Startup one pager: a template you can copy

A one pager has one job: get the reader to the next step. For an investor, that step is a first call. For a partner, a meeting. For a journalist or a newsletter editor, a reply. It is not meant to answer every question, only the questions someone asks before deciding whether you are worth more time.

That is the same role an executive summary plays in a long report: a document in miniature that can be read in place of the longer one. If your reader only reads this page, they should still understand what you do, for whom, and why it is working.

The structure below follows the order Sequoia recommends in its guide to writing a business plan, compressed to fit one page. Aim for one to three sentences per block.

1. Company in one sentence. Sequoia calls this the company purpose: "define your company in a single declarative sentence". Say what you make and for whom, not your mission statement.
2. Problem. The pain of your customer, how they handle it today, and why current solutions fall short.
3. Solution. What your product does about it, described as an outcome, not a feature list.
4. Why now. What changed that makes this possible or necessary today: a new technology, a regulation, a shift in behavior.
5. Customer and market. Who buys first, and how many people or companies look like them.
6. Traction. Users, revenue, growth, pilots, waitlist, or letters of intent. Only real numbers.
7. Business model. Who pays, how much, and how often.
8. Competition and alternatives. Including spreadsheets and doing nothing, which is often the real competitor.
9. Team. Why you are the people to build this, in one line per founder.
10. The ask and contact. What you want from the reader, and how to reach you.

You can copy this skeleton as is:

[Company] helps [customer] [do something] without [current pain].

Problem: ...
Solution: ...
Why now: ...
Customer: ...
Traction: ...
Business model: ...
Alternatives: ...
Team: ...
Ask: ... | email | website

If you have ever built a pitch deck, the list will look familiar. Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 rule names almost the same ten topics for a deck. The one pager is the same story with no slides and no presenter to fill the gaps.

Here is a one pager for an invented product, so you can see the level of detail. The company and numbers are made up for illustration.

Shelfwise helps independent bookshops reorder stock in ten minutes a week instead of an afternoon.

Problem: small bookshops reorder from distributor catalogs by hand, often from memory, and run out of the titles that sell while overstocking the ones that do not. Solution: Shelfwise reads sales from the shop's till and suggests a weekly order the owner approves in one click. Why now: most shops have moved to cloud tills with open APIs. Customer: independent bookshops with one to three locations. Traction: 14 shops in a paid pilot, 11 still active after three months. Business model: monthly subscription per location. Alternatives: distributor portals and spreadsheets. Team: a former bookshop manager and a developer who built inventory tools for retail. Ask: introductions to bookshop associations. founder@example.com

Notice that each block is short, concrete and checkable. A reader can disagree with it, which is a good sign: vague text cannot be wrong, but it cannot convince anyone either.

Lead with the sentence. Write the first line last, after you have filled in everything else, then rewrite it until a stranger could repeat it. If you struggle, the problem is usually that you have not chosen a first customer yet.

Show evidence, not adjectives. Paul Graham's essay on how to convince investors says they look for three things: formidable founders, a promising market, and usually some evidence of success so far. Your page should make each of those visible with facts, not claims like "huge market" or "passionate team".

Express traction as a rate. A total number of users says little without time. Growth per week or per month tells the reader where you are heading. In Startup = Growth, Graham notes that a good growth rate during Y Combinator is 5 to 7 percent a week. You do not need to hit that, but measuring weekly forces honesty.

Make the business model a sentence, not a canvas. If you have filled in a Business Model Canvas, take the revenue and customer blocks and turn them into one line. The canvas is a thinking tool; the one pager is a communication tool.

Make the ask specific. "We are raising a seed round" is an ask. "Any feedback is welcome" is not. Partners and press need a different ask than investors, so keep one version per audience.

• Writing for everyone. An investor, a distribution partner and a journalist care about different blocks. Change the order and the ask for each.
• Shrinking the font to fit. If it does not fit at a readable size, cut. A one pager with ten point text is a short business plan, not a one pager.
• Hiding the product. Add one screenshot or a link to a live demo. If the product is live, a public listing works as proof; you can submit it to MegaLaunch and link the page.
• Inventing numbers. Market sizes from a quick search and "projected" users damage trust. Show what you measured and say what you are still testing.
• Forgetting the date. Put the month on the page. Traction numbers expire fast.

The one pager is often the first written version of your positioning, so it feeds everything that comes after. The same sentences become your landing page headline, your launch announcement and the description on launch platforms. When you prepare those, our go-to-market strategy template turns the customer and channel blocks into a plan, the product launch announcement guide reuses your first sentence, and the free tagline generator helps you compress it further for listings.

Update the page every month. If the first sentence still holds after a few versions, you have found your positioning. If it keeps changing, that is useful information too.