============================================================ nat.io // BLOG POST ============================================================ TITLE: Why Most Business Plans Are Just Bad Science Fiction DATE: August 7, 2025 AUTHOR: Nat Currier TAGS: Business, Strategy, Systems Thinking ------------------------------------------------------------ The startup founder pitched their revolutionary food delivery app with breathless confidence, describing their "inevitable market domination" with the same tone I'd heard before, but not in another boardroom. *I'd heard it in a science fiction convention panel, where an aspiring author was explaining their 47-book space opera series.* Both were creating **elaborate fictional worlds**. Both had **intricate internal logic**. Both were absolutely convinced their creations would captivate millions. And both were making the exact same fundamental mistakes that doom most speculative fiction to the slush pile. > The pattern became clear: business plans and science fiction novels are essentially the same thing—exercises in world-building that succeed or fail based on identical principles. The founder continued describing their **frictionless user acquisition** (users would "naturally" discover the app through word-of-mouth), their **effortless scaling** (restaurants would "obviously" want to join their platform), and their **inevitable profitability** (competitors would simply be "disrupted" out of existence). It was a perfectly crafted fantasy world where every character acted exactly as the author needed them to, where every system worked flawlessly, and where conflict existed only to be easily resolved. > It was, in other words, terrible science fiction masquerading as business strategy. But here's what's fascinating: the best business plans and the best science fiction succeed for exactly the same reasons. They create believable worlds by respecting the fundamental forces that govern human behavior, acknowledging the complexity of systems, and building scenarios that feel inevitable rather than convenient. [ The World-Building Problem: Creating Believable Futures ] ----------------------------------------------------------------- What makes a fictional world believable? It's not the **amount of detail**—plenty of terrible fantasy novels have extensive appendices about their made-up languages and political systems. It's not the **internal consistency**—many logically coherent worlds feel completely artificial. *The key is creating a world that feels like it could actually exist, populated by characters who behave like real people facing genuine constraints.* Business planning faces the identical challenge. You're creating a **speculative future** where your company exists, thrives, and generates returns. Like any fictional world, this future must be believable to your audience—investors, employees, customers, and ultimately, reality itself. The parallels are striking: **Science Fiction World-Building:** - Create a setting with **consistent rules** - Populate it with **believable characters** - Introduce **conflicts and challenges** - Show how characters **adapt and evolve** - Make the outcome feel **inevitable, not convenient** **Business Planning:** - Create a market scenario with **consistent dynamics** - Populate it with **believable actors** (customers, competitors, partners) - Introduce **challenges and obstacles** - Show how your company **adapts and evolves** - Make success feel **inevitable, not convenient** The failure modes are identical too. Bad science fiction creates worlds where everything works too perfectly, where characters act exactly as the plot requires, and where problems are solved through convenient coincidences or magical interventions. *Bad business plans do exactly the same thing.* Consider the classic startup pitch: "We're building the Uber for dog walking." The implied world-building is extensive-there's a massive underserved market of dog owners, existing solutions are inadequate, drivers will seamlessly transition from people to pets, regulatory frameworks will remain favorable, and network effects will create an insurmountable moat. It's a complete fictional universe, and like most amateur science fiction, it's built on convenient assumptions rather than believable foundations. The best science fiction writers spend years researching physics, psychology, sociology, and economics to make their worlds feel real. They understand that believable speculation requires deep knowledge of how things actually work. *The best business strategists do exactly the same thing.* [ Character Development vs. Market Research: Understanding Your Actors ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What separates great science fiction from mediocre world-building? Character development. The best sci-fi writers understand that technology, politics, and social systems are just backdrops-stories succeed or fail based on whether characters behave like real people with genuine motivations, limitations, and contradictions. > Business plans live or die on the same principle: how well you understand the motivations and constraints of every actor in your market ecosystem. In science fiction, **lazy character development** looks like this: "The aliens attacked Earth because they needed our resources." It's convenient for the plot, but it ignores basic questions: Why these resources? Why not trade? Why not find uninhabited planets? What's their decision-making process? How do they handle internal disagreement? *Real characters have complex, often contradictory motivations that create genuine dramatic tension.* In business planning, **lazy character development** looks like this: "Customers will switch to our platform because it's 20% cheaper." It ignores the same basic questions: What are their switching costs? How do they make purchasing decisions? Who influences those decisions? What are they really optimizing for? How do they handle risk? *Real customers have complex, often contradictory motivations that create genuine market dynamics.* I learned this lesson the hard way while working on a **B2B software product**. Our business plan assumed that IT directors would "obviously" want our solution because it reduced costs and improved efficiency. We had spreadsheets proving the ROI. We had feature comparisons showing our superiority. We had everything except an understanding of what IT directors actually cared about. > We'd created characters who existed to serve our plot, not people who had their own stories. The reality was messier. IT directors cared about cost reduction, but they cared more about not being blamed for system failures. They wanted efficiency, but they valued predictability more. They were interested in new solutions, but they were terrified of being the first to try something unproven. Our "obviously superior" product was asking them to take career risks for benefits that weren't even their top priorities. Good science fiction writers solve this through deep character development. They create detailed backstories, understand their characters' fears and desires, and let those authentic motivations drive the plot. When characters act, readers think "of course they would do that" rather than "that's convenient for the story." Good business strategists do the same thing. They develop detailed personas not just for customers, but for every key actor: the economic buyer, the technical evaluator, the end user, the procurement team, the implementation partner. They understand not just what these people want, but why they want it, what they're afraid of, and how they actually make decisions. The breakthrough came when we stopped asking "How do we convince IT directors to buy our product?" and started asking "What story is the IT director telling themselves about their career, their department, and their company's future?" Once we understood their narrative, we could figure out how our product fit into their world rather than trying to force them into ours. [ The Physics of Economics: Rules That Can't Be Broken ] -------------------------------------------------------------- Great science fiction **respects the laws of physics**. Even when writers invent faster-than-light travel or telepathy, the best stories establish consistent rules about how these technologies work and what their limitations are. *Readers can suspend disbelief about fictional technologies, but they can't suspend disbelief about inconsistent world-building.* Business planning has its own **physics**.the fundamental economic forces that govern how markets, companies, and industries behave. Just like physical laws, these economic principles can't be ignored or wished away. You can build creative solutions within these constraints, but you can't pretend they don't exist. The **economic "laws"** that most business plans violate: **The Law of Competitive Response**: If you create value, competitors will try to capture some of it. Your plan can't assume they'll just watch you succeed. **The Law of Customer Acquisition Costs**: Getting customers costs money and effort. The easier customers are to acquire, the easier they are for competitors to steal. **The Law of Scaling Complexity**: As systems grow, they become exponentially more complex to manage. Linear growth assumptions ignore exponential complexity increases. **The Law of Resource Constraints**: Time, talent, and capital are finite. Optimistic timelines that ignore resource constraints are fantasy, not planning. **The Law of Regulatory Gravity**: Successful companies attract regulatory attention. The bigger you get, the more rules you have to follow. I've seen countless business plans that violate these principles with the same casual disregard that bad science fiction shows for thermodynamics: - "We'll achieve **viral growth** through word-of-mouth marketing" (ignoring customer acquisition physics) - "We'll scale to **millions of users** with our current team" (ignoring complexity physics) - "We'll maintain **80% gross margins** as we grow" (ignoring competitive physics) > These aren't optimistic projections—they're violations of economic reality. The best science fiction writers use physical constraints to create dramatic tension. Characters can't travel faster than light, so they must deal with the isolation of interstellar distances. Energy isn't infinite, so they must make hard choices about how to use it. *Constraints create story.* The best business strategists use economic constraints the same way. Customer acquisition is expensive, so they focus on retention and lifetime value. Scaling is complex, so they build systems that can handle growth. Competition is inevitable, so they create sustainable advantages. Consider how Amazon's business plan respected economic physics. They understood that customer acquisition costs would be high initially, so they focused on customer lifetime value. They knew that scaling would be complex, so they invested heavily in logistics and technology infrastructure. They recognized that success would attract competition, so they built moats through operational excellence and ecosystem effects. *Their plan worked because it was built on economic reality, not economic fantasy.* [ Plot Holes and Market Gaps: When Logic Breaks Down ] ------------------------------------------------------------ Every science fiction writer knows the terror of the plot hole-that moment when a reader asks "Wait, if they have teleportation technology, why didn't they just teleport past the guards?" Suddenly, your carefully constructed world collapses because you've created an inconsistency that breaks the story's internal logic. > Business plans are riddled with the same logical inconsistencies, but we call them "market gaps" or "competitive advantages" instead of plot holes. The classic business plan plot hole goes like this: **"We've identified a massive underserved market worth $50 billion, with no significant competition."** The logical question is obvious: if the market is so large and valuable, why hasn't anyone else entered it? The usual answers—"They don't understand the technology," "They're not thinking about it the right way," "They're too slow to innovate"—are the business equivalent of "The aliens didn't think of using teleportation." > Real market gaps exist for real reasons, and those reasons usually represent genuine barriers that you'll have to overcome too. I encountered this firsthand while evaluating a **fintech startup** that claimed to have found a "massive inefficiency" in small business lending. Their plan showed how they could profitably serve a market segment that traditional banks were ignoring. The numbers looked compelling.until you asked why banks were ignoring this segment. The answer wasn't that banks were stupid or slow. It was that this market segment had characteristics that made it genuinely difficult to serve profitably: - **High default rates** - **Expensive customer acquisition** - **Complex underwriting requirements** - **Regulatory complications** The "market gap" existed because it was actually a **market chasm** that required significant innovation to bridge. > The startup's plan had a plot hole: they'd identified the gap but not the underlying forces that created it. Good science fiction writers turn apparent plot holes into features. If teleportation exists, why don't characters use it to solve every problem? Maybe it's energy-intensive, maybe it's dangerous, maybe it attracts unwanted attention. The constraint becomes part of the story's logic and creates new sources of tension. Good business strategists do the same thing. They don't just identify market gaps-they understand why those gaps exist and how they plan to overcome the underlying barriers. They turn constraints into competitive advantages. The fintech startup eventually succeeded, but only after they rebuilt their entire approach around the forces that created the market gap. Instead of pretending the barriers didn't exist, they developed technology specifically designed to overcome them: AI-powered underwriting to handle complex risk assessment, automated processes to reduce operational costs, and partnership strategies to navigate regulatory requirements. *Their revised plan worked because it acknowledged the plot hole and built the story around solving it.* [ The Deus Ex Machina Trap: Magical Thinking in Business ] ---------------------------------------------------------------- In ancient Greek theater, when playwrights wrote themselves into impossible situations, they'd literally lower a god from the heavens to solve everything. Modern storytelling recognizes this "deus ex machina" as lazy writing-problems should be solved through character development and logical plot progression, not convenient divine intervention. > Business plans are full of deus ex machina moments, but we call them "strategic partnerships," "viral marketing," or "network effects." The pattern is always the same: the plan encounters a fundamental challenge.customer acquisition is too expensive, the technology is too complex, the market is too competitive.and suddenly, a **magical solution** appears. "We'll partner with Google." "We'll go viral on TikTok." "Network effects will create winner-take-all dynamics." These aren't necessarily bad strategies, but they become **deus ex machina** when they're used to solve problems without explaining how or why they'll work. *It's magical thinking disguised as strategic planning.* I've seen this pattern repeatedly in startup pitches. The most common version goes like this: "Customer acquisition is challenging in our space, but once we reach critical mass, **network effects** will drive organic growth." It sounds sophisticated, but it's often just a way of saying "We don't know how to acquire customers profitably, but we're hoping the problem will solve itself." **Real network effects** are incredibly rare and require specific conditions to emerge. They don't just happen because you want them to.they must be designed into the product's core functionality and reinforced through careful strategic choices. *Most businesses that claim network effects actually just have economies of scale or brand recognition.* The same **magical thinking** appears in other forms: **"We'll partner with industry leaders"**—without explaining why those leaders would want to partner with you or what you bring to the relationship. **"We'll achieve viral growth"**—without understanding the specific mechanisms that make content spread or the conditions that enable viral adoption. **"We'll disrupt the incumbents"**—without acknowledging that incumbents have resources, relationships, and regulatory advantages that won't disappear just because you have better technology. Good science fiction earns its dramatic moments. If the hero saves the day with advanced technology, the story has established how that technology works and why it's available at that moment. If characters overcome impossible odds, it's because of skills, knowledge, or relationships that were developed throughout the narrative. *Good business plans earn their strategic advantages the same way.* Instead of assuming partnerships will materialize, they explain what value they bring to potential partners and how those relationships will be developed. Instead of hoping for viral growth, they identify the specific user behaviors that drive sharing and design their product to encourage those behaviors. Instead of expecting to disrupt incumbents through superior technology alone, they build comprehensive strategies that account for incumbent advantages and develop sustainable competitive moats. The most successful business plan I've encountered took the opposite approach to magical thinking. Instead of assuming their advantages would emerge naturally, they systematically identified every assumption their success depended on and created specific strategies to make each assumption true. They needed distribution partnerships, so they hired executives with deep relationships in their target industry. They needed viral growth, so they built sharing mechanisms into their core product functionality and tested them extensively before launch. They needed to compete with incumbents, so they chose a market segment where incumbent advantages were less relevant and built capabilities that would be difficult for larger companies to replicate. *Their plan worked because every strategic advantage was earned through specific, actionable strategies rather than hoped for through magical thinking.* [ Good World-Building: Principles for Better Business Planning ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- So what separates good world-building from fantasy? Whether you're writing science fiction or business plans, the principles are identical: **Start with constraints, not possibilities.** The most believable fictional worlds are built around **limitations**—what characters can't do is often more important than what they can. Similarly, the most realistic business plans acknowledge constraints first: limited resources, competitive responses, regulatory requirements, customer behavior patterns. *Constraints force creativity and create believable solutions.* **Develop authentic characters with complex motivations.** Great fiction creates characters who feel like real people with their own goals, fears, and contradictions. Great business plans do the same for every stakeholder: customers who have competing priorities, competitors who will respond strategically, partners who have their own agendas. Understanding these complex motivations is essential for predicting how your market will actually behave. **Respect the fundamental forces.** Science fiction that ignores physics feels fake, even when it's internally consistent. Business plans that ignore economic forces feel equally artificial. You can be creative within constraints, but you can't pretend the constraints don't exist. **Earn your dramatic moments.** The best stories build toward their climaxes through careful character development and logical plot progression. The best business plans build toward their success through systematic capability development and strategic positioning. *Success should feel inevitable in retrospect, not convenient in prospect.* **Plan for unintended consequences.** Complex systems always produce unexpected results. Good science fiction anticipates how new technologies will create unforeseen social changes. Good business plans anticipate how success will change competitive dynamics, regulatory environments, and customer expectations. **Test your assumptions.** Science fiction writers often create detailed backstories and world-building documents that never appear in their published work.they're testing whether their fictional world holds together under scrutiny. Business planners should do the same: stress-test assumptions, explore edge cases, and identify the conditions under which their plan would fail. The best business plan I've ever seen read like a great science fiction novel. It created a believable future by respecting economic constraints, developing complex stakeholder motivations, and building success through systematic capability development rather than magical thinking. The plan acknowledged that customer acquisition would be expensive and time-consuming, so it focused on high-lifetime-value segments and built retention into the core product experience. It recognized that competitors would respond aggressively, so it chose a market position that would be difficult to replicate and built switching costs into customer relationships. It understood that scaling would create operational complexity, so it invested in systems and processes that could handle growth. *Most importantly, it earned every strategic advantage through specific, actionable strategies rather than hoping they would emerge naturally.* The company succeeded not because their plan predicted the future perfectly, but because it created a framework for adapting to whatever future actually emerged. Like good science fiction, it was built on solid foundations that could support multiple possible storylines. [ The Meta-Lesson: Planning as Storytelling ] ------------------------------------------------------------ Here's the deeper insight that connects business planning and science fiction: both are fundamentally about storytelling. You're creating a narrative about how the future might unfold, and that narrative must be compelling enough to motivate action in the present. > The story you tell about your business becomes the reality you create. **Investors** fund the stories they find believable. **Employees** join the stories they find inspiring. **Customers** buy into the stories they find valuable. **Partners** collaborate on the stories they find mutually beneficial. *Your business plan isn't just a prediction—it's a script that guides how all these actors will behave.* This is why the quality of your **world-building** matters so much. A poorly constructed narrative will fail to motivate the behaviors you need for success. A well-crafted story will align stakeholder incentives and create the conditions for its own fulfillment. But here's the crucial difference between business planning and fiction: **your story has to be true**. Not true in the sense of predicting exactly what will happen—that's impossible. True in the sense of being built on accurate understanding of how the world actually works. > The best business plans are science fiction that could actually happen. They **respect the laws of economics** like good sci-fi respects the laws of physics. They **develop complex, believable characters** like good fiction develops authentic personalities. They **earn their dramatic moments** through logical progression rather than convenient coincidences. They acknowledge constraints and use them to create compelling narratives about how those constraints can be overcome. Most importantly, they recognize that the goal isn't to **predict the future perfectly**—it's to create a **framework for navigating** whatever future actually emerges. Like the best science fiction, they're not just entertaining stories about what might happen. They're tools for thinking more clearly about the forces that shape our world and our place within it. The next time you're reviewing a business plan—whether you're writing one, funding one, or joining one—ask yourself: **Is this good science fiction?** Does it create a believable world populated by authentic characters operating under realistic constraints? Does it earn its success through logical progression rather than magical thinking? > If the answer is no, you're not looking at a business plan. You're looking at a fantasy novel that hasn't admitted what it is. And like most fantasy novels, it probably won't have a happy ending.