Notes from twenty Start-Up Visa files.

After writing more than twenty business plans for the Canada Start-Up Visa program, a small list of patterns shows up file after file. None of them are about polish.

The first pattern: defensible specificity

The plans that move are the ones where the founder can name, with specificity, who the first ten customers are. Not "Canadian SMEs in the GTA" — names. Companies. The buyer's role. Why they will pay. The plans that stall are the ones written for a category.

The second pattern: financial models that survive a stress test

Reviewers do not read every cell. They sample. They look for the row where a 20% miss on conversion erases the year-two profit. If that row exists and you have not flagged it, the file reads as inattentive.

The third pattern: a paragraph about the founder that earns the rest

The single most under-written paragraph in most files is the founder paragraph. It is treated like a bio. It should be treated like an argument: why this person, why now, why this market. The plans that win make this paragraph load-bearing.

What it is not about

It is not about polish. It is not about length. It is not about brand. We have submitted plain-text plans that moved through review faster than design-heavy ones. The reviewer is looking for clarity of thought — and that does not need a stock photo.

The habit that compounds

The habit, across twenty-plus files: write the financial model first. Write the customer list second. Write the narrative third. The reverse order — narrative, then list, then numbers — produces files that look beautiful and do not survive the second pass.