Moyn Islam on why the best business plans challenge your assumptions

Every forecast looks reasonable before customers get involved.

Revenue projections, launch dates and acquisition costs can all line up convincingly in a spreadsheet. Then the business enters the market. Customers hesitate, costs change, suppliers take longer than expected or demand comes from an entirely different direction.

That does not make the original plan pointless. It simply means the plan has met information that did not exist when it was written.

This distinction is particularly relevant in the UAE, where the conditions for starting a business continue to strengthen. In the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2025–2026 report, the UAE ranked first globally for its entrepreneurial environment for the fifth consecutive year.

A supportive ecosystem, however, cannot remove the uncertainty involved in building a company. Founders still have to work out whether customers will pay, whether the economics are sustainable and whether an idea can grow beyond its initial audience.

For Moyn Islam, Co-Founder and CEO of BE (BE Club), the answer is not to abandon business planning. It is to stop treating the first version of a plan as though it were the final one.

“A business plan should give the founder direction and make the difficult questions visible,” he says. “But some of the answers will inevitably change once the business begins dealing with real customers, real costs and real competition.”

A plan still has an important job

The UAE Ministry of Economy and Tourism describes creating a business plan as the first practical step in starting a venture. It also notes that a detailed plan may be required by financiers, licensing bodies and banks.

There are good reasons for this. A founder needs to understand the problem being addressed, the customer expected to pay for the solution, the cost of delivering it and the point at which the business could become sustainable.

A serious plan should also account for funding, legal responsibilities, operational risks and the capabilities required within the team. These questions become even more important in regulated or capital-intensive industries.

The problem arises when estimates are presented as established facts. Early projections are usually built on incomplete information. Customer demand may have been inferred from market research. Pricing may be based on competitors rather than purchasing behaviour. Growth forecasts may assume that interest will convert into sales at a rate that has not yet been demonstrated.

A useful plan makes those assumptions explicit and explains how they will be examined.

Let the market edit the document

Testing an assumption does not always require a major launch or a significant investment. A founder might begin with customer interviews, a limited pilot, a prototype or a smaller version of the proposed service.

What matters is the quality of the evidence gathered.

A handful of encouraging comments can be useful, but they do not necessarily demonstrate demand. Online engagement is not the same as a purchase. One unsuccessful conversation should not force a complete change of direction either. Founders need to look for patterns: recurring objections, repeated requests, consistent purchasing behaviour and costs that continue to differ from the forecast.

“The market can be quite direct,” Islam says. “If people like the idea but are unwilling to pay for it, that is important information. The founder then has to understand whether the issue is the price, the product, the audience or the problem itself.”

Revising a plan in response to that information is not evidence that the founder lacked conviction. It shows that the business is learning.

There is, however, a difference between adapting intelligently and changing direction every time something becomes difficult. A disappointing week is not a strategy. Neither is chasing each new trend that appears on social media.

Founders need enough patience to collect meaningful evidence and enough honesty to act when that evidence challenges their original thinking.

AI can improve the process, but it cannot validate the idea

Digital tools have made it much easier to research markets, compare scenarios and produce early prototypes. A founder can now create a polished presentation, financial model or product concept in a fraction of the time previously required.

An OECD review published in 2025 found that generative AI can support idea development, early prototyping and routine business activities. The same review also stressed that evidence concerning AI’s longer-term effects on businesses remains limited and that its effectiveness depends heavily on the task, the user’s experience and the presence of human oversight.

This is an important qualification. AI can help organise information, but it cannot turn an unsupported assumption into evidence. A professional-looking forecast may still be based on the wrong market size, unrealistic conversion rates or outdated source material.

“AI is useful when it helps a founder examine an idea from more than one angle,” says Islam. “The risk comes when the quality of the presentation is mistaken for the quality of the thinking behind it.”

Founders should be able to explain where their numbers came from, what information remains uncertain and what would cause them to revise their projections.Whatever tools are used, founders should retain a clear understanding of the reasoning, evidence and assumptions behind their projections.

Decide in advance what can change

One practical approach is to separate the foundations of the business from the assumptions surrounding its execution.

The company’s values, legal obligations and commitments to customers should not move whenever the numbers become uncomfortable. Pricing, sales channels, product features, hiring plans and launch timelines may require far more flexibility.

It can also help to set review points in advance. Pricing might be reassessed after a defined number of customer conversations. Supplier costs can be updated once written quotations arrive. A new hire could be linked to a level of sustained demand rather than a date in the original plan.

This turns adaptation into a deliberate process rather than a reaction driven by panic, impatience or temporary enthusiasm.

The UAE offers founders advanced infrastructure, access to international markets and one of the world’s most supportive entrepreneurial ecosystems. Making the most of that environment will depend partly on how quickly entrepreneurs can turn early assumptions into reliable commercial knowledge.

“The purpose of a plan is to help you build the business,” Islam says. “If protecting the document becomes more important than responding to what the business is telling you, the plan has stopped doing its job.”

The strongest business plans are rarely the ones that remain untouched. They are the ones that become more accurate as the founder learns.