A true expert on business planning
Tim Berry, author of Lean Business Planning, is the best-known and most-respected business plan expert in the world. Do a Google search for “business plan expert” and you’ll find Tim Berry listed first in the organic, unpaid results. Well-known author Pamela Slim, well-known author of Body of Work and Escape From Cubicle Nation, dubbed him “the Obi-wan Kenobi of business planning,” and quoted him extensively in her landmark book Escape From Cubicle Nation.

Small Business Advocate Jim Blasingame, who has been named Journalist of the Year by the U.S. Federal Small Business Administration twice, calls him “the business plan guru” and “father of modern business planning.” Guy Kawasaki, entrepreneur celebrity, chose to interview Berry as his expert on business planning. Entrepreneur.com called Berry its business planning coach for more than 10 years, and still features him regularly on its blogs.
Real-world Entrepreneur, Not Just an Expert
Berry founded Palo Alto Software and built it on his own, without outside investment, to multi-million-dollar sales, profits, and cash flow independence. He’s a leader in a local group of angel investors. He did business planning for Borland International, a software company that went public in less than four years; for various divisions of Apple Computer for 12 years, and for a collection of clients, large and small for decades.
Author of Books and Software
Entrepreneur Press published his books The Plan as You Go Business Plan and 3 Weeks to Startup. published by Entrepreneur Press. More than two million people got Hurdle: the Book on Business Planning, for the late 1990s. Tim conceived, designed, and wrote part of the code for Business Plan Pro. It was a landmark first of its kind, the best selling software product for doing a business plan over two decades, used by more than three million people. He is key contributor to LivePlan, a browser-based online tool for business planning, which is used by more than 50,000 paying users.
He also wrote half a dozen other books published by Entrepreneur, McGraw-Hill, Dow Jones-Irwin, and others. And he’s been writing on business planning for more than a decade at Entrepreneur, SBA.gov, and other major media.
Stanford MBA and other Degrees
He has a Stanford MBA degree, an MA in Journalism with honors from the University of Oregon, and a BA magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame.
There’s more information about him at timberry.com.
And he is a registered member of Mensa.