Dave Lavinsky

Dave Lavinsky is the founder of PlanBuildr. He is a renowned expert in business planning. As the co-founder of Growthink, Dave has written hundreds of business plans and has trained business plan writers who have developed over one thousand plans. He has also guest lectured on business planning at UCLA and NYU among others, and has appeared on countless webinars and podcasts. His business planning guide was once required reading at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business.

Dave also has significant experience launching new companies of his own. Select companies which he has started, grown and/or exited include:

• Emerge Juice and Nutrition Systems: a juice and smoothie company
• Shoutmouth: a music news-focused social networking site
• Z Reporter LLC: owner of over 3,000 niche-focused information websites
• TopPayingKeywords: a Search Engine Optimization research data firm
• VendingMavericks.com: a site that teaches entrepreneurs how to launch and grow their own vending machine businesses
• Guiding Metrics: a business dashboard company

Dave’s start in the business plan field was as a consultant to Keyspan Energy Services in 1995. Dave wrote the plan for Keyspan to launch deregulated services. Within 3 years of launch, Keyspan, now part of National Grid, grew to over $1 billion in revenues.

Dave gained professional management consulting, marketing consulting and market research experience with PIRA Energy Group, FIND/SVP, BPA International and The NPD Group.