The need to bring the consumer’s voice into the startup firm and the business planning process has seldom been discussed. There is however, much debate about the role of business planning and new venture creation and success. Here, we extend this debate and advance our understanding of the effectiveness of business planning. Specifically, we investigate the impact of incorporating the “voice-of-the-consumer”(VOC) into business planning process as it affects firm survival using longitudinal data from a sample of incubated spin off firms.