While paging through my Google Reader blurbs for the day, I decided to check out some of the bios for the team at kbs+p Ventures (via this post from Darren Herman).
I found that one of the team members, Taylor Davidson, has crafted a pretty useful Excel template for estimating the potential financial reality of a new business venture. At unstructuredventures, Davidson offers a financial modeling template for startup companies to use for estimating sales, costs, and net income–essentially forecasting the profitability of a new company for up to five years.
For someone starting out without any financial modeling experience, this could be a true time saver and help streamline the process for determining a new company’s results over the course of its first few years. I have personally had to create models from scratch before (one of the more complicated being a forecast for Whole Foods), and I can appreciate the uniform template he provides and the benefits of having a the structure of a sound model without much of the initial setup involved in creating/formatting/linking the spreadsheets.
If you are thinking about starting your own business, this is a cost efficient method for estimating financial results, based on customizable drivers (play around with these, as certain variables can have unexpected effects). Although it’s not the most complex model out there, Davidson states on the site that a more powerful update will be out this summer. But for the price (a suggested contribution of $15), it’s hard to pass up, especially if you are serious about planning for the future of your startup and want to avoid the time it takes to craft your own model.
Discussion
No comments yet.