Financial Modeling for Startups & Small Businesses
What you'll learn
- Build financial models for your startup business
- Forecast cash needs for your startup business
- Model user growth
- Model revenue
- Model expenses
- Model attrition
- Model various different business models, from tech to brick & mortar
- Use best practices for financial modeling
Requirements
- Have access to Microsoft Excel 2011 or Newer
- Working knowledge of Excel/spreadsheet core functionality
- Working knowledge of Excel/spreadsheet formulas and cell references
- Working knowledge of basic algebra
Description
Instructor Symon He hosts near daily LIVE office hours on TikTok 10:30PM PDT. Find him @SymonHe.
Reasons why you should create a financial model for your startup or small business. A good financial model can help you:
Test your assumptions and verify key drivers of your business
Compare and contrast different business choices, like pricing models
Calculate the ACTUAL amount of capital you need to startup
Calculate your burn rate
Model out your user growth
Model out your expenses
Be more prepared talking to potential investors
And loads more.
Building a financial model isn't just a vanity exercise. When done right, it could help you better understand your business, whether it's a startup or an existing business you're growing.
But it's not easy and there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it.
Even if you have little to no finance background, if you're going to be starting or running a business, this is a skill you need to have.
A good financial model is an indicator of how deeply you understand your business model and market. But building a good one requires the right tools and the right approach.
We're going to show you how to do that with a wide variety of examples and exercises. But we'll also be teaching general best practices that will help you, no matter what you'll be building your financial models for in the future.
Why learn from us?
By signing up with us, you will be learning from two highly rated instructors that have a combined student count of over 750,000 students and 100,000 reviews!
Check out our profiles and see that we take care of your students and deliver the goods.
Evan has extensive startup experience and previously worked as a venture capitalist, where he evaluated 100's of startups that trying to convince him to invest in them.
Symon also has startup experience in both tech and brick & mortar businesses. Previously he built tons of models while working in mergers and acquisitions as well as in private equity. And he's helped dozens of startups build financial models across a dozen different business models and industries.
Together, we pull directly from our experience and put it in this course--in fact, two of the case studies use the ACTUAL financial models used to raise funding. The other case studies are inspired by well known startups you're sure to recognize.
How is this different from Symon's Intro to Financial Modeling Course?
The Intro to Financial Modeling course taught by Symon He and Brandon Young is an introductory course on financial modeling that presents a general overview covering the topic and is more relevant to those who wish to explore finance as a career option or those who want to understand financial modeling in a corporate context.
This course is all about financial modeling for startup businesses so it's more geared towards entrepreneurs or business owners who want to better understand the key drivers of a new business.
There is almost zero overlap. Even though both courses introduce a lemonade stand as an example, those examples and models are quite different as they serve very different purposes.
What if I don't have any finance or Excel background?
No worries! This course isn't an Excel or Finance course, although you will learn a bit of both. We focus more on the rationale and the logic of modeling specifically for startups or growing businesses, so you can take what you learn to other spreadsheet tools.
But it will take practice. You won't get better just watching the videos. That's why have lots of practice exercises and sample models for you to learn from.
What will I be able to do after I take your course?
After taking our course, you will be:
Able to confidently build financial models for your startup or new business from scratch
Able to apply the best financial modeling practices and techniques
Able to read and understand other financial models by looking at lots of practice models and case studies
Able to leverage financial modeling to help you make smarter choices about your business.
Able to learn a new skill set that you can take with you for any and every business venture you take up in the future.
Why lemonade stand example?
Because learning how to model on its own is tough enough but learning it while also having to learn a new business model makes it even harder.
But, even with a simple business model such as a lemonade stand, you'll be surprised by how complex and sophisticated the analysis could become.
And since this is all about modeling for startups and new businesses, this example is different from the one in the Intro to Financial Modeling course.
After the simple lemonade example, we cover 7 distinct case studies involving different business models in different industries.
Tell me again why I should take your course?
You have absolutely ZERO risk.
Udemy gives you a solid as an oak tree 30-day money back guarantee.
So if you've read this far, we welcome you to join us inside.
Who this course is for:
- Someone who wants to understand how to create a financial model for a startup business
- Someone who wants to start a new business
- Someone who wants to leverage financial modeling to make better business decisions
- Someone who wants to better analyze business opportunities
- Someone interested in doing a startup and plan on raising VC funding
- Someone interested in starting a brick & mortar business
Instructors
Hi, I'm Evan Kimbrell. Thanks for checking out my course.
**My courses have been featured in Forbes, CNN, Entrepreneur Magazine, BusinessInsider, BuzzFeed, Mashable, TheNextWeb, The Daily Beast, & Techcrunch**
Currently, I'm the Founder and Director of Sprintkick, a full-service, referral-only digital agency based out of San Francisco. Over the past four years I've overseen the development and launch of over 100 web and mobile apps. Clients range from two-man bootstrapping startups to multibillion dollar Fortune 100s like Wal-Mart, Dick's Sporting Goods, and GNC.
Prior to Sprintkick I worked as a VC for a new firm called Juvo Capital, based out of L.A. I spearheaded the firm's expansion into Silicon Valley and into the Consumer Web tech category.
In the long long ago, I was a co-founder for an educational software startup called ScholarPRO that raised a ton of money and then spectacularly blew up (in the bad way). Before it exploded like the Death Star, I went through five tech incubators (yes, five): Tech Stars, Excelerate Labs, MassChallenge, Babson Venture Program, and Sparkseed.
Hope you enjoy my courses!
Symon He is the author of the Rental Property Investing QuickStart Guide, Amazon best-seller Real Estate Investing QuickStart Guide, and the co-author of Airbnb for Dummies, all available now on Amazon and in bookstores throughout North America.
He is also co-founder of LearnBNB, a leading online educational destination for all things Airbnb hosting and short-term rentals. His works have been cited or featured on the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Forbes, CNBC, Entrepreneur, and SKIFT. Through his training and coaching programs, he has worked directly with thousands of aspiring Airbnb hosts to jumpstart their short term rental journeys. His training programs have been featured by prominent third-party partners, including a joint venture with RichDad.
As a licensed broker, Symon previously helped private real estate investors with their acquisitions and deal structuring. As an angel investor, he also advises and invests in early stage startups.
Previously, Symon worked in several corporate real estate and finance roles at large private and Fortune 80 companies, including at a private equity investment firm covering a wide range of commercial real estate acquisitions in the western USA.
Symon received dual degrees in Computer Engineering and Economics with Honors from UC Irvine and an MBA from Stanford University.