Founder Puzzles. Better Financial Modeling for Startups
Don’t build better financial models. Build better businesses.
Well, I couldn’t help myself. I went ahead and wrote another one. All 227 pages of it. Why?
Founder Puzzles, summary video. 227 pages in 7 minutes, 29 seconds. Take a look.
After a decade and a half of mentoring startups and founders across my part of the planet have to come realize that as founders, we sink and fail for two primary reasons.
The big one, reason number one, is we don’t know how to sell.
The second, equally important, is because we get married to bad ideas. Mistakes that could have been easily avoided if we ran a few numbers in an Excel spreadsheet. Not exactly Napkin math but questions that would look at fundamental reasons for doing the business, such as:
1.) Does this idea work at a single transaction level?
2.) If not, how many transaction a month or day do we need to make it viable?
3.) What is our path to that number?
4.) If we hit it, where do we go from there?
5.) How do our numbers compare to everyone else in this space?
6.) Are we really doing it cheaper, faster, better? By what margin?
7.) What allows us to do that?
Not looking for a PhD or a model that needs a super computer to run. Just looking for a dating filter before we step into the restaurant and commit ourselves to dinner.
So that as startups and founders we could answer:
a) Who do I build that model for? For myself as a founder or for my investors?
b) How complex should it be? How much time should I spend on building it?
c) What is the one thing I need to get right?
d) What is the question I am trying to answer? How will this model help me do a better job?
e) Where do I start? What do I assume? Who do I ask?
Real world questions. Real world models. Real world answers.
14 chapters covering.
a) 7 lessons from finance for founders
b) Modeling revenues
c) Unit Economics for startups
d) Pricing Fundamentals
e) Value based Pricing
f) Market Sizing
g) Understanding Investor Mindset
f) Revenue Models for content plays
h) Disney Marvel Case study
i) Products vs Services
k) An introduction to valuations
l) Real world Models. Bringing it all together.
m) GEMS Education. A private equity case study
n) Kelly criterion. Founders, Risk and bet size
Broadly based on the 3 day Financial Modeling Bootcamp, I have run for founders and startups for the last 5 years at The Nest I/O Technology Incubator in Karachi.
Scheduled release is 31st July 2020. The book is only available as a digital PDF download. Pre-orders open at the no obligation, no commitment, cancel anytime, link on https://bit.ly/FounderPuzzles
Book page at https://bit.ly/FounderPuzzlesBook
