Dot-Com Bubble, Part II? Why It is So Hard to Value Social Networking Sites
Less than three years after emerging from nowhere, the hot social networking website MySpace is on pace to be worth a whopping $15 billion in just three more years. Or is it? And is the much smaller...
View ArticleValue of Soft Assets
The indefatigable and ubiquitous Auren Hoffman, CEO of Rapleaf, posts his slides from a presentation on the value of soft assets (“connections, knowledge, and reputation”). I particularly like his...
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The value of a CFA
We took our interns out for dinner last night and one of the topics we discussed was their career planning. Walking to work today, I saw the woman below at 38th & Broadway. According to her...
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How Startups Should Report Financial Results
I asked Rick Eaton, CFO of Hashable, to write for you a sanitized version of some of the detailed reports that Hashable provides to its investors (which includes us). He’s provided below a template...
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Tax Credits for Startups in New York State
As our federal and state government continue to worry about job creation, they’re trying their best to promote entrepreneurship. Our CFO Alex Katz just sent out a memo to our portfolio, attached...
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Best Practices in Spreadsheet Design
(This is the first of three blog posts on financial modeling for startups.) While some entrepreneurs may think that financial models are just a formality that needs completing in order to placate...
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Template Startup Financial Model
(This is the second of three blog posts on financial models for startups. Yesterday I wrote about best practices in spreadsheet design.) I couldn’t find a good template financial model online, so I...
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Valuing Startup Employee Options
This is the third of three blog posts on financial modeling for startups. The first was on best practices in building financial models, and the second was a template financial model for a startup....
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How to Prepare For and Run a Board Meeting
After spending quite a bit of time in board meetings, I worked with a NYU student team earlier in 2012-13 to prepare a template for board presentations to investors. In the deck below, I include our...
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18 Ways to Make Your Financial Model Stand Out to Investors
The median investor looking at your proposal is in her 40s. Her eyes are going, not to mention her brain. I look at a lot of spreadsheets and analytic reports, and way too many are difficult to read...
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