Financial Modeling for Business Owners and Entrepreneurs: Developing Excel Models to Raise Capital, Increase Cash Flow, Improve Operations, Plan Projects, and Make Decisions

Financial Modeling for Business Owners and Entrepreneurs: Developing Excel Models to Raise Capital, Increase Cash Flow, Improve Operations, Plan Projects, and Make Decisions may be one of the most important books any entrepreneur or manager in a small or medium-sized enterprise will read. It combines logical business principles and strategies with a step-by-step methodology for planning and modeling a company and solving specific business problems. You’ll learn to create operational and financial models in Excel that describe the workings of your company in quantitative terms and that make it far more likely you will avoid the traps and dead ends many businesses fall into.

Serial entrepreneur and financial expert Tom Y. Sawyer shows how to break your company down into basic functional and operational components that can be modeled. The result is a financial model that, for example, you can literally take to the bank or bring to local angel investors to receive the funding you need to launch your business or a new product. Or it might be a model that shows with startling clarity that your new product development effort is a likely winner—or loser. Even better, you’ll learn to create models that will serve as guideposts for ongoing operations. You’ll always know just where you are financially, and where you need to be. The models you will learn to build in Financial Modeling for Business Owners and Entrepreneurs can be used to:

• Raise capital for startup or any stage of growth
• Plan projects and new initiatives
• Make astute business decisions, including go/no-go assessments
• Analyze ROI on your product development and marketing expenditures
• Streamline operations, manage budgets, improve efficiency, and reduce costs
• Value the business when it is time to cash out or merge

In addition to many valuable exercises and tips for using Excel to model your business, this book contains a combination of practical advice born of hard-won lessons, advanced strategic thought, and the insightful use of hard skills. With a basic knowledge of Excel assumed, it will help you learn to think like an experienced business person who expects to make money on the products or services offered to the public. You’ll discover that the financial model is a key management tool that, if built correctly, provides invaluable assistance every step of the entrepreneurial journey.

Tom Y. Sawyer has used the principles this book contains to create financial models of numerous startup and early-stage companies, assisting them in planning for and raising the capital that they needed to grow their businesses and ultimately exit with multiples of their initial investment. Financial Modeling for Business Owners and Entrepreneurs, a mini-MBA in entrepreneurship and finance, will show you how you can do the same.

Note: This book is an updated version of Sawyer's 2009 title, Pro Excel Financial Modeling.

《企業家和創業家的財務建模：開發Excel模型以籌集資金、增加現金流、改善運營、計劃項目和做出決策》可能是任何中小型企業的企業家或經理所讀過的最重要的書籍之一。它結合了邏輯的商業原則和策略，以及一個逐步的方法論，用於規劃和建模一家公司並解決特定的商業問題。您將學習在Excel中創建運營和財務模型，以定量方式描述您公司的運作情況，從而更有可能避免許多企業陷入的陷阱和死胡同。

連續創業家和財務專家Tom Y. Sawyer展示了如何將您的公司分解為基本的功能和運營組件，並對其進行建模。結果是一個財務模型，例如，您可以直接帶到銀行或帶給當地的天使投資者，以獲得您需要啟動業務或新產品所需的資金。或者它可能是一個模型，清楚地顯示您的新產品開發努力可能是贏家還是輸家。更好的是，您將學習創建可作為持續運營指南的模型。您將始終清楚地知道您的財務狀況以及您需要達到的目標。您將在《企業家和創業家的財務建模》中學習到的模型可以用於：

- 為初創企業或任何成長階段籌集資金
- 計劃項目和新舉措
- 做出明智的商業決策，包括前進/放棄評估
- 分析產品開發和市場支出的投資回報率
- 簡化運營、管理預算、提高效率和降低成本
- 在出售或合併時評估企業價值

除了許多有價值的練習和使用Excel建模您的業務的技巧外，本書還結合了通過艱苦經驗獲得的實用建議、高級戰略思考和深入的硬技能運用。在假定您具有基本的Excel知識的情況下，它將幫助您學會像一個有經驗的商人一樣思考，他們期望通過向公眾提供的產品或服務賺錢。您將發現財務模型是一個關鍵的管理工具，如果建立正確，將在創業旅程的每一步提供寶貴的幫助。

Tom Y. Sawyer使用本書所包含的原則來創建了許多初創和早期階段公司的財務模型，幫助他們規劃並籌集所需的資本，以發展他們的業務並最終以其初始投資的多倍退出。《企業家和創業家的財務建模》是一個關於創業和金融的迷你MBA，將向您展示如何做到同樣的事情。

注意：本書是Sawyer於2009年出版的《Pro Excel Financial Modeling》的更新版本。