Financial Models for Underachievers: Two Years of the Real Numbers of a Startup

blog.guykawasaki.com

54 points·divia··6 comments

Startups face one primary challenge: To never run out of cash. So when projecting costs, we heeded Guy's advice that "the three most powerful words you can utter at a board meeting are, 'We beat projections.'" This convinced us to develop the worst possible financial model that could still be used to raise money.

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A rare sight: a genuinely useful post from Guy Kawasaki. (It helps that he didn't write it.)

I just heard a truemor that Guy won't write any more blog posts.

Why the Guy bashing? I've found his blog pretty useful.

very interesting...although basing your model's assumptions on another random startup may not be "better" than making your own assumptions. they are a good guy check guide if nothing else though.

I dunno. Something tells me that a real estate site has little in common with what the rest of us are doing. When the market tanks (and it will), this looks like what George Plossl used to call, "A precise estimate of a wild ass guess."

The idea is that it is not about the site but the expenses to get the project done and create a company structure to support it.

Personally I feel they feel they are doing some things wrong. 1) The name means nothing, sounds like a fish I might eat and 2) They are going to have to do major advertising to bring house buyers into the site. House buying isn't great right now. They will need to survive a year or two of house market funk to survive.

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