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 straight-laced venture capital types, the reality is that models can be essential tools for creating and analyzing the roadmap an entrepreneurial venture should...

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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 below, about 2 tax credits available to companies that do business in New York State. For background, we rarely see a CPA come to...

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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 for both the cover email and the detailed report.  Rick was previously CFO of ffVC portfolio company Quigo, sold to AOL for...

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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 Facebook really worth the $900 million or more Yahoo is reported to have offered for it? The problem,...

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