The Financial Hockey Stick

Apr 30, 2011

If you haven’t heard of the hockey stick…that’s what you’re looking for to achieve in your financial projections.  The financial hockey stick gives investors that clue that you’re a high growth startup.  I haven’t heard much about this..until recently actually.

It started with someone mentioning to me that my startup’s profit margins were a little on the high side.  Turns out I hadn’t calculated in the appropriate tax calculations, employee benefits, health insurance, etc.  I also had done my startup P & L’s, but only out three years.  Why do it for 5 years because it was all just guessing anyway?  Besides, it took me weeks just to do the first 3 years.

Well, after a year of putting it off (simply because I didn’t understand it) I ended up doing those horrible financial projections.  Before I was doing it by hand, but then my CTO presented me with this really cool spreadsheet that already had all of the formulas built into: by EZ Numbers (made for startup financial projections).  This thing was easy as pie.

Here is the financial hockey stick:

For those of you that know me, you know I don’t sell stuff, and I don’t push products.  In fact, I don’t make any money off this blog.  But this EZ Numbers thing rocks.  I went from guesstimating, having investors look twice as confused by my financial projections, to my financial ah ha moment and financial hockey stick with this.

What’s really cool, is this thing generates all the reports you need off of your basic information.  We’re talking cash flow statements, P & L’s, Investor reports, valuation calculations…

It also automatically calculated taxes, health insurance, etc.  Pretty cool tool I might say.  You can get EZ Numbers here.