Kauffman Founders School Rolls Out ‘Art of Startup Finance’ Series

The better a small business owner understands the numbers of her or his business, the better that business should perform.

“The Art of Startup Finance,” the latest Kauffman Founders School online education series, hopes to help entrepreneurs by offering them tactics and strategies to make the best financial decisions to grow their businesses.

The weekly video series consists of nine modules hosted by venture capital expert Bill Reichert, founder of several Silicon Valley software enterprises. Reichert currently operates Garage Technology Ventures, a seed-stage/early-stage venture capital firm that has put money into more than 150 companies.

“Sometimes entrepreneurs think they can leave the finance and the numbers to the bookkeepers and the accountants,” Reichert said in a release. “But entrepreneurs really need to understand the underlying financial flows of the business. That’s key to understanding how to manage your business.”

In “The Art of Startup Finance,” Reichert shares tools that entrepreneurs can use to clearly comprehend what is happening in their business today and what is likely to happen tomorrow.

Reichert also provides his perspective on the most important financial information and results in such installments as “Financial Processes: Cash Flow,” “Business Processes: Your Business Model Formula” and “Financial Budgeting: Your Long-Term Forecast.”

Reichert’s financial lessons for entrepreneurs include:

  • Knowing how to make a multifaceted business model formula that translates into financials.
  • Creating an annual operating budget with a specific plan for spending money that is also designed to facilitate the achievement of vital company objectives.
  • Developing a five-year financial forecast that reflects where the team wants to take the company and how it expects to get there.
  • Using monthly reports as educational opportunities to examine what was anticipated to happen, what really happened and why there may have been a disparity.
  • Identifying 12 to 15 key performance metrics for the entire company and monitoring them regularly.

“The Art of Startup Finance” can be accessed now at KauffmanFoundersSchool.org.