CALCULATING STARTUP CAPITAL REQUIREMENTS

1. 8 CALCULATING STARTUP CAPITAL REQUIREMENTS

2. Identifying Startup Resource Requirements • Startup resources include: • People (founding team, employees, advisors, independent contractors) • Physical assets (equipment, inventory, office or plant space) • Financial resources (cash, equity, debt) • Bootstraping • Minimizing resources to keep low overhead • Creating innovative combinations of resources to generate competitive advantage and wealth

3. Steps in Calculating Startup Capital Requirements- “Cash Flows” Figure 8.1

4. Steps for an Entrepreneur to Determine Resources • Construct a Business Process Map • Position the Venture in the Value Chain • Position determines margins, customer, and pricing. • Create a Timeline, Milestones, and Triggers • Price for Feasibility Analysis

5. Pricing Strategies • Product pricing is a part of marketing strategy and financial strategy. • How a product or service is priced is a function of a company’s goals. • Customer goals also influence entrepreneurs’ pricing strategies. • Converging on a price • Triangulate by taking into account costs, any competitor pricing, and feedback from customers and value chain partners

6. Startup Financial Metrics • Customer acquisition costs (CAC) • Average order size, time to reorder, lifetime value per customer • Revenues per salesperson and time to revenue for direct sales • For Web 2.0 Ventures: acquisition, retention, revenue, viral coefficient • Contribution margin • Monthly burn rate

7. Develop Financial Assumptions • Estimate new product/service demand: • Use historical analogy or substitute products • Talk to customers • Interview prospective end-users and intermediaries • Use the entrepreneur’s knowledge and experience • Go into limited production

8. Estimating Revenues, Expenses, and Startup Costs • Manufacturing businesses should develop physical prototype early to understand all that is needed to produce product. • Physical prototypes take time and more money than ultimate production costs. • Service companies should prototyped under a variety of the most common scenarios. • Experience in industry is valuable for tapping best industry intelligence.

9. Sales Forecast • Increases in sales are influenced by: • Growth rates in the market segment • New innovations offered to make the product/service more attractive • Technological innovations to enable production at a lower cost Expenses • Items to consider: • Cost of goods sold (COGS) • Sales, general, and administrative expenses (SG&A)

10. Calculating a Startup’s Cash Requirements • Step 1: Develop cash flow statements • Clearly depicts cash inflows and outflows • Add contingency factor for safety • Identify types of capital resources required: capital expenditures, startup expenses, working capital, safety margin

11. Assessing Risk • Analyze financial risks and benefits. • Is the business financially feasible? • Is there enough money to make the effort worthwhile?

12. New Venture Action Plan • Determine the startup metrics for your company. • Gather the numbers you need for performing your financial analysis. • Gather sales forecast data through triangulation. • Create a cash flow statement from startup until a positive cash flow is achieved. • Perform a cash requirements assessment to determine how much capital you will need to start the business. • Determine whether this venture is financially feasible. End of Chapter 8