Monat: August 2012

  • Strategy – why do we even bother with all of this? (b)

    Balance sheet

    Your balance sheet – yes, you have seen it when the yearly accounts were prepared but it really did not matter to your start-up. For you the one and only key was liquidity in the beginning, followed by profitability but what now? Yes, those accounts become important eventually. What do I mean by that – well, once you have established your strategic goals you will need to optimize your balance sheet accordingly. If you are preparing for a sale, potential investors (and their highly-skilled forensic accountants) will look at your accounts. Are you planning to change your debt to equity ratio and work with more capital? Will a bank lend you money? Are you going to build / buy your next office or remain a humble tenant?

    There are a lot more questions to ask and you are now playing with the big boys. A Fortune 500 CFO will be very concerned with her balance sheet and watch movements in these accounts closely. As an eCFO of a start-up this is a new area for you and you should slowly get into it as your business develops.

    In summary a balance sheet can also teach you lots of interesting things about your business and serve as an important stepping stone to your business’s next growth / development stage.

    eCFO Tips: Do not be afraid to think about new things. If you are working in an innovative start-up there might be lots of balance sheet optimization questions that nobody has really thought about. Are facebook fans in generic groups that are rented out for advertising assets? Should the initial investment into these groups be on your balance sheet and depreciated over time? How do you value your investments in other start-ups? What happens with your old, cancelled projects? Make sure you have good advisors and get lots of support when tackling these questions.

    Strategy can mean a lot of different things depending on your situation but as a general rule of thumb I would suggest that you consider anything that is not based around daily operational tasks as “strategic”.  Given your unique position in the business and access to information, you have the opportunity to support the other management team members in occasionally taking a look around and consider the bigger picture, away from the grind of daily demands. This is were you can add a lot of value and a sound strategy will help the business to develop faster and to reach goals that you did not think possible only a short while ago.

  • Strategy – why do we even bother with all of this? (a)

    So, why do we even bother with all of this? Initially, you need to make sure that your business performs well, does not run out of money and that financials analysis and data points support operational decisions. All of that you can do but if you are a serious eCFO this is probably not the stuff that makes you get out of bed every morning.

    What really should get you excited is building a healthy, growing and extremely successful venture.  Your operational measures will support that but more importantly you should be influencing the strategic development of your company – if you are not doing that you chances are you will never be more than a glorified accountant.

    Strategic decisions

    In order to make a strategic decision you will need a strategy. This may sound a little too simple, but ask some start-ups about their strategy and often you will find that they either do not have one or are unclear in what it is they are trying to achieve. How much time do you think an operationally involved management team has for strategic discussion, decisions and evaluations? From my personal experience: very, very little. Daily business and the demands of a growing venture will eat up all available time.

    This in turn means that your role becomes more important. As an eCFO you can provide plenty of data and input for creating a strategy. Often you will also be more shielded from client demands and product needs than the other members of the management team. Make sure you  that you add a discussion about strategy every now and then to the weekly/monthly meeting agenda.

    Formulating a strategy will require a highly customized approach as your business will have individual needs, goals and problems. Nevertheless, I can assure you that if you have implemented the measures discussed on this blog, than you have all the necessary tools, processes and data to support and drive a successful strategy formulation and implementation process. This in turn will help the entire management team to make better business decisions. I have chosen a couple of strategic measures that can be undertaken to provide examples of what I consider to be strategic decision for an eCFO. As I said these are just examples and you should think long and hard about strategic elements for your specific business situation.

    Profit distribution

    So let’s assume that business is going well and money is flowing in. Operationally, you have fixed most major issues and business is good. With the money comes a totally new perspective for a start-up. You have to decide what to do with a refilling pool of cash – should you distribute to hardworking employees, enrich your shareholders, reduce prices for your valuable clients or invest like crazy? Again there is no perfect answer to this but a sound financial analysis will help you to make a better decision. You should start to think about concept such as ROI calculations to evaluate which return perspective each of your investment/payment decisions has. Furthermore, you need to open a dialogue with all of potential stakeholders to find out what exactly there demand and needs are. Often you will be surprised by stakeholder expectations. Note: it might be dangerous to communicate too much to each stakeholder on, as this may raise unrealistic expectations which then lead to disappointment.

    eCFO Tips: Communication, communication, communication… when it comes to strategic decisions never assume that you know what each stakeholder wants. You will most likely approach a decision from a financial analysis perspective – most other (normal) people will not think that way – so make sure you talk to everyone and do not assume anything. Often you will be surprised – sometimes pleasantly and sometimes not so J.

  • eCFO Tips continued …

    August 2012

    eCFO Tips: Communication, communication, communication… when it comes to strategic decisions never assume that you know what each stakeholder wants. You will most likely approach a decision from a financial analysis perspective – most other (normal) people will not think that way – so make sure you talk to everyone and do not assume anything. Often you will be surprised – sometimes pleasantly and sometimes not so :).

    eCFO Tips: Do not be afraid to think about new things. If you are working in an innovative start-up there might be lots of balance sheet optimization questions that nobody has really thought about. Are facebook fans in generic groups that are rented out for advertising assets? Should the initial investment into these groups be on your balance sheet and depreciated over time? How do you value your investments in other start-ups? What happens with your old, cancelled projects? Make sure you have good advisors and get lots of support when tackling these questions.

    July 2012

    eCFO Tips: Especially in a start-up environment do not get bogged down in the details. If you are looking to establish financial goals do not say EUR9,287 because your business plan spits out that number – instead just define easy to remember goals e.g. we need EUR10,000 revenue per month with at least 30% EBIT. Do that for 3 months in a row and this business starts to be viable. This is an easy rule for not only you to remember, but it also sets a financial target the management team can work towards.

    eCFO Tips: Make sure that management teams can differentiate between expenses and investments. In our company everybody gets a VOIP phone installed on their computer and uses a headset for calls. We do not have actual phones anymore. Nevertheless, the FolienKnecht team requested to spend EUR40 for an actual phone – it took a long discussion for them to convince me that this was a necessary expense and approval took a while. At the same time I suggested that they should get together with the city of Hamburg and sponsor a networking event. Sponsoring fees here were a small 4 digit amount and they asked why I did not have a problem with such a comparatively large amount, versus all the hassle for the EUR40 phone. The answer is easy – for a start-up it is essential to spend money on the RIGHT things not on those that are nice to have. As an eCFO it is your responsibility to ensure that this principal is actually enforced and that every expenditure is measured.