How to "crunch the numbers" for a startup.

April 4, 2011 11:10 AM

Good resources for the "crunch the numbers" part of starting a business?

I've been devouring some entrepreneurial/start up books and resources over the past week and one of the focuses on writing business plans/attracting investors etc. is "crunching the numbers."

I've never really been good with numbers and have done my fair share of trying to stay away from them. Now that I'm in a situation where it matters and I want to embrace "crunching numbers" by tackling it with good intentions and the right mindset, where do I start? Books, blogs etc for how exactly I approach this? If it helps I'm from Boston and I am aware of several local Small Business groups that I'll be looking into for assistance, as well as on line groups like SCORE.

Background info: I'm just in the learning stage of starting a business, no action nor concrete product/idea as of yet. However I am studying on my own as much as I can to be prepared to take that step.

posted by modoriculous to Work & Money (3 answers total)

Tim Ferriss' "4-Hour Work Week" has an interesting section on finding out if your product or service is viable BEFORE beginning by using online campaigns. You invest a few hundred bucks instead of a few thousand.

You can get some previews on his blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/
posted by jander03 at 11:35 AM on April 4, 2011

Start at the beginning and start reading.
posted by COD at 11:45 AM on April 4, 2011

The SBA site has some good resources like a link to this guide to Break-Even Analysis.

But my real answer is that if you have never been good with numbers and actively avoid them, get someone on your core team that loves numbers and finance.
posted by philipy at 12:06 PM on April 4, 2011