Up and Running

FEBRUARY 20, 2015

If you don’t understand your key financial metrics, you have no way of monitoring your business’s health—and you risk mingling assets, incurring penalties for filing taxes late, overlooking expenses, and running into difficulties paying bills and employees, just to mention a few! Each article will give you: A brief definition of the metric.

Metrics 60

Metrics Burn Rate .Net Churn Rate 60

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Managing the Business. One of the ways our VC’s kept track of our progress was by taking a monthly look at three financial documents: Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement. To be clear – Income Statements, Balance Sheets and Cash Flow Statements are really important at two points in your startup.

Balance Sheet 300

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 300

Berkonomics

JULY 1, 2021

First, the VC’s ordered that the company ramp its burn rate (monthly losses in cash) to over $800,000 a month, which I could not fathom. We members of the board never saw, (never asked) and the CFO never mentioned the balance sheet and cash position. For me this was nuts. The moral is simple. .

Balance Sheet 62

Balance Sheet Cofounder Cash Position Burn Rate 62

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

The Wrong Metrics. Traditional startup board meetings spend an insane amount of wasted time using Fortune 100 company metrics like income statements, cash flow, balance sheet, waterfall charts. The only numbers in those documents that are important in the first year of a startup’s life are burn rate and cash balance.

Silicon Valley 292

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 292

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

The Wrong Metrics. Traditional startup board meetings spend an insane amount of wasted time using Fortune 100 company metrics like income statements, cash flow, balance sheet, waterfall charts. The only numbers in those documents that are important in the first year of a startup’s life are burn rate and cash balance.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 263

Berkonomics

DECEMBER 18, 2014

First, the VC’s ordered that the company ramp its burn rate (monthly losses in cash) to over $800,000, which I could not fathom. We never saw, and he never mentioned the balance sheet and cash position. So those expenditures were not reviewed by the board which had not been given a balance sheet to examine.

Balance Sheet 71

Balance Sheet Burn Rate Cash Position Forecast 71

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 13, 2011

The Wrong Metrics : Traditional startup board meetings spend an insane amount of wasted time using Fortune 100 company metrics like income statements, cash flow, balance sheet, waterfall charts. The only numbers in those documents that are important in the first year of a startup's life are burn rate and cash balance.

Silicon Valley 117

Silicon Valley Balance Sheet Metrics Early Stage 117