Every business has certain costs that are incurred prior to actually being able to sell products or services. These are referred to as startup costs. It’s very important for entrepreneurs to quantify startup costs because they must figure out how to finance them in the absence of revenue.
Action Items
- Think through the costs for your prospective business. Conduct financial research to find out how much money it will take for each required task/item:
- Figure out the costs which should be assigned to your list of startup costs.
- Ensure you have appropriate estimates for both net sales and operating expenses. You need to show that you have researched this and not just taken a stab in the dark. Cite your sources.
- Use the Financing Workbook to record and quantify these costs. Not all of the costs that are listed on the sample sheet are required for each business. Some businesses will have costs that are not listed, and others will not need some that are listed. Here are suggested steps:
- Open up the Financing Excel workbook.
- Read the Start here-Notes tab, this explains how the tabs interact with each other.
- Click the startup budget tab and list all of the startup costs for your business. Modify those listed in the spreadsheet to match those for your business (just check the formulas to make sure your costs are adding to the total). You will be using your own numbers based on your research.
- Complete projections for Years 1 and 2 using the P&L Y1 and P&L Y2 tabs.
- Complete the Cash Flow tab.
- Complete the Benchmark Data tab
- In a separate Word document of 3 pages, describe the assumptions you made about your costs and justify them:
- Consider the financial projections you have made for your venture and confirm how much money you need to make it through the “valley of death.”
- How much of this money can be provided through sweat equity?
- How much of this money can you or people close to you personally provide?
- What would be your preferred source of additional funds? Why?
- Will you consider using equity as a source of funding? Why or why not?
- Format your paper in APALinks to an external site. style, ensuring that you’ve properly cited your sources.
- Submit your Word document (but not your spreadsheet) to Turnitin.
- NO AL used or plargarisms
- make sure to write in third person only
- ApA 7th edition formatting for paper and reference page as well
- heading for each section of the paper