Is my business viable?
Talking to creative entrepreneurs at I Create Namibia, 18.6.2022. Photo by Willem Vrey.
In my time as an early-stage startup coach in Finland and southern Africa, I’ve met plenty of first-time founders without a business or finance background. They’re creatives, coders and experts in their field who got into business for the love of the game - not the business side of things. They might have a lot of talent and if they’re lucky, they have a co-founder who knows numbers.
When that’s not the case, these founders might feel intimidated by ”the money stuff”. Maybe financial literacy isn’t their strong suit and just seeing a free budget template with financial terms can be mad scary. If they have access to (free) support services, they can turn to business coaches and financial experts, but sometimes those with the expertise might just assume the founders have a basic grasp of financial terms like ”revenue”, ”profit” or ”ROI”, and the session might easily go over the founders’ heads, leaving them feeling inadequate. This could further increase the intimidation, and ultimately, the founders might have no way of independently figuring out whether the business will break even or be profitable.
However, understanding what makes a business viable is critical for every entrepreneur and learning basic terms in a non-intimidating way can be the exact thing people without a business background need. It could encourage and guide more creatives to approach their art as entrepreneurs. This in itself could have a wider positive impact when the creative industry as a whole is strengthened.
I’m creating an easy-to-use, educational and clear tool for for founders without a business background.
The Viability Assessment Tool was born to help me in my entrepreneurial ventures — I don’t have a background in finance either. I’ve received help from financial experts in checking my formatted calculations and explanations. It is not a detailed budgetary tool, but something that helps a founder to:
understand their business idea and what makes it unique
understand their costs and revenue of the different products/services their business consists of
get an overview of whether their business is making a loss, a profit or breaks even
The Viability Assessment tool combines the Business Model Canvas with the calculations that most matter for a business. The tool guides the user in thinking about the critical aspects of their business idea and allows them to input their numbers with automated calculations for profit and return on investment - and don’t worry, these terms are explained.
Talking to creative entrepreneurs at I Create Namibia, 18.6.2022. Photo by Willem Vrey.
I was invited to talk to Namibian creative entrepreneurs at ”I Create Namibia” about approaching their craft like an entrepreneur, and there’s now a pilot group of creatives testing a prototype of this tool. After the pilot, the tool will be improved upon based on feedback before it’s launched publicly.
The pilot group is now closed (30.6.2022), but by filling in the form below, you will…