[nostrademons]

The value of financial modeling is mostly in being able to run various scenarios quickly, not in the final report. You can plug in different assumptions for development velocity, labor costs, market segmentation, sales conversion rate, cost of inputs, financing sources, etc. and then see what their effect on the bottom line (= net income) is, along with other metrics like burn rate, IRR, etc. Then you use your domain knowledge to judge how likely all these scenarios are, giving you a much more complete picture than if you aren't conversant with these financial tools.

But yes, you can learn all of this from books & the Internet, you don't need an MBA for it.

[ilaksh]

Sure but I taught myself how to use Excel when I was in 6 or 7th grade. It's actually not very hard.

[spookthesunset]

By your definition, neither is learning to code. Just pick up a book that describes the programming language you are gonna use and boom. You are a coder!

Excel is easy. Knowing what to put into excel is not at all easy. And yeah you can get a template but if you don't know how that template is created or why the creator did what they did you are gonna set your business up for failure. Accounting is not just math but an art.