Accounting for Tech Entrepreneurs

[switzerland]

Dear hackers and tech entrepreneurs,

I want to start my first software company. Unfortunately I don't know anything about accounting. I want to acquire the most important skills to manage and analyze companies financially and to understand the most important concepts of the accounting language.

Can you recommend an online course?

I have found the following courses. Are these two courses sufficient to realize my plans?

Course1: https://sps.northwestern.edu/post-baccalaureate/fundamentals-accounting/index.php

Course2: https://sps.northwestern.edu/post-baccalaureate/advanced-accounting/index.php

Thanks very much!

[dhruvkar]

I've found beancount's documentation to be a good intro to double entry bookkeeping:

https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1RaondTJCS_IUPBHFNdT8...

[rahimnathwani]

If you want to learn the fundamentals of accounting, the best intro I've seen is "Frank Wood's Business Accounting Volume 1".

For analysing companies, start with "Principles of Corporate Finance" which covers both the investment question (what the company should do) and the financing question (where to get the money to do those things).

For more on analysing companies, check out study resources for the CFA, or anything written by Aswath Damodaran.

But you should probably spend your time on more core activities for now. You would be better off focusing on the content of:

- Disciplined Entrepreneurship

- Venture Deals

- any blog post about SaaS economics (CAC, LTV etc.) regardless of whether you're starting a SaaS company