The articles 3.020504, “A Framework for Evaluating a Company” and 3.020505, “Company Evaluation Factors,” describe a numeric method that can be used to assess the current state of a company. The numerical nature of the technique helps to eliminate any positive or negative biases that can creep into an evaluation. By examining nine different areas, the end result should provide guidance to the company and any potential investor into the areas that are both strong and weak points. The Tool is targeted at companies that are in the later startup stages and have revenue, an in-place management team, and are interested in approaching investors to raise money. However, even a sole entrepreneur may find this Tool useful. It can be thought of as a roadmap to help them understand how others may view their business. As explained in the accompanying User Guide, any of the items or entire categories can be ignored while focusing on the other, relevant items.
There are two versions of the Tool, which is a Microsoft Excel™ application. This article links to the Basic version of the Tool. It allows the user to compare three different companies or for three different users to share the Tool sequentially, each adding their own numerical ratings. The Tool allows each user to use the standard Excel cell Comment feature to add a note about each rating that they make.
The Advanced version of the Tool, described in the next article in this series, uses the same rating principle and will yield the same rating result. That version contains several summaries and charts that may be useful. None-the-less, the Basic version may be perfectly acceptable to use instead of this far more complicated version.
The two files referenced above are:
COMPANY GRADING TOOL v1_BASIC.xls
Company Grading Tool User Instructions v1_Basic.do
