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Comment by paulryanrogers | Hacker News Reader

> Google sheets is convenient for making changes and having multiple people editing, but sending an investor a model in Google sheets signals that you are not financially savvy.

I do wonder how many of these 'signals' there are, and what weight they really carry for investors.

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If the business model is solid, I prefer the type of investors who look at the assumptions and not at the font the calculator uses.

It’s not rocket science, it’s adding up a bunch of imaginary cash flows, explaining where they might come from should be the important bit.

This may have been true in 2016, but since then, I’ve seen CEOs raising multimillion dollar rounds using Google Sheets, financial modeling software, and Excel alike.

There’s certainly still some preference towards Excel in 2020, but in no way using sheets will mean that you’re not “financially savvy.”

Back in 2016 google sheets couldn’t do circular calculations, so many financial modeling tasks were impossible.

This is a good point. It started off with a bit of a "toy spreadsheet" reputation (fair or not) and that may have biased some people for a while. It shouldn't matter now.

Yep, this is where I switched off. If the advice is to "look good" to investors based on the type of spreadsheet program you use you've got bigger problems.

Lol agree with this

There's a bigger issue here, apart from the outdated advice.

It's just BAD advice to begin with.

What it signals is lack of tech savvy in the investors. It does not in any way shape or form signal any lack of financial savvy on the part of the founder.

If you're starting a tech company, do you REALLY want to work with an investor who can't open a cloud spreadsheet ffs?

This particular one is outdated advice. I’ve seen many financings the past few years, and many really sophisticated google sheets models. It’s a total no-op what you use as long as it can model what you need it to.

Google sheets has an xlsx export feature. One great trick for investors that should be focusing on the model instead of the app used to create it.

The other side is everything via DocSend so you can surveil them. This also doesn't go well.

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