You can run but you can't hide
Almost-daily updates of my journey as a French Tech entrepreneur starting up in France.
Day 8 — Thursday, 25th March 2021, 1900 Hours
I skipped all my finance classes in my master's program. I already knew I was going to do something in software and I didn't really get things like P&L, Balance sheets, and ledger balancing. So I took the easy way out, spending the finance classes (most of them) in the computer lab. My finance profs tried hard to make me attend but eventually gave up.
Graduating and getting my first job meant a definite escape from finance. Or so it seemed. Until I started my entrepreneurial journey.
If you believe that running your business means you can do what you like — it can't be farther from the truth. Or, it's just one half of the truth. The part they don’t tell you is, you have to do many things that you certainly dislike. For me, it was financial planning for my startups.
As we prepare to apply for the Bourse French Tech — an innovation grant given by the French Government for startups incubated under the La French Tech one key requirement I had to work on was a three-year financial forecast in the US EBITDA format.
These last 5 days, as spring gradually emerged from the shadows of winter, and the weather became warmer and more beautiful each day, I sat and poured over terms like Cost Of Goods Sold, OpEx flows, Income Statements.
As I sat by my little terrace, overlooking the Belledonne range, the occasional sparrow came to inquire about my pensive mood. I couldn't help but think about karma catching up with me, of the skipped classes of finance back in my Masters and how my profs are having the last laugh.
This isn't new but it keeps coming back to me — the things you run from in life are often the ones that come and sit square in the middle of your road ahead and refuse to budge until you deal with them, even embrace and become comfortable with them. For me, these past 5 days were coming to terms and becoming fully comfortable with those financial terms, operations, and numbers that I thought I had escaped during my college years.
