ASimpleModel.com Introduction & Overview

ASimpleModel.com (ASM) was designed to make financial modeling instruction simple and affordable. The curriculum was developed to take someone new to finance and Microsoft Excel, and bring them up to speed as efficiently as possible. Today the website is used by students, entrepreneurs and industry professionals alike. The articles that follow describe how the website works, and explain why the website focuses on the three statement model, the discounted cash flow model and the leveraged buyout model.

ASM Reading Suggestions

On reading, Charlie Munger has been quoted saying “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero. You’d be amazed at how much Warren [Buffett] reads, at how much I read.” Like Munger, most great investment professionals place incredible value on digesting as much information as possible. While a comprehensive list would be impossible, what follows should help steer you in the right direction.

Financial Modeling Quizzes, Exams and Case Studies

ASimpleModel.com incorporates quizzes, exams and exercises to provide students and professionals with the immediate feedback required to asses their financial modeling knowledge. These tests can also be used by university professors looking to introduce students to financial modeling, and by corporations and recruiters looking to identify financial-modeling talent. Please click on the the topics that follow to learn more.

Flow Through Questions

Flow through questions are a great way to test your understanding of how the three primary financial statements relate to each other.

Getting a Job in Investment Banking / Private Equity

I receive a lot of emails asking for advice related to securing a job in investment banking and / or private equity. What follows is a list of answers I have used to respond to these questions.

Private Equity

An overview of private equity with an emphasis on the lower middle market. This is a space that I am quite fond of and where I have spent the majority of my professional career. What I find most fascinating about this segment of private equity is that it is often where highly successful founder / entrepreneurs interact with institutional capital for the first time.

Quick References for Financial Models

Early in my career there were a handful of items, concepts and / or lists that I kept handy to help me work through tasks efficiently. Many of these were pasted to my cubicle wall so that I could review the information and continue working without interruption. What follows are a few of the images, lists or shortcuts I referenced most frequently.

Stock Purchase Agreement

If there is anything I wish I had been exposed to earlier in my career it is this document: the stock purchase agreement. A stock purchase agreement is the primary transaction document for a stock acquisition. But the negotiation that surrounds this document is typically a guarded process, and few resources exist to get someone up to speed quickly.

For this reason we are excited to start introducing this topic at ASimpleModel.com as part of our content creation initiative with Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP. Please click on the links that follow for more information.