AOL Money & Finance

Ridgely Evers posts

Feed

Entrepreneur's Journal: What does the financial meltdown mean for your business?

This week, I received a number of calls from friends and family about the incredible events in the financial markets. I've tried to be optimistic, but it wasn't easy. Every day, there seemed to be a new avalanche of bad news.

So what does this all mean for your business?

Well, I think it's critically important to be careful and conservative. Basically, assume the following:

  • It's going to take longer to raise capital -- and the terms will be tougher.
  • It's going to take longer to get customers.
  • Oh, and customers will take longer to pay you (and that's assuming they actually do pay you).

In other words, you need to find ways to manage your cash flow. You can use some nifty online tools, such as NetBooks. There are also some great books on the topic, like Tim Berry's The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan.

And another thing: Be sure to focus on your existing customers. In tough times, it can be easy to lose them. And, of course, it's always expensive to get new customers.

Continue reading Entrepreneur's Journal: What does the financial meltdown mean for your business?

NetBooks gets $9 million to challenge Intuit

NetBooks logoIntuit (NASDAQ: INTU) has made a fortune by selling easy-to-use and affordable accounting software for small businesses. But competition is heating up -- which is, no doubt, a great benefit for customers.

The latest entrant is NetBooks, which recently raised about $9 million in a Series A round. The investors include CMEA Ventures and Integral Capital.

Developing accounting software is extremely complex. As a result, it took NetBooks about four years to create its offering. Interestingly enough, the company's founder, Ridgely Evers, was the mastermind of Intuit's QuickBooks.

With NetBooks, a small business can accomplish things like sales management, customer relationship management (CRM), vendor management, and so on.

And since it uses an on-demand approach, NetBooks is fairly easy to implement and does not require large information technology (IT) expenses.

But the big test will be the upcoming IPO of rival NetSuite. If it's a success, I think we'll likely see more companies like NetBooks hit the market.

If you want to check out more venture fundings, click here.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Symbol Lookup
IndexesChangePrice
DJIA+132.7910,450.95
NASDAQ+29.972,176.01
S&P 500+14.861,106.24

Last updated: November 24, 2009: 08:20 AM

BloggingStocks Exclusives

Hot Stocks

DailyFinance Headlines

Latest from BloggingBuyouts

WalletPop Headlines

AOL Business News

BioHealth Investor Headlines

Sponsored Links

My Portfolios

Track your stocks here!

Find out why more people track their portfolios on AOL Money & Finance then anywhere else.

BloggingStocks Partners

More from AOL Money & Finance