As a virtual CFO and angel investor working with early stage companies and SMEs, I'm often asked about where to get funding. Businesses always want to know about angel investment and venture capital. For some reason grants are usually overlooked. Yet they make up a sig...

At CFOcus we're frequently asked by clients to recommend an accounting software package. This can either be micro businesses that are growing up, and can no longer afford to rely on Excel and paper records to run their finances with. Alternatively, it can be more estab...

Because we all like free stuff, here’s a compilation of 25 online resources to assist entrepreneurs build and develop their startups.

Financing and investment

There are plenty of financing document templates online, however they tend to be for use in the US. For Australi...

Working out how much profit an average customer will deliver over the lifetime of their relationship with you is a crucial step in understanding the profitability of your business - and in particular in assessing the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing spend.

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The backlash against excessive consumerism, captured by books such as Oliver James' bestseller Affluenza, has seen workers in developed countries come to increasingly examine and question their work life balance. There is a burgeoning realisation that full time work...

Many Australians sat up and took notice when New South Wales inventors Stuart and Cedar Anderson raised US$1 million in just three hours on Indiegogo, with their revolutionary beehive system called Flow Hive. They went on to break the record for the amount raised i...

I recently ran a successful crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter. I've compiled a list of 10 key lessons I learned from the process, hopefully you will find them useful if you are about to embark on a similar journey. While I've focussed on the Kickstarter platform,...

Data analytics (DA) is the analysis of raw data in an effort to extract useful insights which can lead to better decision making in your business. In a way, it's the process of joining the dots between different sets of apparently disparate data. Along with its cousin...

Research suggests that 46% of all new hires fail within 18 months, but 89% of them fail for attitudinal reasons (personality traits, human interactions, etc) rather than cognitive ability (brain-based skills like logic and reasoning, problem-solving, language, etc)....

One of the biggest challenges to face small and medium enterprises (SMEs), especially those growing quickly, is knowing when to hire expert help. As business owners we're told both to manage costs, and to get help rather than trying to be an expert in all things - two...