COURSE NUMBER: MBA236G.1A

COURSE TITLE: Designing Financial Models that Work

UNITS OF CREDIT: 1

INSTRUCTOR: Jenny Herbert-Creek

E-MAIL ADDRESS: herbert@haas.berkeley.edu

PREREQUISITE(S): Intermediate Excel skills

CLASS FORMAT: Primarily experiential -- the bulk of class time will be spent on hands-on Excel-based exercises, completed individually or in pairs. Some lectures and case discussions.

REQUIRED READINGS: None

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: In-class exercises, homework, quiz, class participation, group project

CAREER FIELD: This is a hands-on, practical course for students pursuing any career path. As this course covers models from a variety of industries, students specifically interested in investment banking models should enroll in 236H: Financial Statement Modeling instead of / in addition to this course.

ABSTRACT OF COURSE:
Spreadsheet financial models are often too big, complicated, and buggy to help people. In this course, students learn to design financial models that work because they're small (fit on a screen or two), straightforward (involve only basic math), clear (a non-MBA can follow them readily), and fast to build. These simple yet powerful representations of the cash flows for a new product/deal/venture help people share their vision, recognize tradeoffs, brainstorm possibilities and make decisions.

We will focus on creating clear, easy-to-follow financial models for many business situations, including pricing models, start up models, simple valuation models and more. Examples come from industries including retail, real estate, consulting, non-profits and technology. While Excel is not the primary focus of the course, we will also leverage Excel tools to enhance our models, including efficiency tools (keyboard shortcuts), data analysis tools (like pivot tables), sensitivity analysis tools (like data tables) and data visualization features (like pivot charts and conditional formatting).

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Jenny Herbert Creek is a lecturer and consultant for programs in financial modeling, Microsoft Excel, technical communication and leadership communication. Her work draws upon more than 15 years of experience in the educational services industry, including serving as CFO of two educationally-focused companies. She is currently a member of the Professional Faculty of the Haas School of Business, where she teaches financial modeling and leadership communications to hundreds of MBA students each year. Jenny has also taught at institutions that include Berkeley Center for Executive Education, Stanford University, UCLA Anderson School of Business, the Olin School of Business and numerous corporations and start-ups. Jenny holds an MBA with honors from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and is an honors graduate of Stanford University, where she earned the Dean's Award for Academic Accomplishment.