COURSE NUMBER: MBA237.8

COURSE TITLE: Designing Financial Models that Work

UNITS OF CREDIT: 2 Units

INSTRUCTORS: Sarah Tasker, Jenny Herbert-Creek

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

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Thursdays, 2:00-4:00 PM

PREREQUISITE(S):  Basic Excel skills (we’ll only need to add, subtract, multiply and divide).

CLASS FORMAT: This is a very hands-on course, made up of design exercises done in pairs or groups of 4, collective debriefs of the design exercises, and occasional mini-lectures. Students are required to bring a laptop computer to every class. The laptop must have a minimum screen resolution of 1024 x 728 and should run Excel 2010 for Windows (Mac users should run virtualization software and Excel 2003/2007 users will need to upgrade).

REQUIRED READINGS: None. (Outside class, exposure to new material is done primarily via videos rather than readings.)

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: 30% homework and projects, 35% exam, 35% collaboration score. The collaboration score is based on peers’ and instructors’ evaluations of how empathic, open-minded, thoughtful, and innovative students were during the design exercises, the class discussions, the mini-lectures, and the class projects.

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:

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.

NOTE:

Excel has many advanced features that “Power Users” aka “Excel Jockeys” make great use of, such as Macros, Solver, Conditional Formatting, etc. However, our goal here is “cooperative modeling” –collaboratively creating straightforward, co-owned financial models representing our shared understanding. Given this goal, Excel bells and whistles are contra-indicated, and we will not be using them in this course.

We invite students to seek help elsewhere for advanced Excel training (e.g., read one of the many highly rated books on Excel at Amazon, or watch the Excel videos at Lynda.com, or attend an Excel workshop by WallStreetPrep / Training the Street / Wall Street Training, etc. ) J

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:

Sarah Tasker cares deeply about alleviating perplexity, especially when it comes to financial modeling. She has spent the last decade teaching modeling to Haas students, Cornell students, and many new investment banking hires. She won the Apple Teaching Award at Cornell and the Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching at Haas. Her undergraduate and doctoral degrees are both from MIT.

Jenny Herbert-Creek is an educator and consultant with expertise in spreadsheet design, start-up modeling and leadership communication. She has facilitated classes or workshops at the Haas School of Business, Stanford University, UCLA, and the Olin School of Business and regularly consults with Silicon Valley start-ups. Jenny has an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and a BA from Stanford University, where she received the Deans’ Award for Academic Accomplishment.