<p>How important is being good at finance if you want to start and run a successful business?</p>
<p>What kind of business? As I see it, you do what you excel at and hire out the rest. You need a rudimentary understanding of everything just to make sure you aren’t be screwed by your employees.</p>
<p>For finance you merely need to know if you need to do X, not necessarily how.</p>
<p>but if any business deals with money, so wouldn’t you need to be fairly good at finance to run any company? sure you can find someone else to do the finance, but would you trust them? It might be better to do it yourself.</p>
<p>You have to trust or else you will be doing everything yourself. Just don’t be ignorant enough to not know what they are doing. Basic understanding of accounting (different than finance) is definitely needed to run a business; if you don’t know what your costs are than how can you make good decisions?</p>
<p>Out of all of the legendary tech startup founders of the last 30 years, I doubt that any of them - with the possible exception of Gates (who seems to be a true geek polymath) - were mavens at finance.</p>
<p>not necessarily (unless your business is finance related of course) – that’s what you hire a CFO for when your business gets big enough.</p>
<p>“Start” is one thing. “Running” is another.</p>
<p>You don’t have to be great at finance to Start a business. The SBA lenders will help you develop a business plan that is financially sound.</p>
<p>However, to keep it running and to grow it, you will need to figure out the numbers. Or, hire someone who can do it for you. Not that you need high finance to price the implied call option on the mezzanine financing being offered by the private equity shops. You just need to make sure the cashflow is working, and if it isn’t, why.</p>
<p>The bigger you get, the more important it is to have good accounting and finance people watching over the company.</p>