Magic Numbers

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Published: 12:00am, 19 Nov 2006

I find numbers amazing - especially those associated with money. When I was young, my grandfather told me that if I put $1 in the bank and doubled the size of my deposit each day, in 20 days I would have more than $1 million in the account, not counting interest. As impressive as that feat might have been, being able to deposit $8,192 on day 13 and $262,144 on day 18 would have been even more amazing.

There are ways of saving $1 million that are more feasible, such as depositing $100 a week at 12 per cent interest. This will get you $1 million in less than 30 years. An even better way to make your million is to start a business in which you have hundreds or thousands of customers from whom you make hundreds or thousands of dollars profit each week. Starting a business is exactly what I was doing when I discovered the magical numbers application Excel (www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2004/office2004.aspx?pid=office2004; US$399, less in some places). Yes, magical.

First, if you are going to start a business, you will need to create a spreadsheet to illustrate the key facts as they apply to time and money. How much does the product cost? What are your overheads? What are your expenses? And if you do all the numbers correctly, Excel will show you how much money your business will bring in each year.

Now, I used to think a spreadsheet that illustrated a new company's projections was just hot air. How is anyone going to accurately predict how many customers you will have in your first month? But I recently discovered that once a spreadsheet has been made, the world will magically attempt to accommodate it. It seems to have something to do with adjusting your vision to a quantitative level

and clarifying your intentions. Investors, employees and even customers you hadn't expected will appear and help you fulfil your predictions. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it. It seems that a spreadsheet is the first and most important step towards creating a new business reality.

Now, Microsoft has announced it will be shipping the non-Mac version of Excel 2007(in Office 2007) by the end of this month to corporate customers only and the consumer version a bit later, with the Mac edition following early next year - probably in January. And, of course, the entire Mac community is expecting a new, Mac-only spreadsheet application addition to Apple's iWork suite to be released at the upcoming MacWorld conference in San Francisco.