But Susan (and any other start-up CEO) doesn’t think of budget just in terms of operating expenses to run the business. It’s an investment in growing the business. The typical MBA finance jock might want to allocate the budget by estimating the cost of capital, setting that as the target hurdle rate, ranking all projects based on their IRR (internal rate of return), NPV (net present value), or CUF (complex useless formula), and then doling out the cash until it runs out. The typical CEO knows that the budget shouldn’t be set by how much revenue the business will generate in that fiscal year,
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