Cash Flow Diagnosis for a Tokyo Direct-to-Consumer Skincare Startup
Overview
What this challenge is about.
Build an operating cash flow statement for a Tokyo skincare startup and diagnose its cash gap to earn your verifiable certificate.
The scenario
Glow Tokyo is a Tokyo-based, three-year-old direct-to-consumer skincare brand (roughly ¥600M annual revenue, single-digit headcount) selling through its own online store and a few Japanese wholesale retailers. Revenue is growing, gross margins are healthy, but the founders keep seeing the cash balance shrink and cannot explain why a profitable business feels cash-starved.
The Brief
What you'll do, and what you'll demonstrate.
Why is a growing, gross-margin-positive direct-to-consumer brand running short on cash, and what should management do about it?
Earning criteria — what you'll demonstrate
- Convert accrual-based income statements and balance sheets into an indirect-method cash flow statement
- Quantify how each working capital component drives the gap between profit and cash
- Select and interpret liquidity and efficiency ratios to support a diagnosis
- Translate a technical financial finding into recommendations a non-finance audience can act on
- Design a concise, evidence-backed deck for founders and an investor
Program Fit
Where this fits in your program.
Sharpens the same skills your degree expects you to demonstrate.
Aligned coursework coming soon.
Skills
Skills you'll demonstrate.
Each one shows up on your verified credential.
- Cash Flow Analysis
Apply cash flow analysis to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Ratio Analysis
Apply ratio analysis to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Financial Statement Interpretation
Apply financial statement interpretation to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Working Capital Management
Apply working capital management to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Presentation Design
Apply presentation design to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
Careers
Career paths this challenge builds toward
Completing this challenge demonstrates skills that transfer directly to these roles:
Financial Analyst
This challenge mirrors a core analyst task: turning raw statements into a cash narrative and defensible recommendations for decision-makers. You practice the reconciliation discipline and ratio fluency that financial analyst roles screen for in their first 90 days.
This challenge sharpens
- cash-flow-analysis
- ratio-analysis
- financial-statement-interpretation
FP&A Associate
Financial planning and analysis teams live in the gap between profit and cash. By diagnosing working-capital drivers and proposing operational levers, you build the forecasting and liquidity-management instincts that FP&A associates apply to monthly close and cash planning.
This challenge sharpens
- working-capital-management
- cash-flow-analysis
- ratio-analysis
Startup Finance Consultant
Early-stage founders need finance translated into action. This engagement rehearses scoping a short diagnosis, evidencing it from statements, and presenting it to founders and investors, the exact loop a startup finance consultant runs on each client.
This challenge sharpens
- financial-statement-interpretation
- working-capital-management
- presentation-design