Hi, I'm George.
I've been working in spreadsheets for about 15 years now, which means I've built a handful of models I was pretty proud of and inherited plenty that made me want to throw myself in front of a tram.
The idea for this came out of a conversation with my two brothers, one of whom works in private equity and the other in consulting. We got talking about how you're actually meant to get good at Excel when you're in first or second year at uni, and the honest answer is that the options are pretty crap. Uni mostly teaches you the theory and if you're lucky there's a tute where someone shows you SUM, YouTube is a lot of watching someone else's screen without ever doing it yourself, and the proper courses are really built for people who already have the job (and are priced that way).
So I've tried to build the thing I would have wanted when I was at uni, which is a set of short exercises you do in your browser on the kind of spreadsheets you'd actually get handed as a grad, whether that's monthly numbers in an FP&A team, an audit sample at a Big 4 firm or a list of acquisition targets at a bank. You type the formula in yourself and it tells you whether you've got it right, and it works on a Mac as well as Windows, which matters because a lot of people do their whole degree on a MacBook and then get handed a Windows laptop on their first day.
In mid 2025 I joined OwnHome Technologies as CFO and was handed a Mac laptop. This proved to be a bit of a conundrum because, after 15 years on Windows, none of my muscle memory worked. The business also operates out of Google Sheets rather than Excel. Double conundrum. I spent the first few weeks looking up shortcuts I'd known for years.
Excel Excelsior has been built with that experience in mind too: the seasoned operator who all of a sudden looks like a fool because they have to do one-finger typing. Pick Mac or Windows at the top of the page and every shortcut changes to match, and a Google Sheets mode is on the way.
The first few lessons are free if you want to have a go. It's still early days and I'm adding more as I go, so if something's broken or doesn't make sense I'd love to hear about it. The easiest way to reach me is on LinkedIn.
Cheers,
George