Spreadsheet template to analyze the ROI of starting a new business

Hi everyone,

I'm an undergraduate business school student that hopes to work in corporate finance one day. I'm very sorry if the following question is pretty basic, and silly, but we recently had a speaker from a firm who came in and was talking a bit about corporate finance and some of the interview questions they ask.

He said that some times they make interviewees design spreadsheet templates such as

"Design a spreadsheet where you can analyze the ROI of starting a new business"

I'm sort of familiar with the concept of ROI, but doesn't it vary across industries and asset classes? How do you build a whole spreadsheet around it. Does anyone have any example spreadsheets or templates? Also, any good books on this?

Are questions like this typical of financial firms? Or is this rare?

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