$0
Money in, ever
The Open Ledger
Big companies publish their numbers once a quarter with a team of accountants. We are going to do it on one page, forever, starting before we have earned anything — because a ledger you only start once it looks good is not a ledger.
We are prelaunch. No customer has paid us anything yet. The honest way to read this page right now: two kids and their parents have put about $1,600 into a business that has earned nothing, on the belief that it will. That is what starting a company actually looks like, and most businesses never show you this part.
Rows marked est are our best estimate rather than a receipt — we will replace each one with the real figure as we confirm it, and say so when we do.
| What | Why | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| The machine | A new dual-tank frozen drink machine. The whole business, physically.Bought new. A second one would cost about the same, which is the number that matters the day we think about buying it. | $800 |
| Slush Sisters LLC est | Registering as a real Texas company.The Texas Certificate of Formation filing fee is $300 flat. If a formation service was used it costs a little more; this row shows the state fee. | $300 |
| Insurance, first year est | General liability, so schools and HOAs can book us.Small event-rental policies run roughly $500–$1,500 a year. We show the bottom of that range until the real premium is confirmed; if ours is higher, this number goes up and we say so. | $500 |
| The domain est | slushsisters.com, one year.A .com at Cloudflare's at-cost registrar pricing. | $11 |
| Web hosting | This entire website.Genuinely free. It is hand-written pages served on Cloudflare's free tier — no monthly bill, which is a real decision and not an accident. | $0 |
| hello@slushsisters.com.Also free — Cloudflare forwards it to an inbox we already had. | $0 | |
| Starting supplies est | Mix, cups, straws, the candy for the rims.A rough allowance for what is on the shelf before party one. We will replace this with the real receipts total. | $0–$100 |
| Total in, so far | ≈ $1,617 |
Who paid? Our parents fronted it. Whether that is a loan we pay back or an investment they made in us is a real question with a real answer, and it is one of the first things this page will pin down — because "Dad paid and nobody wrote anything down" is how family businesses get confusing later.
Real companies forecast, then find out if they were right. We are learning to do the same, so here are our guesses, dated, small on purpose. When we beat one it turns green and stays. When we miss one it stays too, with what we learned — that is the deal.
| Forecast, made Aug 2026 | Our guess | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| First paid bookingSomebody we are not related to pays the deposit. | by Sep 30 | waiting |
| First party deliveredMachine out, party happens, machine back, nothing broke. | by Oct 31 | waiting |
| First month with 2 partiesOne could be luck. Two in a month means it repeats. | by Dec 31 | waiting |
| First $1,000 earnedFour parties. The machine is halfway paid for. | by Mar 2027 | waiting |
| Break even — every dollar paid backAbout 8 parties at roughly $200 each after supplies and fuel. | by Jul 2027 | waiting |
| First repeat customerThe one that matters most. A party good enough to book twice. | by Aug 2027 | waiting |
Why the goals are small. We could have written “100 parties” and looked ambitious. But a forecast you cannot miss is not a forecast, and a forecast you always miss teaches nothing. These are set so that beating them is realistic and still worth telling people about — and when we do beat one, we will, loudly.
First profitable summer — break even plus a real season on top, around 15–20 parties. The second machine conversation — the point where saying no to double-booked Saturdays costs more than the $800 a second machine does, around 30 parties. Neither gets a date yet. Dating a goal two summers out is pretending, and this page does not pretend.
Some grown-up companies put every dollar they make on the internet for anyone to see. Almost no kids do. We think that is exactly the reason we should — it is the thing that proves a kid business is a real business, and not a cute thing our parents run for us. Numbers do not care how old you are.
The other reason is that this page is how we learn. Forecasting, margins, break-even, what a miss teaches you — you cannot learn those from a worksheet, but you can learn them from your own numbers with your name on the page. If another kid wants to copy this whole idea for their business, we would genuinely love that.
Also, honestly: we are 11 and 8, and people sometimes wonder whether a kid business is a real business or a cute thing parents run. Numbers answer that better than words do. If this works, you will watch it work here. If it does not, that will be here too.
The rule for this page is the same as rule seven: when a number changes, we change it and say what changed. Nothing gets quietly deleted.
Party number one is the whole ballgame right now.
Book the first party