Excel Sharpies Gather in Vegas for Spreadsheet Showdown

Of course, almost everyone fancies themselves to be fairly proficient at Microsoft Excel, at least those who work with numbers on the daily, but how would you compete worldwide?

We’re about to find out who the best is. Next week in Las Vegas will be the final showdown for the Microsoft Excel World Championship 2024 Finals, where a room of quants will be battling for over $120,000 in prize funds.

It was one of a number of events from the Financial Modeling World Cup, which holds competitions such as this one throughout the year leading up to this event.

It will take place Dec. 3-4 at the HyperX Arena Las Vegas, in the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas.

Spreadsheet Prowess

The spreadsheet was invented in 1979 by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, who named their creation VisiCalc. invented the spreadsheet in 1979 with their creation of VisiCalc. Though it was quickly succeeded by Lotus 1-2-3 and by Microsoft’s own Excel, the spreadsheet quickly became the backbone of business accounting worldwide.

Financial analyst and modeler Andrew Grigolyunovich created the cup in 2020, suspecting that people worldwide would excel at using the spreadsheet and could compete against each other for recognition.

There was already a worldwide competition for financial modeling called ModelOff, but when that series ended in 2019, Grigolyunovich jumped on the chance to do something similar. Grigolyunovich had competed in the ModelOff several times, even making the finals twice.

His idea was to a set of real-life financial modeling cases for people to solve, and see who could solve them the quickest.

The event has since gotten mainstream coverage from Wall Street Journal, ESPN, the Verge and others. Over 40 million observers tuned in last year across social media, including 2.8 million views on YouTube. Over the years, the event has evolved to be more interesting for spectators, with visual maps to go along with the problems being solved.

Participating in last year’s event, the Verge reporter described a room of tables draped in back tablecloth and covered with power strips. A total of 26 competitor finalists (and a few newcomers) are crammed into the room from nearly a year’s worth of qualifying rounds. Snacks are periodically wheeled in on carts.

Favorite Qaunts

The final round (to be held Dec. 4 this year) will have eight contestants. The finance geeks are dressed in the typical accountant garb, business casual, and bring their own laptops and notepads. Participants must wear headphones, as the hosts are commenting for those tuning in online. Unlike chess battles, Excel battles can be quite spirited, with onlookers cheering their favorite quants.

“You can be really creative in Excel,” Grigolyunovich said.

And whole there is not enough money on the table yet to be a professional e-sports player, benefits do accrue, such as recognition for your spreadsheet savvy that can lead to promotions, job offers and so on.

Analysts make up the majority of contests, who are working full time at banks or consultants (though there is a large student contingent as well). They tend to enjoy solving puzzles, and many don’t mind sharing secrets of their trades.

For the puzzles, the challenges rely on case studies. Knowing Excel functions is very handy of course, as is working fast, but the true challenge is in solving logical puzzles. The way they are structured, there is only one answer, though there can be multiple ways of getting to the answer.

A case study last year, for instance, was tackled by one contestant who built an overarching formula to solve all the problems in one pass while another went through and solved each sub-problem manually.

The guy writing the formula won the match, Grigolyunovich recalled, but with only about 30 seconds to spare.

Each case study awards points for completion within a given timeframe, plus some bonus points. Twelve people compete in each round, which is five minutes long, with the lowest scorers in each round being eliminated.

Grigolyunovich himself has learned a few things from watching these matches. For instance, did you know there is a function that allows you to search against color cells? “You can click into a cell, if it’s colored in yellow, you can search all the other yellow cells,” he said. Many of the top performers did not know that one.

Beyond the formulas, the event showed Grigolyunovich how positive people are. “I really was surprised by the way the community is creating and developing and really helping each other. They’re really willing to share the knowledge.”