There’s a new small business tool over at StartupNation – one that either budding entrepreneurs will love or hate.

It’s called the “Odds of Success Calculator For Business”. Designed in part by EquityNet, the ‘calculator’ is designed to help entrepreneurs identify and evaluate business risk. It also calculates the probability of whether a small business will succeed or fail.

Part tough love tool, part Magic 8 ball – the small business success calculator lets business owners get a snapshot of their own business risk profiles based on eight key risk factors:

- amount of capital investment

- difficulty in obtaining funds

- quality of financial management

- degree of business planning

- annual industry growth rate

- management experience

- industry experience and timeframe.

One click – free of charge – and the calculator spits out the odds for success within a given timeframe identified by the business ower.

EquityNet says this tool is best suited for companies that are younger than four years. The company also insists that the methodology used to generate the risk assessment is fair and accurate.  The comprehensive version of EquityNet’s Risk Quantification System (RQS) analyzes 30 important business variables including industry sector and enterprise age. It then compares them against hundreds of thousands of data points of companies that have failed or succeeded, thereby computing the probability of success for the individual company.

And there you have it. A hard dose of reality all wrapped up into one tight little tool.

As they say in small business – boom or bust.

Why not let the ‘calculator’ break the news to you first?