
Show HN: Funded.io rapid prototype - bottompair
http://funded.io
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bottompair
Struggling with maintaining 25 versions of financial projection spreadsheets
for a tiered SKU based SaaS startup. I decided to spin this up as quickly as
possible (and learn a little AngularJS along the way).

The result - after ~30 hours it's usable enough to show. Obviously needs more
flexibility around the variety of revenue models and expense categories. But
really it's just for rough estimates at this point.

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icambron
As a piece of technology, this is really cool. But I guess I don't get how
it's different from a nice Excel model. How is it that this allows you to
capture 25 different use cases in a way that the a spreadsheet can't?

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bottompair
A few things I was thinking:

\- Spreadsheets are prone to fat-fingering and messing up formulas. For
example, if you built a spreadsheet with three product SKU's and wanted to add
a fourth, it's not so easy. Especially if you have visualizations tied to
specific ranges of cells, etc. With this app I can validate data once and not
worry about some random missing formula screwing it up down the road.

\- When creating models for comparison the typical pattern is Save As -> New.
Before you know it, you've got 8 or 10 different spreadsheets with different
variations on the numbers. Now add a new expense category to the model in
spreadsheet #10. If you want to compare backwards to the rest you'll need to
do that work over and over (this is the pattern I was stuck in).

\- Longer-term I wanted to be able to overlay models - sort of an A/B test
given different configuration

\- During the past few months I've met with countless entrepreneurs trying to
launch startups pre-money. Most of them are trying to build models from
scratch (or a template they found) and it's been a clear pain point for them

\- I can share models in a service like this easily. I've already used it
several times when someone's asked me to help validate their business model. I
create the model in the app and send them a link. They can tweak it and show
me their ideas. It's crude right now, but collaboration between founders on
something like this might be worthwhile.

\- Even longer-term I'd like to add in more templates to support startups
beyond the initial financial model. Basically I looked at my last several
years' worth of operational spreadsheets from helping run SaaS companies and
thought "there ought to be an app for this".

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rahimnathwani
From quickly scanning the comments, it seems that (i) many people would use a
tool like this, despite its lack of flexibility, because it's easy to use and
it works, (ii) very few had the same reaction as I did: it looks nice, but why
not just use Excel.

Perhaps it's because I've spent many, many hours using Excel (although less so
these days), but those problems you state don't seem like problems:

1) Fat-fingering is a problem only if you mix the task of coding (setting up
the structure and formulae in Excel) with the task of using (changing the
parameters). You don't code your web site at the same time as using it (except
for manual testing), and it can be the same with Excel. Highlight all input
cells with a yellow background and blue font, unset their 'Protected'
property, and then lock the workbook. You/anyone can then play to your heart's
content without worrying about messing up formulae.

2) When you are creating new versions of a spreadsheet, it's either because
you are changing the structure (e.g. changing formulae, adding columns) or
because you are changing the input data. If the latter then, yes, you can have
several different versions. I've managed this in the past (when fundraising
and doing regular reviews with investors) by having an 'Assumptions' tab which
contains _all_ inputs. Each scenario (set of assumptions) has a name/number
and a column of its own. The calculations and output dynamically reference
just one scenario at a time depending on the scenario chosen from a drop-down.
Not only that, but Excel's 'Data tables' feature (which explicitly supports
only one-variable or two-variable scenarios) works with this, even if you have
10s of variables: just set the scenario number as your variable.

3) Using a 'template they found' is clearly a bad idea. They wouldn't just
copy-paste some 'code they found' without studying it and the tests. In fact,
for something simple, they'd probably just re-create their own after studying
someone else's code for something similar. It's the same with Excel files.

4) Can't argue with this one :)

5) This last point intrigues me: until now I thought you were focused on
business plans, and that you wouldn't overwrite the historical data with
actuals. However, you mention operational data, suggesting you are talking
about combining planning and tracking into one tool. Is this correct?

~~~
bottompair
All good points. Sharing models without emailing spreadsheets around (now you
have your version and I have mine) has probably been the best thing I've
gotten out of it so far.

I've already had a few people email me links to their model with questions
about implementation. Since posting on HN there have been more than 2,000
models created. If someone finds a serious bug in a formula or better yet, a
new feature is added then they all get the benefit. There's not very clear
path(s) to upgrading an Excel workbook.

And my straw man argument: I could make a case for building a lot of stuff in
Excel that currently exist as successful hosted applications. Lowering the
barrier to entry is one way to differentiate.

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davidbanham
I have spent more hours than I'm comfortable contemplating slaving over Excel
spreadsheets creating projections. I went into one funding round with perfect
eyesight and came out needing reading glasses.

This tool is fantastic.

I'd love to be able to modify it for non-MRR companies though. What license
are you releasing the code under?

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bottompair
Hadn't thought about open-sourcing the project yet. Initially just something
to remove the pain I was feeling in my current role. It allows me to share
models with founders and collaborate as well. Data is persisted (MongoDB) and
the unique Url for each model created will work if you navigate directly back
to it.

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rrhyne
Don't release it, turn it into a business!

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krainboltgreene
Or do both.

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immad
Would be cool if you could export to Excel. That way you could lay the
fundamentals in place here and do custom things offline.

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bottompair
Plan to do this eventually. However, this fundamentally doesn't solve the core
problem (for me at least). Versioning nightmares happen when you've got one
model that you customized to have three products and your new model has four.
To compare to your previous model(s) you've got to keep updating all
spreadsheets.

An app like this would hopefully remove some of that rework and eventually
allow A/B testing of different fundraising scenarios, or different revenue
models with similar fundraising, etc.

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cordie
I'll add a vote for the "bootstrappers" version of this. Although I was able
to make it work for my situation. Great work though. Definitely a useful tool!

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labaraka
This is absolutely fantastic. I would pay real money for something similar
tailored to product sales model (vs recurring SaaS).

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jamiecollinson
Out of curiosity, what would be the major changes required?

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endlessvoid94
Definitely unit economics and everything that needs to go above the line.
Would be KILLER to have those.

~~~
bottompair
If you have an example worksheet I'd love to see it. I've spent my last 7
years in B2B SaaS so have plenty of the tiered SKU models for reference.

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ilaksh
That's awesome. Can you make one thats for 'lifestyle' businesses, i.e.
bootstrapped startups with a sustainable model?

For starters, with my business model, the monthly expenses depend on the
number of customers directly. Every time I get a customer, I automatically
deploy a VM. And I am charging them a few more bucks than the VM costs, so my
revenue is directly tied to the number of customers also.

Maybe I just need a spreadsheet. But really its pretty simple. I plan to
launch something that I can support alone. Within a month or so, I need to
have enough profit to hire a guy from oDesk to help with support.

The other part is charging for support, which I plan to make separate from the
servers. So you can pay as low as $5 if you want minimal support, up to $500
if you are a business and want to prepay for up to half a day of consulting
each month.

So what I want is a spreadsheet that I can change that has a projection chart
off to the side that is automatically connected to the spreadsheet.

With template spreadsheets/charts that I can configure.

Maybe use something like Google Spreadsheets or
[http://stoic.com/formula/index.html](http://stoic.com/formula/index.html)

~~~
bottompair
Great suggestions. This initial pass was meant to solve one specific use case
I happened to have, but I'd love to add more modeling capabilities.

The addition of one-time costs or revenue based on customer acquisition is
important and something that will be there eventually (training is a good
example in Saas).

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toast76
Love it. The only issue I have is the SKU slider is a little bit "fuzzy".
Would be great to actually be able to plug some real sales estimates.

Also the slider seems to be capped out at some really low number (like 30 new
customers a month or something?)... not sure if I'm doing something wrong?

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bottompair
True, for lower priced products the SKU slider is limited. I struggled with
this on my Excel worksheets as well. In mid-market SaaS ($200-$1500 MRR range)
growth tends to slow down the higher the price goes. In addition, growth
increases over time as the company grows, but the higher priced SKU's grow
slower.

The sliders are only one possible solution to visualizing the rate of growth
per price tier. Most other things I've tried involve math fiddling that I
haven't managed to translate well to a user experience.

Open to suggestions or examples if you have ideas!

~~~
toast76
The difficulty possibly stems from starting at 0 and trying to get a growth
function to suit over 1-5 years (ideally it's exponential in the early days,
but likely logarithmic over a longer period of time). Problem is if you're
going to investors, you don't want a chart that shows growth slowing down over
time (certainly not in the first 24 months anyway).

Early on you have an idea of what sort of traffic you're able to generate and
a likely conversion rate, and therefore estimate a sign up rate using
real(ish) numbers. It's only the growth beyond that that you're really
guessing at.

You may just want a text box with a gross # of new customers/month based on
what you think you can bring in, and then have the slider work on top of that,
in effect creating an adjustable polynomial function for growth? Just
spitballing here...

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tomasien
I did a quick model with this tonight after a full day of investor pitches,
and even though I'm exhausted I got about a 70% accurate model done in about 5
minutes. I know how to use Excel, but I just wouldn't have gotten that done in
5 minutes with Excel. It was helpful, that's the best thing I can say about
anything.

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tomkinson
I will use this extensively tonight(spend about 1-2 hrs beta testing) and come
back with suggestions/comments and input, IF you can add ways to save the data
and/or export to CSV/excel after. On a brief look, it looks great, well done.

~~~
bottompair
The data is actually being persisted (MongoDB). Notice a unique Url is created
when you click through the initial landing page. If you save that Url
somewhere and come back to it your data will be there.

Thanks for taking some time on it - feedback is most welcome as I'll continue
to hack on it over the next few months - time permitting.

~~~
tomkinson
Yes noticed that. Well done. It does still seem that A LOT if not most of the
comments here are as well asking for a download/export feature. Everyone wants
to know they are covered after investing a few hrs into working on something.
No one really knows how long that URL would be active for. Anyway, I am a
founder and have some real number so will dive in tonight. Export would still
be welcome. Again, great job. Looks tight.

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kfk
What’s your current pain in dealing with financial projections? What kind of
help could benefit you from a finance controller expert remotely? Would you be
willing to share finance/spreadsheet knowledge with some coding mentoring?

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aktary
Impressive! Are you going to develop this further for the community? I'd love
to use it and be able to save, print, export, etc...

~~~
bottompair
Yep, planning to keep rolling with it if there's interest. I mentioned this in
previous responses, but the data is actually being saved. The unique Url
generated when you first start will get you back to the settings for the model
you're working on.

It's a stop-gap feature so that I didn't need to implement a
login/authorization system in the MVP.

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shekyboy
Awesome work! Export to Excel please

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jaimefjorge
This is definitely useful. Export/import to/from excel could be a great
feature.

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pla3rhat3r
Very cool! Add some secure features and exporting tools and you're onto
something.

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narzero
Fantastic tool! Like aktary, I'd love to see a save, print and export options.

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budgetyzer
Check: App.budgetyzer.com Similar tool more advanced.

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ing33k
cool , please add export to excel or google docs..

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martialmartian
for those who can't use excel...

~~~
bottompair
As posted higher up, the spreadsheet I created and based the application on:

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxgh-9Z9zd40ZExtRnYyZVhWU2s...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxgh-9Z9zd40ZExtRnYyZVhWU2s/edit?usp=sharing)

Feature development on the app will be faster (and reach a broader audience)
than the spreadsheet, however. And I wanted to learn AngularJS ;)

~~~
budgetyzer
Hi all, i created a similar tool a wile ago. You can take a look at:
app.budgetyzer.com

It could load a bit slow. You can only log in with your Google account ATM.

Currious If you all like it...

Tim

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notastartup
half of those accounting terms scare me. I'm more than happy to just keep
selling software and not leverage myself to appease some rich guy who doesn't
respect the art of software and just wants a ridiculous return.

