

Ask HN: Projecting sales, growth, etc for proforma - lucisferre

My co-founder and I have been hard at working creating our first proforma and we'd really appreciate some tips from those with some experience.<p>One of the things we are really struggling with is projecting client acquisitions rates, growth, etc. It seems anything we come up with is pure speculation and could be argued against in some way. Are there any standard approaches to this estimation or is it always just guesswork and creative storytelling?
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daemon13
> just guesswork and creative storytelling

No.

Not to brag, but once I did a full P&L forecast for 15 years forward for $50M
annual revenue and 250+ people by SKU, HC position and all major expense
buckets, tied to FX and market/market share changes... in Excel... after 25
revisions by HQ it was still sane. I assume your case is less complicated.

What you need to do is make a simple spreadsheet in Excel, lay down some
assumtions and tie them to your revenue with formulas. After you have it done,
you can either (1) optimize to find sweet spot, or (2) make several scenarios.

This would help you play safe - all assumptions are transparent. Also, since
you seem to have investors, they would have a choice and most probably they
would push for a more agressive scenario. But that would be their choice.

I would advise to distance yourself from assumptions. You own execution, NOT
assumptions, which you / noone can control.

Excel

    
    
                                               2011    2012   2013    2014

Market Market Growth % of Market that is your Target Audience Average FY spend
by customer Cost customer acquisition

etc etc etc

Gross Sales Discounts/Taxes/etc Net Sales COGS Marketing expenses etc etc Net
Income

can be as complicated as you want... try keep it [assumptions] simple, but P&L
lines as detailed as possible. Also break forecasted year by month.

Hope this helps

