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.
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?
- 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".
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?
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.
3) In my opinion, another reason why using a 'template they found' is clearly a bad idea, is because the process of creating the model is at least as important as the results you get.
And if you want to understand what you see, and tweak it to your business, you must have a very deep undestanding of all the mechanics behind the cells, which is very hard/painful/time consuming to obtain when you use a complex spreadsheet from someone else.
Still, I really like the concept of funded.io. Combining planning and tracking into one tool (automated for tracking) would be awesome!
Yeah, I get what you mean, and I've written some powerful stuff in Excel that avoids the issues stated. However, sometimes it's frustrating to try and work around the small idiosyncrasies in Excel and I can totally see why someone would use something like this instead.
In my mind the difference is that I don't have to build it! Using this I can just plug in my numbers and go instead of spending time building a spreadsheet.
Thank you for sharing. It's nice to see how other people do things.
A few suggestions which may save effort next time you do this:
- Only use the $ symbol as much as necessary. Usually you only need one (e.g. $C12 or C$12 rather than $C$12), unless you're referencing a single input. In your example, the excessive use of $ on the 'Detail' tab prevents me from adding an extra row for an employee simply by copying-and-pasting
- SUBTOTAL can be better than SUM for summing columns of numbers. You want subtotals for Sales, Support etc., as well as a grand total. SUBTOTAL can be applied to a whole column of values without fear of double-counting, as it ignore existing SUBTOTALs.
- EOMONTH(x,1) will give you the last day of the month after the date x. EOMONTH(x,0)+1 will give you the first day of the month instead. It's a bit easier to read than your DATE(YEAR, MONTH+1, DAY) construction.
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?
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.
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.
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!
Totally with you. Would love to build out several different cost/revenue models including one completely based on web site visits and paid customer conversion rate. Sprinkle in some correlation with marketing spend and you've got something passable for a B2C company.
One of our local tech mentors here in Des Moines released a free Excel file for these sorts of projections (an accompanying book to explain the models, etc is also available from Amazon).
I haven't used it myself but I know that it has helped quite a few companies work through their financial projections around here. It's at least a decent starting point.
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.
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).
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?
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!
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.