Getting Started with Your Financial Model
To kick off your financial journey, you’ll be working with a few key sections in our template, highlighted in blue: Assumptions, Team (Roster), Fixed Costs, and Capitalization Table (Cap table).
1. Assumptions: Setting the Foundation
Begin in the Assumptions section. This is where you’ll lay down the groundwork by defining your business model’s basic parameters. You’ll set the timeline for your planning, including when you’ll start, how long you plan to run, and when you expect to start making sales.
2. Understanding Unit Economics
Next, dive into the metrics that drive your business’s financials. Our template simplifies this by focusing on basic unit economics. Here, you’ll detail the financials for your first batch of sales (we call this the first cohort) during its first selling period. Remember, we’re assuming you’ll evaluate your business monthly.
- Funnel Visualization: Define your customer journey from potential lead to actual customer. You can outline the entire process or just highlight the conversion rates.
- Average Order Value: Determine the average amount each customer from the first cohort spends, as well as how often they make a purchase. This average frequency is calculated by dividing the total expected payments from all customers by the number of customers in that cohort.
3. Variable Costs: Identify costs that change with your business activity. These are split into costs for every transaction and one-time costs for the first transaction. You can structure these costs as a percentage of the average order value or as fixed amounts.
4. Marketing Costs: Estimate the marketing budget needed to attract your first cohort of customers. You can either set a total marketing budget or break it down by cost per lead or the total leads you aim to attract in your first month.
5. Setting a Financial Target: Choose a financial goal (like Contribution Margin) and specify its desired value for the end of your planning period.
6. Team (Roster) Planning: List out the roles needed, the number of people in each role, and their salaries (including taxes) for each planning period. This helps you visualize staffing needs and costs.
7. Fixed Costs: These are your ongoing expenses that don’t change with sales volume. Fill in all necessary fixed costs for each planning period to keep your model accurate.
8. Capitalization Table (Cap table): If you’re seeking investment, outline when you’ll need investors and how ownership is divided between founders and investors. Our tool automatically calculates the business’s valuation and ownership percentages over time.
9. Unit Economics Deep Dive: The Unit Economics section gives a snapshot of your business model’s financial health for your first and last cohorts. It uses our internal algorithm to optimize metric values for achieving your target financial goals.
10. Cohorts Overview: This technical section shows how customers, sales, and transactions are organized over time. It’s crucial for understanding customer behavior and cash flow.
11. Product Plan: Here, you’ll find a comprehensive table with all product-related metrics that influence your financial model. It’s a great tool for comparing actual business performance against your initial model.
12. Profit & Loss (P&L) and Reports: Finally, these sections provide a detailed Profit & Loss statement based on your model and a summary report outlining your financial model’s key aspects.
By following these steps, you’ll create a robust financial model that not only helps you understand your business’s current state but also guides you in making informed decisions for its future.
