A financial modeling bootcamp
for startup founders

Now that we understand the basics of how financial models work, we’ll get to building our first formulas to connect the maps that we’ve been working on. 

Curriculum:

• Setting up the layout: inputs vs outcome spreadsheets
• Standardizing our format: variables vs formula results
• Our first formula: a marketing budget
• Scaling linearly vs exponentially
• Defining launch dates
• Our first complete map: from driver to costs

We’ve built our first financial model, but we need a better canvas to work on if we want to scale the spreadsheet. We’ll walk you through the (free) template our team built, and that over 20,000 startups have used as a starting point.

Curriculum:

• The basics: SG&A, COGS and Revenue
• Advanced sheets: CAPEX
• Understanding VAT and Sales Taxes vs Income Taxes
• Managing headcount and staff scaling
• Advanced sheets: Cap Table

With a superpowered canvas to work from, we now move into connecting a complete model map inside an existing financial model template. 

Curriculum:

• Build a realistic budget, focusing on salaries and hiring plans
• Plan for a pre-seed round to start operations and adjust the team size to fit funding
• Manage costs, cut unnecessary hires, reduce salaries, and scale marketing gradually to stretch the budget
• Project growth and revenue to determine when to raise rounds
• Use financial models to test different scenarios for sustainability and investor expectations

At this point we have a fully functional financial model we can use to estimate anything we want. It’s now time to put it to good use to answer the questions a founder needs to solve before pitching investors.

Curriculum:

• Building a dropdown scenario picker
• Determining if the business is scalable (and/or venture-backable)
• Budgeting an investment round: expenses and milestones
• Building a simple dashboard with charts and KPIs