Financial Analysis · Startups
A raise story your investors can pressure-test
We build the model behind your pitch from your actual drivers, not round-number optimism, so every projection traces back to an assumption you can defend. You get unit economics, burn, runway, and a use-of-funds that stands up when a partner opens the tab and starts asking questions.
The Outcome
What a real financial model gives you
Not a spreadsheet of wishful numbers — a model built from your real drivers that a lender or investor can actually trust.
A model that survives diligence
Every line ties to a stated assumption. When an investor changes one input, the whole model recalculates cleanly, and nothing breaks or hides.
Clarity on your unit economics
We show whether a single customer, cohort, or seat actually makes money once CAC, gross margin, and churn are honestly accounted for.
Runway you can plan around
A burn and runway view that tells you how many months this raise buys and what milestones it has to fund before the next one.
How we work
Here’s how we’d model it — from your drivers, not our wishes
We won’t hand you a hockey-stick built on invented assumptions. What follows is exactly how we’d model your business — from your real drivers, with transparent, stress-tested assumptions, and honesty about what can’t be known before you have the data. Where a number genuinely can’t be forecast yet, we build a framework to fill, not a fiction to sell.
Who it’s for: Pre-seed through Series A founders preparing to raise, or operating without a model they trust. Best when you have real early data, or a genuine willingness to make your assumptions explicit before you show them to a partner.
What We Model
What we model for startups
Four workstreams that turn your business into a model an investor can open, question, and believe. We start from your real drivers and make every assumption visible so the numbers hold up to scrutiny.
Unit economics
Does one customer make money?
The question: You are told to "know your unit economics," but CAC, payback, and contribution margin live in scattered spreadsheets and none of them agree.
What we’d build: A single unit-economics layer: fully-loaded CAC by channel, gross margin per customer, contribution after variable cost, payback period, and LTV built from real retention, not a wished-for lifetime.
Burn & runway
How many months does this raise buy?
The question: You need to know how long the money lasts and which hires or spend the raise actually funds before the next round.
What we’d build: A cash and burn model driven by your hiring plan, cloud/COGS, and go-to-market spend, with net burn, gross burn, and a runway line that shows the exact month cash hits zero under each plan.
Projections
What is a defensible growth path?
The question: Top-down "we'll take 1% of a huge market" numbers get torn apart. You need a bottoms-up build an investor will accept.
What we’d build: A bottoms-up revenue engine from your real funnel: leads, conversion, ACV, expansion, and churn, projected monthly so growth is a consequence of drivers you can point to, not a hockey stick you drew.
The raise
How much, at what dilution, for what?
The question: You know you need money but not how much to ask for, what it buys, or how the round changes ownership.
What we’d build: A raise and use-of-funds model: amount sized to reach the next milestone, a cap-table-aware view of pre/post ownership and dilution, and spend allocated so every dollar has a job.
The Fuller Scope
The fuller scope
Beyond the four core workstreams, the modeling engagement can extend into the specific questions a raise, a board, or a next round tends to surface.
Three-statement model
A linked P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow so investors can see not just revenue but how cash actually moves through the business over time.
Cohort retention & expansion
Retention and net revenue retention modeled by cohort, so churn and expansion are grounded in behavior rather than a single blended assumption.
Scenario & sensitivity analysis
Base, upside, and downside cases with the two or three inputs that actually move the outcome flagged, so you know where the model is fragile.
Cap table & dilution
A round-by-round view of ownership through option pool, SAFEs, and priced rounds, so you can see where founders and early investors land.
Hiring & headcount plan
Headcount built role by role with fully-loaded cost and start dates, tied directly into burn so the org plan and the cash plan are the same plan.
Board & investor reporting pack
A clean monthly dashboard of the metrics investors ask for, KPIs, burn, runway, and plan-vs-actual, so board prep stops being a fire drill.
Pitch-deck financials
The two or three financial slides that back your deck, built from the same model so what you present and what you diligence never diverge.
The Questions the Model Answers
The questions the model answers
A model earns its keep by answering the decisions that ride on the numbers. Here’s what ours is built to answer.
Is it fundable?
A bottoms-up projection and unit-economics view that shows whether the growth story holds together before a partner does the same math.
What are the unit economics?
CAC, contribution margin, payback, and LTV from real data, so you know whether each customer pays back and how fast.
How much runway?
A burn model that reports the precise month cash runs out under your current plan, and how far a raise extends it.
How much should we raise?
Ask sized to the next fundable milestone plus buffer, not a round number, with the dilution it implies made explicit.
Where does the money go?
A use-of-funds that allocates the raise across hiring, GTM, and product so each dollar maps to a milestone.
What breaks the plan?
Sensitivity analysis that isolates the few assumptions, usually conversion, churn, or CAC, that decide whether the plan works.
Your model is built from your real drivers, funnel, pricing, retention, and cost, with every assumption written down and visible, so anyone can trace a number back to why it is there. Where the future genuinely cannot be known, early conversion or long-run churn on a young product, we say so plainly and build a transparent, stress-tested framework you can update as real data arrives, rather than presenting a guess as a fact. The result is a model designed to be questioned and to hold up when it is.
The Engagement
Investor-grade, driver-based, and yours to run
A scoped modeling engagement built from the drivers you actually control — not a top-down guess. We map the assumptions, build the model, stress-test it with scenarios, and hand you a tool your team can run, present, and defend.
Transparent and honest. Every assumption is visible and sourced, downside cases are shown rather than hidden, and where something can’t be known yet we say so — a model you can stand behind, not one that flatters a deck.
Every business is different. Discovery is where we map the drivers your model runs on.
How It Works
From drivers to a model you can defend
-
Discovery & drivers
We map the real operating drivers — pricing, volume, cost structure, cash timing — and the decision the model has to support.
-
Model build
A clean, driver-based, three-statement or purpose-built model with a transparent assumptions tab everything flexes from.
-
Scenarios & sensitivity
Base, upside, and downside cases plus the sensitivities that show which assumptions actually move the outcome.
-
Review & pressure-test
We stress the model against the questions a lender or investor will ask — coverage, runway, returns, breakeven — and fix what doesn’t hold.
-
Deliver & support
You get a documented model your team can run, plus support taking it into the raise, the loan, or the board meeting it was built for.
FAQ
Startups & Fundraising — financial-modeling questions
What tools do you build in?
Excel or Google Sheets, your choice. We build native, unlocked, and fully formula-driven so you and your investors can open every cell. No black-box software you have to keep paying for, and nothing you cannot maintain yourself.
Is this investor-grade?
Yes. The model is built to survive diligence: bottoms-up drivers, a documented assumptions layer, and a clean structure a partner can audit. We build the way investors expect to see, which is why we favor traceable logic over impressive-looking outputs.
How long does it take?
A focused pre-seed or seed model is typically one to two weeks; a full three-statement model with cohorts and scenarios runs longer. The main variable is how ready your data and assumptions are, and we tell you that up front.
What does it cost?
It is scoped to the work, not a fixed menu. A single-purpose model costs less than a full three-statement build with scenario analysis and a reporting pack. We quote a flat fee against a defined scope before we start, so there are no surprises.
Do you use our real drivers?
Always. We start from your actual funnel, pricing, retention, and cost. If you have no data on a driver yet, we make the assumption explicit and defensible rather than burying it. We do not import generic startup templates and call them yours.
We are pre-revenue with no history, can you still model us?
Yes, and we are honest about what that means. With no history, some inputs are assumptions, so we source them from comparables and your own economics, label them clearly, and build the model so you can swap in real numbers the moment you have them.
Three-statement or a simple model, which do we need?
It depends on the raise. Many pre-seed rounds close on a clean unit-economics and burn model. Later rounds and lenders expect a linked three-statement build. We recommend the lightest model that answers your actual question, not the most elaborate.
Do you help with the pitch itself?
We build the financial story and the slides that carry it, and we prep you for the questions investors will ask about the numbers. We are not your fundraising agent, but by the time we are done you can defend every figure yourself.
The Full Practice