Standard Financial Model v2

• All businesses, startups to growth-stage, tech and non-tech.
• Works for companies starting from scratch as well as companies with multiple years of historical operational and financial data that they want to use in reporting and forecasting.
• Create anything from a simple 12 month cost budget up to a detailed, 6 year forecast of users, revenues, financial statements, valuation, capitalization, and exit.
• Works for multiple types of business models, but can also be adapated to your specific business needs.
• Subscription-based businesses (SaaS, enterprise SaaS, B2C SaaS, subscription commerce, content subscriptions, etc.)
• Transaction-based businesses, including direct retailers, apps, for one-time or recurring transactions.
• Marketplaces, including marketplaces like Etsy and services marketplaces like Uber.
• Advertising-based businesses like website publishers selling ads directly or through ad exchanges.
• Combinations of the above, including hardware companies with software subscriptions (Fitbit and others), subscription services with ecommerce add-ons (Harry’s, Amazon Prime, and more), companies with free advertising-supported freemium levels alongside paid subsciptions and potentially additional transactions, etc.

1. README. Description of model, layout, and how to use it.
2. Outline. Flowchart of how the model works, with a description of every sheet and their goals.
3. How To. Documentation that details of each sheet and how the inputs and calculations work. Assumptions and calculations are noted and explained throughout the model.
4. Assumptions. Over 200 potential assumptions to use, more about assumptions structure here. Assumptions are structured on one page, with the option to alter them on individual time periods on each calculation sheet.
5. Summary. Key operational and financial metrics organized in a clean summary, reported over 5 years, built to be easily customizable for your key metrics and timeframes.
6. Key Reports. Charts and tables of costs, active users (optional), cash on hand, revenue and revenue growth rate, net income and cumulative net income, margins, sources and uses, and more.
7. Costs. Simple yet robust methodology for creating a cost budget for up to 60 months of operations, including a detailed hiring plan, while also automatically handling the accounting treatment of the expenses. Set hiring, salaries, roles, and when to hire, including a method to automatically calculate hiring as the company scales. Flexible inputs to input all costs easily on a month by month basis. Expenses can be allocated to key expense areas and labled for accounting treatment as SG&A, COGS, or CAPEX.
8. Users and Revenues. User acquisition is broken out by four paid channels, two organic channels, and includes sections for viral growth and business development, and all channels can be mapped to your Google Analytics or actual data. User retention is modeled by cohorts, subscriptions, and straight manual inputs if desired. Revenue forecasts for subscription, SaaS, ecommerce, marketplaces, advertising, and app-based businesses. Key user and customer calculations by monthly cohorts, subscriptions, or manual inputs, and revenue calculations for each available (and optional) revenue model. For businesses requiring less comprehensive revenue forecasting methodologies, consider the Starter Financial Model.
9. Statements. Consolidated financial statements, including income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows. Includes a detailed cash flow forecast that automatically forecasts funding requirements based on a simple assumption of how many months expenses to raise money for. Use this sheet for forecasting only, or bring in your historical financials to show either a mix of the past and the future, or to compare budgets to forecasts.
10. Cap Table. (Optional) The cap table in the Standard Model v2 is the Cap Table Model integrated into the cash flows of the business, mapping forecasted expenses and net burn to needed fundraising to estimated funding rounds by size and date. Models equity, convertible note and SAFE financing rounds, mapped to expected financing dates and amounts. Exit waterfall calculates distributions of proceeds to investors in the case of a sale, and calculates returns to all shareholders.
11. Valuation. Valuation is aided with built-in structures for discounted cash flow, VC Method, and market comparables valuation methodologies. Valuation can be tied to exit value in cap table providing seamless projection of returns to investor classes and shareholders.
12. External Data. Sheet used for importing financials from Quickbooks, Xero, Freshbooks, and other accounting software.
13. Changelog. Details of all edits to the model since release, by version number.

I created the financial models behind Foresight so early-stage entrepreneurs can spend less time on finance and more time on their products. I’ve been building and helping entrepreneurs build financial models for startups since 1998. More about my story here.