Changelog

Changelog

New updates and improvements to Foresight

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  • Edited Forecast sheet to add a new Runway calculation, to calculate the number of months runway based on cash at the beginning of the month and future expenses. The model calculates runway two ways, one just a simple current cash divided by net burn that month, the second way looking at how long current cash lasts based on future cash flows, thus accounting for changes in net burn in the future. Both can be valuable in thinking about runway.
  • New sheet called Snapshot, that is intended to help with analysis. Pick a date, and the model will report expected quarterly revenues, runway, cash in the bank at the end of the selected month, and create a table and chart showing major changes in cash over the previous 3 months and next three months from the selected date. Goal is to help with analysis, this is a first version and expect this to change over time.

Update of the Standard Financial Model to include new features for services and consulting businesses. The release of this model leverages two key additions from the last couple updates to the Standard Model - adding seperate billing structures, and introducing bundling of new signups to start of revenues - in adding the last features necessary to make the Standard Model a good fit for services and consulting businesses.

Announced the next dates for How to Model Venture Funds and Cap Table and Exit Waterfall Masterclass, as well as the launch of cap table short courses.

Updates to the Standard Financial Model:

  • Formula rationalization, reducing use of OFFSET and replacing with INDEX. Goal is to reduce use of volatile functions and improve performance (speed of recalculations). Forecast, Revenues, and Hiring Plan sheets first edit, will replace more OFFSET over time.
  • Get Started and Revenues sheets, added new option for % billed upfront. Most cases it will be 100%, but in some cases (services, consulting, some enterprise contracts) there is a need for contracts to be paid at multiple times, on a non-every month or all billed upfront option. This implements a billing option where you can select to bill a % upfront in first month of contract, and the remainder at the end of the contract (on the last month of the contract)

Updates to the Standard Financial Model:

  • Edits to Revenues sheet to create a new "bundling" feature. line 114 calculates the conversions after the conversion lag, line 115 is a bundling input, line 116 calculates conversions after bundling. some businesses may make sales over time, but when the sales start may not be the same period, but may bundle them together into groups. an example is in education, where you often sign up users but don't start charging them until school is in session, for example. this input is designed to say "yes" or "no" using a "1" or "0", respectively, to say whether the conversions should flow through (a "1") or be bundled and held until the next event ("0" until the period for them to flow through into the next "1"). Kind of specific for certain businesses; if you don't understand it, then it doesn't apply to you :)

Update to the Angel and Venture Fund Portfolio Tracking, updating the Actuals sheet for a calculation of GP catchup, to handle the situation where there is a preferred return and not GP catchup (no impact if not using the preferred return input).

Update to the Venture Capital Model, Annual Forecast, Detailed Investment Strategy, adding in prebuilt scenario analysis. Video with how to think about scenario analysis and how to use it is linked at the product page and inside the model, and below.

  • Update to the Standard Financial Model, Runway Budgeting Tool, and Starter Financial Model, edited the timescale on Forecast sheet row 7, so that it corrects the fiscal year for the Summary sheet when the calendar year-end is not the same as the fiscal year-end. Previously, the Summary sheet would sum up the years still using calendar years rather than fiscal years, a simple change to the formula on row 7 updates this.
  • Update to the Standard Financial Model, edited Hiring Plan so it uses the timescale from Forecast sheet, instead of recalculating the timescale. All sheets link to the timescale from Forecast so that they are all consistent, previously this one was independent but now it's tied to the Forecast sheet.
  • Update to the Standard Financial Model, added a new assumption to Get Started for the revenue calculations on Revenues sheet so that the input for the starting number of revenue units is exposed on Get Started. No change in model functionality, just a slight addition to make it clearer where to make that input.

Added new page, Pricing, to make it easier to see all products, and updated homepage with a new product list and filter system,

Launched the Talent Collective to help users find professionals to assist with financial models for startups and funds, business plans, valuations, and more. Details here.