Modeling

How Foresight builds financial models.

I've been building templates and working with entrepreneurs to build financial models since 2004, so I have a lot of experience - across a wide variety of companies - in thinking through how to build solid financial models that entrepreneurs can maintain and use throughout the lifecycle of their companies.

I don't strive to build tools that have the most details, the most charts, the most features. I work to build the most practical, accessible, usable tools for people to get done what they need to get done - create financial projections to help them make key business decisions and (likely) convince investors that they have a solid financial plan for their business.

I've worked as a VC so I know what VCs want; I've built custom models for hundreds of companies so I know what entrepreneurs need; I've worked to distill all of that into models that can provide people what they need.

I also recognize that you, the user of a financial model, may want to make changes or do some things differently in their models. All of my models are completely unlocked - all cells, sheets, and formulas can be completely edited - and they are extensively noted, so that you can use, understand, and modify the model to fit your needs.

Already have a model? No problem.

I've built the Bring Your Own Model functionality to help use Foresight's models with other models. The financial core of the base models - consolidated financial statements, operating costs, cash forecast, summary, and key reports - is separated from the revenue and cost forecasts so that you can bring or build your own revenue forecasts, hiring plans, and operating budgets into the model with a minimum of integration effort.

What does that mean? Let's say you already have a revenue forecast you like, whether you built it or you're using a non-Foresight template. And let's say you like the revenue forecast, but don't think it does cash forecasting, or funding forecasts, or the cap table, or LTV, CAC, or other metrics reporting as well as Foresight. That's fine: simply duplicate the revenue forecast sheets from the non-Foresight model into a Foresight model, use your existing model for the revenue forecast, and link it into the financial core through the `Forecast` sheet. You can still fully use all the financial components of the Standard Model, but you don't have to use my revenue forecast. And the integration will take minutes, not hours, because you won't have to hunt and find where to link the models together: the functionality makes it easy to do and keep clean and consistent.

The problem with financial model templates has always been that they do some things you need, but not everything, and it can be incredibly hard to modify them to do what you want. One of the reasons for that is because modeling the revenues for a business - the sales methodologies, the growth engine, what is sold and how it's sold, etc. - can be incredibly specific to each business, and it's very hard to build a model that can work for a wide variety of businesses. I've worked to build a common growth and revenue structure that works for a wide variety of businesses, but having worked with thousands of businesses, I know that it's simply not possible to do everything.

That's why I've worked to build a modular model - a standardized financial core with an easy methodology to integrate with any revenue forecast - to help solve the problem with financial model templates, and to make it as easy as possible for you to use a template and minimize the amount of time you have to spend to make it work for you.