Finmark is a venture-funded platform for building financial models and understanding a range of key financial metrics, including cash, burn, runway, and more. A graduate of Y Combinator, Finmark was founded by a repeat entrepreneur who experienced the pain in creating financial forecasts using spreadsheets:
“One of the biggest pain points was always understanding where our projections were relative to what we were actually doing as a company. So many times we were running our entire business off of Excel, and so many times the forecasts of what we thought we were going to do were wrong,” he said.
Finmark aims to eliminate the spreadsheet with a simple to use platform for founders to create, update, and share their financial plan. Build a model in Finmark, connect to your accounting systems (Quickbooks to start) and billing platforms (Stripe to start), and use it to continually manage your view of your company's future.
One of the recent features added to Finmark is the ability to build in custom variables and formulas; while initially, users were limited to the preset revenue and expense types built into the platform, users now have the ability to create their own formulas, variables, and functions mirroring the formula structures we often use in spreadsheets. The video above details how to get started using formulas and functions, and why I think custom variables and functions are important for users to be able to handle the unique aspects of your business.
How to use
Here's how to get started:
- Go to Finmark and create an account for free, no credit card required →
- Dive in and start building out a forecast. Finmark offers many guides to help you get started, and many detailed how-tos on how to use prebuilt functions and more advanced features such as custom variables.
Comparing Foresight and Finmark
Why am I sharing a company that aims to eliminate the spreadsheet for financial projections? I have always worked to provide the best financial tools for a founder, investor, or finance professional to make impactful decisions about key strategic and operational decisions for their business, and my goal is to help someone answer those questions and setup the right processes, whether they use a spreadsheet financial model template or not.
Personally, I don't believe it's an either/or choice between spreadsheets and web apps for managing a company's financials. There are situations and stages in a company's growth where spreadsheets are sufficient, or are better for specific analyses, and there are situations where web tools can provide a better user experience for building financial models to manage a company's financials. Finance is a function that is just beginning to see the explosion of tools and platforms that we have seen for product development, design, management, collaboration, communication, and human resources, and I'm excited to see the innovation in the space. Towards that, I'm happy to help you use spreadsheet models or help you onboard and build models in Finmark, contact me to learn more →
More web tools for building financial models at Alternatives to Foresight →