Skeleton · Finance
5-tab financial model
📋 Template · 🎯 Pre-seed → Series A · 5 tabs · 18-month horizon
Don't over-engineer. The model investors actually read has five tabs, change one driver and watch the cash line move, and three scenarios you can defend.
The skeleton
TAB 1 · DRIVERS (every assumption editable here)
Pricing
- ASP (avg selling price) per customer / month: $___
- Annual price increase %: ___
GTM
- CAC blended: $___
- Payback period: ___ months
- Sales cycle (days): ___
- Conversion: lead → trial → paid: ___% / ___%
Retention
- Gross monthly churn: ___%
- Net dollar retention: ___%
Headcount
- Engineers: q1 ___ → q4 ___
- GTM: q1 ___ → q4 ___
- Ops: q1 ___ → q4 ___
- Average loaded cost per FTE / region: $___
Cost
- Hosting / infra (% of revenue): ___%
- Tools / SaaS (per FTE / month): $___
- Office / travel (per month): $___
TAB 2 · REVENUE (built bottom-up from Drivers)
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun ...
New customers ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Churned customers ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Net new customers ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Total customers (EOM) ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Avg revenue / customer ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
MRR ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
ARR ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
NDR ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
TAB 3 · COSTS (headcount-led)
Headcount build
Eng / GTM / Ops by month, totalled
Salary cost (loaded — salary + benefits + tax)
Per category, per month
Variable costs
- Hosting (= Drivers.hosting% × Revenue)
- Tools/SaaS (= Drivers.tools/FTE × FTE count)
- Travel/office (= Drivers monthly)
GTM spend
- Paid acquisition (CAC × new customers)
- Sales tooling
- Events / content
TAB 4 · P&L + CASH FLOW
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun ...
Revenue ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
COGS ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Gross margin ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Gross margin % ___% ___% ___% ___% ___% ___%
Salary cost ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
GTM spend ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Other opex ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Operating loss / gain ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Net cash burn ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Opening cash ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Closing cash ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Runway (months) ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
TAB 5 · SCENARIOS (3 only)
Base case — driver values from Tab 1
Downside (-30%) — revenue lower, hiring delayed 3 months
Upside (+30%) — faster sales cycle, lower CAC, faster hiring
For each: ARR EOY, runway, cash needed for Series A timing.
The drivers tab is sacred. Every number on every other tab pulls from Tab 1. If a number isn't formula-driven, mark it red. Investors stress-test by changing drivers — break the link and you've broken trust.
Common model mistakes
- Hard-coded assumptions buried in formulas. Refactor everything to point back to Tab 1.
- Top-down market sizing in the model. Tabs build bottom-up; market size is for the deck appendix only.
- 14 scenarios. Three scenarios you defend beat 14 scenarios that look impressive.
- Stale dates. Last-modified date matters. Investors see a model from 6 weeks ago and trust drops 30%.
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