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Sources and uses of funds

Runway calculator

Free sources and uses of funds calculator to understand how long your investment will last and illustrate your runway.

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Sources and uses of funds runway calculator. How much to raise?

How much investment do you need to raise? What is your startup runway? What charts should you show on your sources and use page (‘The ask‘)?

These are all questions I’m sure are in your head when you’re thinking what venture capitalists are looking for from you when pitching when the question about how much you are raising inevitably crops up. I know it’s something founders ask me all the time. Here’s the tool for you!

But here is a question for you, in case you are wondering if you want to keep reading.

How about showing investors your runway in a simple graph like this?

saas runway

Would you love to make this chart with very little work, to understand your spend?

sources and uses of funds

I love nerding out and making the best possible tools for founders, from the cap table, due diligence template, board deck template, ESOP model… to the Q&A of VC questions will ask etc. The most hardcore tools I made are fundraising models, for SaaS, Enterprise SaaS and Ecommerce. In the course of making them, I thought of what cool things I could also build that would be useful to the founders that use them.

One cool thing I made was a sheet for your Sources and Use (startup runway)- how much money do you raise from investors and how you are going to spend it? Groan (I can hear you from here). Yeah, that’s a pain in the arse and all you ever get is high-level overviews and no real instruction. So I made it.

I’m constantly mentoring founders and doing consulting on fundraising, so ‘how much to raise‘, ‘when do we run out of cash‘ and ‘how do we present our spend’ are questions I deal with twice a week at least. I thought… do you know what? Why don’t I make my sources and use sheet free to everyone and they can use it for that critical final page when they are asking for cash, hand outreached 😉 So I hacked out and made this tool just for you.

Founder feedback

A founder just emailed me some feedback and I thought it would be insightful for you to hear from someone who actually used this to fundraise and has got offers.

I am very new to fundraising, but one of the biggest takeaways is something you preach: building your financial model to ACTUALLY operate from. We recently went through DD with a VC and they admitted that a pre-revenue financial model was somewhat of a shot in the dark, but they wanted to see we had a legitimate plan for capital utilization. I had a 2 hour zoom with one of the associates at the firm going line by line through inputs of the source and use model you have created (for free, btw – thanks a million), mostly asking what the logic was behind the inputs and why.

The feedback I recently received is that the biggest driver of their offer decision was the team, followed by the fact that we had a solid plan & financial model. They also commended our humility in understanding that we don’t know what we don’t know, and being open to advice, guidance, and learning quickly / being able to pivot when needed.

Seriously man, I share your stuff with all of my other founder / entrepreneur friends. It’s brilliant and I can’t believe how much value you provide for free. Thanks again!

  • Jacob

The sources and uses of funds calculator

This Excel tool has four sheets and is set up for two types of startups: ecommerce and SaaS. Though if you have a different business model you can adjust it for your own purposes.

For both business models there are two sheets:

  • Detailed: If you want instructional line items, you can input all your cost items and the model will add them up and stick them in the right buckets
  • Short: If you have a model already and want to use the template to get the cool charts, you can just fill in the high-level numbers and stick em in

Now the detailed version has a lot of helpful line items! Too many to show on a webpage properly. So the screenshots below are indicative. There is a hack line to input the headline numbers where you want to a hybrid (I do think of how you might use it).

Once you fill in the yellow boxes all the calculations are done for you and out will pop 5 charts you can use as you see fit.

Now let’s look at some of the cool stuff.

Sources and uses of funds runway calculator

Once you filled in the yellow revenue and cost boxes, you can play about and see what the effect is on your sources and uses of funds plan with only 4 assumptions!

  • You can set your planned runway and it will tell you how much you need to raise
  • You can type in how much you plan on raising and it will say how many months it will last

sources and uses of funds

Here is a video I made for the SaaS model to explain this sheet (Note I’ve added a new sheet here to illustrate your runway to investors. No stress. There’s a description in the model to understand how to use it):

A really pimp thing is you can set the length of startup runway you want (e.g. 18 months) and the formulas will dynamically select all the data for that time period and update your charts. So let’s say you decide you only want to raise for 12 months, or say 24 months, you type that number in one cell and all the calculations and charts will update. Sorry, I think that’s epic ;).

Inputs sheets

The model is set up logically by main departments; R&D, G&A and S&M and COGS and additional main ones for ecommerce such as buying.

There are yellow boxes to fill in. Where you have some complicated calculations, such as paying bonuses at your year-end, the calculations will dynamically calculate this for you.

All the numbers are calculated on a cash not GAAP/IFRS basis, so you actually know when cash is going out of the bank (and not BS accounting with depreciation and stuff which is blergh).

Charts

This should be self-explanatory, but let’s break down the goodies:

  • Marimekko chart: It’s really pimp. It breaks up your costs on two axes’ so you can see the spending relatively
  • Pie chart: This is probably what you do at the moment. It’s a pie, with slices and stuff
  • Radar chart: I think this is kinda cool, but not as much as the Marimekko (of course). It shows relatively where costs are allocated
  • Costs vs revenue and orders: This is a stacked chart of your costs, with lines on your revenue (and orders)
  • Costs % spend over runway: This shows how your costs are spent as a % of total each month over your runway

I can go on about the details, but by now you should be sold already (Dude, it’s free)! So let’s get our screenshot on.

Ecommerce Overview

Assumptions

Detailed inputs

sources and uses of funds

Simple inputs

startup runway simple assumptions

Runway illustration on burn and cash in the bank

ecommerce runway

Marimekko chart for sources and uses of funds

sources and uses of funds

Pie chart

Radar chart

Costs vs revenue and orders

Costs % spend over runway in the sources and uses of funds

sources and uses of funds

SaaS Overview

Assumptions

Detailed inputs

Simple inputs

Runway illustration on burn and cash in the bank

saas runway

Marimekko chart

Pie chart in the sources and uses of funds

Radar chart

Costs vs revenue and orders

Cost vs billings and MRRsources and uses of funds

The end

If you love it, do me a solid? Can you share a link on your socials? Cheers.

Any questions or love, sound out in the comments. God bless.

 

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