Best Practices and Resources for Financial Modeling

After years of building financial models for over 18,050 people in 98 countries I have seen a lot of commonly asked questions about best practices, resources and templates. I started compiling a list of financial modeling resources on the web, and over time that list has grown. I’m constantly updating this so if I missed something let me know. Contact me.

General Startup Financial Model Excel Templates

• David Teten’s startup financial model
• Giff Constable’s freemium business model template
• Glenn Kelman’s financial model from Redfin
• Andrew Chen’s freemium business model
• Tim Raybould, A cash model template for startups
• IA Ventures, Operating expense budget
• Eloquens, multiple financial models and business planning tools available to download (free and paid)

FAST Standard

• The FAST Standard for financial modeling
• Taylor Davidson, Why Foresight is adopting the FAST Standard

SaaS Financial Model Templates and How-To

• Brandon Marker, early-stage SaaS financial model template
• Christoph Janz, Financial Planning for SaaS Startups
• Baremetrics, SaaS Financial Model
• Nikos Moraitakis, Financial planning for SaaS startups
• Garrett Dimon, Starting and Sustaining, a guide for SaaS web apps
• Christoph Janz, A KPI Dashboard for early-stage SaaS Startups
• David Skok, SaaS Metrics 2.0 — A Guide to Measuring and Improving what Matters
• Andreessen Horowitz, Understanding SaaS, a Valuation Primer
• Sean Moran, How to project customer retention for a subscription business
• Ali Rahimtula, Fundraise Like a Pro Using this Internal SaaS Metrics Playbook
• Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge Capital, Your LTV Math is Wrong
• Ben Murray, SaaS metric and forecasting models

Ecommerce Financial Model Templates and How-To

• Matthew Carroll’s sample ecommerce model, explanation in detailed Quora thread
• Jeremy Liew’s how to estimate lifetime value for an ecommerce business (with cohort analysis)

Marketplace Templates and How-To

• Version One Ventures Marketplace Handbook
• Bill Gurley, All Markets are Not Created Equal: 10 Factors to Consider When Evaluating Digital Marketplaces
• Version One Ventures Marketplace KPI Spreadsheet

Startup Financial Model Excel Templates ($$)

• Taylor Davidson of Foresight, Financial model templates for startups for SaaS, advertising, app/in-app, commerce, and marketplace businesses
• Michael Herman’s Startup Financial Model, $$ Excel Templates
• Startup Model, $$ Excel Templates
• OpStarts, $$ Financial Projections

Financial Models for Investors

• Taylor Davidson of Foresight, Venture Investor Model

Operations Tempates

• Revelry Labs, Resourcing Spreadsheet for development shops and agencies

User Acquisition and Growth

• Noah Kagan, You’re Still Modeling Growth Wrong
• Andrew Chen on how to calculate cost per acquisition for startups
• David Skok, Modeling User Acquisition
• Jamie Quint, on modeling retention and virality, Retention is King (Guest Post)
• Andrew Chen, Facebook Viral Marketing (commentary and links to cohort analysis)
• Andrew Chen, What’s Your Viral Loop?
• Rahul Vohra, How to Model Viral Growth

Revenue Models and Forecasts

• Fred Wilson, Web and Mobile Revenue Models
• Steve Blank, The Business Development / Customer Development Stack
• Tim Berry, Creating a Sales Forecast
• Larry Cheng, How to Estimate your Addressable Market
• Taylor Davidson, Creating your Assumptions
• Ben Einstein on financing strategies for Hardware startups, Kickstarter is Debt

Metrics and Datapoints for Startup Financial Models

• Andreessen Horowitz, 16 Startup Metrics
• Mattermark, Important Financial Indicators for Startups at Every Stage of Growth
• Thomas Tunguz, The 10 Most Important Metrics In A Startup’s Financial Statements
• Joe Stump, How To Spend your Investors’ Money
• Thomas Tunguz, The Ratio Of Engineers To Sales People In Billion Dollar SaaS Startups
• Thomas Tunguz, How Much Cash Does Your Startup Need To Go Public?
• Fred Wilson, Forecasting

Cap Tables, Equity, and Convertible Note Mechanics

• Taylor Davidson of Foresight, How-to — Cap Tables, Liquidation Preferences and Exit Proceeds
• Venturehacks, How to make a cap table
• Mark Suster, valuation and sample capitalization table
• Raj Bedi, Discount or cap? A spreadsheet that shows what happens when a note converts.
• Michael Dempsey, Liquidation Preferences, A Waterfall Analysis, and Educating Startup Employees

Financial Model Best Practices and Guidelines

• Kostas Stavreas, Is the Financial Model Dead?
• Great Quora thread on building a financial model for a web-only product startup
• Taylor Davidson, Why Financial Models are Easier Than You Think
• David Teten, Best Practices in Spreadsheet Design
• Mark MacLeod, 3 traits of a great financial model
• Nathan Beckord, Your Financial Model is a Work of Fiction; Build it Anyway

Metrics and Dashboards How-To

• Christoph Janz, The Easiest Spreadsheet for churn, MRR, and Cohort Analysis
• Jeremy Liew, How to estimate lifetime value (with sample cohort analysis)
• Andrew Chen, What Factors Influence DAU/MAU? Nature v. Nuture (also, Appdata is a great resource for DAU/MAU data)
• Andreas Klinger, The simplest and most important dashboard for early stage startups
• Dave McClure, Startup Metrics for Pirates
• Kyle Rush, Optimization at the Obama Campaign, A/B Testing
• Ben Sesser, Memo to this year’s YC class: It’s damn hard to build an enterprise company, including some stats about enterprise companies

Pitch Decks

• Venture Hacks, What Should I Send Investors: Deck
• NextView Ventures, Pitch Decks for Raising Seed Capital
• Bing Gordon of KPCB, How To Craft A Concise Pitch Investors Will Care About
• Mark Suster and Mark Jeffrey, What Makes a Good Pitch
• Examples of web pitch decks by Piccsy and CSS Piffle

Fundraising

• Paul Graham of Y Combinator, How to Raise Money
• Alexander Taub, A Very Simplified + Formulaic Way To Raise Your Seed Round
• Steve Schlafman of RRE Ventures, Raising Seed Capital
• Taylor Davidson, Fundraising for Entrepreneurs
• Sam Altman of Y Combinator, Fundraising Mistakes Founders Make
• Hyde Park Angels, How to Read a Term Sheet

Employee Equity Valuation and Structure

• Taylor Davidson, Employee Equity 101
• Eden Shochat, Closing the Information Gap on Employee Option Grants: Part One

Board Meetings and Metrics Dashboards

• RRE Ventures, Update My VC for VC updates
• IA Ventures, Startup Docs
• David Teten, Board Meetings

Need help with your financial model? Learn more at foresight.is

Originally published at foresight.is.