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Struggling with maintaining 25 versions of financial projection spreadsheets for a tiered SKU based SaaS startup. I decided to spin this up as quickly as possib

Struggling with maintaining 25 versions of financial projection spreadsheets for a tiered SKU based SaaS startup. I decided to spin this up as quickly as possible (and learn a little AngularJS along the way). The result - after ~30 hours it's usable enough to show. Obviously needs more flexibility around the variety of revenue models and expense categories. But really it's just for rough estimates at this point.

seivan 13y ago
~30 hours? You deserve the funding you can get :)
- f_salmon 13y ago
  That's nothing. I once did 5 such projects on a Sunday morning :)
  - cstrat 13y ago
    cool story, bro
primitivesuave 13y ago
This is excellent and a great demonstration of rapid development in Angular.
cstrat 13y ago
very impressive effort for a quick side project. bookmarked, i will come back and try it with some legit data when I get a chance!
icambron 13y ago
As a piece of technology, this is really cool. But I guess I don't get how it's different from a nice Excel model. How is it that this allows you to capture 25 different use cases in a way that the a spreadsheet can't?
- jotato 13y ago
  In my mind the difference is that I don't have to build it! Using this I can just plug in my numbers and go instead of spending time building a spreadsheet.
  - icambron 13y ago
    Sure, but the OP could have just published their spreadsheet and you wouldn't have to build that either.
    - bottompair 13y ago
      This was the worksheet I created (and have been using for a few months). I believe funded.io is at feature parity with this simplified model - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxgh-9Z9zd40ZExtRnYyZVhWU2s/edit?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxgh-9Z9zd40ZExtRnYyZVhWU2s...
      - rahimnathwani 13y ago
        Thank you for sharing. It's nice to see how other people do things. A few suggestions which may save effort next time you do this: - Only use the $ symbol as much as necessary. Usually you only need one (e.g. $C12 or C$12 rather than $C$12), unless you're referencing a single input. In your example, the excessive use of $ on the 'Detail' tab prevents me from adding an extra row for an employee simply by copying-and-pasting - SUBTOTAL can be better than SUM for summing columns of numbers. You want subtotals for Sales, Support etc., as well as a grand total. SUBTOTAL can be applied to a whole column of values without fear of double-counting, as it ignore existing SUBTOTALs. - EOMONTH(x,1) will give you the last day of the month after the date x. EOMONTH(x,0)+1 will give you the first day of the month instead. It's a bit easier to read than your DATE(YEAR, MONTH+1, DAY) construction.
- bottompair 13y ago
  A few things I was thinking: - Spreadsheets are prone to fat-fingering and messing up formulas. For example, if you built a spreadsheet with three product SKU's and wanted to add a fourth, it's not so easy. Especially if you have visualizations tied to specific ranges of cells, etc. With this app I can validate data once and not worry about some random missing formula screwing it up down the road. - When creating models for comparison the typical pattern is Save As -> New. Before you know it, you've got 8 or 10 different spreadsheets with different variations on the numbers. Now add a new expense category to the model in spreadsheet #10. If you want to compare backwards to the rest you'll need to do that work over and over (this is the pattern I was stuck in). - Longer-term I wanted to be able to overlay models - sort of an A/B test given different configuration - During the past few months I've met with countless entrepreneurs trying to launch startups pre-money. Most of them are trying to build models from scratch (or a template they found) and it's been a clear pain point for them - I can share models in a service like this easily. I've already used it several times when someone's asked me to help validate their business model. I create the model in the app and send them a link. They can tweak it and show me their ideas. It's crude right now, but collaboration between founders on something like this might be worthwhile. - Even longer-term I'd like to add in more templates to support startups beyond the initial financial model. Basically I looked at my last several years' worth of operational spreadsheets from helping run SaaS companies and thought "there ought to be an app for this".
jqueryin 13y ago
I like it. Nice work and welcome to the land of Angular! Minor spelling issue I noticed that was bugging me all over the place: s/Reccuring/Recurring/
- bottompair 13y ago
  Ouch. Fixed.
avighnay 13y ago
I too have been trying to capture this in excel, thank you for making it available in this format.

seivan 13y ago

~30 hours? You deserve the funding you can get :)

f_salmon 13y ago
That's nothing. I once did 5 such projects on a Sunday morning :)
- cstrat 13y ago
  cool story, bro

primitivesuave 13y ago

This is excellent and a great demonstration of rapid development in Angular.

cstrat 13y ago

very impressive effort for a quick side project. bookmarked, i will come back and try it with some legit data when I get a chance!

icambron 13y ago

As a piece of technology, this is really cool. But I guess I don't get how it's different from a nice Excel model. How is it that this allows you to capture 25 different use cases in a way that the a spreadsheet can't?

jotato 13y ago
In my mind the difference is that I don't have to build it! Using this I can just plug in my numbers and go instead of spending time building a spreadsheet.
- icambron 13y ago
  Sure, but the OP could have just published their spreadsheet and you wouldn't have to build that either.
  - bottompair 13y ago
    This was the worksheet I created (and have been using for a few months). I believe funded.io is at feature parity with this simplified model - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxgh-9Z9zd40ZExtRnYyZVhWU2s/edit?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxgh-9Z9zd40ZExtRnYyZVhWU2s...
    - rahimnathwani 13y ago
      Thank you for sharing. It's nice to see how other people do things. A few suggestions which may save effort next time you do this: - Only use the $ symbol as much as necessary. Usually you only need one (e.g. $C12 or C$12 rather than $C$12), unless you're referencing a single input. In your example, the excessive use of $ on the 'Detail' tab prevents me from adding an extra row for an employee simply by copying-and-pasting - SUBTOTAL can be better than SUM for summing columns of numbers. You want subtotals for Sales, Support etc., as well as a grand total. SUBTOTAL can be applied to a whole column of values without fear of double-counting, as it ignore existing SUBTOTALs. - EOMONTH(x,1) will give you the last day of the month after the date x. EOMONTH(x,0)+1 will give you the first day of the month instead. It's a bit easier to read than your DATE(YEAR, MONTH+1, DAY) construction.
bottompair 13y ago
A few things I was thinking: - Spreadsheets are prone to fat-fingering and messing up formulas. For example, if you built a spreadsheet with three product SKU's and wanted to add a fourth, it's not so easy. Especially if you have visualizations tied to specific ranges of cells, etc. With this app I can validate data once and not worry about some random missing formula screwing it up down the road. - When creating models for comparison the typical pattern is Save As -> New. Before you know it, you've got 8 or 10 different spreadsheets with different variations on the numbers. Now add a new expense category to the model in spreadsheet #10. If you want to compare backwards to the rest you'll need to do that work over and over (this is the pattern I was stuck in). - Longer-term I wanted to be able to overlay models - sort of an A/B test given different configuration - During the past few months I've met with countless entrepreneurs trying to launch startups pre-money. Most of them are trying to build models from scratch (or a template they found) and it's been a clear pain point for them - I can share models in a service like this easily. I've already used it several times when someone's asked me to help validate their business model. I create the model in the app and send them a link. They can tweak it and show me their ideas. It's crude right now, but collaboration between founders on something like this might be worthwhile. - Even longer-term I'd like to add in more templates to support startups beyond the initial financial model. Basically I looked at my last several years' worth of operational spreadsheets from helping run SaaS companies and thought "there ought to be an app for this".

jqueryin 13y ago

I like it. Nice work and welcome to the land of Angular! Minor spelling issue I noticed that was bugging me all over the place: s/Reccuring/Recurring/

bottompair 13y ago
Ouch. Fixed.

avighnay 13y ago

I too have been trying to capture this in excel, thank you for making it available in this format.