Walk through of some key features of the sheets in the App and Social financial model
There is a lot in this model. I can't possibly explain all the details involved, and neither do you want to read it ;). I've whacked in a screenshot per sheet so you have an idea what is going on. If you want to see me explain it in more detail watch the videos. This should give you an idea of the magnitude of how much there is in this model and the time I put into making it.
Table of Contents (Click to section)
- Marketplace Model Architecture
- Formatting Sheet
- Detailed Profit And Loss Statements
- Depreciation And Tax
- Detailed KPI Sheet
- Runway Calculator
- Staff And General Costs
- Payment And Tech Expenses
- Support staff
- Revenue
- Cohort Power
- Conversion assumptions
- Virality
- Detailed forecast calculations
- Complete marketing
- Paid And Organic Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Blog & Social
The App and Social model architecture
- Fully integrated model: Changes in one sheet flow through the whole model automatically
- Logical flow: Expenses, marketing and revenue are all segmented so they connect logically
- P&Ls: Actuals and forecasts have their own P&Ls. These are then combined into a 'combined sheet' so you can see the progress month to month
- Other: Charts and KPIs have their own sheets. The key data from the large calculation sheets are presented so you don't have to dive into them
Formatting sheet
- Actual start: You can add up to 11 months in the actual sheet (12m is a historic, right?)
- Forecast date: Forecast sheet has 36 months of forecast
- Constantly update your model: I spent 2 weeks just figuring out a way to constantly update your model. You start with your Actual start date, then you can move your forecast month forward as time goes by. You then add your new actual month in
- Month end: Set your month end. Your annual bonus, tax etc will be paid out that month in the CFS, but accrue in the P&L as usual
- Currency change: With my plugin, you can switch to all the currencies you can see in the list
Detailed Profit and Loss statements
- 3 P&L sheets: Actual, forecast and combined
- Non key assumptions in line: If you want to add discounts, cancellations and bad debt, you can easily add in a percentage in line
- Fundraising: When you plan on raising money, you just input the amount into your cash balance
- Accounting and cash flow: Two main parts. The main part follows normal accounting practices (There is a sheet for Tax to manage NOLs as well as depreciation and amortisation following Investment Banking standards). The bottom of the sheet converts accounting to operating cash flow so you know when money is actually going in and out
- Complex adjustments: Bonuses are paid on year end in cash flow, but accrue in the P&L. Same for tax. Accrued bonuses from actuals are factored into your forecast for when they need to be paid
Depreciation and tax
- Control depreciation and tax: Simply manage the boring accounting bits with only a few assumptions like an M&A banker would
- Depreciation: Accounting for depreciation
- Tax: Calculate when you need to actually pay tax. Net Operating Losses (NOL) accounted for
- UPDATE COMING: I hired an accountant to add more boring nerd stuff to include R&D capitalisation etc. I'm not adding amortisation of intangibles because you're not a big corporation... I purposefully only add what might be useful
Detailed KPIs (94 rows)
- Detailed KPIs: 94 rows of relevant KPIs
- Segments: KPIs for key financials, margins, cost structures, user and churn metrics, downloads, funnel metrics, and headcount
- Dates: Both monthly and annual KPIs
Runway calculator
- Runway calculations: Understand your gross and net burn over your defined runway (in months). See how many months your planned fundraise will last based on your model forecasts
- Detailed operating expenses: See exactly where money is being spend per department over your runway
Staff and general costs can be detailed or basic
- Automatic forecasting: Customer care can automatically be calculated in it's sheet. This feeds into the staff sheet
- Scale recruitment as you need: Opt to hire recruiters when you hire [5 or more] new people a month so you don't have to think about how many recruiters you need
- Granular control over hiring: Easily add benefits/tax, choose the date you hire/fire staff and the date you want to increase their salary (say at Series-A)
- Other costs: Quickly add all the 'other' costs you need like rent, onboarding costs (e.g. laptops) of staff, and whatever costs you need without having to over think it. Most costs are calculated my multiplying the average cost be the number of staff you have
Automated expense sheet
- Payment costs: Simply manage your payment costs with credit card, PayPal, bank transfer and payment on delivery.
- Tech costs: Automate server and email costs. You can build this out if it is a big deal to you
Automated customer care
- Integrated with staff sheet: Flows into the staff sheet automatically
- Customer care: Determines the number of staff you need
- Simple but detailed: Defined what % of customers need help and how many minutes they need on average, and the model tells you how many staff you need
Service and ad revenue
- 2 revenue types: Generate revenue from charging premium services or from advertising
- Service revenue: Launch up to 7 modules you can charge, and calculate what % basic, premium or pro customers adopt
- Ad revenue: Generate revenue from inventory, branded, and direct response ads
Cohort power
- Granular modelling: The entire model is based on monthly cohorts. This is complicated to build but enables you to do a lot of things you couldn't without them. The annual calculation sheet is 3,482 rows long alone. Yes, I know my stuff
Conversion assumptions
- Android vs apple: Define what % of your customers download on which store. Each have their own assumptions. No investor is going to say you haven't thought about your business again
- 3 avatars: Customers have three profiles throughout the model: basic, premium, and pro
- Adoption curve: Define how long it takes for a registration to download
- Churn: Define your retention period
Virality
- Overview: Forecast product engineered growth through virality
- Detailed: The most detailed viral growth model in the world. It only took me a month to make it and I've invented a lot of concepts. The math for formulas is also explained
- Explanation: Read about the details of viral math here
Detailed forecast calculations
- 2 sheets: Two calculation sheets for Android and Apple
- Cohort based: Highly granular modelling
Complete marketing
- Granular assumptions: Control how traffic turns into registrations by setting conversion rates
- Conversion: Convert your traffic to registration
- 5 marketing sheets: Main marketing sheet gets fed by 4 marketing activity sheets which are all integrated. Paid, organic, email, blogging, social, and channel sales
- Growing too large?: Inbuilt calculations to stop you from growing larger than your defined market. Turn it on and off... if you want that level of nerdy- ignore and hide it otherwise!
Paid and organic marketing
- Organic growth: Simply add an organic growth rate of people going to your site
- Paid growth engine: Set your spend per month across up to 6 channels. Set your CPCs to generate traffic to your site. In addition you can add non-paid spend which doesn't attribute traffic (one-time campaigns and brand marketing) but will still contribute to your marketing costs and metrics
- Supporting metrics: See supporting conversion rates and metrics to check things make sense
Email marketing
- Earned growth: Support sheets effectively help you to reduce your paid CAC
- Fancy assumptions: There's a load of assumptions built-in from open rates, click through, forward rates, rebroadcasts, unsubscribes, etc.
Blog & Social
- Earned growth: Support sheets effectively help you to reduce your paid CAC
- PR: Get press, featured in TechCrunch etc and get earned traffic to your site. Simple to follow and understand.
- Social: Build a social following with lots of detailed assumptions as the email sheet. How many times you post, follow CTR, follower shares, rebroadcast rate and CTR, as well as builds to your email list