A startup financial model with exactly three tabs
Most free startup model templates are built for a Series A pitch deck: cohort logic, 5-year projections, hiring plans by function. This one answers a narrower, more urgent question, MRR trend, runway, and whether the business survives without more funding, in three connected tabs instead of eight.
Download the template
Three tabs: MRR Waterfall, Runway & Burn, and Default Alive Check. The third tab pulls live from the first two, no copy-pasting numbers between sheets.
Download the .xlsx templateWhy three tabs, not eight
Comprehensive startup financial models exist for a reason: an investor doing diligence wants to see cohort-based revenue logic, a hiring plan broken out by function, and multi-year projections. Building and maintaining that model every month is a real time cost, and most of the detail in it doesn't change the answer to the question that actually matters day to day: is the business on a path to surviving without more funding, or not. This model answers exactly that, cutting everything that doesn't feed directly into the answer.
Tab 1: MRR waterfall
Four inputs, starting MRR, new customers, churned customers, and price, produce the whole waterfall. This is intentionally the simple version: a single blended churn number rather than cohort-by-cohort churn, since at this scale the extra precision rarely changes the growth trend the number is meant to show.
Tab 2: Runway and burn
The monthly revenue line references the MRR Waterfall tab directly rather than asking for it again, so updating the ending MRR on Tab 1 automatically updates the burn and runway calculation here, no manual re-entry, no risk of the two tabs drifting out of sync with each other.
Tab 3: Default alive check
This is the tab that actually answers the question, built entirely from numbers the first two tabs already produced, plus one new input: the current pace of net new customers per month.
25 months of runway comfortably outlasts the 2.4 months needed to reach breakeven at the current pace of new customer additions, so the verdict cell reads "Default alive" automatically. Change any input on any of the three tabs and the verdict recalculates immediately, since it's a live formula comparing the two numbers, not a manually typed conclusion.
How the three tabs actually connect
The connection is the entire point of building this as one workbook instead of three separate calculators. Ending MRR flows from Tab 1 into Tab 2's revenue line. Runway flows from Tab 2 into Tab 3's verdict formula alongside a fresh breakeven-timing calculation built from Tab 1's price and Tab 2's fixed costs. Update one number, a price change, a fixed cost increase, a slower month of new customers, and every downstream number updates with it, including the verdict itself. This is the same connected-tab structure covered conceptually in the bootstrapped founder metrics guide, built here as an actual working spreadsheet using the identical numbers from that piece.
When you need more than this
Investors doing diligence expect cohort-based revenue logic, a hiring plan by function, and multi-year projections. This model is a fast internal check, not a substitute for that deck.
A single blended price per customer stops being accurate once there are meaningfully different plans or products contributing to MRR separately.
Once hiring decisions are a significant part of the burn conversation, a dedicated hiring-plan tab (start month, fully loaded cost per role) becomes worth the added complexity.
For any of these, the MRR & ARR calculator, runway calculator, and true cost of an employee calculator cover the individual pieces in more depth than this intentionally minimal model does.
Frequently asked questions
At minimum, three connected pieces: an MRR waterfall (new, churned, net new, ending MRR), a runway and burn calculation (cash, revenue, expenses, months remaining), and a way to compare runway against how long it will actually take to reach breakeven. Everything beyond that (cohort modeling, 5-year projections, hiring plans by function) is useful for a full investor deck, not for answering the day-to-day survival question.
A business whose current growth trajectory reaches profitability before its cash runs out, with no further funding required. It's a direct comparison between two numbers: months of runway remaining, and months until revenue covers costs at the current growth pace.
Most free templates are built for a fundraising pitch: multiple tabs, cohort-based revenue logic, detailed hiring plans by function. This one is deliberately smaller, three tabs, cross-linked so the runway and MRR numbers feed directly into a single default-alive verdict, built for a founder who needs a direct survival answer, not a board deck.
For this level of model, no. Churned MRR (customers lost from a single starting base) is enough to see the net new number and the growth trend. A more detailed cohort-based model matters more once there's enough customer history to make cohort-by-cohort churn meaningful.
Monthly, at minimum, right after closing the books for the period. The MRR Waterfall tab only needs four numbers each month, so updating it is a five-minute task, not a project.
Download the free template again, or run the pieces individually on the runway calculator.