Napkin Financial Model for Startups
A napkin financial model for early-stage startups: a first draft of how the marketing budget turns into customers, revenue and profit, before you build a full model.
Before a founder builds a proper financial model, they should be able to sketch the business on a napkin: how much marketing costs, how many visitors become customers, how long customers stay, what it costs to serve them, and whether anything is left at the end of the month. This template is that napkin.
I drafted it for an edtech (tutoring) startup I was mentoring, to help the founder answer one question: what should we charge? It is deliberately simple. Every number is either an input you test or a simple formula linking it to the others, so you can see which assumption moves profit the most. It is not an investor-ready model: no cash flow, no fundraising, no cohorts. Once the napkin works, move to a full model.
The one formula worth studying is Month of Operations: pick a month from launch and it estimates your customer base at that point, with retention.
Open the Napkin Financial Model in Google Sheets
Using the template#
Feel free to use, reuse or modify it under CC BY 4.0. Credit by linking to https://saalse.com/startups/financial-model
Related: the Co-founder Responsibility Map, another free template for early founding teams.
Use the model in Google Sheets#
- Open the link
- Click File > Make a copy
- Choose Name and Folder for your copy
Use the model in Microsoft Excel#
- Open the link
- Click File > Download > Microsoft Excel (.xlsx)
