How to Build a Real Set of Projections and a Real Financial Plan

So to get everyone excited about SaaStr Europa, we're here from fake live Paris with the Eiffel Tower right over here. So get ready, we've got 1,000 founders and VCs and others coming June 14th, 15th, and 16th to Paris. So go to saastrueuropa.com and come. What I want to briefly talk about today is one of the things that SaaS founders get the most wrong on many levels that's the simplest to correct, which is your financial plans and projections. Everyone struggles to come up with these, has delusional plans, miss their plans, miss their burn, and I wanna come up with one simple suggestion that we wrote about years ago, but not enough people do, which is a last 4-month plan. A last 4-month plan is super simple. You take your growth rate the last 4 months, your top line, how much your revenue grew, and you take your burn rate for the last 4 months, how much you spent, and you just average them. If for the last 4 months you grew 9.3% on average, and for the last 4 months you burned $118,000, 75% of the time, that's what the rest of the year is gonna look like. Now, a lot of times founders are resistant to this 'cause they don't like the outcome. They wanna grow faster than that. That's okay. Then have two plans. Present the last 4 months as your going forward growth rate, the average of the last 4 months, and your going forward burn rate, and then have a different plan. Say we wanna do better or challenge it. But the biggest mistake you can end up with is being in delusional territory. Not optimistic, but delusional. Spend too much, grow too slowly, and be all confused. But last 4 months doesn't lie. Last 4 months doesn't have biases. Your average growth rate and your average burn rate for the last 4 months are just facts. You can influence them, but they are what they are, and they're the best predictor you have for a startup of where you're going to be at the end of this year. Uh, talk to you soon.