A simple tool to improve your 2016 planning
In my last post I wrote about the problem with month-over-month growth rates . One of the issues I talked about was that when your revenue plan numbers are based on a constant m/m percentage growth figure (i.e. you're projecting to grow exponentially), your short-term objectives are likely too low relative to your longer-term goals. As an example, I showed a (fictional) SaaS startup that wants to grow from $1,000 in MRR to ~ $85,000 in MRR within one year. If that company projects exponential growth, it will have to add less than $7,000 in net new MRR in the first half of the year in order to be on track ... but to stay on track, it needs to add more than 10x that amount in the second half of the year! To follow-up on the topic, I've put together a very simple (Google Sheets based) calculator which startup founders might find useful when they work on their plan for 2016. The purpose of this simple sheet is not to replace a thorough bottom-up planning which is based on the key ...