When I became an FP&A leader for the first time, I built our entire operating model from scratch. I had no context and no templates. And that blank workbook staring back at me was DAUNTING!
That’s why I’m excited to introduce our sponsor, Mercury.
Their VP of Finance, Dan Kang is sharing his personal template for building a financial forecast model.
Whether you’re preparing to fundraise, updating investors, or charting a new course for the company, you’ll likely reach a point where you’ll need to build a forecast model. It can help you align on clear business goals and understand why those goals matter.
As a child I collected baseball cards. As an adult, I now collect benchmarking reports.
Do yourself a favor and bookmark this list in your Chrome browser (or Microsoft Edge browser, if you’re a complete psychopath) for ease of reference. It will be especially helpful during annual planning season when you’ll need to sanity check:
Revenue Growth
Productivity
Profitability
Operational Benchmarks:
KBCM Private Company SaaS Survey by Keybanc (2024 results)
KBCM Private Company SaaS Survey by Keybanc (2023 results)
KBCM Private Company SaaS Survey by Keybanc (2022 results)
KBCM Private Company SaaS Survey by Keybanc (2021 results)
KBCM Private Company SaaS Survey by Keybanc (COVID) (2020 results)
KBCM Private Company SaaS Survey by Keybanc (2019 results)
KBCM Private Company SaaS Survey by Keybanc (2018 results)
KBCM Private Company SaaS Survey by Keybanc (2017 results)
Pacific Crest Private SaaS Company Survey by Pacific Crest (2016 results)
Pacific Crest Private SaaS Company Survey by Pacific Crest (2015 results)
Pacific Crest Private SaaS Company Survey by Pacific Crest (2014 results)
State of the Cloud by Bessemer Partners (2024)
The Cloud 100 Benchmarks by Bessemer (2022 results)
Scaling to $100M by Bessemer (As of September of 2021)
The BVP Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index by Bessemer (As of 2023)
SaaS Benchmarks Report by OpenView and Paddle (2023 results)
SaaS Benchmarks Report by OpenView (2022 results)
Financial and Operating Benchmarks Report by OpenView (2021 results)
Expansion SaaS Benchmarks by OpenView (2020 results)
Expansion SaaS Benchmarks by OpenView (2019 results)
Maxio Institute: The Growth State of B2B SaaS Businesses (as of June 2024)
Maxio Institute: The Growth State of B2B SaaS Businesses (as of Jan 2024)
B2B SaaS Benchmarks Report by Benchmarkit (2024)
B2B SaaS Benchmarks Report by Benchmarkit (Q2 of 2023)
The ICONIQ Growth Enterprise Five (2024)
Topline Growth & Operational Efficiency by ICONIQ (As of September of 2022)
Procurement Benchmarks:
The SaaS Trends Report by Vendr (As of Q2 of 2024)
The SaaS Trends Report by Vendr (As of Q1 of 2023)
Talent and Compensation Benchmarks:
The Definitive Guide to Sales Compensation by ICONIQ (As of May 2023)
Revenue per Employee Benchmarking by SaaS Capital (As of November 2021)
Employee equity benchmarking for startups by Index Ventures (As of 2022)
As a reminder, I circulate valuation and efficiency metrics by sector every Sunday.
I put it all into terms that operators can easily understand. It will help you build and track the comp set relevant to your specific business.
You can get on the list (for free) by subscribing.
Cheers CJ. We devour these reports too.
The ultimate would be to have these benchmarks collated into one place / spreadsheet
super helpful, thanks for these