Financial Model Examples: 5 Startup Models + Free Template (2026)

An investor likes your pitch and asks for the model. You open a blank spreadsheet and stall. Which numbers go where? How much detail is enough? The fastest way to learn is to copy a model that works. So below we show how a startup model is built, then walk through five financial model examples, from SaaS to hardware. You also get a free Excel template where every output is a formula.

A financial model example is a spreadsheet that turns a few assumptions into a forecast. Say you have 20 customers paying $500 a month and win 4 more each month. The model turns that into revenue. It subtracts your costs to show profit, then shows how long your cash lasts. Investors use it to test your plan.

How is a startup financial model built?

Build it in one direction. Start with one sheet of assumptions: customers, price, churn, salaries and costs. Turn them into revenue, then add your costs and hiring plan. The profit and loss subtracts costs from revenue. The cash flow moves each number to the month the money really moves. The balance sheet then checks that everything adds up.

Here's what each sheet does, with a real line from month 1 of our SaaS template.

Profit and cash are different numbers, and the gap trips up a lot of founders. Say a customer pays your March invoice 30 days late. The revenue counts in March, but the cash lands in April. Until then, the balance sheet carries it as money you're owed. In our template, the P&L stops at EBITDA: profit before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA vs revenue explains it). Our cash flow guide shows why the cash sheet matters so much in a raise.

Two rules keep a model honest. Keep every input on one sheet, and never type a number into a formula. The ICAEW Financial Modelling Code asks for the same thing: inputs, calculations and outputs kept apart, and no fixed values inside formulas. Then a change to one assumption flows through every sheet, and nothing breaks quietly.

In most startup models, two sheets drive the costs: the team and customer acquisition. Our guide to the hiring plan shows how to model salaries, taxes and start dates. And our customer acquisition model turns a marketing budget into new customers.

Financial model template: a free SaaS example in Excel

Our free template is a 36-month financial model for a fictional B2B SaaS startup. It has four sheets: a how-to note, assumptions, a monthly model and a yearly summary. Every number outside the assumptions is a formula. Change the price, the churn or the hiring plan, and revenue, profit, cash and runway update on their own.

Here are the inputs in the example. Swap in your own:

And here's what the formulas build, year by year:

Read the last rows first. The company grows fast, but it doesn't make a profit in these three years, and its cash runs out in month 32. That's not a broken model. It's the model doing its job. It tells you to raise your next round well before month 32, or to slow the burn. ARR here is a simple run rate: monthly revenue times 12. The burn multiple shows how much cash each new dollar of ARR costs.

What if the numbers are worse?

Now test the downside. Change one input at a time and watch two lines: ARR at month 36, and the month the cash runs out.

Two lessons jump out. A late round is the most dangerous change on the list: the money runs out before investors wire theirs. And growth costs cash. Push new customers up from 8% to 10% a month, and ARR at month 36 rises by more than half. But you need the next round three months sooner. A good model shows you both sides of that trade before an investor asks.

Financial modeling examples by business model

The structure stays the same. What changes is the revenue formula and the cost that can sink it. A SaaS model lives or dies on churn. A marketplace earns a cut of what flows through it. E-commerce fights returns and ad costs. Hardware ties up cash in stock. And an AI product pays for every unit its customers use.

Why these five? They follow the mix we see in our own projects. Here's how often each business model comes up, by share of projects on record.

Most platforms charge a subscription, a cut of each transaction, or both. So the first two examples cover them. We added e-commerce because it breaks in a different place: returns and ad costs.

Example 1: a SaaS startup (customers × price, minus churn)

Revenue is customers times price, every month. The template above is a full SaaS model, so here we'll stress-test the input that matters most: churn. Say you have 100 customers at $400 a month and win 20 new ones every month. Same sales team, same price. The only difference is how many customers cancel.

By month 36, the low-churn company is about 40% bigger. Churn compounds quietly, which is why investors check it early. Here's how the template's inputs compare with published benchmarks.

Our template loses more customers than the median company and earns back its CAC slower than the medians for its size. That's on purpose. A careful input is easier to defend in a meeting than a heroic one. For the full list of numbers investors ask about, see our SaaS metrics guide.

Example 2: a marketplace (GMV × take rate)

A marketplace's revenue is its cut, not the total sales on the platform. That total is called GMV, or gross merchandise value. Your take rate is the share of it you keep. The classic mistake is to put GMV on the revenue line, and investors spot it in seconds. Say you run a marketplace for home cleaning. Customers book 2,000 cleans a month at $150 each, and you keep 15%.

Look at the card fees. They're charged on the whole $150, but you keep only $22.50 of it. So they eat about a fifth of your revenue. Model them as a cost of revenue, next to refunds and support. For more on how marketplaces make money, read our guide to the marketplace business model.

Take rates vary a lot by market. a16z puts the usual range between low single digits and the mid-30s. Here's what three public marketplaces kept in mid-2026:

Example 3: an e-commerce brand (orders × basket, minus returns)

An online store's revenue is orders times the average basket, minus what comes back. Say you run a clothing brand. The average order is $80, a fifth of sales get returned, and it costs you $45 in ads to win a customer. Here's one customer, on their first order and over their first year:

The first order loses money. The second and third orders pay for it. So an e-commerce model needs repeat orders by customer group, called cohorts, not just a count of new customers. Our guide to retention cohorts shows how to build them, and our CAC calculator works out what a customer really costs you.

Don't guess the returns rate either. NRF estimated that 19.3% of US online sales would be returned in 2025. Across all of retail, the estimate was 15.8%.

Example 4: a hardware company (units × price, minus the bill of materials)

Hardware revenue is simple: units sold times price. The hard part is cash. You pay for parts and assembly months before you sell, and business customers often pay weeks after delivery. Say you sell a smart sensor to businesses. Here's what one unit earns:

Now the timing. Your factory wants a deposit with the order and the rest when the units ship. Customers pay 60 days after delivery. Here's one order of 1,000 units:

The P&L shows a $180,000 profit in month 6. But your bank account sits $220,000 lower until month 8. That gap is working capital, and it grows with every order. Double the order and you need twice the cash up front. So a hardware model needs a working capital sheet: deposits, stock and money customers owe you.

For a reference point on margins, Sonos reported a 43.7% GAAP gross margin for its 2025 financial year.

Example 5: an AI product with usage-based pricing

Usage-based pricing charges for what customers use: documents, API calls, minutes. Revenue is customers times usage times price per unit, often plus a monthly platform fee. The catch is cost. Every unit a customer uses costs you money in AI model fees. Say you sell an AI tool that reviews contracts. You charge a monthly fee plus a price per contract. Each review costs you model fees.

With usage pricing, your margin holds steady as customers use more. On a flat price, your heaviest users cost you more than they pay. So an AI model needs a cost line per unit of usage, not one fixed hosting bill.

In 2026, AI margins still run below classic software. Here's what two investor reports found:

How do you know if your financial model is ready for investors?

Run five checks. Every number traces back to an assumption. Revenue comes from customers and price, not a growth rate. Costs grow with the team and the customers. The cash flow shows the month you run out. And the upside is big enough to matter to a venture fund. In our work, most models we review fail the last one.

Not sure what big enough means at your stage? Compare your year-two and year-three numbers with our Series A benchmarks. Raising earlier? Start with our seed round benchmarks.

Here's how a weak model plays out in a real raise. An AI adtech startup had won investors over with its pitch, then lost them on the model. Revenue was a top-down target, with no link to sales capacity or marketing spend. The plan showed a 60% profit margin against a 30% industry standard. Many costs were missing, from hosting to AI model fees. And it had no cash flow at all.

We rebuilt revenue from the funnel: leads, then sales opportunities, then paying customers, with real sales cycles and contract values. On top sat the full statements and a dashboard of the key metrics (how to build one). The rebuild took a week. A month after we delivered it, the company closed its $6M seed round with a tier-one VC. A year later, it came back to us to plan its Series A. Read the case.

A second example is a UK fintech app. We built retention cohorts and tied the plan to burn multiple, magic number and CAC payback. The work took two weeks, and the company raised a £3M late seed round led by top-tier UK funds (see the case).

Want a second pair of eyes? We build and review models as part of our financial modeling services. For the errors we see most, read 6 critical mistakes in startup financial models.

What are the four types of financial models?

The usual list has four. They're the three-statement model, the discounted cash flow (DCF) model, the merger model and the leveraged buyout (LBO) model. Bankers and private equity investors use all four. A startup needs the first one most: a three-statement model built on its own drivers, like the examples above. A DCF helps when you value the company. The last two belong to deals.

CFI lists ten types in all. Here's what each one answers, and whether a startup needs it:

Asked for a valuation as well? Our guide to startup valuation methods covers the DCF and the methods investors use more often at early stages.