Tools to sharpen your startup.
Practical tools you can use for free, no strings. Score your fundamentals, find the investors who actually fit, and put the odds a little more in your favour. More on the way.
The Founder Canvas.
Everyone canvases the idea. This one canvases the founder. Twelve boxes on one page for the journey itself: team and equity, money in and out, what you'll build, what proves it, and the ninety days in front of you.
- Pairs with the Lean Canvas; this one gets it off the ground
- Each box points at the free tool that fills it
- Free under CC BY-SA. We're shaping v1 with founders now
The Founder's Scorecard.
Score your startup against the ten fundamentals that decide whether it compounds into a business or quietly runs out of road. Get your biggest risk and a focused set of suggestions on what to fix first.
- Ten quick questions, with examples so it isn't a gut feel
- Your score, your single biggest risk, and where to focus
- Built for pre-seed and seed founders. Five minutes.
The Raise.
Stop firing the same deck at a list of names and hoping. Describe your startup and get matched to the funds that fit your stage, sector and geography, with the real submission route for each and a pipeline to track every application.
- Matched on stage, sector and geography, not vibes
- The real submission route for each fund, not just a name
- One pipeline to track every application, end to end
Runway & Burn Calculator.
Four numbers in, and you get how many months of cash you have, the date you hit zero, and the date you should actually start raising. Then see what a raise or a cost cut buys you.
- Your runway, your zero date, your start-raising date
- A cash-depletion chart and a plain verdict
- Model a raise or a cut and see the difference
Unit Economics Calculator.
Five numbers in, and you get your CAC, your LTV, the ratio between them, and how long it takes to earn a customer back. The numbers investors ask for, and most founders can't answer.
- CAC, LTV, LTV:CAC ratio and CAC payback
- A plain verdict on whether growth is working
- See what fixing churn or CAC would do
The Leap.
Every startup rests on assumptions, and one of them, if it's wrong, sinks the whole thing. List them, rate each on impact and evidence, and find the single leap of faith to test first, with the cheapest experiment to test it.
- Map your assumptions on impact against evidence
- Your riskiest bet, ranked, with a cheap test for each
- Tag by desirability, viability and feasibility
The Round.
What a raise actually costs you in ownership. Enter your raise, pre-money and option pool and see your post-money, the investor's share, and exactly how much of the company you give up, then watch founder ownership erode across the rounds ahead.
- Post-money, investor share and your dilution
- An ownership bar and a stack-the-rounds projection
- See what more valuation or no pool would do
The Model.
For SaaS and anything with tiered pricing. Model up to six tiers, flex each price on a slider and watch projected users move with it, then add your tier, base and operating costs. See your MRR, ARR, profit and margin, with revenue graphs.
- Up to six tiers, each with its own price and users
- A demand curve, so price changes flex acquisition
- MRR, ARR, profit and margin, with revenue graphs
More free tools are on the way. Check back, or subscribe to The Read to hear when they land.