Trying to figure out how much to raise, what it is going to cost you, and keeping the team up to date with these details can become a nightmare.

Why? Startups move fast and can change directions on projects at a moment's notice. All of this back and forth can make it a pain to plan out your next fundraising round.

This template is meant to drastically simplify the round raise planning process. It’s something to keep you and your team internally aligned on what is needed for the next raise and how the deal might be structured. Getting the actual fundraise done will likely require more than what this template has to offer, but this template will help you in the early stages of planning your round.

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Instructions

First off, let's go over the three basics of using this template:

• All blue shaded cells are meant for you to enter data into (Also H10 through J27 in the Investment Overview section).
• Most cells will have notes explaining what they are if you get confused while filling this template out.
• Each sheet is built to fit perfectly on a page when printed in landscape orientation.

You should fill out the pages in this template in the following order:

1. Simple Cap Table
2. Overview
3. Engineering and Manufacturing, Operations and Legal, Marketing and Sales Pages

Pages:

• Overview Page: This is where all of the details of your round will be summed so that anyone looking at it can get a quick overview of what the round might look like
• Engineering and Manufacturing, Operations and Legal, Marketing and Sales: These pages are where you will list out each of your expenses in these categories
• Simple Cap Table: This is an ULTRA simplified cap table for you to do two things. 1. Enter your “total number of shares” 2. Get an idea of how much equity each team member will end up with after the raise (if its a priced equity round)

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Overview Page: Round Details Section

This section is where you map out the details of your round. Information that you need will change based on the “type” of round that you choose in the Investment Overview section.

There are a few rounding functions in here to make the numbers easier to work with. The “Share Price” is rounded to the nearest cent. The “Round Target” is rounded to the nearest $5,000. The “Minimum Investment Amount” is rounded up to be 5% of the “Round Target” to make sure you don’t have too many investors in this round.

Overview Page: Investment Overview Section

There are three main parts to this section:

1. The round type. Either a Priced Equity round or a Convertible Note / SAFE round: This is where you can choose what type of round you would like to raise. If you choose CN/SAFE, you will see that you can map out your interest rate, discount rate, and cap to the right of the check boxes.
2. Dilutive Investors: The names and investment amounts of your predicted/actual dilutive investors.
3. Non-Dilutive Investors: All non-dilutive capital that you think you can raise or have raised through grants, accelerators, etc. in this round.

Overview Page: Budget Overview Section and Milestones Section

The pie chart gives you a simple visual representation of how your costs in the three different categories (Engineering and Manufacturing, Operations and Legal, Marketing and Sales) break down.

On the bottom of the overview page, you can find a more detailed cost breakdown as well as your milestones for this raise. In my opinion, the best place to start on this sheet is with the “Key Milestones” sections. Doing this will really help you figure out your most important priorities which will help you break down what detailed costs go towards achieving these milestones.

The last really important part of this section is the “Error Margins.” These are where you can predict your margins of error for each spending category. For example, if I calculate my engineering and manufacturing costs to be $10,000 and I have an error margin of 1.4 on all of the expenses, my total raise needed will be $14,000 (you can choose not to include your error margin on any item in the following category breakdown pages).

Engineering and Manufacturing, Operations and Legal, Marketing and Sales Pages

These pages are where you map out your expenses for each category. You can choose to include or not include your error margin on any item that you list (Checked = include error margin. Not Checked = don’t include error margin).

Simple Cap Table

The only mandatory entry that you need to fill out on this page is your total number of shares. As a rule of thumb, it's best to have at least 1,000,000 shares so that you have plenty to distribute and can have low share prices to start out.

Besides that, all you need to do is input each of your team members and how many shares they currently hold. New stockholders will be automatically imported from the “Investment Overview” section on the Overview page.

This is a drastically simplified cap table and should never be used in place of a real cap table. It’s purpose in this template is to enter how many shares you have and to give you a rough idea of where each of your current equity holders will stand after the raise.

If you have any questions, comments, or find an error in this template, please email me at hello(at)danstrangfeld.com

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