It’s that time of year again. Time to build your financial plan for 2026.
And if you’re like 80% of founders, you’re either (1) doing it wrong, (2) haven’t started yet, or (3) built something so optimistic it’s basically fiction.
I get it. Financial planning is tedious. Spreadsheets are boring. And honestly, most founders would rather be closing deals or shipping product than modeling burn rates.
But here’s the thing: without a real plan, you’re flying blind. You won’t know how many to hire. Where to spend. What’s realistic versus what’s a pipe dream. And in 2025’s funding environment, that’s not just inefficient — it’s dangerous.
The good news? We just made this dramatically easier.
The C60 Plan: Your Most Important Number
Let me remind you what a C60 plan is: it’s a financial plan you have 60% confidence you can hit. Not 90% (too conservative). Not 30% (too aggressive). Right in the middle.
This becomes your base plan. Your board goals. Your hiring plan. Everything.
And the fastest way to build it? An L4M model — Last 4 Months. You take the average growth rate of your revenue and burn over the trailing 4 months, and roll those rates forward. That’s it.
Why does this work? Because recent trends are your most reliable predictor of near-term future performance. Not your ambitious goals. Not what you told investors. What’s actually happening in your business right now.
The Problem: Most Founders Never Actually Build It
I talk to hundreds of founders every quarter. And here’s what I see:
50% have no real financial plan at all. Just vibes and a hockey stick chart.
30% have a plan, but it’s wildly optimistic. They’re modeling 10% month-over-month revenue growth when they’ve averaged 3% for six months.
15% have a plan, but they built it once in January and never updated it. Now it’s November and completely disconnected from reality.
Maybe 5% actually maintain a living, data-driven financial model.
The reason? It’s genuinely annoying to build. You need to export data from your accounting system, update formulas, recalculate ratios. It takes 2-3 hours minimum if you’re starting from scratch. And most founders just… don’t.
The Solution: Let AI Build It For You
This is exactly why we built the new forecasting tool into SaaStr.ai’s Benchmarking platform.
Here’s how it works:
- Upload any investor update, board deck, or financial summary that includes your trailing revenue and burn data
- Our AI extracts the numbers and calculates your L4M growth rates automatically
- It projects those rates forward 12 months
- You get a complete C60 plan with revenue projections, burn rate forecasts, and runway calculations
Total time: about 60 seconds.
What used to take you 2-3 hours now happens while you grab coffee.
What You Get: A Real, Data-Driven Base Plan
The tool shows you two critical views:
Revenue Projection: Your ARR trajectory based on recent growth trends. In the example in the screenshot, a company at $83.4M ARR today is projected to reach about $85M by November 2026. Not a hockey stick. Not a fantasy. Just math based on what’s actually happening.
Burn Rate & Runway: This is the scary one, but the most important. The green line is your cash balance. The red line is your cumulative burn. Where they intersect? That’s your Zero Cash Date.
In this example, the company has burned $27.4M cumulatively and is trending toward a crossover point around September 2026. That’s about 10 months of runway. Not great. Needs immediate attention.
Why This Changes Everything
Once you have your C60 plan — your actual, realistic base case — you can do three critical things:
1. Build your hiring plan. You know exactly how much revenue you’ll likely generate, so you can model out how many reps, engineers, or support staff you can actually afford to hire. No more “let’s hire 5 people and hope it works out.”
2. Build your stretch plan (C10). Take your C60 revenue projections and increase them by 20%. That’s your stretch goal. The thing you pay bonuses on if you hit it. Now you have real targets, not fantasy.
3. Build your worst case (C90). Keep the C60 expenses, but cut revenue by 20%. Watch your runway evaporate. This tells you if you need to raise now, or if you have cushion. Most founders hate this exercise, which is exactly why you need to do it.
The Hard Truth Most Founders Ignore
Here’s what I see constantly: founders build an optimistic plan because they don’t like what the data shows them.
They’re at $5M ARR growing 3% per month. The L4M model says they’ll be at $7M ARR next year. But they promised investors $10M. So they just… model $10M. And then spend like they’re going to hit $10M.
And then they run out of cash.
The C60 plan forces you to look at reality. It’s not what you want to be true. It’s what’s most likely to be true based on recent performance.
If you don’t like your C60 plan, that’s actually valuable information. It tells you that you need to change something fundamental about your go-to-market motion, your product, or your unit economics. Not just model a bigger number in a spreadsheet.
How to Use the Tool Right Now
Go to SaaStr.ai’s Benchmarking section and look for the Predictive Analytics & Forecasting feature.
Upload any document that has your monthly or quarterly revenue and expense data. Most investor updates work perfectly. The AI will extract the numbers, calculate your growth rates, and project forward.
You’ll immediately see:
- Your revenue trajectory
- Your burn rate trend
- Your projected runway
- When you’ll hit zero cash if nothing changes
Then do this:
This week: Review the C60 output. Gut check it. Does it feel roughly right based on what you’re seeing in the business? If yes, this is your base plan.
Next week: Build your C10 stretch plan by increasing revenue projections 20% and modeling the associated costs.
Week after: Build your C90 plan. Keep costs flat, cut revenue 20%. Look at your new Zero Cash Date. If it’s less than 12 months out, you need to either cut burn or start fundraising conversations now.
The Bottom Line
Financial planning shouldn’t take three days at least to start. A very basic plan shouldn’t require a finance team. And it definitely shouldn’t be something you avoid because it’s tedious.
The L4M methodology is the fastest, most objective way to build a realistic base plan. It takes the emotion out of it. It’s just math.
And now, with the new SaaStr AI Benchmarking tool, you can generate it in seconds instead of hours.
Most of you still haven’t built your 2026 plan yet. I know you haven’t. It’s November 20th and you’ve been busy.
But you’re out of excuses now. Go upload a deck. Get your C60 plan. Look at your runway. Make decisions based on data, not hope.
Because the founders who plan well don’t just survive. They’re the ones who know exactly when to accelerate, when to pull back, and when to raise. They make better decisions because they see clearly.
And in this market? Clear sight is the biggest competitive advantage you can have.
Try it here: SaaStr.ai Benchmarking Tool
And let me know what you learn. I genuinely want to know if your runway is shorter than you thought. Because if it is, you need to know that now, not in March when you’re down to 6 months of cash.
