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Finally an easy financial projections template that's as awesome as your startup. Quickly create your startup financial projections with Rocket Pro Forma to be investor-ready, win pitch competitions, and successfully grow your business. Rocket Pro Forma Impress Investors with Your Financials Get Rocket Pro Forma Make Your Startup Investable In A Single Afternoon Impress investors with your financials. And get funded. And stop worrying so much about getting investors, and more about getting customers! Rocket Pro Forma is a financial projections spreadsheet that saves time and headache so you can focus on what you do best. Rocket Pro Forma can help you get investment more quickly, so you can turn your focus back to building a great business. In one afternoon, Rocket Pro Forma can help your startup become vastly more investable. We’ll show you how easy it can be using Rocket Pro Forma. Get Rocket Pro Forma for a limited time at the reduced “trial offer” price of 90% off. Get Rocket Pro Forma Some of the businesses that have used to Rocket Pro Forma to become investment ready “Thanks again for one of the most valuable tools we had access to at the Babson WIN Lab.” Babson College Accelerator Program “ Rocket Pro Forma helped us consider all aspects of our financial needs, business expenses, and revenue projections in a very efficient way as we raise capital. ” Annette King Founder at Muuchit “Thanks to Rocket Pro Forma, I won my pitch competition along with the cash prize! I watched all of the included videos, which helped a lot.” Stefano Selorio CEO of Carevocacy Nail Your Big Pitch Get Rocket Pro Forma 1. Simply Input Your Assumptions The easy interface will automatically create your pitch deck slide and financial statements. 2. Learn As You Go Rocket Pro Forma walks you through with a series of videos to answer your questions. 3. Grow Your Business Rocket Pro Forma is your shortcut to success. Made for entrepreneurs by an entrepreneur Meet Mike Lingle I’m a former software developer who’s raised venture capital, had an exit, and run several accelerator programs. I'm an entrepreneur in residence at Babson College and Founder Institute. After almost driving my first startup into the ground I realized that I needed to figure out the financials—and I created Rocket Pro Forma because it's the tool I wish I had when I started my first business at 25. I'm obsessed with helping founders launch and quickly grow successful businesses. Connect with me on LinkedIn or join one of my free webinars on how to be more confident in your financials and when pitching investors.

Finally a financial projections spreadsheet that's as awesome as your product. Quickly create your pro forma to run your business and be investor ready. Last updated: February 6, 2026 This Privacy Notice for Tonic Studios LLC (“we,” “us,” or “our”) describes how and why we might access, collect, store, use, and/or share (“process”) your personal information when you use our services (“Services”), including when you: Visit our website at: https://www.rocketproforma.com or any website of ours that links to this Privacy Notice Engage with us in other related ways, including any marketing or events Questions or concerns? Reading this Privacy Notice will help you understand your privacy rights and choices. We are responsible for making decisions about how your personal information is processed. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, please do not use our Services. 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Start your company’s culture right My friend Brad keeps starting television networks. He’s become great at it. Years ago—when he was launching MTV Canada—he taught me a way to quickly capture a company’s culture. It’s called a brand filter. Starting a company can be chaotic! There’s so much happening all at the same time, and once customers show up it’s even more hectic. So we start moving quickly. It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. How do we make sure that we’re on the same page with our co-founders? Let’s stop for a minute and consider what we’re building here: What are our core values? What’s important to us? How we want to feel while we’re working? How do we want our customers to feel? How do we explain our brand to a marketing or PR agency? How do we make sure that we’re on the same page with our co-founders? And how do we make sure those all-important first hires fit our vibe? In short, what is our company culture and how do we communicate it? This is the magic of the brand filter, and it’s deceptively easy: Pick five words or short phrases that describe your company.  Print this list out and stick it to the front of your computer.  Check what you’re doing against this list every time you create a piece of collateral, hire someone, design a new product or service, etc. Everything won’t match 100%, but you can quickly tell if you’re in the ballpark. And you can easily communicate your list to everyone else. Check what you’re doing against this list every time you create a piece of collateral, hire someone, design a new product or service, etc. If you’re flying solo, please take a few minutes and do this yourself. Here’s my list: Practical : I want my suggestions to be immediately actionable. What can we do right now with what we already have? Always Adding Value : I want people to feel like they’re learning from every conversation, and I always do what I can for people for free. Collaborative : I don’t have all the answers and I’m always looking for ways to include other people in what I do. Reliable : I want people to know that I’m always there for them, especially when they’re asking for help. Flexible : Part of the reason I like consulting is the constant innovation and the flexible schedule. Let’s always be learning and optimizing. My friend Rajan Chopra started a coaching business for successful executives (I've use his services myself!) and he came up with “The Five I’s:” integrity, intellect, insights, ideas, and inspiration. They’re easy to remember and it sounds like a company I’d like to work with. A new person added to a small team has the ability to dramatically affect the culture, and with a brand filter you can clearly communicate your expectations. As an entrepreneur I’m trying to create an environment that I enjoy working in. I want to be careful that I’m not creating a prison for myself. I want to ensure that my startup retains its culture as it grows and more people get involved. The only way to achieve that is to set a goal and navigate towards it. If you already have co-founders you can schedule an hour to build your brand filter together. Future decisions become much easier once you all agree. I highly recommend doing this exercise before making that all-important first hire. A new person added to a small team has the ability to dramatically affect the culture, and with a brand filter you can clearly communicate your expectations. Please post your brand filter in the comments! Featured Download: Grab my Brand Filter Guide to quickly establish and communicate your company culture with your team. This is the best way to ensure you’re building a palace instead of a prison. Mike Lingle  is obsessed with helping founders grow their businesses. I'm a serial entrepreneur, mentor, and executive in residence at Techstars and Founder Institute Check out Rocket Pro Forma if you want to  quickly create your financial projections .

Overview I help a lot of founders with their pitch decks. In fact, most of my startups were presentation apps ., and before I focused on financial projections I ran a pitch deck business. I'm not a graphic designer, but I've learned to make decent slides that raise money. In fact, one of the pitch decks I worked on last year was used to raise over $200 million. Here are a few best practices that I’ve established over the years when creating startup pitch decks: Google Slides is usually the best option Create slides that look good and are easy to update Reduce the amount of info on each slide Use larger text Use images, icons, and diagrams wherever possible Use animations to slowly introduce information Use the Theme Builder for colors, fonts, and slide layouts Pick the right colors Choose sexy font pairs Practice, practice, practice 1. Google Slides is usually the best option Pitch Decks are living documents that we need to update regularly—and often in a hurry. For the most part this means tasteful combos of fonts, images, and layouts (see below for my specific suggestions). We don't necessarily need the best graphic design and animations. For the most part I find that Google Slides is good enough visually. Google Slides also provides the best collaboration experience, along with killer version control (meaning you can roll back to pretty much any individual edit). Google Slides does have limitations regarding charts and smart art. PowerPoint is a close second. It offers a wider feature set, but a poorer collaboration experience. Keynote looks the best, but is neither portable nor collaborative. And I find that most pitch decks don't need whatever extra boost we think we're getting in design. The rest of this post will assume that we're using Google Slides, but the tips apply no matter which presentation app we choose. 2. Create slides that look good and are easy to update My goal is always to create slides that look great and that are easy for us to update ourselves. Remember how we need to update our slides all the time and at the last minute? 90% of the visual appeal is in the choice of fonts, images, and layouts. Be careful when working with graphic designers. They have a tendency to create slides that look spectacular...but can't be edited easily. I've found it's better to dial down the visuals a bit in order to keep the slide editable. For the most part this means tasteful combos of fonts, images, and layouts (see below for my specific suggestions). But first, here's a trick I use all the time: Cropping images with a shape can improve the visual appeal of slides. In Google Slides we can select the image, click the cropping tool, and then choose a shape to apply. Use both the yellow handle(s) and the cropping feature (double-click on any image) to reshape the frame. There is a limitation in Google Slides where rotating the frame also rotates the image (which can make it confusing when we try to change the image). For more complicated mattes, it may be best to use PNG layers to overlay photos with a transparent section. In this slide, the background image is sitting underneath editable text, circles with shadows, an orange line on the left, and a blue PNG splash shape on the right: We can then simply swap out the background without touching any of the layered elements. This gives us incredible power to quickly update our own slides: 3. Reduce the amount of info on each slide Determine the use of this Pitch Deck: 1) If the Pitch Deck will be emailed , then the viewer will read it on their own and therefore the slides require more text. In this case the slide needs to tell the story. 2) If the Pitch Deck will be presented live , then each slide needs to work as a platform for you to create a personal connection with the audience. In this case, it’s important for the you to tell the story. In this case, text on the slide competes with the your ability to tell the story. Every time you switch slides the audience will stop listening to you for as long as it takes them to read all the new text. So in live pitches your slides actually start to compete with you for attention. We normally don't have two separate versions of our pitch deck—one for email and one for live presenting—so I recommend using the least amount of text possible that still works for emailing. I avoid reading the slides to my audience when I'm presenting live. Find different words to tell your story. Otherwise you'll find that the audience gets bored because you're not adding value (they could just read the slides themselves). If I do have a text-heavy slide that I want my audience to read, I'll tell them, "Go ahead and read this slide" and then I'll give them 30 seconds before I speak again. This felt weird the first few times I did it (because of the long silence) but it works incredibly well. A good trick that I use when creating startup pitch decks is to do a brain dump and write really long, text-heavy slides. Then I go back and cut again and again until I get each slide down to just a few short bullet points. Here's an example of a slide that works for both email and in-person: 3a. Use larger text Legibility is important, plus we’re often trying to reduce the amount of text on each slide. Investors may skew older, in which case they do better with larger text. For these reasons, I recommend at least 18 point text wherever possible. 3b. Use images, icons, and diagrams wherever possible Visuals help people understand and retain the information that you're presenting. They make your presentation more entertaining and they break up monotonous text slides. Striking visuals are also what pop into viewers’ heads the next day—triggering a recollection of the entire presentation. People will spontaneously remember the perfect image hours—or days—later: This one's good too: Diagrams help people understand important points and user flows. The combination of a clear visual plus you explaining key concepts works wonders for establishing yourself as the trusted authority: 3c. Use animations to slowly introduce information We want to reduce the amount of new text appearing on the screen at any one time (remember that text fights with you for the audience’s attention). I recommend having each paragraph of text build on individually. This allows you to make one point at a time. You can also link image and icon builds to happen at the same time as each text element. In the diagram above, for example, I would build each icon and text box on separately. I would talk to each point before triggering the animation to bring on the next arrow, icon, and text box. In Google Slides, click the "By Paragraph" option inside each animation to have each bullet point build on separately: I usually stick to simple build animations. Anything more complicated—and more flashy—tends to be more of a distraction than a help. Remember that we're trying to create a connection with our audience, and we're trying to create a presentation that helps us do that, while minimizing distractions. 4. Use the Theme Builder for colors, fonts, and slide layouts Access the Theme Builder in Google Slides using the View menu: The Theme Builder allows you to standardize the fonts, colors, and slide layouts. This gives "future you" the power to make global updates, like changing a color in one place and having it change on every single slide. You'll thank me later: Setting your colors in the Theme Builder makes it easy to select them from the color palette when you're editing slides. And setting your fonts and layouts in the Theme Builder saves time and ensures consistency. 4a. Pick the right colors I've learned to limit the number of colors in my presentations. I typically use: Background color Text color Main highlight color Extra highlight color (maybe) I choose a light background color if I'm using a dark text color (and this combo saves the most ink if I'm printing the slides). Otherwise I'll choose a dark background color if I'm using a light text color. I use a lot of white, black, and dark blue for my background and text colors. I usually only use one highlight color—but sometimes I'll use a second highlight color. Adobe offers a free color palette tool at color.adobe.com (and there are a bunch of other options too if you Google "free color palette tool"). And that's it. Simple is best here. The only place where I'll use more colors is in charts—where I'll use shades of one or two of my main colors (in this case gold and navy, which you can see anchoring the corners): 4b. Choose sexy font pairs Serifs are the little points that stick off of letters. The New York Times logo is in a serif font—and serif fonts tend to point to the past. There are, of course, more modern serif fonts. "Sans Serif" means "without serifs," and sans serif fonts tend to feel more modern. This blog post is done entirely in sans serif fonts. The trick with startup pitch decks is to choose one font for the slide titles and a different font for the text. These two fonts should be complementary—even sexy. Try a free tool like FontPair.co to suggest pairs of fonts that work well together. I spend ten minutes choosing two fonts and that's it. I find that anything more complicated is both wasted time and potentially distracting in a startup pitch deck. I also try to use fonts which are available on Google Fonts —which means I can easily use them in my slides and online. Fancy rare fonts that I have to install on my computer tend to not work well on websites, which is a problem. Bringing it all together Here's the same slide with different colors and fonts. See how it completely changes the feel? Now you are a design ninja, but you're keeping it simple. 5. Practice, practice, practice I read an interview with Marc Benioff of Salesforce where he said that he needs to practice each presentation seven times before he feels comfortable. By "practice" he means running through it talking out loud clicking through his slides. Seven times. It's not a quick process, but it ensures that he feels comfortable when he finally steps in front of his audience. Remember that our goal is to establish trust by becoming the trusted authority and telling an authentic, informative, entertaining story. Practice is how we get there. I hope these startup pitch decks tips help you. Please let me know if you have questions. ### Mike Lingle is obsessed with helping founders grow their businesses. He's a serial entrepreneur, mentor, and executive in residence at Babson College and Founder Institute. Check out Rocket Pro Forma if you want to quickly create your financial projections .

Pitching investors? Here’s how to figure out your startup’s valuation in 30 seconds. 30-Second Startup Valuation Here's how to figure out how much your startup is worth before you start pitching investors. You’ll need these two things, which you probably already know: How much money you’re raising in this round (Cash Raised) What % of the company that “should” be worth (Ownership Percentage) according to you, your investors, or both (start with 20% if you're not sure—you can always change it later). The formula to figure out your startup’s valuation is: Cash Raised divided by Ownership Percentage = Post-Money Valuation. Now subtract the Cash Raised to get your Pre-Money Valuation (what your startup’s worth now, before the investment). Your Pre-Money Valuation is the answer to the question, "What's my startup worth?" Here's a short video walkthrough: Example: We’re raising $1 million for 20% of the company, so Cash Raised = $1 million and Ownership Percentage = 20%. $1 million divided by 0.2 (20%) = $5 million Post Money Valuation. Now we subtract the $1 million Cash Raised to get a $4 million Pre-Money Valuation. So our startup is worth $4 million now, before the investment. That’s it! That’s literally the only Pre-Money Valuation that gives you the cash you want while also giving the investors the correct ownership percentage. This works for equity / priced rounds, convertible note valuation caps, and valuation caps for SAFEs. Yes, you can use fancy spreadsheet models to calculate startup valuation based on discounted cash flows or net present value. The thing with early-stage startups—especially pre-revenue startups—is that all of the numbers in the spreadsheet are guesses. So in my experience that leads to weird negotiations with potential investors over made-up numbers. This is because no one knows the future. Not even Google, who just announced that they're laying off 12,000 people last week. I make spreadsheets for a living—and Rocket Pro Forma will calculate net present value—but trust me when I tell you it’s easier to focus on the two pieces of info you actually know: a) how much money you’re raising (Cash Raised) and b) what % of the company that % should be worth (Ownership Percentage). This seems too easy, but it’s how I’ve raised money in the past. Here's how: My Story My cofounder and I were raising a $2 million Series A round, and we finally found a VC firm who agreed to invest (our path to becoming investable is an entire story that I’ll cover in a separate blog post). We hadn’t really thought about valuation, but the investors said they wanted to own “about a third” of the company. Boom! Now we had the two pieces of info we needed to calculate the valuation: Cash Raised = $2 million Ownership Percentage = 1/3 or 33.3% (Dividing by 33.3% is the same as dividing by 0.333. Plug 2,000,000 / 0.333 into a calculator to see for yourself) Here's the math: $2 million dollars divided by 33.3% = $6 million Post-Money Valuation - $2 million Cash Raised = $4 million Pre-Money Valuation So our startup had to be worth $4 million pre-money. Wait, is it really that easy? Yes. The investors gave us a term sheet offering us the $2 million investment (Cash Raised) on a $4 million Pre-Money Valuation. This is called “two on four,” and it would create a $6 million company (because the $4 million Pre-Money Valuation plus the $2 million Cash Raised adds up to a $6 million Post-Money Valuation). The investors would then own 1/3 of the company, because $2 million Cash Raised divided by $6 million Post-Money Valuation = 2/6 = 1/3 = 33.3% Ownership Percentage. We thought about it for a day, and then we asked the VC firm for a $5 million Pre-Money Valuation (or a “two on five”). What would this do to the numbers? We would now be creating a $7 million company. because the $5 million Pre-Money Valuation plus the $2 million Cash Raised adds up to a $7 million post-money valuation. The investors would own 2/7 or 28.6%, because $2 million Cash Raised / $7 million Post-Money Valuation = 2/7 = 28.6%. By asking for a $5 million Pre-Money Valuation we were actually negotiating the Ownership Percentage. Our investors said yes and we did the deal. The result was that we saved almost 5% of equity, because 28.6% Ownership Percentage is 4.7% less than 33.3% Ownership Percentage (their original offer). At no point during those conversations did we ever have to “prove” that our startup was worth $4 million…or $5 million. Our Pre-Money Valuation was simply a function of both parties getting what they wanted: We got a $2 million cash investment (Cash Raised) The investors owned about a third of our company (Ownership Percentage) And we never had to negotiate made up numbers from our spreadsheet. Can we skip the valuation for now? One way to raise money is to sell equity at a specific valuation. This is called a priced round, and it's what we did in the story above. It requires you to come up with a Pre-Money Valuation—which is easy now that you know the cheat code, right? But what if you don't want to come up with a Pre-Money Valuation right now? The idea behind a Convertible Note is that you can delay valuing your startup, specifically until the next round of funding. The Convertible Note was created to help founders and investors move quickly, with the least amount of negotiation. The Convertible Note has a ticking clock, meaning the next investment usually has to happen within two years (or however long you and your investors agree to). After that it's supposed to convert to Equity (shares of stock). The SAFE is similar to a Convertible Note, but removes the ticking clock. So a SAFE can sit forever without converting. The thing with both Convertible Notes and SAFEs is that investors often want a valuation cap (here’s the full story on valuation caps from Y Combinator). So you’re back to figuring out what your startup is worth in order to create the valuation cap. Again, the 30-second method that I’ve laid out in this blog post is the easiest way to make everyone happy. Why have a valuation cap? Because it protects investors if you hit a home run. For example, if you raise $100,000 from investors using a Convertible Note and then create a $100 million company, their $100,000 doesn't give them very much of an Ownership Percentage. But you needed their money in order to succeed. So the valuation cap protects investors by saying that their $100,000 will convert to equity at no more than a $1 million valuation (for example). Trick Question If your investors put $200k into your startup (Cash Raised) with a $1 million Pre-Money Valuation, what with their Ownership Percentage be? Take a minute to think it through. Hint: Ownership Percentage = Cash Raised divided by Post-Money Valuation. Here's a walkthrough of your Startup's Post-Money Valuation (using different numbers so we don't give away the answer to the trick question yet): Definitions We’ve discussed enough things that we a list of definitions. You'll find every term in this list is capitalized throughout this blog post. This is your cheat sheet when you’re getting ready to pitch investors. Pre-Money Valuation is the answer to “What’s my startup worth?” It’s what your startup is worth now, before the Cash Investment. Post-Money Valuation is the Pre-Money Valuation plus the Cash Investment. You and the investors work together to create the Post-Money Valuation, because you add their cash to your existing company. Cash Raised is the amount of money being invested into the company. Ownership Percentage is how much of the company the investors own after they invest. It’s calculated as Cash Investment divided by Post-Money Valuation. Equity means shares of company stock that represent actual ownership. A Priced Round is when you raise money from investors by selling shares (Equity) of your startup at a specific valuation. This is how we raised money for our startup in the example above (My Story). A Convertible Note is a loan to a startup that will convert to Equity (shares of stock) within a certain period. It’s a founder-friendly way to raise money. A SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) is similar to a Convertible Note, but doesn’t have a time limit, and so may never convert to equity. It’s even more founder-friendly than a Convertible Note. A Valuation Cap is designed to protect your investors in a Convertible Note or SAFE if you create a high-value company without needing to raise more money. Answer to the Trick Question If your investors put $200k into your startup (Cash Raised) with a $1 million Pre-Money Valuation, what with their Ownership Percentage be? Hint: It’s not 20%. You'll create a $1.2 million Post-Money Valuation company ($1 million Pre-Money Valuation plus $200k of Cash Raised), of which the investors would own 2/12 or 16.7%, because $200k / $1.2 million = 2/12 = 1/6 = 16.7%. Answer: Their Ownership Percentage would be 16.7%. And this is why it's important to only talk about investor Ownership Percentage in relation to the Post-Money Valuation. Founders who accidentally talk about Ownership Percentage in relation to the Pre-Money Valuation end up with confused—and possibly disappointed—investors. That's it! Now you have everything you need to figure out what your startup is worth in 30 seconds. Mike Lingle is the founder of Rocket Pro Forma (financial projections for Web2 and Web3 startups), CFO at Security Token Group (digital asset securities on the blockchain), and an entrepreneur-in-residence at Founder Institute. He co-founded an online slide presentation app that was acquired by VMWare in 2011.