Three versions of next year — conservative, base and aggressive — so that a bad quarter is something you prepared for rather than something that happens to you.
Scenario planning means building three versions of your financial plan:
Conservative — growth is slower than hoped, a key deal slips, hiring is delayed. Base — your genuine expectation. Aggressive — things go well and you want to spend into it.
Each one produces a different runway and a different decision point.
Because the useful question is not 'what will happen' — nobody knows — but 'what will I do if'. Deciding the response in advance, calmly, is worth far more than the accuracy of any single forecast.
It also tells you which month you must decide by. A conservative case that runs out in month nine means the decision point is month five, not month eight.
A company with $300,000, spending $25,000/month, currently at $8,000 MRR.
Conservative — MRR grows 5%/mo, no hires. Net burn stays near $17,000. Runway ≈ 17 months. Decision point: start raising at month 8.
Base — MRR grows 12%/mo, one hire in month 4 (+$7,000). Burn rises then falls as revenue catches up. Runway ≈ 14 months, and roughly break-even by month 15.
Aggressive — MRR grows 20%/mo, three hires. Burn reaches $46,000. Runway ≈ 9 months — but with $40k MRR by then, raising is straightforward.
The insight is not any single number. It is that the aggressive plan shortens runway and only works if growth actually arrives. So the trigger is written down in advance: hire the second and third people only if MRR passes $20k by month five.
That sentence is the entire output of the exercise.
First-time founders often build only the optimistic case, because it is the one they believe and the one they show investors. Then the base case does not happen and there is no prepared response — just a scramble.
The second mistake is treating conservative as pessimistic. Conservative is not the disaster scenario; it is 'things take longer than expected', which is the most common outcome in every startup.
Your honest expectation for revenue growth and hiring. This is the budget you already built.
Halve the growth rate, keep costs the same. This is the scenario where you were right about spending and wrong about speed.
Faster growth plus the hires that growth would justify. Note that this usually shortens runway.
Three numbers. Three dates on a calendar.
The real output: 'if MRR is below X by month five, we do not make hires two and three.' Specific, dated, decided in advance.
Five minutes. You are always in one of the three, and knowing which changes what you should do this month.
Annually, before a fundraise, and before any decision that materially changes burn — a hire, an office, a big marketing commitment.
Do not build five scenarios with detailed monthly modelling. Three is the useful number; beyond that it becomes a spreadsheet hobby rather than a decision tool.
Apply this to your own startup in My Full Journey (free account).