ProjectionHub helps founders create financial projections to secure funding from investors and lenders.

📈 Monthly revenue: $30,000

📈 Net profit: 10%

📈 Funding: $0 outside investment, self-funded

📈 Initial cost/investment to start the company: $200,000

📈 Number of team members: 3

📈 Started: April 2012

How does the company make money?

• ​Financial Projection Templates
  – We have a library of over 70+ CPA developed financial projection templates for just about every industry from SaaS and eCommerce to Trucking and Dental Offices. Average price per template is $99
• ​Custom
  Financial Modeling – We build custom financial models for founders. Average price per custom model is $1,500
• ​ProjectionHub+ – We license our entire library of templates and tools to accountants and consultants who use our tools to help their clients create financial projections. ProjectionHub+ is $1,000 per year.

4 strategies that have worked to attract and retain customers?

✅ Unique Content Creation + SEO – We write detailed blog posts to help answer founder’s key startup finance questions. Make the up-front investment in great content and SEO best practices, and in the long run Google can reward that with free organic traffic unlike any other strategy.

✅ Partnerships with Pitch Deck Designers – We found pitch deck designers and consultants to be great referral partners. When a founder is looking to raise capital they typically need a pitch deck and a financial model. Our partners are designers and story tellers, not accountants, so many pitch deck consultants send their clients to us to help with the financial model.

✅ Free Spreadsheet Tools – We sell premium financial projection templates, but we have found that providing some useful free spreadsheet tools like our Airbnb Cash Flow Calculator is a great way to acquire leads that may need a full financial model in the future.

✅ Loom for Customer Service – We use Loom to provide customer service. When a customer has a question about a spreadsheet, they can email us a question and their file, and we record a screenshare Loom video to answer their question and demonstrate how to use the template. Often, our customers are blown away by this level of service.

3-4 things that haven’t worked (or didn’t work as well) when it comes to growing the company?

❌ SaaS Product – It turns out founders need projections at a specific point in time when fundraising, not on an ongoing basis, so they shouldn’t need to pay monthly for a SaaS tool. Also, Excel is still pretty great for financial modeling, so after years of trying to get a SaaS tool to work, we pivoted to creating great, custom, Excel based financial models that we sell for a 1 time fee and our business took off.

❌ Google Ads – We have tried to make Google Ads work for years and we always just breakeven. Maybe our lifetime customer value just isn’t high enough to make Google Ads work.

❌ Youtube Channel – Youtube has actually been working pretty well bringing in about 20% of our sales each month, but I have been surprised how hard it has been to get real traction with Youtube. Maybe videos on financial modeling for startups just isn’t that exciting haha!

Through starting & growing the business, what have been the 3 key lessons that have possibly changed the trajectory of the company?

• Not everything needs to be a SaaS product – We started the company as a SaaS tool for creating financial projections in 2012. Since most founders only need projections for a point in time during fundraising, a one time fee turned out to be better than trying to force a monthly fee SaaS product.
• Create content yourself – We have tried to have others create content for us because it takes so much time, BUT when you can get the SEO engine really working a single piece of content can get 100,000+ views over the life of the content, so it is actually worth the time to make that content great.
• Humbly avoid “just hopping on a quick Zoom call” – We use Loom videos for customer support to answer customer questions. This has been a game changer. Otherwise, I would spend all day “just hopping on a quick Zoom call.” It is tricky to say no to a call with a customer, but we have found that in 99% of cases a Loom screenshare recording solves the problem for the customer and helps us avoid endless Zoom calls. I guess I would say “Loom don’t Zoom”