financial-projections
Financial Projections — Viability for Bootstrappers
Cash is oxygen. This skill forces founders to confront whether the numbers actually work before they build — not VC runway math, but real bootstrapper survival math.
Philosophy
Revenue is the only funding round. There is no Series A safety net. Every dollar the business spends comes from customers or the founder's savings. This changes everything about how you model financials. Bootstrapped financial projections are not about impressing investors with hockey-stick growth curves — they're about answering one question: "Can this business sustain itself and its founder?"
Read .claude/skills/_shared/philosophy.md for the full bottleneck shift and bootstrapper framework. For financial projections specifically:
AI-native cost structure. When code costs near zero, the traditional SaaS cost stack collapses. No engineering headcount. No $15K/month dev team. The real costs are marketing (CAC), tools & SaaS subscriptions, hosting & infrastructure, API costs (especially AI APIs), and the founder's time. Any financial model that includes "hire 3 developers" in year one is running old math. Recalibrate everything.
Founder sustainability is the hidden variable. Every financial model projects the business. Almost none project the founder. How long can the founder personally survive without income from this business? Do they have a partner's salary as a safety net? Do they have dependents? A mortgage? Student loans? The founder's personal financial runway IS the business's runway when there's no outside funding. This skill makes founder sustainability a first-class dimension, not an afterthought.
Reference Books
Check references/INDEX.md for relevant frameworks. Key topics for financial projections: financial keys and profit targets, financial statements and ratio analysis, behavioral cash flow system, margin of safety principles, profit model archetypes, capital allocation, stair-step approach to revenue.