How long does your cash actually last?
Cash ÷ burn stops being true the moment you hire someone. This runs the projection month by month — and shows what delaying a hire buys you.
Your numbers
Team & planned hires
Starts is the month they join. 1 means already on payroll. Anything above 1 counts as a planned hire, and those are what the scenarios delay.
What if you delay hiring?
Why cash ÷ burn gives you the wrong number
It is the first formula everyone reaches for, and it is right exactly once: when your spending is completely flat and your revenue never moves.
The moment either of those changes, the formula breaks — and both of them always change. An engineer joining in March costs nothing in February and everything from March on. Revenue growing 3% a month is not the same number in month one and month twenty. Every month has a different burn, so there is no single burn to divide by.
The honest version: take the cash, subtract what actually happens in month one, carry the remainder into month two, and keep going until the balance goes negative. That number of months is your runway. There is no shortcut — you have to walk it month by month.
That is the whole reason this page exists. Walking 36 months by hand in a spreadsheet is tedious enough that most founders do it once, badly, and never update it.
What delaying a hire is actually worth
"Should we hire now or wait a quarter?" is usually argued in vibes. It has a number, and the number is often much bigger than people expect, because a salary you do not pay in month three keeps compounding through every month after it.
Take a typical early-stage case: $180k in the bank, $12k of revenue growing 3% a month, two founders on payroll and three hires planned over the next six months.
| Plan | Runway |
|---|---|
| Hire as planned | 8 months |
| Delay every hire by 3 months | 10 months (+2) |
| Delay every hire by 6 months | 13 months (+5) |
| Don't hire at all | past 36 months |
Three months of patience buys two months of life. Six months buys five. Whether that trade is worth it is your call — but you should make it knowing the size of it.
How this calculates
Nothing here is hidden, and nothing is estimated. Each month, in order:
- Revenue for the month is the starting revenue compounded by your growth rate — not a flat average.
- Payroll counts only the people actually on the payroll that month, then adds employer tax on top.
- Fixed costs are charged every month, whatever the headcount is doing.
- Cash carries over: what is left at the end of one month starts the next.
Runway is the last month that ends with the balance still above zero. Break-even is reported as the month revenue covers costs and keeps covering them — a founder who crosses into profit in month two and back out in month four has not broken even, and calling it that would be flattering nonsense.
All arithmetic is done in whole cents rather than decimals, so a 36-month projection does not drift by a few cents along the way. The engine behind this page is covered by 104 tests, including hand-worked examples checked cent by cent and a closed-form cross-check of the revenue series.
Your numbers stay in your browser. There is no account, no server, and no analytics on the figures you type.
Want this inside your Notion workspace?
The same calculator, living next to the rest of your company instead of in a browser tab you have to find again — with your projection pasted under it and a table for logging what actually happened, month by month. Next quarter's plan then starts from last quarter's real numbers instead of a blank page.
Get the Notion template — $20This page stays free and complete. The template is for keeping the plan where you already work, not for unlocking the math.
Questions
Is this really free?
Yes. Every feature on this page works, forever, with no account. The paid Notion template puts the same calculator in your workspace, on a page laid out for keeping the plan next to your real numbers — it does not add math you are missing here.
Do my numbers get uploaded anywhere?
No. The calculation runs in your browser and your inputs are saved only to your own browser's local storage so the page remembers them next time. Clearing your browser data clears them.
What growth rate should I use?
Whatever your last three months actually did, not what your plan says. If revenue went 10,000 → 10,400 → 10,800, that is roughly 4% a month. If you are unsure, run it twice — once optimistic, once pessimistic — and plan against the pessimistic one.
Why is my break-even month different from what I expected?
Because this reports sustained break-even. If you cross into profit and then a planned hire pushes you back under, the crossing does not count. The month reported is the one you cross and stay across.
Can I model people leaving, or one-off costs?
Not yet. Today you set who is on the payroll and which month each hire starts — that is what drives the scenarios. Departures and one-off costs like legal fees or equipment are not exposed as inputs. If you need them now, the workaround is to run the projection twice and read across the break.
Should I include founder salaries?
Include whatever actually leaves the bank account. If founders are unpaid, leave them out — but remember the runway you are looking at assumes they stay unpaid for its entire length.