Finance & FP&A

How to forecast runway and months of cash as Chief of Staff and Founder's Office

Finance & FP&AFor Chief of Staff and Founder's Office2 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

You're the one who has to answer 'how much runway do we have?' before the CEO walks into a board meeting — and the honest answer is usually 'let me pull that together.' QuickBooks has the expense data but it's two weeks behind close. Plaid shows cash balances but not burn rate in any useful format. Stripe has revenue but someone needs to reconcile it against invoices. You're stitching a spreadsheet at 10pm from three exports, one analyst's model that hasn't been touched since January, and a Notion doc of assumptions nobody has audited. By the time you send the number, you're already nervous it's wrong.

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Finance & FP&AFor Chief of Staff and Founder's Office2 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live burn rate and runway dashboard pulling from Stripe revenue and Plaid bank feeds — updated daily, no manual exports, no waiting on your bookkeeper to close

A scenario modeling view where you can stress-test hiring plans, revenue misses, or delayed fundraises against your actual baseline before the CEO asks you to

A single source of truth for the 'how many months do we have?' question that you can share with the CEO or paste into a board deck without a disclaimer attached

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Runway Analysis Scenario Analysis

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Plaid transaction and balance data on a schedule (categorized expenses, account balances, daily refresh) and syncs your Stripe data on a schedule (charges, subscriptions, payouts). Both data streams feed the Runway Analysis and Scenario Analysis apps directly. No CSV exports, no manual uploads — when the underlying accounts update, your dashboard updates.

Prompts to copy

Connect my Plaid and Stripe accounts and build me a runway dashboard that shows net burn rate, months of cash remaining, and a 24-month forward projection broken down by expense category

Using the same Plaid and Stripe data as my runway dashboard, build a scenario analysis tool where I can model what happens to runway if we add 8 engineers in Q3, if revenue comes in 15% below plan, and if we delay our Series B by 6 months — show each scenario side by side

Add a summary card to my runway dashboard that auto-generates a two-sentence board-ready cash position statement I can paste directly into the investor update each month

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Open the Starch App Store and install the Runway Analysis starter app — it's pre-wired for Plaid and Stripe and gives you burn rate, cash balance, and a 24-month projection out of the box without any configuration.

2 Connect your Plaid account so Starch syncs your bank transaction data on a schedule — this is what drives the expense side of burn rate. Takes about 90 seconds; Plaid authentication is the same OAuth you've done before.

3 Connect Stripe so Starch syncs your revenue data on a schedule — charges, subscriptions, and payouts flow in automatically and offset your gross burn to give you real net burn.

4 Spend five minutes reviewing the default expense categories in the Runway Analysis app and tell Starch in plain language if you want categories renamed, merged, or broken out differently to match how your leadership team thinks about cost centers.

5 Install the Scenario Analysis app from the App Store — it reads the same Plaid and Stripe connections you just set up, so your baseline is your actual numbers, not a manually keyed starting point.

6 Build your first three scenarios by typing them into Starch: your base case, an aggressive hiring plan (e.g., +8 engineers in Q3), and a revenue miss scenario (e.g., 15% below plan). Each scenario shows runway, burn rate trajectory, and break-even under those conditions.

7 Tell Starch to add a 'board summary' text card to your runway dashboard — prompt it to auto-generate a two-sentence cash position statement from the current data so you have something paste-ready for investor updates.

8 Set the refresh cadence — Starch syncs Plaid and Stripe data on a schedule, so your dashboard updates automatically. Confirm the sync frequency matches how often you actually need the number to be fresh (daily is standard).

9 Share the runway dashboard link with the CEO and CFO (or whoever needs read access) so 'what's our runway?' has a self-service answer that doesn't go through you every time it's asked.

10 Before the next board meeting, open the Scenario Analysis app and run a fresh stress test against whatever the board will likely probe — pricing change, hiring freeze, slower ARR growth — so you walk in with the downside math already done.

11 When the board deck needs a cash slide, pull the current projection from the runway dashboard rather than rebuilding from scratch — the numbers are already reconciled against your actual accounts.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

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Worked example

Q2 2026 Board Prep — May Close

Sample numbers from a real run

Cash balance (Plaid, as of May 30)	4,200,000
Net burn rate (trailing 3-month average)	-310,000
Monthly recurring revenue (Stripe)	187,000
Gross burn (Plaid, all operating expense categories)	-497,000
Projected runway at current pace	13.5
Projected runway — +8 eng hires scenario	9.2
Projected runway — revenue 15% below plan	11.1

It's the Thursday before a Friday board meeting. In the old world, you'd be reconciling a spreadsheet against a QuickBooks export and a Stripe revenue CSV, double-checking that nobody changed the hiring assumptions tab, and hoping the CEO doesn't ask about a scenario you haven't modeled. With the Runway Analysis app live, you open the dashboard and the number is already there: $4.2M in cash, $310K net burn per month, 13.5 months of runway at current pace. Plaid synced last night's bank balances; Stripe pulled this morning's MRR. You flip to the Scenario Analysis app and see the three scenarios you built last week — the base case still shows 13.5 months, the aggressive Q3 hiring plan compresses that to 9.2 months, and a 15% revenue miss lands at 11.1 months. You copy the two-sentence board summary Starch generated from the dashboard ('As of May 30, the company holds $4.2M in cash with a net burn of $310K/month, representing 13.5 months of runway at current spend. Accelerated Q3 hiring reduces this to approximately 9 months, making Series B timing a live decision for Q4.') into the board deck. Done before lunch.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Months of runway at current net burn (updated daily, not at month close)

Net burn rate — trailing 3-month average, not a single-month snapshot

Runway delta between base case and worst-case hiring or revenue scenario

Time from 'board deck request' to 'cash slide is done' — a proxy for how operationally ready the founder's office is

Frequency that the CEO has to ask you for the runway number vs. checking the dashboard themselves

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Excel or Google Sheets model maintained by an analyst

More customizable for complex multi-entity models, but requires manual data exports from QuickBooks and Stripe, breaks when someone edits the wrong cell, and is typically 2-4 weeks stale by the time you need it for a board meeting.

QuickBooks reporting + manual Stripe reconciliation

QuickBooks has all the expense data, but its native reports don't give you forward runway projections, scenario modeling, or daily refresh — and P&L report views in QuickBooks require manual export; entity-level data is what Starch actually syncs.

Mosaic, Cube, or Vareto (dedicated FP&A platforms)

Purpose-built for financial planning with stronger multi-entity consolidation and audit trails, but require a finance hire to set up and maintain, cost significantly more, and don't let the chief of staff build connected board-prep surfaces on top of the same data.

A fractional CFO or finance consultant on retainer

Brings judgment and experience for fundraising strategy, but you're still waiting on their turnaround time for a number that should be self-service — and you have no live dashboard between their deliverables.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — runway analysis, scenario planning all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Our bookkeeper hasn't closed the books yet. Is the runway number actually reliable?

The Runway Analysis app pulls from Plaid bank feeds (actual cash out the door) and Stripe (actual revenue), not from your accounting close. That means the burn rate reflects what really happened in your bank accounts, not what QuickBooks will show once your bookkeeper categorizes everything. For the 'how much cash do we have and how fast are we spending it?' question, this is actually more current and reliable than waiting on close. It's a different number than accrual-basis burn — worth naming that distinction if your board is used to seeing GAAP figures.

Can Starch pull QuickBooks data too, not just Plaid and Stripe?

Yes — Starch syncs your QuickBooks data on a schedule, including invoices, bills, vendors, payments, and journal entries. One honest caveat: QuickBooks report views (P&L, Transaction List, Vendor Expenses) are temporarily disabled while an upstream connector issue gets resolved. Entity-level data syncs normally. For the runway use case, Plaid and Stripe cover the core burn and revenue inputs; QuickBooks entity data is more useful for the investor reporting and budget-vs-actual workflows.

How do I present multiple scenarios to the board without it looking like a spreadsheet someone emailed around?

The Scenario Analysis app shows each scenario — base case, upside, downside — side by side with runway, burn rate, and break-even under each set of assumptions. You can tell Starch in natural language how you want it framed ('show me three scenarios: current pace, +8 engineers in Q3, and 15% revenue miss') and it builds the view. For the board, you can either share the live app link or pull a snapshot into your deck. The baseline is always your actual Plaid and Stripe data, so the scenarios are stress-testing real numbers, not an analyst's manually keyed starting point.

Is this SOC 2 certified? Our investors are going to ask.

Not yet — Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. If your company has a strict vendor compliance requirement for tools that touch financial data, that's worth flagging to your security team before connecting bank accounts. It's on the roadmap. For most growth-stage companies at the 150-person stage, the honest tradeoff is: you're already connecting Plaid and Stripe to other tools, and the operational value of a live runway dashboard is high. But it's a real limit and you should know it going in.

What if I want to model something Stripe and Plaid don't capture — like a new product line's revenue, or a headcount plan we haven't hired for yet?

Tell Starch what you want to add as an assumption layer on top of the live data. You'd prompt it something like: 'Add a manual input field to the scenario model for projected revenue from a new enterprise tier, starting at $40K/month in August, growing 10% month over month.' Starch builds it as an adjustable assumption that overlays your real Stripe baseline. It's not a full FP&A platform — it won't replace a dedicated model for a complex fundraise — but for the 'what if' questions a chief of staff needs to answer quickly, the composable assumption layer gets you there without a finance hire.

Can I share this dashboard with the CEO and board members directly, or does everyone need a Starch login?

You can share dashboards and apps with your team inside Starch. For external board members who shouldn't need a Starch account, the current pattern is to pull a snapshot or summary from the dashboard into your board materials. A fully public shareable link for external stakeholders isn't the current setup — worth noting if your use case is 'live investor portal' rather than 'internal exec tool.'