Strategy & Planning

How to run a scenario analysis for a strategic decision as Asset Management Founders

Strategy & PlanningFor Asset Management Founders2 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

When an LP calls asking what happens to your fund's runway if a portfolio company misses its next milestone, you're probably pulling up a three-month-old Excel model, adjusting assumptions by hand, and hoping your Plaid exports match what QuickBooks says. Emerging fund managers don't have an analyst to rebuild the model every time something changes, and the institutional tools — Addepar, Juniper Square — cost more than your management fee covers in year one. So scenario modeling becomes a Sunday-night exercise in copy-pasting cells and second-guessing your own formulas, right before a meeting where the answer actually matters.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Strategy & PlanningFor Asset Management Founders2 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live scenario modeling dashboard where your baseline pulls directly from real Stripe revenue and Plaid bank data — not a snapshot you uploaded last month

Side-by-side scenario comparisons (delay the next close, cut operating expenses 20%, extend the investment period) with runway, burn rate, and break-even for each case

A model you can update in minutes before an LP meeting, not hours, because the data connections do the lifting

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

Scenario Analysis Runway Analysis

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Stripe data on a schedule (management fee and subscription revenue) and your Plaid data on a schedule (bank transactions and balances) to build the baseline. Both connections refresh automatically so your scenario inputs reflect current actuals, not last month's export. No manual uploads required.

Prompts to copy

Build a scenario analysis for our fund that compares three cases: our current trajectory, a case where we delay the next LP close by 6 months, and a case where management fee revenue drops 15% because we miss our fundraise target. Pull baseline burn from Plaid and management fee revenue from Stripe. Show runway, monthly net burn, and break-even under each scenario.

Show me our real net burn for the last 6 months broken down by expense category — fund admin, legal, travel, and compensation — and project forward 24 months at current pace so I have a baseline before I run scenarios.

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

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Stripe and Plaid from your Starch settings. Starch syncs your Stripe charges and Plaid bank transactions on a schedule — this becomes the live baseline every scenario runs against.

2 Open the Runway Analysis app from the Starch App Store to confirm the baseline looks right: net burn, cash balance, and 24-month projection. Verify expense categories match how you think about your fund operating costs.

3 Open the Scenario Analysis app and tell Starch in plain language what decisions you're actually trying to make — fundraise timing, headcount, fee structure — so the scenarios map to real choices, not abstract sensitivities.

4 Define your base case by describing it to Starch: 'Our base case assumes we hold a final close in Q3, management fees stay flat at $X/month, and operating expenses stay at current run rate.' Starch uses your live Plaid and Stripe data as the starting point.

5 Add a downside scenario — for example, 'What if the final close slips to Q1 next year and we need to cover 6 additional months of fund operations at current burn?' Starch models runway and break-even under those conditions without you touching a formula.

6 Add an upside or alternative scenario — for example, 'What if we cut fund operating expenses by 20% by moving to a lighter fund admin provider and delaying one hire?' Starch shows how that changes your runway and gives you a break-even comparison.

7 Review the side-by-side output: runway by scenario, monthly net burn under each assumption set, and the date each scenario reaches a cash floor. Flag the assumptions you're least confident in.

8 Adjust a single assumption — say, a slower-than-expected LP drawdown schedule — and ask Starch to update all three scenarios at once. Because the data connection is live, you're not re-pulling exports; you're just changing the variable.

9 Use the scenario output to prepare your LP update narrative. If you have a Presentation Agent request (currently in beta), describe what you need: 'Build a 5-slide scenario summary showing our three runway cases, the key assumptions behind each, and our recommended path forward for the next board call.' Request beta access in Starch settings.

10 Save your scenario set in Starch so it updates automatically as new Stripe and Plaid data comes in. Before your next quarterly LP call, open it — the numbers will already reflect the most recent transactions without any manual refresh.

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 LP Call Prep — Evergreen Ventures Fund I

Sample numbers from a real run

Cash on hand (Plaid sync)	410,000
Monthly management fee revenue (Stripe)	28,500
Monthly fund operating expenses (Plaid)	34,200
Net monthly burn — base case	-5,700
Runway — base case (months)	72
Net monthly burn — delayed close scenario	-12,400
Runway — delayed close scenario (months)	33
Net monthly burn — expense reduction scenario	-2,900
Runway — expense reduction scenario (months)	141

Going into a Q2 LP call, you have $410,000 in cash, $28,500/month coming in from management fees (Stripe, synced daily), and $34,200/month going out in fund operations — legal, admin, travel, and one part-time salary (Plaid, synced daily). Your base case net burn is $5,700/month, giving you 72 months of runway, which is healthy. But an LP asks: what if the final close doesn't happen until Q1 2027? In that scenario, you're covering 9 months of full fund operations without the fee step-up from the additional committed capital — net burn jumps to $12,400/month and runway compresses to 33 months. That's still viable but it changes when you'd need to start raising Fund II. The third scenario — cutting operating expenses by $2,800/month by renegotiating your fund admin contract and pushing one hire to Q1 — brings net burn down to $2,900/month and extends runway to 141 months. You walk into the LP call knowing exactly which lever matters most, and you built the whole model in Starch before breakfast.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Fund runway in months under each scenario (base, downside, upside)

Monthly net burn against management fee revenue — the real number, not an estimate

Break-even month by scenario (when fee income covers operating costs)

Cash floor date — when does each scenario require a capital decision

Variance between last quarter's projected burn and actual (Plaid vs. model)

Comparison

What this replaces

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

Excel or Google Sheets model

You fully control the logic, but every LP call means manually exporting from Plaid and Stripe, re-pasting data, and hoping no formula broke since last quarter — it's a 3-hour job that Starch does in minutes with live connections.

Juniper Square or Addepar

Purpose-built for fund reporting at scale, but they cost $30k–$80k/year, assume a dedicated ops team, and aren't designed for an emerging manager who also needs to run their own email and scheduling.

Carta (financial modeling module)

Solid for cap table and fund admin, but the scenario modeling is limited — you can't freely define multi-variable cases or pull in bank-feed burn data the way Starch does with Plaid.

Visible.vc

Good for LP reporting and KPI dashboards, but not a scenario modeling tool — you'd still need a separate model for 'what if the close slips six months,' which puts you back in spreadsheets.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — scenario planning, runway analysis 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

Does Starch actually pull live data from Plaid and Stripe, or do I have to upload exports?

Starch syncs your Stripe and Plaid data on a schedule — no exports, no manual uploads. When you open your scenario model, the baseline already reflects your most recent transactions and balances. The sync runs automatically in the background.

My fund uses QuickBooks for fund accounting in addition to Plaid. Can Starch pull from both?

Yes. Starch syncs QuickBooks data on a schedule alongside Plaid and Stripe — invoices, bills, payments, vendors, and journal entries are all available. One thing to note: QuickBooks report views like P&L summary and Transaction List are temporarily unavailable due to an upstream connector issue, but entity-level data syncs normally. For most scenario modeling use cases, the entity-level data is what you need.

Can I model scenarios that don't map neatly to standard financial categories — like 'what if one LP redeems early' or 'what if a portfolio company triggers a capital call'?

Yes. You describe the scenario in plain English and Starch builds the model around it. You're not constrained to preset templates — if you tell Starch 'model a case where LP A redeems 15% of committed capital in Q3 and we have to cover the shortfall from management fees,' it builds that case using your actual baseline data.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? I have LPs who ask about data security.

Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. If a formal certification is a hard requirement from your LPs or compliance framework, that's worth knowing upfront. It's on the roadmap.

How is this different from just building a model in Excel and updating it manually each quarter?

The difference shows up the third time something changes before a meeting. With Excel, you re-pull exports, re-paste data, check formulas, and hope nothing drifted. With Starch, the data connections keep the baseline current automatically — you only touch the assumptions you're actually changing. For a manager running the fund solo or with one person, that's the difference between scenario modeling being a real tool you use and a spreadsheet you avoid updating.

Can I share the scenario output with LPs directly, or export it for a board deck?

You can export scenario outputs and use them in your LP materials. The Presentation Agent — currently in beta — will let you describe what you need ('5-slide scenario summary for Q2 LP call with our three runway cases') and get a polished deck back. You can request beta access from your Starch settings.