Strategy & Planning

How to run a scenario analysis for a strategic decision as Small Investor Relations Teams

Strategy & PlanningFor Small Investor Relations Teams2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

You're a two-person IR team staring down a capital call decision or a GP ask for 'what happens if we delay the Fund III close by a quarter' — and your current answer is an Excel model that was last stress-tested by whoever built it in 2022. Pulling the actual baseline numbers means logging into QuickBooks, downloading a CSV, pasting into the model, cross-referencing Plaid for cash balances, and hoping the Stripe subscription data someone exported last week is still current. By the time the model is fresh, the GP has already made the decision in a hallway. You don't have a finance hire to rebuild this every time the assumptions change.

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Strategy & PlanningFor Small Investor Relations Teams2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live scenario analysis dashboard that pulls your actual Stripe revenue and Plaid cash data on a schedule — so the baseline is always your real numbers, not a manually refreshed export

Side-by-side scenario comparisons for the specific decisions your team faces: delayed fund close timing, revised deployment pace, changes to management fee projections, or capital call sequencing

A shareable output you can drop into an LP update or a GP briefing without rebuilding from scratch each time

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 and your Plaid bank feeds on a schedule, so the baseline in every scenario reflects your actual revenue and cash balances without a manual export. QuickBooks entity-level data — invoices, bills, vendor payments — can be connected via Starch's direct QuickBooks integration and queried to cross-check expense assumptions. If your LP portal (Juniper Square, Intralinks, or DocSend) is web-accessible, Starch can automate it through your browser — no API required.

Prompts to copy

Connect Stripe and Plaid and build me a scenario analysis that shows three cases: our current deployment pace, a 20% slower pace due to delayed Fund III close, and a case where management fee revenue drops 15% while we hold headcount flat. Show runway, net burn, and break-even month for each case.

Build me a runway dashboard that pulls live Stripe revenue and Plaid bank balances and shows me 24-month cash projections broken down by fund operations expense versus deal-related spend.

Add a fourth scenario: what if we call $8M in LP capital in Q3 instead of Q4 — how does that change our cash position and break-even relative to the base case?

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

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Stripe and Plaid in Starch settings — Starch syncs both on a schedule so your scenario baseline pulls from live revenue and cash data, not last month's CSV.

2 Open the Scenario Analysis app from the Starch App Store. The starter template gives you a base case built from your connected Stripe and Plaid data immediately — no blank-model setup.

3 Define your decision-specific scenarios in plain language: 'delayed Fund III close by one quarter,' 'deployment pace drops 20%,' 'management fee revenue down 15% — headcount held flat.' Starch builds each scenario layer on top of your real baseline.

4 Review the side-by-side output — runway months, net burn, and break-even date under each case. Adjust any assumption (hiring timeline, fee structure, capital call timing) by describing the change in natural language.

5 Open the Runway Analysis app alongside Scenario Analysis to stress-test cash timing. If a scenario shows a thin month in Q3, the runway view shows exactly which expense categories are driving it.

6 If you need to cross-check management company expense assumptions, connect QuickBooks from Starch's integration catalog — the agent queries invoices, bills, and vendor payments live to validate your model inputs.

7 If your capital call schedule or commitment pacing data lives in a portal like Juniper Square or Intralinks, Starch can pull it through browser automation — describe what you need and it logs in and extracts the relevant figures.

8 Add a capital call timing scenario: describe the Q3 versus Q4 call option in natural language and Starch adds it as a fourth case without rebuilding the model.

9 Save each scenario with a label ('Fund III delayed close — Q3 call' vs 'base case') so you can share a stable link with the GP or CFO rather than sending a versioned Excel file.

10 When the GP asks for a board-ready summary, describe the output you need — 'a three-scenario comparison table showing runway and break-even, formatted for our quarterly LP update' — and Starch surfaces it as a shareable view.

11 Set a weekly refresh cadence so Stripe and Plaid data updates automatically. The next time assumptions change, you adjust the scenario inputs rather than re-pulling source data.

12 When the decision is made, archive the scenario set with a date stamp — you now have a documented record of the analysis behind the call, which matters when LPs ask 'how did you think about that timing?' six months later.

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

Fund III close timing decision — March 2026

Sample numbers from a real run

Management fee revenue (2% on $180M committed)	3,600,000
Fund operations expense (salaries, legal, admin)	1,850,000
Deal-related expenses (diligence, travel)	420,000
LP capital call — Q3 2026 (proposed)	8,000,000
Projected cash at Q4 end — base case	2,100,000
Projected cash at Q4 end — delayed close scenario	890,000

In March 2026, your GP is deciding whether to push the Fund III final close from June to September. You open Scenario Analysis in Starch — Stripe is already synced with your management fee invoicing data, Plaid shows the management company bank balance at $2.4M. The base case scenario, built automatically from those live numbers, shows $2.1M cash at Q4 end with a June close. You add the delayed-close scenario in a sentence: 'push Fund III close to September, assume $180M committed stays flat but fee accrual shifts 90 days.' Starch recalculates: cash at Q4 end drops to $890K — thin but technically solvent. You add a third scenario: 'accelerate the Q4 LP capital call to Q3 at $8M.' With that capital call moved up, the delayed-close case recovers to $1.7M at Q4 end. The whole analysis takes 25 minutes instead of a day and a half. You share a link with the GP before the end of the morning standup. The GP picks the 'delayed close plus accelerated Q3 call' path, and you have a documented model behind the decision when your Fund III LPs ask about it at the annual meeting.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Months of management company runway under each scenario

Net burn rate by fund versus management company expenses

Break-even month under base case versus stressed deployment pace

Days between assumption change and updated scenario output delivered to GP

Capital call timing variance versus original fund documents

Comparison

What this replaces

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

Excel / Google Sheets model maintained by the team

Full flexibility, but the baseline goes stale the moment Stripe or Plaid data changes — and 'who has the latest version' is a real problem in a two-person team with a CFO who also edits files.

Juniper Square or Addepar

Purpose-built for fund-level LP reporting and portfolio attribution, but scenario modeling for management company operations (burn, hiring, call timing) is not what they're designed for, and the $50k+ annual cost assumes a dedicated IR-ops analyst.

Cube or Mosaic (FP&A SaaS)

Solid for companies with a finance hire managing the model, but setup and maintenance require someone who can configure data connectors and owns the model — not realistic for a two-person IR team without a dedicated FP&A resource.

QuickBooks reports alone

Good for historical actuals; doesn't give you side-by-side forward projections with adjustable assumptions, and report views (P&L, Transaction List) are temporarily unavailable in Starch pending a connector fix — entity-level data like invoices and bills syncs normally.

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 our live Stripe and Plaid data, or are we uploading spreadsheets?

Starch syncs your Stripe and Plaid data on a schedule — no uploads, no CSVs. The scenario baseline reflects your actual revenue and cash balances automatically. When the data updates, the scenarios update.

We use QuickBooks for management company expenses. Can Starch pull those numbers into the scenario?

Yes. Starch connects directly to QuickBooks and syncs entity-level data — invoices, bills, vendor payments, journal entries — on a schedule. One note: QuickBooks report views (P&L, Transaction List, Vendor Expenses) are temporarily unavailable pending a connector fix. Entity-level data syncs normally, so your expense line items are accessible even while that's being resolved.

Our LP commitment and pacing data lives in Juniper Square. Can Starch reach that?

Juniper Square doesn't have a direct Starch integration today, but if you can log into it in a browser, Starch can automate it through browser automation — no API required. Describe what data you need (commitment totals, pacing schedule, unfunded commitments by LP) and Starch navigates the portal and extracts it.

How is this different from just building a better spreadsheet?

The difference is the baseline. A spreadsheet model is only as good as the last time someone manually updated the revenue and cash inputs. Starch's baseline is live — Stripe and Plaid sync on a schedule, so you're adjusting assumptions on top of real numbers rather than stale exports. You also describe scenario changes in natural language instead of editing formulas, which matters when you're under time pressure before a GP call.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? We have LPs who will ask.

Not yet — Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified as of today. That's worth knowing before you connect anything LP-confidential. If your IR security requirements mandate SOC 2, flag that to the Starch team directly; it's on the roadmap.

Can I share the scenario output with our GP or CFO without giving them a Starch login?

You can export scenarios as shareable views or link outputs into your existing reporting workflow. For something that needs to go into a formal LP update, the Presentation Agent app — currently in development, request beta access — will let you turn scenario outputs into a formatted slide deck. For now, you can export data and structure the presentation separately.

What if our assumptions change mid-quarter — do we have to rebuild the whole model?

No. You describe the changed assumption in natural language — 'update the hiring scenario to assume we add one IR associate in September instead of June' — and Starch rebuilds that scenario on top of the current live data. The other scenarios stay as they are. You're adjusting assumptions, not maintaining formulas.