For educational purposes only. This tool helps you think through your business plan and is not financial, tax, legal, or investment advice.
Pro Forma Lab

Try an example

Load a complete demo business in one click. This will overwrite anything you've entered.

Tell us about your business

Your answers here help the AI assistant give you specific, relevant feedback. The more detail you write, the better the coaching.

What's your business called?

This is the single item the business produces and sells - one cup of coffee, one consulting hour, one t-shirt printed. Be specific. Every number in this plan flows from how many SPUs you sell.

Are there physical limits on how many SPUs you can produce or sell? For example: a restaurant has limited tables and hours, a consulting firm has limited billable hours. If there's no clear limit, write 'No hard capacity limit.'

In a few sentences, describe the opportunity.

What do you sell, and how does revenue come in?

Describe your target customer and why they'll pick you over alternatives.

Step 1
Market Analysis
Important: enter every market figure as monthly SPUs (the same unit and time period as Month 1 units sold). Not customers, not dollars, not annual totals.

The number of SPUs you expect to sell in your very first month. This anchors the whole forecast - a confident estimate is fine, the model scales from here.

What you charge a customer for one SPU. Held constant across all 60 months.

What it costs to produce or deliver one SPU. Materials, ingredients, direct labor on that one unit. NOT general overhead, salaries, or rent - those belong in personnel and assumptions.

The total monthly SPU demand in your demographic and geography - the ceiling. If everyone in your target market knew about you, this is how many SPUs they'd collectively buy each month. For example, a coffee shop's target market might include all coffee-drinkers within a 3-mile radius.

The subset of your target market that currently knows your business exists. Smaller than the target market. This is the pool you actually sell to. Marketing, word-of-mouth, and reviews grow this over time - increasing your Marketing % in Advanced Settings will make addressable grow faster.

How fast the underlying target market is growing each month - population growth, demographic changes, regional trends. Often near zero (0%) for stable areas.

Month 1 share of addressable market: 0.75%

If this is over 100%, your Month 1 units exceed your addressable market - increase addressable or decrease units.

Step 2
Personnel

Add your first role to get started.

Step 3
Capital Investment (PP&E)

Add your first capital item to get started.

Pro Forma Guide

Your AI coach. Ask questions. Request changes. Get pushback on your plan.

Hi! I’m your Pro Forma Guide. Review your business outputs below, then ask me to make modifications (ex: raise my price per unit by $15), or ask me for guidance (ex: why is my Year 5 Valuation so low?).

Year 5 Valuation

$0

Based on 10× Year 5 EBIT. This is a rough starting estimate - your chatbot will help you stress-test it.

Required starting capital

$168,000Add $68,000 more

Minimum day-1 capital so your cash balance never goes negative across the 60-month plan.

Cash Balance
Revenue vs Total Expenses
Free Cash Flow

Detailed reports

Download the full month-by-month breakdown to share or import into Excel.

About this tool

Pro Forma Lab is an educational tool designed to help entrepreneurship students and aspiring founders learn how to model the financial side of a business idea. The projections it produces are illustrative, based on the inputs you provide and simplified assumptions. They are not predictions, guarantees, or professional advice of any kind.

Real financial planning for a business involves tax, legal, accounting, regulatory, and market considerations that are beyond the scope of this tool. Before making any business, investment, or hiring decision, consult qualified professionals - including a CPA, a business attorney, and a financial advisor licensed in your jurisdiction.

The AI assistant (Pro Forma Guide) is a teaching aid that asks Socratic questions and applies your requested changes. It does not have access to real market data, your actual finances, or domain expertise specific to your industry. Treat its observations as prompts for your own critical thinking, not as expert recommendations.

By using this tool, you acknowledge it is provided as-is for educational purposes, and that the authors and Anthropic are not responsible for any business, financial, or other decisions you make based on its output.