Six Years In, $8M ARR, Still No Business Plan

Until Today.

One thing that always struck me as outright wrong is to spend time on creating detailed business plans and financial reports/predictions early on when starting a SaaS company. I’ve seen this many times, and every time it felt so alien to me.

I always wondered, aren’t those founders (friends and acquaintances) wasting their time?

Shouldn’t they place another cold call or write another line of code instead of creating speculative future growth scenarios of how their company is going to fare in the future?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not siding on having 0 plans but as a founder, it should be quite clear in your head what is the general direction of the company. Putting speculative revenue numbers into an investor deck does not make that direction any clearer; and let’s not kid ourselves, those numbers have a near-perfect track record of never coming true.

Which makes today mildly ironic.

Six years in. ~$8M in ARR. And for the first time in Walcu’s short history, we’re building a proper financial analysis report—with external help.

Yes. I’ve succumbed.

Despite being stubborn as a mule about these things, we’ve decided this is a reasonable moment to allow ourselves a small distraction. Not because I’ve changed my mind about it, but because I can afford the learning experience.

I’m pretty sure I’ll learn a lot from the process. And who knows—maybe I’ll finally understand what these exercises are actually good for.

At the very least, it feels like the right time to find out.