How Much Should I Raise? Fundraising Calculator and Pitch Deck Financials

How the calculator sizes a raise

The raise is the gap between the cash your plan burns and the cash you already have. Revenue starts at today's MRR and grows at your monthly rate. Spend starts at today's spend (net burn plus revenue) and changes three ways: cost of revenue rises with the new revenue, each planned hire adds its fully-loaded cost from its start month, and other spend changes kick in from theirs. Each month's net burn is spend minus revenue.

Adding the monthly burn up gives cumulative burn. Its deepest point inside your runway target is the cash the plan needs. If the plan turns cash-flow positive before the target month, that low point comes earlier and the raise is smaller. The buffer is a percentage on top. Subtract cash on hand and round up to the next $50,000, and that is the raise.

Worked example: the default plan

The numbers are illustrative. A SaaS company closes its round in Apr 2027 with $400,000 in the bank, $30,000 MRR growing 5% a month, a monthly net burn of $80,000, cost of revenue at 20% and 8 people. The plan adds 6 people (three engineers, an account executive, a product marketer and a customer success hire), $10,000 a month of paid acquisition from month 3 and $3,000 of tools from month 1. Runway target: 18 months, buffer 20%, pre-money $12,000,000.

Today's spend without cost of revenue is $80,000 + $30,000 − 20% × $30,000 = $104,000. In month 1 revenue is $31,500, cost of revenue $6,300 and tools $3,000, so spend is $113,300 and net burn $81,800. In month 2 the engineers start and burn jumps to $125,540.

The company burns cash in every month of the plan, so the deepest point of cumulative burn is the last month: $2,612,064. The 20% buffer adds $522,413 for a cash need of $3,134,477. Less the $400,000 on hand, the gap is $2,734,477, rounded up to a $2,750,000 raise. At a $12,000,000 pre-money the post-money is $14,750,000, so the round sells 18.6% of the company.

The company reaches Sep 2028 with $537,936 left. At that month's burn of $139,241 the cash lasts 3.9 more months, so the raise buys about 21.9 months in total. That tail is the time to raise the next round, which is why the buffer matters.

The 3 numbers your financial slide needs

Investors read the financial slide for three things before anything else, and each one comes straight out of this plan:

1. The ask: $2,750,000, 18.6% of the company at a $14,750,000 post-money.
2. The runway it buys: 18 months of plan to Sep 2028 plus 3.9 months of buffer, about 22 months.
3. Where it gets you: $866,383 ARR (from $360,000, 2.4x) and a team of 14 by Sep 2028.

The use of funds then explains the ask. Revenue and the cash already in the bank pay for today's operations first, so the new money goes to the hires ($1,235,000, 45%), the other new spend ($214,000, 8%), the rest of current operations ($763,064, 28%) and the buffer ($537,936, 20%). The full sources and uses table under the calculator shows the whole period: $4,036,170 of sources (cash, revenue, the raise) against the same amount of uses. The use of funds guide covers how to tie each line to a milestone.

Raising more or less than the plan

The raise and the valuation set the dilution together. Asking for $3,700,000 to cover 24 months instead of $2,750,000 for 18 sells 23.6% instead of 18.6% at the same pre-money. For a market reference point, Carta's July 2026 benchmark of over 1,000 priced software rounds put the median seed at $4.1M raised and 18% dilution (Carta data archive); treat that as context, not a target. Check the pre-money with the SaaS valuation calculator, see the effect of several rounds and an option pool with the dilution calculator, and test the burn side with the runway calculator. The burn rate and runway guide explains why runway is measured at the latest burn rate.

Download the Excel version

The Excel template has the same defaults and the same math as live formulas: inputs, hires and spend changes on one sheet, the month-by-month plan with the raise, dilution, runway and use of funds on the next. No email needed. When you move from sizing the round to defending it in diligence, a financial model built for investors carries the same assumptions over 36 months.