SaaS startup business plan with an MRR, churn and CAC model
Investors reading a SaaS plan skip to three things: how revenue compounds month to month, how fast customers leave, and what it costs to win one. This prompt has your todo.is agent research your competitors and their pricing pages, then write a plan built around recurring revenue, with an editable MRR model in Excel.
The prompt
- Write a business plan for my SaaS startup, [PRODUCT NAME AND WHAT IT DOES], aimed at [TARGET CUSTOMER]. The plan is for [WHO WILL READ IT]. Where we are now: [TRACTION, TEAM AND FUNDING SO FAR]. Find 6 to 8 competitors with links, their pricing tiers and what reviewers complain about. Write these sections: summary, problem and solution, ideal customer profile, market size (TAM/SAM/SOM with sources), competition, pricing tiers, go-to-market (self-serve vs sales-led), product roadmap, team, key SaaS metrics, risks, and the funding ask. Build a 36-month Excel model with new customers, churn, expansion, MRR, ARR, CAC, LTV, LTV:CAC, payback months, burn and runway, using [MY PRICING AND CHURN ASSUMPTIONS]. Mark every assumption clearly. Send the plan as Word and the model as Excel.
What to change
- [PRODUCT NAME AND WHAT IT DOES]: E.g. "Shiftly, scheduling software for small clinics that cuts no-shows with SMS reminders".
- [TARGET CUSTOMER]: Who pays, e.g. "independent clinics with 3 to 20 staff in the US" or "mid-size ecommerce teams".
- [WHO WILL READ IT]: E.g. "seed investors", "an accelerator application", "my co-founder and me".
- [TRACTION, TEAM AND FUNDING SO FAR]: Users, paying customers, current MRR, founders' backgrounds, money raised. "Pre-launch, 2 founders, bootstrapped" is fine. Attach a deck if you have one.
- [MY PRICING AND CHURN ASSUMPTIONS]: E.g. "$29/$79/$199 per month, 3% monthly churn", or write "suggest typical numbers for B2B SMB SaaS".
Example result
- Summary
- Shiftly is scheduling software for independent clinics with 3 to 20 staff. Clinics lose revenue to no-shows and to front-desk time spent on the phone. Shiftly sends SMS reminders, lets patients rebook in two taps and fills cancelled slots from a waitlist. We have 41 paying clinics and $3,900 MRR, and we are raising a $750,000 seed round.
- Ideal customer profile
- • Owner-led clinics (physio, dental hygiene, chiropractic) with one front-desk person
- • Already uses a calendar but no reminder tool, or pays for an outdated one
- • Buyer: clinic owner; user: front desk
- Pricing (illustrative)
- • Starter $29/month: 1 location, 500 SMS
- • Clinic $79/month: waitlist fill, 2,000 SMS, reporting
- • Group $199/month: up to 5 locations, API, priority support
- • Annual plans at 2 months free to cut churn
- Go-to-market
- • Self-serve trial (14 days, no card) for Starter and Clinic
- • Founder-led sales for Group accounts
- • Partnerships with 2 practice-management consultants, paid 20% of year-1 revenue
- Key metrics (all numbers are illustrative assumptions)
- • Monthly logo churn: 3.0% falling to 2.2% by month 18
- • Net revenue retention: 104% (upgrades to Clinic tier)
- • Blended CAC: $310; average revenue per account: $82/month; gross margin 81%
- • LTV: about $3,000; LTV:CAC 3.4 by month 24; CAC payback 4.6 months
- 36-month outlook (illustrative)
- • Month 12: 260 customers, $21,000 MRR
- • Month 24: 720 customers, $61,000 MRR
- • Month 36: 1,350 customers, $118,000 MRR ($1.4M ARR)
- • Burn peaks at $58,000/month in month 14; runway 19 months on the raise
- Risks
- • Churn higher than planned: onboarding call for every Clinic account, health score alerts
- • SMS costs rise: usage caps per tier, pass-through pricing above caps
- • A big scheduling platform adds reminders: focus on waitlist fill, which they do poorly
- Use of funds
- • 55% engineering (2 hires), 30% sales and marketing, 15% operations and buffer
How to do it with todo.is
- Copy the prompt and fill in your product, customer, stage and pricing guesses.
- Paste it on the Today screen in todo.is or message it to your agent on WhatsApp, Telegram or Slack. Attach your deck or a metrics export if you have one.
- Your agent reads competitor pricing pages, writes the plan with source links and builds the 36-month model in Excel.
- Change one input in plain words, like "what if churn is 5%?" or "add a $499 enterprise tier", and get an updated model.
Tips for a better result
- Model churn monthly, not yearly. 3% a month sounds small but loses about 30% of customers in a year.
- Show CAC by channel. Investors trust a blended CAC more when they can see paid, partner and organic separately.
- Put your pricing page logic in the plan: what makes a customer move from one tier to the next.
- If you have real data, attach a Stripe or billing export. Your agent uses your actual MRR and churn instead of guesses.
SaaS startup business plan: FAQ
- What metrics should a SaaS business plan include? At least MRR or ARR, monthly churn, net revenue retention, CAC, LTV, LTV:CAC, CAC payback period, gross margin, burn and runway. The Excel model calculates all of them from your inputs.
- What is a good LTV to CAC ratio? A common rule of thumb is 3:1 or better, with CAC paid back in under 12 months. Early-stage numbers are rough, so treat them as targets and update them as real data comes in.
- Do I need a business plan if I am raising from VCs? Most seed investors want a pitch deck and a financial model more than a long document. The plan gives you the thinking behind both, and you can ask your agent to turn it into a deck.
- Can it use my real numbers? Yes. Attach a CSV or Excel export from your billing tool and your agent builds the model from your actual customers, MRR and churn.
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