How much should we raise, and to get us to what?
An amount without a milestone reached cannot be defended.
PilotFinancial trajectory
Profit, cash, funding and sensitivities over 3 to 5 years
Someone is going to ask you what this plan rests on.
- P&L
- Working capital
- Cash
- Funding
An investor, a banker, your board or your partners. The question will not be about the year-five result: it will be about the growth assumption in year two, the payment terms retained, what happens if the retention rate drops by five points.
Pilot builds the trajectory with its assumptions in plain sight, its sensitivities and its dated funding requirement. You are not defending a figure: you are defending the way it was obtained.
LEADERSHIP QUESTION
Is the trajectory viable and fundable?
WHAT PILOT LETS YOU DECIDE
Five questions asked before every funding round.
When do we run out of cash?
The date matters more than the amount: it sets the timetable for the raise.
Which assumption brings the plan down?
There is always one or two. Better to name them before the analyst finds them.
What are we promising that we will be able to deliver?
An over-ambitious trajectory costs more at the second round than at the first.
Does the funding requirement come from growth or from the model?
Working capital that runs away is not a volume problem.
STEERING LOOP
Set, project, test, defend, revise.
A trajectory presented without its assumptions is received as a promise; presented with them, it is received as reasoning.
- 01Frame the ambition and the third party concerned
- 02Set the business assumptions
- 03Build the trajectory: profit, working capital, cash, capital expenditure
- 04Bring out the funding requirement: amount and date
- 05Test the sensitivities
- 06Defend it, assumptions included
- 07Revise at the due date
THE TRAJECTORY FILE
What you open across the table.
The last section is the one investors read first when they find it. Its absence is what makes them doubt the rest.
- The ambition and the third party — what is asked, of whom, for which milestone
- The business assumptions — each with its source, author and date
- The consolidated trajectory — profit, working capital, cash, capital expenditure, funding
- The funding requirement — amount, date, what it funds
- The scenarios — base, cautious, accelerated, with their switching conditions
- The sensitivities — the variables that really move the trajectory
- Unproven assumptions — what the plan rests on without data
CONCRETE EXAMPLE
A funding round moved forward by two quarters.
A services company projects five years: strong growth, positive profit in year three. The trajectory reveals a cash trough in the sixth quarter — not because of losses, but because of key accounts’ payment terms.
The sensitivity shows that thirty extra days of payment terms shift the funding requirement by several months. Two decisions follow: raise earlier than planned, and negotiate down payments before negotiating price.
Illustrative case. The scenarios are built from declared assumptions, never from a growth rate imposed by the tool.
BEFORE PILOT
Pilot does not make up the assumptions, it consolidates them.
Grid says which segments the effort is concentrated on: without that decision, the trajectory adds up markets you have no means to address. Mix supplies the price, volume and unit margin that feed revenue. Calc makes each calculation auditable — that is what lets an analyst retrace the path.
Map identifies the dependencies and disruptions that could bring the trajectory down, and that belong in the file rather than being discovered in due diligence. Atlas keeps the decisions and assumptions of previous exercises: that is what explains why this year’s plan differs from last year’s.
A trajectory built without these upstream inputs is a spreadsheet with a pretty curve.
HOW TO GET IT
Three modes, with a cadence set by the raise.
Self-service
Annual licence
Your finance team builds and maintains the trajectory.
Scoped engagement
Fixed fee
We build the trajectory, the scenarios and the sensitivities with you, and hand the file back in Pilot. Short format, aligned with the deadline: the raise does not wait for an engagement schedule.
Guided review
Subscription
Monthly during the raise, quarterly afterwards. We set actuals against assumptions and document the gaps before the funder points them out.
All three modes exist for every workspace. The detail of each pricing model is on the Offer page.
See the three access modes in detailWHO PRODUCES WHAT
We decide neither what you ask for, nor what you commit to achieving.
| Deliverable | Produced by |
|---|---|
| Consolidated trajectory model | The tool |
| Business and cost assumptions | Workshop run by inNOVAtio, entered in Pilot |
| Profit, working capital, cash, funding | The tool |
| Base / cautious / accelerated scenarios | The tool, from your assumptions |
| Sensitivity analysis | The tool |
| Log of unproven assumptions | The tool, completed in the workshop |
| The amount requested and the milestone promised | Your decision, recorded in the file |
It is the line the investor will remember, and the only one nobody can sign in your place.
WHAT A TRAJECTORY DOES NOT PROVE
A consistent model is not a true model.
Pilot ensures the figures link up: that profit feeds cash, that growth consumes working capital, that funding covers the trough. It does not ensure that your market assumptions come true.
A sensitivity analysis is not a probability. It shows which variables move the trajectory, not which one will move.
No projection replaces the question your counterpart will ask: what makes you think that this growth is achievable? The answer comes from Grid, from Mix and from the field — Pilot only makes it quantifiable and defensible.
Pilot does not make the plan credible. It makes visible what it rests on, including what is not proven.
In front of whom will you have to defend this trajectory, and when?
A first thirty-minute conversation about your actual plan, the deadline and the third party concerned.