What the model is for
Investors use a seed financial model (finansmodell) to understand your reasoning more than to predict earnings in year five. They want to see what drives the business, how the assumptions connect and how they lead to the amount you are raising.
Run these three checks before sharing the file; investors usually do them within a few minutes:
- Change a key assumption and check that the relevant calculations update.
- Trace the funding request back to the cash forecast. Show what it takes to fund operations to a stated milestone.
- Compare the model with the deck and the accounts. Explain any differences in period, definition or calculation basis.
An investor’s scorecard covers the same ground, and an investor who cannot answer it from your model marks it down without saying why. Its economy section asks whether a budget exists, whether there is a milestone plan, and whether the funding need has been estimated. The funding-round section asks for:
- the pre-money valuation against the last round
- soft and hard commitments received
- whether existing shareholders are participating
- the use of proceeds
- the runway the round buys
- the size of the round after this one
Structure: drivers first, statements second
Keep assumptions and calculations on separate sheets. Enter inputs only on the assumptions sheet so investors can trace each result back to the choices behind it.
| Sheet | What belongs there |
|---|---|
| Assumptions | Every input a human chose: prices, conversion rates, churn, salaries, hiring dates, payment terms. Nothing calculated. |
| Revenue build-up | Volume times price, built from the drivers that actually produce sales, not a growth percentage applied to last month |
| Costs and headcount | One row per role with a start date, the full employer cost per role, and non-payroll costs tied to the driver that causes them |
| Cash | Timing: when invoices are paid, when payroll leaves, when holiday pay and tax fall due, when grant money arrives |
| Statements | Profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow as outputs of the sheets above |
Generate the three statements from the other sheets. Typing the figures directly into them prevents the model from showing what happens when an investor changes an assumption.
As a practical starting point, model monthly for the first 18–24 months, then quarterly or annually. Adapt the horizon to the runway and decisions the round must fund. This is a planning recommendation, not an external standard or a claim that every round lasts two years. Investors will also check the current cash position in due diligence.
The assumptions investors will test
Prepare a short explanation of these five assumptions before the meeting. Investors will test whether you can support them, including when the outlook is optimistic.
- Growth, and its justification. Where does the next customer come from, through which channel, at what cost.
- Gross margin, and its defence. What sits in cost of sales, and why the margin holds as volume rises.
- Customer acquisition cost against customer lifetime value. Both need to be calculable from the model’s own drivers.
- Churn. Its level, and whether the revenue build-up actually applies it.
- Hiring pace. Headcount is the largest cash line in almost every early-stage Norwegian company, and the one founders most often understate.
The Norwegian cost lines a model must carry
An employee costs more than their salary. A model that expenses gross salary and stops understates cash by a wide margin and misstates its timing.
| Cost | What to include in the model |
|---|---|
| Employer contributions | The 2026 ordinary-industry rates are 14.1% in zone I, 10.6% in II, 6.4% in III, 5.1% in IV, 7.9% in IVa and 0% in V. In Ia, the 10.6% rate applies until the saving against 14.1% reaches NOK 850,000; the allowance is a saving, not a payroll threshold. Check location, activity and special rules. Use the contribution-liable amounts, including relevant holiday pay and pension costs, rather than base salary alone. |
| Holiday pay | Under Holiday Act § 10, the ordinary minimum is 10.2% of qualifying remuneration, not every payroll payment. Agreements providing five weeks commonly use 12%. The extra week for employees entitled to holiday from age 60 adds 2.3 percentage points, subject to the statutory 6 G limit on that addition unless better terms apply. Model accrual and payment separately, including final settlement on departure. |
| Occupational pension | First check whether the business meets an OTP Act § 1 threshold: two people each at least 75%; one non-owner employee at least 75%; or people each at least 20% totalling two full-time equivalents, with both working time and pay meeting the stated thresholds. The duty does not automatically arise with every first hire. For covered members, the minimum contribution is 2% of qualifying pay up to 12 G, with administration and required disability contribution-waiver cover additional. Check membership, including age 13 and the reporting threshold, currently NOK 2,000 for ordinary businesses, with the pension provider. |
Model salary after the applicable holiday deduction, holiday pay on its proper accrual base, pension and employer contributions on their respective bases. Do not add holiday pay to twelve full months of salary without accounting for the salary it replaces. Have the accountant confirm the bases and deduction method, and distinguish accruals from cash payments.
Grants and SkatteFUNN
SkatteFUNN provides a 19% deduction for eligible R&D costs in an approved project. The current cost limit is NOK 25 million per business per income year; collaborative projects also share a project-level limit. Eligibility and combined public-aid limits still apply.
For eligible employee time, the SkatteFUNN calculation uses 1.2 per thousand of agreed and actually paid annual salary, capped at NOK 700 per hour and 1,850 hours per employee per year. These are scheme-specific calculated costs, not a replacement for ordinary payroll accounting. Any deduction exceeding assessed tax is settled as a refund.
The Research Council approves the project; Skatteetaten assesses the deduction through the tax return. The cash effect normally comes with the following year’s tax settlement, not as monthly funding. The 2026 guarantee deadline was 1 September: applications submitted by then are guaranteed processing that year, not approval or an unconditional deduction.
Show expected grant and SkatteFUNN cash effects separately from customer receipts, on realistic settlement dates. Include delayed or refused support in a downside scenario. Accounting recognition follows the applicable rules; under Norwegian accounting standards, SkatteFUNN is treated as a grant and may be recognised before settlement when the conditions are met. Do not turn an accounting receivable into cash in the model.
The red flags that end the reading
Check the model for these problems before sending it.
| Red flag | What the investor concludes |
|---|---|
| Hardcoded numbers where formulas should be | There is no model. The numbers were decided and then typed in |
| A hockey-stick curve with no driver behind it | The founder is describing an outcome they want rather than a mechanism they have |
| Costs that stay flat while revenue multiplies | Either the business is misunderstood or the cost side was never built |
| Payroll modelled as gross salary only | The founder has not run a Norwegian payroll and has not asked anyone who has |
| An ask unconnected to break-even or to the milestone plan | The round size came first. Everything after it is presentation |
| Model numbers that contradict the deck | One of the two is wrong, and both are now suspect |
| A single scenario with no stated sensitivity | Nothing has been tested, including by the founder |
What a healthy model shows
An investor should be able to test each of these claims by changing an input. Check that the relevant cells exist and that changes flow through to the cash forecast.
| Signal | What it demonstrates |
|---|---|
| Growth that can be justified driver by driver | The founder knows where customers come from |
| Gross margins that can be defended as volume rises | The unit economics are understood, not assumed |
| Low customer acquisition cost against high lifetime value | The business can afford to grow |
| Low churn | Customers who stay are evidence of value delivered |
| Trends that improve over the modelled period, for a stated reason | Learning is being priced in, not hoped for |
| A funding need that reaches break-even or the next milestone | The ask is arithmetic, not ambition |
Granularity and horizon by stage
Match the model’s precision to the evidence you have. Showing five-year revenue to two decimal places before the company has any revenue suggests more certainty than you can support.
Pre-revenue, the honest model is short and driver-heavy: cost and headcount modelled properly, revenue as a small number of explicit assumptions you are willing to defend, and a clear statement of what the round funds.
Post-revenue, the historical months become the model’s calibration. Actuals versus plan, month by month, is a stronger argument than any forecast, because it shows your estimates being tested against reality.
Build two or three scenarios, each driven by changing one or two assumptions in the assumptions sheet, with the change visible. Typing different figures into columns labelled conservative, base and aggressive does not test the underlying assumptions.
The model in the raise
In financial due diligence, investors will usually want last month’s bank statement, the current cash position and monthly cash spending. Keep these figures up to date and reconcile them with the model.
Historical numbers must tie to what is filed, and current numbers to the bank statement and the ledger. Filed annual accounts sit in the Register of Company Accounts (Regnskapsregisteret), where anyone can retrieve up to fourteen years of them without asking. The tax return (skattemelding) is not public and will be requested in the data room (datarom) instead.
A historical tab that does not reconcile to the filed accounts is a diligence finding before anyone has looked at the forecast. The model also has to stay usable through the months a raise takes:
- Keep one version of the truth. One file, dated, with the version shared with each investor recorded. Sending an updated model without saying what changed is worse than sending nothing.
- Answer model questions from the model. If a question cannot be answered by changing an assumption and showing the result, say that the model does not cover it. Do not improvise a new number in the meeting.
- Update the actuals monthly through the raise. A model whose last actual month is four months old tells an investor the company is not run from its numbers.
What to prepare, by situation
The checks are the same for every founder. What you prepare first depends on where you are in the raise.
- First raise, pre-revenue. Build the cost side first and build it completely: every role with a start date and the full employer cost from the table above, because headcount is the line investors expect you to understate. Keep revenue to the few assumptions you can defend out loud, and let the ask fall out of the cash line as months of runway to a named milestone.
- Second raise. Open with actuals against the plan you showed last time, month by month, with the misses explained. Reconcile the historical tab to the filed accounts before anything else, since the investor can pull them from Regnskapsregisteret without asking you. Show the last round’s money in the cash line: what it bought and how long it lasted.
- With a lead already committed. The lead will forward the model to co-investors and run the three checks on their behalf, so the assumptions sheet has to read without you in the room. Agree with the lead which dated version is the diligence version, freeze it, and log every change after that in one place.
- Without a lead. Several investors will open the model in the same weeks, and each will compare it with the deck and the bank statement. One file, one dated version per investor, and answers from the model only, so that no two investors hear different numbers for the same question.