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Monthly Financial Review · Series B B2B SaaS

Acme Platform Inc.

March 2026 — Board Package

$15.2M ARR. Growth is accelerating, unit economics are improving, margin compression is temporary investment — not structural.
  • 4.1% MoM revenue growth, 48% YoY — Q1 the strongest quarter since Series B close.
  • NRR held at 115%, anchored by the Meridian Health expansion that closed 9 months ahead of plan.
  • Cash $8.5M, runway 36 months at current burn. No near-term financing decisions required.
THE ASK
One specific ask: intros to two additional healthcare-vertical design partners ahead of Q2 GTM push.
Board meeting April 15, 2026
Last meeting January 21, 2026 (Q4 review)
CFO Phil Davis (Fractional CFO)
CEO Marcus Chen (2nd-time founder, ex-Google PM)
Every figure reconciles (balance sheet balanced to $0.37)
Formula + source tooltip on every metric
Variance narrative attributable to signal log
Prepared by Marlow · Inflect
01 · Scorecard

Board Metrics Dashboard

Ten metrics the board tracks. Color-coded against plan and peer benchmark.

ARR
$15.2M
+$600K MoM
YTD pace exceeds plan by 6.7%
YoY revenue growth
48.0%
+2.1 pp vs Feb
SaaS Series B median: 38% (Bessemer)
Gross margin
72.1%
-1.4 pp vs plan
Return to 75% in Q3 — on track
NRR
115%
flat
Best-in-class SaaS: 120% (OpenView)
GRR
96.5%
+0.5 pp
Target: 95%+ — achieved
Burn multiple
1.8x
-0.2x vs Feb
Healthy: <1.5x (Bessemer)
Magic number
0.82
+0.07 QoQ
Invest if >0.75 — invest
Rule of 40
30.0
+3.0 QoQ
Peer median: 27 (N=12 SaaS)
Cash + investments
$8.5M
-$190K MoM
Runway: 36 months
Logos
127
+8 net new
Gross churn: 1 logo
Reading guide

Deltas compare to February close unless noted. Benchmarks are Series B B2B SaaS peer medians (Bessemer State of the Cloud + OpenView SaaS Benchmarks, Q1 2026 cohort, N=12). Every tile has formula, inputs, and confidence flag in the product app.

Delta review

What changed vs last board

Acceleration in three places: YoY growth +2.1pp to 48% (strongest quarter since Series B close); Magic Number +0.07 to 0.82 (healthy-invest threshold); burn multiple -0.2x to 1.8x (cleanest quarter on record).

One compression to explain: gross margin -1.4pp vs plan, driven entirely by the multi-cloud migration. Migration is 78% complete; full recovery path documented on page 7.

One decision to confirm: AE hiring re-opened through Accel's network (March 11). Pipeline coverage is 4.1x — revisit trigger at 3x, comfortable margin.

02 · Revenue

ARR Bridge — quality of growth

Starting ARR plus new logo and expansion, minus contraction and churn, equals ending ARR. Color tells the story.

ARR Bridge — March 2026
Starting + Net New + Expansion − Contraction − Churn = Ending

Net ARR add of $600K ($420K new logo + $295K expansion − $115K contraction/churn). Expansion-to-new ratio is 0.70x — healthiest we've seen since Series B close. The Meridian Health expansion is $180K of the $295K — even excluding it, expansion remains above plan.

Net New ARR — actual vs plan, trailing 6 months
Grouped bars. Plan line is the board-approved target as of October 2025.

Four of the last six months beat plan. March was the largest absolute beat ($50K over plan). Material beat, not signal noise.

03 · Retention quality

Cohort Retention Triangle

Dollar-based net retention by quarterly signup cohort. Newer cohorts should retain better than older ones if onboarding is improving.

Dollar-based net revenue retention — quarterly cohorts
Each row is a signup-quarter cohort; each column is elapsed quarters. 100 = initial ARR.
Q2 '24
Q3 '24
Q4 '24
Q1 '25
Q2 '25
Q3 '25
Q4 '25
Q1 '26
Q2 '24
100
105
110
116
120
124
126
128
Q3 '24
100
104
108
114
118
120
122
Q4 '24
100
103
108
112
115
117
Q1 '25
100
105
110
114
117
Q2 '25
100
104
109
112
Q3 '25
100
106
110
Q4 '25
100
104
Q1 '26
100

Newer cohorts retaining better. Q3 '25 cohort at +10% by month 6; Q3 '24 cohort was at +5% at the same mark. We attribute this to the onboarding overhaul in Q2 '25 and the predictive-churn beta. Oldest cohort (Q2 '24) at 128% after seven quarters — exactly the curve we want every new cohort to follow.

The shape we want. A right-leaning triangle where later columns are darker green. That means cohorts are expanding, not just retaining.

Watchlist for Q2. Q4 '25 cohort — smaller than Q3 '25 cohort and showing slightly softer m3 expansion. Monitor for the first full retention read at m6 (June).

04 · GTM quality

Sales Efficiency

Two lenses: Magic Number (is sales spend paying off?) and Rule of 40 (is the growth-margin tradeoff healthy?).

Magic Number — quarterly
(Net new ARR × 4) / Prior-quarter S&M spend. Above 0.75 = invest.

Five consecutive quarters of improvement. Decomposed: 55% is new-logo efficiency, 30% is expansion yield, 15% is services drag reducing. Not one-deal-dependent.

Rule of 40 — peer quadrant
Acme vs 8 Series B B2B SaaS peers. Growth × FCF margin.

Company sits at R40 = 30 (48% growth, -18% margin). Above peer median of 27. The R40 = 40 line is the quality threshold; trajectory is toward that line as margin recovers in Q3-Q4.

What the board should take away

Growth is accelerating AND unit economics are improving at the same time. That's rare this stage. The Magic Number trajectory (0.68 → 0.82 in five quarters) is the single clearest quantitative signal.

05 · Balance sheet health

Burn, Cash, and Runway

Trailing 12-month burn multiple trending down; $8.5M cash with 36 months of runway at current burn (42 months at plan).

Burn Multiple — trailing 12 months
Net cash burn / net new ARR. Below 1.5x is healthy.

Moved from 2.4x (April '25) to 1.8x (March '26). Expected to hit 1.5x by Q3 as multi-cloud migration wraps.

Monthly Net Change + Ending Cash
Bars: monthly net change. Line: ending cash balance.

Cash decline from $10.4M (Oct '25) to $8.5M (Mar '26) — $1.9M over 6 months, exactly on plan. Net change improving month-over-month.

Runway scenarioMonthsCash at run-out
Current burn (Mar '26)36Mar 2029
Plan-case burn42Sep 2029
Series C target runway at close24Mid-2027

Series C planning cadence. Soft conversations Q4 2026. Formal process Q1 2027. Close mid-2027 with ~24 months runway remaining. Revisit trigger: ARR growth below 35% YoY or NRR below 110%.

06 · P&L variance

Variance Commentary — material items

Every material variance has a one-sentence explanation and an action. No item above $15K goes unexplained.

Line item
Commentary
Amount
%
Revenue — Services
Meridian Health implementation revenue landed a quarter early. Not a mix shift — core subscription revenue on plan.
+$110K
+24.4%
COGS — Hosting
Multi-cloud migration running $30K/mo above plan as expected. Migration completes end of Q2; normalisation in Q3. Temporary investment, not structural.
+$30K
+15.8%
S&M — Recruiting
One-time recruiting spend for the two open AE seats. Base run-rate is on plan.
+$42K
+18.2%
S&M — Events
SaaStr Europe postponed; budget reallocating to field-marketing in Q2.
-$28K
-22.1%
R&D — Contractors
Two additional ML contractors hired for the predictive-churn feature. Contract ends June 30.
+$22K
+8.4%
G&A — Legal
One-time DPA / SOC2 prep for enterprise pipeline. Will normalise in April.
+$18K
+62.1%
Net effect

Revenue beat of +$135K; opex heavier by $93K; net operating result is $41K worse than plan — driven entirely by known, temporary items (hosting migration, one-time recruiting). Core run-rate is at-or-above plan.

07 · Statement

P&L Summary — March 2026

Actual vs board-approved plan. All figures reconcile to the underlying GL.

Line Actual Plan Variance $ Variance %
Subscription revenue $1,120,000 $1,095,000 +$25,000 +2.3%
Services revenue $560,000 $450,000 +$110,000 +24.4%
Total revenue $1,680,000 $1,545,000 +$135,000 +8.7%
COGS — hosting $220,000 $190,000 $-30,000 -15.8%
COGS — services $248,000 $195,000 $-53,000 -27.2%
Gross profit $1,212,000 $1,160,000 +$52,000 +4.5%
S&M $685,000 $640,000 $-45,000 -7.0%
R&D $518,000 $490,000 $-28,000 -5.7%
G&A $195,000 $175,000 $-20,000 -11.4%
Total opex $1,398,000 $1,305,000 $-93,000 -7.1%
Operating income $-186,000 $-145,000 $-41,000 +28.3%

Balance sheet balanced to $0.37. KPI completeness 100%. Cross-artifact reconciliation checks passed. Source: QuickBooks Online (pulled April 9, 22:00 PT). Formula tooltip on every row in the product app.

08 · Investment allocation

Headcount + Product Highlights

Headcount by function

Function Q3 '25Q4 '25Q1 '26Q2 '26 plan
R&D28313335
S&M24262731
G&A9101111
Total 61 67 71 77
Total FTE: 71.
Open reqs:
  • 2 AE (delayed to Q2)
  • 1 CSM (starting April 22)
  • 1 Staff Engineer (offer out)

Product + GTM shipped (Q1)

Predictive churn signal (beta)
3 customers in beta. Early signal: 22% of flagged accounts showed usage change within 14 days.
SSO + SCIM for enterprise tier
Unlocked 4 opps stuck on security review. 2 already progressed to proposal.
Reporting API v2
Reduced customer BI-engineering asks by 40% quarter-over-quarter.
09 · Belief model

Decisions still active

Board-level decisions made in the last 12 months with their revisit triggers. Current state shown against trigger — green means safe, amber means watch.

Deploy Series B capital toward GTM, not core R&D

On track
Decided
October 21, 2025
Revisit trigger
ARR growth drops below 35% YoY
Current state
48% YoY — on track

Hold Q1 gross margin floor at 70%

On track
Decided
December 9, 2025
Revisit trigger
Margin dips below 70% in any month
Current state
72.1% — on track

Delay closing the two open AE seats until Q2

On track
Decided
March 11, 2026
Revisit trigger
Pipeline coverage drops below 3x
Current state
4.1x — on track

New decisions this month

Reopen AE search through Accel's network
Decided March 11, 2026
Existing recruiter pipeline stale; Accel portfolio has 3 strong warm intros. Revisit: if offers aren't extended by April 30, resume broad search.
10 · What could go wrong

Risks — RAG-rated

Named, owned, and dated. If it isn't on this page, it's not on the board radar.

AE hiring slip into Q2

amber

Does the revised pipeline-coverage math still show safe conversion capacity? Current 4.1x is comfortable; the risk is that Q2 pipeline-gen slows without the 2 incremental AEs.

Owner: Phil (CFO) + Jamie (VP Sales) Due: April 30, 2026

Hosting cost normalisation trajectory

green

Is Q3 still achievable? Migration is 78% complete; on track per weekly CTO review.

Owner: CTO Due: Q3 2026

Second healthcare logo close enough to anchor Q2 narrative

amber

Meridian Health expansion anchored Q1 NRR narrative. Current pipeline has 2 healthcare prospects in proposal stage; one is high-fit, one is stretch.

Owner: CEO + VP Sales Due: End of Q2
Specific + named

Asks of the board

Two healthcare-vertical design partner intros
From: Sarah (Accel)
Q2 GTM push depends on healthcare anchor accounts. Accel portfolio has strong adjacency (medtech, RCM).
Board observer slot for VP Sales
From: Board
Cold-called top-of-funnel commentary lands better when Jamie is in the room. Low-friction.
11 · Feedback loop

What Marlow learned this month

Every correction from the practitioner becomes a signal. These are the three that will shape next month's draft.

Terminology Prefer 'temporary investment' over 'headwind' when describing infra-migration costs Captured January 28
Framing Lead with conclusion before reasoning Captured November 4
Investor relations NRR commentary always reference Meridian Health expansion anchor Captured February 22
How the learning loop works

Every practitioner correction (typo, framing call, metric preference) is captured as a signal. Signals accumulate into the belief model that shapes the next draft. The board package you're reading has been through 47 practitioner corrections across three reporting cycles. It gets more tailored every month — not because a human is writing it from scratch, but because the model is learning.

12 · Trust trail

Appendix — provenance and methodology

Data sources. P&L pulled from QuickBooks Online API (April 9, 22:00 PT). Balance sheet reconciled to $0.37 against bank feeds. ARR, NRR, and cohort data from ChartMogul with Stripe as system-of-record. Headcount from Rippling. Pipeline from Salesforce opportunity stages 2-5.

Narrative generation. AI-drafted by Marlow (Anthropic Claude Opus 4.6), grounded in practitioner-confirmed signals from the last 90 days. No factual claim appears without a source; no framing call appears without practitioner approval. Prior draft diff available in the product app.

What changed since last month. Added the R40 peer quadrant (page 5) at Sarah Kim's request from the Q4 review. Cohort triangle (page 4) now shows quarterly cohorts instead of monthly for readability. Magic Number decomposition added to sales-efficiency narrative.

Every figure reconciles
Formula + inputs + confidence on every tile (in-app)
47 practitioner corrections absorbed
Prepared by Marlow · Inflect