Unified Startup Enablement & Growth Platform

Runway Is the One Number That Ends Every Other Conversation

Product roadmaps, hiring plans, and expansion ambitions are all downstream of one question: how many months until the bank balance hits zero? A founder who doesn't know their exact runway to the month is making every other decision blind — and investors can tell within the first five minutes of a pitch whether you actually know this number or are guessing.

Net burn (burn minus revenue), not gross burn, is what actually determines your runway — a growing revenue line extends runway even if spending stays flat
Runway should be planned in scenarios, not a single number — a "what if growth stalls" case matters as much as your base case
The right time to start fundraising is when you have 6+ months of runway left, not when you have 2 — raising under pressure destroys your negotiating leverage

Net Burn vs Gross Burn

Gross Burn

Total monthly cash outflow — salaries, infrastructure, marketing, rent, tools, professional services. This is your spending, full stop, regardless of what's coming in.

Net Burn

Gross burn minus monthly revenue. This is the number that actually determines runway: cash balance ÷ net burn = months remaining. A startup with ₹9.5L gross burn and ₹6.2L revenue has a net burn of ₹3.3L — a very different runway picture than the gross number alone suggests, and the number investors will actually ask for.

Burn Category Breakdown

Category	Typical share of burn (early-stage Indian startup)
People & Salaries	Usually the largest line by far — includes employer PF contributions, not just gross salary
Cloud & Infrastructure	AWS/GCP spend, often underestimated until usage scales with customers
Marketing & Paid Ads	The first line most founders cut when runway tightens — watch CAC payback before cutting blindly
Office, Tools & Professional Services	Individually small but collectively material — SaaS subscription creep is a real, recurring leak

Scenario Planning — Conservative, Base, Aggressive

A single runway number is a false sense of precision. Model three scenarios against different revenue growth and burn assumptions: conservative (revenue growth stalls, spending holds), base (current trajectory continues), and aggressive (planned hiring and marketing spend accelerates). The conservative case tells you your true floor — the number that should drive your fundraising timeline decision, not the optimistic one.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many months of runway should trigger fundraising? +

Start the fundraising process at 6–9 months of runway remaining, not 2–3. Raises typically take 3–6 months from first investor meeting to funds in the bank — starting late means negotiating from a position of desperation, which shows up directly in your valuation and terms.

Should runway calculations include a funding round that's "almost closed"? +

No — until funds are actually in the bank, model your runway as if the round isn't happening. Term sheets fall through, diligence surfaces issues, and closing dates slip. Plan your spending against confirmed cash, and treat a pending round as upside, not baseline.

What's the fastest lever to extend runway without a fundraise? +

Usually people costs, since they're the largest line — but the right lever depends on your burn category breakdown. Before cutting marketing spend reflexively, check CAC payback period; cutting a channel that pays back in 3 months can hurt more than it helps. Review the breakdown by category, not just the total.

Key Takeaways

Net burn, not gross burn, is your real runway number.

Revenue growth extends runway even when spending stays flat — tracking gross burn alone overstates how urgent your situation actually is (or understates it, if revenue is declining).

Model a conservative scenario and plan against it.

Your base case is what you hope happens; your conservative case is what you should actually plan your fundraising timeline around.

Start fundraising at 6+ months of runway, not 2.

Rounds take months to close. Starting under time pressure is the single biggest destroyer of founder leverage in a negotiation.

Inside Corpfy Runway Tracker

Corpfy's Runway Tracker dashboard tracks cash balance, monthly burn and revenue history, a category-level burn breakdown, your funding events log, and three-scenario (conservative/base/aggressive) runway modeling — all live-computed, not a static spreadsheet someone forgets to update.

What you get in the dashboard

Feature	What it does	Founder benefit
Live Runway KPIs	Cash balance, net burn per month, and runway in months — computed automatically from burn and revenue history	No manual spreadsheet math that goes stale the day after you update it
Burn Category Breakdown	Monthly spend split by category — people, infrastructure, marketing, office, tools, professional services	See exactly where a cost-cutting decision will have the most impact before making it
Burn History	Month-by-month burn, revenue, and balance trend	Spot a worsening trend before it becomes a crisis
Scenario Modeling	Conservative, base, and aggressive scenarios with independent cash, revenue, and burn assumptions	Know your true floor, not just your hopeful case, when planning a raise
Funding Events Log	Historical rounds with date, amount, type, and investor	A single source of truth for your capital history, ready for investor updates