p/whatifi-io
low-code business models. no formulas. no spreadsheets.
KP
whatifi For Business — Low-code business models, no formulas, no spreadsheets
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Low-code, decision making clarity for SMBs. We help business leaders VISUALLY model, compare and share countless “what if” financial and strategic simulations - in seconds. Runway. Cash flow. Staffing. Pricing. Capacity. All without formulas or spreadsheets.
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KP
Hunter
📌
Hey PH fam, Super excited to bring whatifi to the wider tech & startup community. As a new full-time founder who has needed to make lots of decisions, I resonated deeply with Jon's mission of helping entrepreneurs and leaders within organizations reimagine how they do scenario planning. Jon has found a way to brilliantly infuse his 25 years of Hollywood and VFX industry acumen into how this platform is designed. It's an entirely different product than your boring Excel. I got a chance to take the tool for a spin and quickly saw the value which led me to agree to support Jon's launch. Here are 3 things that stood out to me: → Ability to have hundreds of different outcomes calculating concurrently (you get to visualize all your decisions and their outcomes like Dr Strange in the Marvel multiverse) → Tons of pre-built business logic “Events” and business templates that cover sales, marketing, fundraising and financial scenarios → Actionable dashboards that featuring KPIs, Graph Views etc. to measure and track key metrics Anyway, check out whatifi and feel free to share your reflections, ideas, suggestions and questions below 💡
Jon Cowley
@thisiskp_ - thanks for this and all of your help getting geared up for the launch! Hoping that folks throw a few "what if" scenarios at me over the next 24 hours and I can post and share some of those whatifi simulations back here in the comments.
Jon Cowley
Hi everyone 👋. My name is Jon and I am the Founder of whatifi. whatifi is a highly visual, low code, financial and strategic decision-making platform. We make it easy for SMBs and Founders to ask, and answer, their most important “what if” business questions - in seconds. No formulas. No fancy, schmancy vlookups(). Instead, connect together pre-built business logic events in our decision-tree like scenario builder to model dozens of "what if" simulations - all in real time. ✴️ whatifi raise a $2M seed round? ✴️ whatifi increase our prices 20% this Summer or wait until the next year? ✴️ whatifi lean into CPC ads or hire a rep for outbound sales? ✴️ whatifi open an office overseas or invest in our local office? ✴️ whatifi my revenue dips in Q3 and I have to plan layoffs? ✴️ whatifi can’t get my churn below 5%? Plenty of tools help C-Suite execs, Owners and Founders look backwards. Few look forwards. The traditional row-and-column type approach can’t track multiple different concurrent outcomes happening on different timelines. A + B, today, is not the same six months from now. Spreadsheets are amazing but they have their limits. The result? CEOs make half-informed, gut decisions. Sue from marketing takes three weeks to submit her department budget - and it is a guess, at best. Founders burn runway blindly and only realize they are in trouble after it is too late to course correct. CFOs spend weeks chasing a one-off financial model that is too brittle to change, too daunting to share and too complex to tweak in a board meeting. How many times have you heard, "That's a great question... Let me get back to you...."?

The Back Story:

I’ve spent 25 years as a VFX Supervisor working on some of 🎥 Hollywood’s coolest (and not so cool) features and TV series. Everything from District 9 to Tron to Fast and Furious through to TV series like Snowpiercer, A Series of Unfortunate Events and Lost In Space. Not to mention some duds like Sin City 2… 💣 In VFX, we create all of those epic shots using software that is timeline and flowchart/node-based with a connect-the-dots style UI. Imagine decision trees. We edit and think in time, first. Visual effects shots go through 100s of iterations and the tech is designed to expect and embrace change. Want to make the CG dinosaur pink and have it come into the frame 1/2 a second earlier? No problem. Drop in a color correct Event and a time offset Event. Click. Boom. Send that to Spielberg.

The Aha Moment

Some of the best innovations comes from uncertainty and an outsider point-of-view. Someone peaking over the fence and saying, “Hey…that looks weird? Have you ever thought about doing it another way?” What if I take this visual-first workflow from the film industry and applied it to the boring world of finance? Connect an Income Event to an Expense Event to an Employee Event. Or a Customer Event to a Growth Event to a Churn Event to a Pricing Event. And then be able to slide those Events around on a timeline and change dates, like you do when editing a video. Each of these Events would contain all of the business logic required to perform if-this-then-that calculations and each Event could pass those calculations and down through the flowchart to subsequent Events. But then build these scenarios using a decision tree-like UI. Each unique path through the tree representing a unique financial outcome. With just a few "what if" clicks, your scenarios could quickly grow from a handful of outcomes to hundreds of scenarios (kinda like Loki in the Multiverse) - all in real time. Try that in a spreadsheet... whatifi is a VERY different way to create, compare, share and present financial calculations and strategic simulations. Users can select from a library of 30+ pre-built Events (and growing) to rapidly build out models. Like Hugh from Blinkmoon Games. He's raised money and is using our tech to quickly model out his financial runway, future raises, revenue models for his games and staffing projections to create the game. Or Rob from Insights Matter. He is a Fractional CFO and his agency uses whatifi to plan and present merger and acquisition strategies to his clients. Everything from taking out loans to fancy revenue-based financing options.

What you get with whatifi?

1️⃣ Interactive, connect-the-dots style canvas for building scenarios 2️⃣ Ability to have hundreds of different outcomes calculating concurrently 3️⃣ Full chart of accounts and ledgers for tracking transactions 4️⃣ Sorting; rank all scenarios based on monthly or cumulative accounts/ledger values 5️⃣ CSV importing of budgets and other financial statements 6️⃣ Templates! We build the flowcharts and you fill in the blanks 7️⃣ 30+ pre-built business logic “Events” and growing ✨ Basic Events like Bank, Income, Expenses, Debit/Credits and Loans ✨ SaaS/SMB module with Customer, Growth, and Churn Events ✨ Outbounds Sales module ✨ Campaign and Cost-Per-Click customer acquisition funnels ✨ Groups, Projects and Instancing ✨ In-app Expression Language Event based on CEL 8️⃣ Scenario Share models with your team, clients or investors 9️⃣ Dashboards, KPIs, Grid View, Graph View and export to CSV

Upcoming features:

✴️ Link to Bank Accounts, Quickbooks, Xero, Netsuite and other Accounting packages (July) ✴️ OpenAI-enabled Assessment Event (August) ✴️ Event SDK; build, publish and market your own Events (September) ✴️ whatifi API; wrap your own front end around our calculation engine and embed in external sites ✴️ Future integrations; Salesforce, Hubspot, Mixpanel, Segment, Google Sheets, Excel and more

Show Me The Money

👀 The best way to explore whatifi is to check out some of our DESKTOP ONLY sample scenarios. These will drop you into whatifi in GUEST MODE. 🎯 Case Study - Writer's Strike Impact on a VFX Studio 🎯 Sample Scenario - Startup Runway Model 🎯 Case Study - Blinkmoon Games - Modelling Freemium Gaming Revenue

The Offer

Create a free account at http://app.whatifi.io or signup for early access on our main website www.whatifi.io If you upgrade to our Startup Starter or Solo Business accounts, use our Product Hunt promo deal to get 50% off for the first three months. Bring on the feedback!
Navin Peiris
This looks amazing, can’t wait to give it a try! Congrats on the launch and best of luck!
Jon Cowley
@navinpeiris - Thanks Navin! Been bootstrap building for 6 years now... nice to finally get this out into the world. Happy to walk you through a demo whenever you are ready to give it a go or help you build your first model interactively.
Alex Hughes
Amazing to see that Whatifi is launching. It looks like it will be a super useful visual tool for me. Also being from film I loved the case study and "guest mode" examples provided. Congrats on the launch Jon! This is looking great
Sophia O'Neal
I am that weird person that loves spreadsheets, but ones with numbers about my company's financial future make me nervous (and excited!). Freaking love how easy it is to model with whatifi. My biggest whatif - (i run a productized agency that has a split of full-timers and freelancers) - when is the best time to focus on sales when it takes 30+ days to close so that the team is at a healthy productivity level while taking into consideration everyones holidays (the team is 100% international and remote) and timezones/work hours? Could i do it in a spreadsheet? yes. do i want to heeeeeeck to the no!
Jon Cowley
@sophia_o_neal Thanks Sophia - perfect use case. One of the things that spreadsheets struggle with is time. Especially when a bunch of events are all coupled together like capacity, deal flow, employees. Like a gantt chart - we've built in the ability to shift projects, contracts, employees and contractors around on a timeline to see not only WHAT the calculation is, but also WHEN the calculation is. Thanks for checking out our tech!
Rana Phool
Congratulations on launching this innovative new way of making decisions! Can't wait to see how this helps businesses plan for the future!
Jon Cowley
@rana_phool Thanks Rana. Already working with a Gaming studio, two VFX companies, a Fractional CFO, an IPO'd E-Commerce company, a Cannabis startup, a heathtech startup and Yoga studio.... pretty big cross section so far and looking to test the tech with more types of companies soon.
Carter Wang
...Impressive! Check wikigpt3.com and email me your app details and I can also help get your app listed on my directory and other 100+ AI directories.
Gabriel Nori
Wow! 🎉 Congratulations on the recent launch of whatifi on Product Hunt, Jon! I'm curious to know about any use cases or features that you think would benefit aspiring entrepreneurs and startups the most. Since whatifi offers a wealth of possibilities, some guidance on where to start would be super helpful! 🤔 Again, kudos for making finance less boring and more visually approachable! 🎊
Jon Cowley
@gabriel_nori Thanks Gabriel - we've built (and will be adding a lot more) sample scenarios and templates specifically for startups. Everything from funding scenarios (like raising a round/angel investment) to customer growth models to testing different pricing. Our main focus has been on SaaS type revenue models. Here's an example of a very basic Startup Runway model that can be used as a starting point: https://bit.ly/43wFJ9j (link only works on desktop)
Jon Cowley
@gabriel_nori One of the things we are doing in the early days is working directly with companies (no charge) to help build those first model - helps us figure out patterns and needs - and then turn those into templates.
Nina Chan
This is a truly wonderful idea, and loving the execution. Thank you also for the case studies. Great to not have to start from zero.
Jon Cowley
@nina_computer - thanks Nina! Just the beginning - plan is to have a whole whack of case studies, template and pre-build "snippets" of models that you can mix and match as needed. Ultimately want to be as easy to use as Canva but w/ the power of Photoshop under the hood.
Brant Friesen
BF @brant_friesen. Just got a demo of Whatifi this week. Whatifi hasPlatform has excellent API and Modular Expansion capabilities.
Jon Cowley
@brant_friesen - Thanks Brant! Really appreciate this comment - especially given your years of experience as a CFO and building models "the spreadsheet" way. Hoping that we'll be able to collaborate together on some of the VFX projects and scheduling that you and the team are cooking up!
Gezim Hoxha
Whenever I think biz scenario planning, I think whatifi...great tool for visualizing.
Jon Cowley
@happygezim - Thanks Gezim! All about getting folks out of those spreadsheets and into something more "connect-the-dots" and visual. whatifi hire a virtual assistant or do it myself? whatifi spend more on shopify ads or lean into SEO? whatifi get into YCombinator or continue to bootstrap?
Hugh Behroozy
I made a productHunt account just to comment on this product. The creator is a very talented individual and I can't wait to see Whatifi grow. We've been using it as a planning and communication tool when it comes to making business decisions, and I can say it helps a lot to have a visual roadmap of funding.
Jon Cowley
@hugh_behroozy - Thanks Hugh. Great to have you and the team at Blinkmoon Games as part of our early adopters. Being able to test our tech with real businesses in real scenarios has been a huge unlock for us.
Maicon | side.tech
Congrats on the launch @thisiskp_ 🎉🚀