r/financialmodelling

In the last year I have interviewed with over 40 tech companies. My experience is in Strategic Finance in enterprise SaaS. Throughout my time recruiting I have amassed quite a diverse collection of about 20 case studies that I plan to share. Let me know if this is helpful.

Here is one I completed from Gusto:

Candidate Homework Finance, BizOps, and Strategy (FBOS)

Expected time: 4 - 6 hours

Deliverable: (i) Excel file or Google Sheet supported by (ii) short memo or max 3 slides

1. Model: Create a 3-year monthly P&L forecast with the following assumptions as a

starting point. Please explain any changes you make to these assumptions. Make any

other assumptions you need and explain why.

● 400,000 active customers as of Jan 1, 2025 in the U.S.

● 5% MOM customer growth rate

● 1.4% monthly customer churn

● 6.1 person average company size

● 12 month CAC Payback (revenue)

2. Business Model Discussion: Please present the P&L, then share the top three risks

and top three opportunities that you see. What is the right set of metrics to track in this

business?

I’m good at financial modeling and it’s part of my daily job.
I want to be a champion or advanced at it.
What courses, resources, etc that will make me get to THAT level ?!
You know the sophisticated models used by investment bankers and so on?! I want to be able to create them myself

Hi everyone , I’d like to ask for any recommendation on sensitivity analysis course that will help me to create sensitivity analysis for investments of the funds I’m handling with. I’m new to this and I don’t have any idea where to start. Thank you😊

I am currently valuing a company called ABFRL with 4 different segments. The segments are:

• Value & Masstige Retail – e.g. Pantaloons
• Ethnic – multiple brands/businesses with different growth, margins, LTL and market shares
• Luxury Retail – The Collective and other luxury businesses
• TMRW – high-growth, digital-first/emerging brands, currently in the investment phase

Given the differences in growth, margins and maturity, I’m thinking SOTP (Sum-of-the-Parts) is more appropriate than valuing the company on a single P/E or EV/EBITDA multiple.

How do I value a company like this with vastly different segments and what are the important metrics to consider while valuing an apparel company. Would appreciate any guidance, if you have any resources to recommend please do that as well.

I know that the debate between self-study and full-immersion is a common question. But the responses I'm seeing are 2+ years old. In 2026, I don't see where the CFI resources command a $300 premium versus me asking AI for help.

Context: CFA Charterholder who hasn't modeled in 5 years, need to re-learn so I can get a new job.

Hii! I'm trying to learn financial modelling using free YouTube videos by wall street journal and trying to apply it on a multinational company, coming to the revenue growth rate, WSJ just uses the historical avg for projecting the new percentage but that's not making sense to me, how're we supposed to project revenue growth rate while doing financial modeling, if someone cam pleaseee helpp

I am doing this kinda fun or profit. This started 2 years - 3 years ago when I set up 3 side projects (video production weddings film, photography (maternity photography, and birthdays casual only ), video production b2b ( storytelling, comercial ) , and cybersecurity and development, media businesses are getting more clients due to the nature of it. The customer acquisition cost is far cheaper than trying to acquire customers from cybersecurity more expensive . so I learn about 1 - 2 months of modeling with real, small historical data from income and expenses , taxes, and employee comp to know how much we are getting vs cost of running the business , cost of having a fully load employee comp , however if we want to acquire another small company in the future, how much we can grow or affect us the projects we have. we have a low traction, but they are validated since we have MRR ,and clients.

Hello guys. I am building a case study where a company builds a 3 statement model income,balance and cash flow plus a payroll financial modeling where the company knows the fully loaded employee compensation however this company wants to acquire a business.. how M&A and LBO models and what key factor to consider if the company is a good investment from acquisition view?

Hello everyone, new here I am looking for help. If someone has experience building financial models for equity research for Indian companies or currently working in the industry, I need some clarity for modelling income taxes and leases.
Context :
I have recently done CFI FMVA certifications but some topic especially modeling for taxes was explained in very simple manner like taking assumption of income tax. But I want to know the industry standards like how people working in the industry model taxes.
Thank you

Does anyone know of any free and reliable tools to perform fundamental analysis on comparable data

I’m referring to something like a screener with multiple businesses in the sector, comparing metrics like EV/EBITDA etc

Guys, I'm preparing for the interview in Business Valuation and Financial Modelling group at E&Y, but i have zero knowledge about it. I mean I'm realy driven and keen to learn, watch videos on YT and working with ChatGPT, but the scale of info seems insane. Is it hard to learn it in 2 weeks? what and where to find? also if anyone wants to do a mock interview with me, much appreciate! I hope everything will be good as this position is my goal

I’ve built a financial model and valuation report and it would be a huge help if you could take a look and share your views. If you have any suggestions or feedback, please go for it...it'll help me big time 🙂

Hi Folks,

Please suggest me FM course which will help me with depth knowledge about building model for Startups and Early stage and also lead me to build model by myself in future single handedly

i have been learning financial modelling and I don't understand one thing what is the use of all these financial model actually ? we never know how the market will perform in future so how do people actually predict future cash flow, revenue and all. no assumption or prediction is accurate so how are these financial models like dcf and 3 statement even helpful ? we don't know what decision the frim might take, they might take a loan or raise funding or sell one of their holdings. what is the reason behind all the analysis

Okay, I know this question has been asked many times here. But i can't help asking again. Please help me with a roadmap to learn financial modelling from scratch to advanced. You can recommend me paid courses. Also what are some other skills that can help me break into the field of finance. Thankyou

Hi,

I have been picking value stocks for the past four years and have had reasonably good results. That said, almost everyone has benefited from a strong market over much of that period, and I’m not convinced that my unleveraged stock picking has consistently outperformed the S&P 500 on a risk-adjusted basis.

What I have been experimenting with instead is using moderate margin leverage alongside a value-oriented portfolio. My reasoning is that if I am buying companies with a substantial margin of safety and avoiding extremely expensive or highly speculative stocks, the downside distribution may be somewhat more favorable than for a more aggressive growth portfolio. Of course, value stocks can still fall dramatically, so I don’t consider this protection in itself.

The main problem is how to quantify the additional risk created by leverage. So far, I’ve been estimating the probability of reaching a margin-call threshold using historical price movements of the underlying positions. I don’t treat this as a guarantee or forecast, but rather as a way to measure how vulnerable the current portfolio is. If the estimated risk becomes too high, I would consider deleveraging.

Does anyone here use a similar approach? If you use margin with a long-term value portfolio, how do you decide how much leverage is reasonable ?

Hello everyone I'm 23 just got done with school, and got an opportunity to intern inside a big company inside their Corporate M&A team.

I wanted to learn the foundations from scratch, and have always been interested and studied finance and investing throughout my whole school yrs.

I kept looking through forums and realized that 3 statement modelling is the best way to get started, and unless u master them u cant move forward confidently to Valuation methods and the advanced stuff.

So i did the Kenji explains video, it was nice to get the general idea. But then i had to move to more serious things, i then did the M&I free 1h30 3 statement model vid.

And then i wanted to take the challenge and practice on a real company that is not so difficult, i took walmart and got the 10k's and started building, and i asked Claude and other ai tools and googled a bunch stuff whenever i got stuck.

I have built all the statements and schedules.

And at the end it didnt balance and i just couldnt figure it out despite asking ai and everything, mind u the process took me around 20 hrs and i honestly feel so frustrated rn, and wondering if this is even a career for me....

Honestly the amount of assumptions, plugs and stuff i tried to make sense of it was a great learning experience but the fact that public co's dont offer extensive info around their financials, some stuff just has to be sorted by a plug.

Idk if this is normal, can someone with more exp pls guide me and be as honest as they can... is it over? Or do i just keep going ?

Should i keep trying to balance it, or do i start over with another company.

What do u think is the right next step ?