jezweb Runway check
A founder should know their runway in months, not "uhhh we have a few months". This skill makes the answer reliable and current.
When this skill fires
- Boss asks "how's our runway?"
- Pre-fundraising conversation prep
- Monthly scheduled check (1st of each month)
- After any major hire or significant expense
The shape
Pull bank balance:
- If Xero MCP wired:
xero_accounts get_balance - Else: read most recent
wiki/finance/<year>/<month>/bank-balance.md - Else: ask the founder to provide it
- If Xero MCP wired:
Compute trailing 3-month average burn:
- Sum monthly burn for last 3 months from
wiki/finance/<year>/<month>/burn-summary.md - Divide by 3
- If trend is clearly increasing or decreasing, note it
- Sum monthly burn for last 3 months from
Compute runway:
runway_months = bank_balance / monthly_burn- Express as both months AND end-of-runway date
Surface a tighter view:
- "If burn stays flat at $32K/mo, runway is 7.5 months (out by 2027-01-10)"
- "If we hire 1 more engineer (+$10K/mo), runway shortens to 5.8 months"
Surface levers:
- "Current biggest expense category: payroll (60%)"
- "Cheapest fast-impact lever: deprioritise the $4K/mo SaaS subscriptions we'd consolidate"
Write to
wiki/finance/<year>/<month>/runway-check.mdwith frontmatter kind:runway-checkFlag if runway < 6 months — boss should know
Anti-patterns
- Reporting runway without showing the burn assumption (always show both)
- Optimistic projections that assume a fundraise will close
- Ignoring upcoming known expenses (e.g. quarterly tax payments)
- Pretending we have data we don't ("our burn is around $30K" when it's actually unmeasured)