Startup Death Clock

We have a death clock on our company dashboard. Cash on hand/burn rate/revenue are updated a couple of times a month manually. We have yet to figure out a way to get the data programmatically.

Last time there was noise about startup death clocks (let me find the link to the last discussion later), I thought it was a good idea but not at all what I wanted. What I wanted was to be able to plug in the actual income/outgoing for individual months/days and be able to see when the trend lines change, or choose which time frames to calculate over, and not just to determine "when will I run out of money?" but also "when will I become rich?" using the trend of the last month, six months, year, total, what have you. Not only that, but early in a startup, in/out costs can be highly variable month to month.

So I implemented some basic java scripts to record and update incoming and outgoing transactions and I realized as I was starting to put data in, that I would much rather not input all transactions but just get the data from my bank.

Then I realized that this would be much better as a plugin for a ledger/budget balancer program, or for something like mint.com. And I kind of abandoned progress on it there, as I don't use mint, and I started looking at various programs to help me track money but realized that keeping a spreadsheet of "money at start of month, money at end of month", still works fine for me, and with some macros I can determine what I want to know.

So... for some one who does use these programs, would a plugin (or just a script on exported data) be worth it? Should I learn to use mint or gnucash or whatever for this?

Try entering anything with monthly revenue >= monthly expenses.

$2000 in revenue a month and I'm 37 signals? I'm flattered :)

Please don't superscript the "1/2".

P.S. Little easter egg - Watch the clock as you plug in your numbers.

If you accidentally mouse down on the page and begin selecting things (I do this habitually), Chrome will begin scrolling right, and then you're unable to scroll back without doing the same in the inverse. Weird.

Meh. All I get is "37Signals?".

Apparently since we're earning money, we're 37signals.

I'm working on a death clock right now. It's called the yearly budget for our non-profit grant funded project.

Is this an ad for 37Signals? They're the only startup with revenue exceeding expenses? I don't get it.

Haha this is hilarious! Reminds me of the death clock that was so popular forever ago - oh man, it's still alive and kicking! http://www.deathclock.com/. Wonder how much that guy made all these years.

If you type in enough 9's in the "cash on hand" slot, the "middle box" will get out of bounds. Should add some JS to make the fonts a bit smaller when there are too much symbols in the row ;)

We've been using a similar death clock in a spreadsheet, but it calculates the date that we go broke. Nothing to fire you up like impending doom!

Not sure why a break even company == 37signals though...

This doesn't work for me in any browser at all.. clock just spins around and message says: is your startup 37signals? Or I have missed the joke.

200 revenue, 200 expense, 5 in bank == 37 signals?

o.O It says ours is dead "Now?" hah. nope money ain't the only factor.

If only it were this simple.

Color.com

revenue: 0

expenses: $100k/mo (who knows, but let's err on high side)

cash: $41m

dead in: 34 years

nothing at all wrong with their raise. nothing at all.

dead in 1 years?

Is that Julia Allison grammar?

Is this another sign that we are entering a Web 2.0 bubble? You bet it is!

37 signals is sending an awesome message to the community; one that emphasizes that you don't need millions of funding and that net income is your #1 objective as a business owner. Make more money then you spend. End of story.

I love the message.