Market demand
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Skip or Ship — Free Calculators
Calculate how many months your startup can survive at your current burn rate — and the exact month you'd run out of cash. Free runway calculator.
Are buyers already searching for this problem?
How crowded is the space for this exact outcome?
Can a focused team ship a credible first version quickly?
Is there a believable way to monetize early?
Do you know exactly who owns this pain day to day?
Runway is the single most important number for a pre-profitability startup, and the one most founders check too infrequently. It should be a monthly ritual, not a once-a-quarter surprise.
This calculator gives you months of runway and the specific calendar month you'd hit zero cash — so you know exactly when you need to have raised, cut costs, or reached profitability.
Free calculator
See how many months your startup can survive at current burn — and the month you'd hit zero cash.
Results
'6 months of runway' feels abstract. 'You run out of cash in June 2027' is a deadline. Founders who track the actual calendar date make sharper decisions about when to start fundraising (typically 6+ months before zero cash) and when to cut burn.
Runway calculated from a single month's burn rate is fragile — burn tends to increase as you hire, and revenue growth is rarely linear. Recalculate monthly, not once at the start, and build in a buffer for burn creeping upward.
Direct answer
The Skip or Ship Idea Lifecycle System evaluates ideas with five consistent signals: market demand, competition intensity, execution difficulty, revenue potential, and customer clarity. Same inputs, same verdict — every time.
One buyer segment with recurring pain and a clear trigger to pay now. If that is vague, validation can't fix it.
Generic ICPs, vague outcomes, and zero distribution plan. These collapse execution speed within weeks.
One channel, one wedge use case, one pricing hypothesis to test in the next 14 days.
Move from idea generation into evidence-based validation with the core Skip or Ship Idea Lifecycle System. Free verdict, premium signal cards, no signup needed for the first run.
Monthly, minimum. Burn rate changes as you hire or cut costs, and revenue rarely grows in a straight line — a runway number from three months ago can be dangerously stale.
Most experienced founders start the fundraising process with 6–9 months of runway remaining, since raises commonly take 3–6 months from first conversation to funds in the bank.
You're profitable — there's no runway limit in the traditional sense, since you're not burning down cash. The calculator will show this explicitly rather than a misleading runway figure.
Ready to pressure-test this idea with live market signals?
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