KPI dashboard (revenue, growth, burn, runway, cash)
Show the 5-6 numbers that define company health, trended over time, against plan.
This is the slide directors study line by line, often re-reading it during the meeting itself. Bill Gurley's runway writing treats cash and runway as the two numbers that deserve the most scrutiny.
- Revenue (ARR/MRR), growth rate, burn, cash balance, runway in months
- Trend over the last 4-6 quarters, not just this quarter's snapshot
- Actual vs. plan for each metric, not actual alone
- Vanity metrics with no link to revenue or runway (signups, downloads, press mentions)
- More than 6-7 metrics; a dashboard that needs its own legend has failed
- Runway is stated in dollars, not months
- Burn is shown but cash-out date is never stated explicitly
- Showing MRR growth rate but not absolute burn, which hides how many months are left
- Changing which metrics appear each quarter so trends can't be tracked
- · Can a director calculate the cash-out month from this slide alone?
- · Is every number here also traceable to the P&L slide, exactly?
[Metric]: [value] ([+/-X]% vs. plan) , trend over last N quarters
"Our metrics are looking great with strong growth and healthy engagement across the platform."
"ARR: $196K (+38% MoM). Burn: $312K/mo (plan: $280K). Cash: $1.87M. Runway: 6 months, cash-out Aug 2026. 41% of active users engage via Slack integration weekly."
Nimbus states runway as a month, not a range, which is what lets the board react in this meeting instead of the next one.
Quick quiz
1. Which unit should runway be reported in?
- ○ Dollars remaining
- ✓ Months to cash-out, ideally with a named month
- ○ Percent of budget spent
- ○ Number of employees
Gurley's argument: months and a calendar date force a decision timeline, dollars alone do not.
2. Why cap the dashboard at 6-7 metrics?
- ○ Slides can't fit more text
- ✓ Beyond that, no single metric gets enough attention to drive a decision
- ○ Investors dislike numbers
- ○ It's a legal requirement
A dashboard with 15 metrics is a spreadsheet, not a signal.