Because the AI already knows the structure, how an income statement links to a balance sheet and cash flow, what assumptions a SaaS or D2C model needs, so you skip hours of formula plumbing and go straight to the decisions: your pricing, hiring plan and growth assumptions. Describe your business in plain English and tools like Claude in Excel or ChatGPT will draft a linked, working model in minutes that you then sanity-check and adjust. Founders who tried it report finishing in under an hour what used to take days, and the model is easier to change when an investor asks "what if growth is half that?"
A quick orientation. The real value is below: resources worth your time, from people who've actually done it.
CFI's CEO strips the formulas out of a real 3-statement model and watches Claude rebuild it, then grades the result against professional modeling standards, the most honest benchmark you'll find.
Watch on YouTube youtube.com →
A well-known finance educator demos three practical routes, models inside Claude, Excel exports, and the Excel integration, so you can pick the workflow that fits you.
Watch on YouTube youtube.com →
Tight 10-minute walkthrough of building a model from a plain-English business description and upgrading an existing spreadsheet without writing formulas.
Watch on YouTube youtube.com →Practical setup guide (which plan, settings, Projects, three model-building methods) opening with a real 3-statement model built in 18 minutes vs 9 days manually; the full 60-prompt pack is paid but the free setup section stands alone.
Open sidsaladi.substack.com →