“I’m a huge fanboy. This is what Excel always should have been.”
Will SimonCFO at Mainspring
Answers in 5 seconds
Will Simon, CFO at Mainspring, was tired of wrestling spreadsheets. Every time someone asked, “What if we hire more reps?” or “What happens if a deal slips?”, it meant digging through layers of Excel logic to rebuild the scenario.
With Runway, he set up the model just once — and could simulate changes instantly.
Impact
- Revenue planning that once took 30 minutes now takes 5 seconds
- Answers in real-time — even mid-call with the CEO
- Forecasts stay current without manual rebuilds
I can very quickly say, okay, if we hire five more sales reps this month, here's the effect. And the whole thing populates.
Will Simon
Dashboards that investors and sales reps love
Mainspring’s sales team runs on commission — but they had no way to track how much they were earning, or where the revenue came from. Investor updates weren’t much better, with hours of spreadsheet wrangling just to pull the numbers together.
Will built each rep a Runway dashboard showing bonuses, residuals, and account-level revenue. He also created a real-time dashboard for the board. Everyone finally had visibility — and no one had to open Excel. The reactions surprised him:
Impact
- Reps can see and track their comp — monthly and by account
- Board gets real-time visibility into performance
- No custom code or engineering lift required
Many of them were like, ‘I’ve been dreaming about having this for 10 years.
Will Simon
One model for the entire business
Finance used to live across backend reports, spreadsheets, and manual CSV uploads. It technically worked — but syncing everything was slow, painful, and error-prone.
Now, Will pipes it all through a Google Sheet integration into Runway, where it powers commissions, revenue spreads, and forecasting. The model stays live and accurate — no rebuilds required.
Impact
- One connected model for finance, commissions, and revenue
- Seamless flow from raw files to financial outputs
- Foundation that can scale with the business
We got the revenue file in, I dropped it into Sheets, it synced into Runway — and it just worked. I was on a call with the CEO, and we both just went, ‘Damn, that’s really cool. This is the closest we’ve got to a single source of truth. It’s still V1, but it already feels really powerful.
Will Simon
Building models that are actually fun
Will knew his way around Excel — but traditional modeling always felt fragile, tedious, and uninviting. “I was always working to get the model to a point where I could stop working on it.”
Runway was different. Once he wrapped his head around formulas and time series, he found himself iterating for the fun of it — grinding through models the way he used to grind through video games.
Impact
- Less stress, more iteration
- Built a better model by enjoying the process
- Replaced friction with curiosity
With Runway, modeling felt more like play than work. I felt like I was grinding in a game to get enough coins to get a helmet. I didn’t want to stand up — I just wanted to keep going.
Will Simon
