# Headcount Desk > Paste an early-stage startup's facts - cash, monthly non-people costs, monthly revenue and its growth, the plan start, the next funding milestone and its month, the option pool and what is granted - and a team table of everyone on payroll and every planned hire, with function, level, base, equity, location and start month. The browser prices every row against the skill's US 2024 salary bands with the location adjustment, works out the fully-loaded cost, when recruiting must start and when each hire is productive, the month-by-month burn and cash, the runway with and without the plan, the first-12-month headcount budget by function and as a share of revenue, equity against the stage ranges and the option pool after the plan, for free. Then a review lane answers every finding and puts every planned hire in order, and a memo lane writes the board memo for the plan. URL: https://headcount-desk.skillsafe.ai/ API tutorial: https://headcount-desk.skillsafe.ai/api.html ## Who it is for Founders, CFOs, heads of people and operators at pre-seed, seed and Series A startups who have a list of hires and start months and need to know whether the cash carries them to the next round, in what order to make them, what they really cost, whether the pay and the grants sit inside sensible ranges, and how to put the plan to the board. ## The free reading (in the browser, no model) - Facts, one per line: cash, monthly non-people costs, monthly revenue (or ARR), revenue growth per month, plan start, milestone and milestone date, option pool and pool granted, default location. - The team table: a header row, then one row per person - role, function, level, base, equity, location, start ("now" or a month like 2027-03), and optionally type (fte, contract, founder), variable pay and reports to. CSV, TSV or pipe separated. - Per row: the skill benchmark for the role and its location-adjusted band (San Francisco and New York +20-30%, Seattle, Boston and Los Angeles +10-20%, Austin, Denver and Chicago +0-10%, remote and other US cities -10-20%, international varies); fully-loaded cost at base x 1.3 plus variable pay; the cost over the first 12 months; the equity range for the stage and level; for a planned hire, the weeks to hire, the month recruiting must start, the ramp and the month it is productive. - Plan: burn and cash month by month, the month cash runs out with the plan and with the current team only, cash at the milestone, the first-12-month budget by function, comp as a share of revenue against the stage band, headcount against the stage's team size, the Series A function mix, spans of control, and the option pool after the planned grants. - Findings, each high or medium: cash runs out by the milestone, the planned grants overrun the pool, recruiting for a hire should already have started, a hire is productive only after the milestone, a base outside its band, a sales role with no variable pay, a grant outside the stage range, founder splits outside the skill's ranges, a key stage hire missing, a team above the stage size, a function mix off the Series A benchmark, comp above the stage share of revenue, a span of control above the range, a core role on contract. - Exports: the reading as Markdown, every row as CSV, the month-by-month burn as CSV. ## The paid lanes (gpt-terra, metered) - review: one answer per page finding, in order (the arithmetic findings - runway, pool, recruiting lead time - confirmed); every planned hire in the order to make it, with an action (keep, start recruiting now, move earlier, move later, hire as contractor, hold, cut), a start month and a reason; pay and grant changes; up to three roles the stage needs that the plan lacks; one to five risks with a mitigation; and a verdict that follows from the lists: cannot fund this plan (the cash runs out by the milestone), resequence the plan, hire with changes, or hire as planned. - memo: the board memo - a title, the ask, five sections (where we are, the hiring plan, what it costs, equity, risks and what we will watch), every hire it puts forward in start order with why now, and one to five things to watch by month. After a review (the button under it), the memo describes the reviewed plan. ## How replies are held to the input Every reply is reconciled in the browser against the page's own arithmetic: every page finding answered once, in order, and the arithmetic ones confirmed; every planned hire sequenced once and no one already on payroll; each action's start month consistent with the planned one; every late hire acted on; a plan that runs out of cash by the milestone moves, holds or cuts a hire; no base cut below its band; the verdict the lists imply; for a memo, the five sections in order and exactly the hires the plan (or the review) keeps, at their months; every row and finding id the page's, every month one the input or the reply's own plan contains, and no figure that the input, the page's arithmetic or the skill does not contain (rounding allowed). ## Limits - Up to 60 rows of the team table per run. - The salary and equity figures are the skill's US 2024 benchmarks, not live market data for a city and role; international locations are not adjusted. - Revenue is modelled as flat or growing by a fixed monthly rate; costs other than people are one monthly figure. - It does not give legal, tax or securities advice: equity paperwork, 409A valuations and contractor classification belong with a lawyer and an accountant. ## Source Derived from the agent skill @wshobson/team-composition-analysis (https://skillsafe.ai/skill/@wshobson/team-composition-analysis), from the repository wshobson/agents (MIT): team structure by stage, the compensation benchmarks and location adjustments, the fully-loaded cost formula, equity by role and stage and option pool sizing, organisational design and spans of control, full-time against contract, hiring velocity, and the headcount budget formula. ## Pages - https://headcount-desk.skillsafe.ai/ - the app - https://headcount-desk.skillsafe.ai/api.html - API tutorial (cURL, Python, JavaScript, Go, Java, Ruby, PHP, C#)