Claude Now Lives Inside Excel. Here's What That Actually Means.

How I built an institutional-grade LBO prompt without knowing LBO and what that says about where finance is heading.

“Anyone can build an LBO model. The spreadsheet doesn’t care who’s typing. But 90% of the models I’ve reviewed get thrown out in the first 60 seconds.”

That’s what a senior PE analyst told me two weeks ago.

I asked him why.

“Because they test the wrong things. The math is always fine. Excel doesn’t make arithmetic errors. But the assumptions? The debt sizing? The sensitivity variables That’s where you see who actually understands the deal and who just followed a template.”

That conversation is the reason this week’s workflow exists.

But let me back up.

I’m Shubham. I run Alpha with AI, a weekly newsletter where I build AI-powered workflows that replicate what institutional research teams do, and release them for free.

Every week, one workflow. Every workflow challenges an expensive industry standard.

I’ve built tools for earnings analysis, peer comparisons, insider trading detection. But this week, I tried something I’ve never done before.

I built an LBO modeling prompt.

The problem? I don’t bu…