A week ago, I ran a poll.
The question was simple: Has Modern Excel made spreadsheets more productive in the enterprise?
The overwhelming answer—6 to 1 said yes. Excel is better than ever, apparently. Faster, smarter, more powerful.
But here’s the twist.
I ran another poll. This time, I pointed out a striking contradiction:
If Excel is getting more productive—if Excel Hell is being fixed—
Why is the “alternative to Excel” industry booming?
150+ startups. Billions in funding. All claiming the same thing:
“Excel is the problem.”
Their pitch decks, their white papers, their entire business models are built on one promise: We can rescue you from Excel Hell.
So which is it?
- Is Excel Hell being solved (as most Excel users believe)?
- Or is Excel Hell real and getting worse (as venture capitalists, FP&A vendors, and your CFO seem to think)?
Both can’t be true.
Yet both are driving massive momentum in opposite directions.
Here’s what I’ve observed:
🔹 The Excel expert community is doubling down on training, teaching one-user tricks, and celebrating features like LAMBDA and spill functions.
🔹 The FP&A tools industry is doubling down on their claim: Excel is unmanageable at scale. They’re pointing to consolidation failures, version control chaos, and audit nightmares—and offering their SaaS platforms as salvation.
And guess what?
Only one side is winning funding.
Only one side is building a billion-dollar industry.
And it’s not the Excel training gurus.
🚨 The Real Problem: Architecture
What every alternative-to-Excel tool has in common isn’t better charts or nicer UX.
It’s architecture.
They offer client-server models—data in the cloud, logic at the front-end, collaboration in real time, and governance by design.
But here’s the thing:
Excel already has that.
And it’s had it for decades.
Not in the default way you’ve been taught. Not in the videos with purple squares and fancy formulas.
But in the hub-and-spoke, database-backed, enterprise-integrated model that I’ve built again and again in the real world.
That’s where the true opportunity lies.
⚡ Excel’s Real Power Is Being Suppressed
Let me be blunt:
Every FP&A white paper attacks Excel.
The infamous “Nine Circles of Excel Hell” has stood unchallenged for over a decade.
Why?
Because nobody’s showing what Excel can do—at scale.
Instead, we get more tutorials. More functions. More one-person hacks.
More Power Query filters on CSV files, as if that solves the CFO’s consolidation nightmare.
Excel Hell isn’t caused by lack of features.
It’s caused by lack of system design thinking.
By scaling standalone tricks to team-based, enterprise-wide needs.
That’s how we create Excel Hell, not fix it.
🎯 The Opportunity of a Generation
Right now, there’s a third path.
One that most people haven’t seen.
A path where Excel does scale. Where it plays beautifully with cloud-hosted databases. Where you GET and PUT data with buttons, not queries. Where finance teams remain in control, agility stays in-house, and spreadsheet logic is versioned, secured, and automated.
This is what I’ve been doing for two decades.
This is what I’m demonstrating with the Mission:Impossible Excel series.
And this is where you come in.
💡 This Is Your Moment
You don’t need to be a developer.
You don’t need to wait for IT or buy an FP&A tool that locks you out of your own process.
All you need is this:
✅ A shift in mindset
✅ An understanding of hub-and-spoke spreadsheet architecture
✅ A willingness to unlearn what social media taught you about Excel
That’s it.
Because the truth is:
There is a massive, overlooked, high-value opportunity in transforming Excel Hell.
Not replacing it.
Transforming it.
The difference between chaos and control is just one architectural leap.
And I’ve already built the bridge.
Now it’s your turn.
🚀 The gold rush is here. And this time, it’s made of Excel.
Join me.
Watch the Mission:Impossible episodes.
See the real-world demos.
Steal the playbook if you like—I’m handing it to you.
You can transform spreadsheets.
You can transform your company.
And you can transform your pay while you’re at it.
This is Excel reimagined.
This is Excel with a mission.
And the mission starts now.
– Hiran de Silva
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