When you're buying a business, what are you buying? I was recently discussing an M&A deal with a client involving a business they were considering purchasing. My client owns a related business, and we were exploring acquisitions to expedite growth. We'd looked at a lot of interesting businesses, warts and all, but one in particular sticks in my mind as a great lesson: There was something really funky about this one business we looked at: They had high forecasted revenues of $5M for the next 8...
9 days ago • 2 min read
I was just watching an amazing video by modeling expert Chris Reilly on how he maps out financial models before building them. And it made me realize something about how traditional Big-Co FP&A is totally different from building financial models for startups And how Finance best practices - in general - should be different for startups than they are in big companies. It all comes down to this: It's backwards. In Chris's video, He starts his modeling map based on the Raw Data (your historical...
16 days ago • 2 min read
Tell me if this sounds familiar: You're a founder hustling in a big city, You're working with your team having a huge impact, You're rubbing shoulders with investors, advisors, and industry moguls - many of whom think you have promise. You're seeing HUGE opportunity, talking every day with customers, and so energized to get things going. But tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Next week is New Years. And suddenly - Investors are on vacation, the team is mysteriously absent, the internet is getting...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
First a quick reminder: Startup Financial Modeling 101 LIVE is happening online next week! There are still a few early-bird discount tickets left if you want to join! Okay, now back to our regularly-scheduled CFO newsletter program: Ahh... the beautiful sounds of a new CEO learning to delegate: "How the HECK don't they get it?!" "It's been 3 weeks - HOW is this not done yet?!" "How could they POSSIBLY think that was the right decision?!" "Seriously?! Do I have to do EVERYTHING myself?!" If...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Other advisors sometimes ask my why I focus on teaching financial modeling to founders. Most other FracCFOs don't do this, and for good reason: It's an uphill battle sometimes, because many founders just want to outsource it FracCFOs make TONS of money building models for founders (minimum ~10k per model!) Founders are less reliant on you when they know how to run their own model Models built by founders often only make sense to founders and VCs; many finance folks will think they're too...
2 months ago • 1 min read
As a FracCFO, a founder, a finance educator, a podcaster, and an advisor… I’m in a whole lot of group chats. Someone in one of the channels was recently asking for some advice. But their ask was quite nebulous, and folks in the group were struggling to be helpful. It got me thinking about the differences between how we use group chats, expert advisory, books, podcasts… When we have issues, these are the kinds of places we turn to. But when we pick the wrong place for the wrong type of...
3 months ago • 2 min read
It’s been a very busy few weeks over here at Daily CFO central! Updates to come soon. For now, I’ll leave you with a short one tonight - A word of warning: “To break even, all I need is 10 customers!” Is not an exciting discovery, Until you know what it takes To win One. Your Daily CFO, Lauren
4 months ago • 1 min read
Recently, I read a comment from a startup advisor peer about the lack of women in VC-funded startup leadership. Essentially: "Maybe this is just a product of preference. Maybe women are just more risk-averse. And maybe men are simply dumb enough to try." While framed as flattery, it disguises something ugly- It’s a tidy explanation for the funding gap That promotes a dangerous narrative Which is also - blatantly - wrong. Women do start venture-backed companies - many of them. About 1 in 5...
4 months ago • 1 min read
AI is supposedly making us faster. In conversations with founders and engineers, I’m hearing the same story: Prototypes that once took weeks now take days. Code that required whole teams now gets drafted in an afternoon. Experiments are cheaper, iteration is faster, and the barrier to entry for creating new products has never been lower. But speed in one part of the system often exposes constraints elsewhere. Recently, I’ve been reading Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book on...
4 months ago • 1 min read