👋🏾 Hi friends!

This weekend I spoke at Niyo Fest about the gender and ethnic funding gap that seems to be persisting.

An interesting (and depressing) stat that I talked about from this Crunchbase article says it all:

It was great to have been able to give my perspective on what founders can practically do to improve their chances of securing funding – irrespective of the real or perceived barriers out there 💪🏾

I’m well underway writing about all the things I’ve learned from the last couple of decades as founder, CFO and CEO, so sign up for early access to Off Balance – The Book and feel free to share with anyone else you think might enjoy it 😄.

Now let’s get down to business…

In this weeks Off Balance:

🎙️ Andrea Gurnari from 2100 Ventures on Nothing Ventured talking about building hardware and investing across Europe.
🔥 What founders often get wrong about burn.

This week on Nothing Ventured I spoke to Andrea Gurnari, Partner at 2100 Ventures 🚀

2100 Ventures is a pre-seed and seed stage fund dedicated to supporting European entrepreneurs driving the new golden age of industrial innovation, investing in B2B businesses across a range of verticals. Prior to 2100 Ventures, Andrea was an investor with Atomico and Connect Ventures before which he worked in and co-founded startups in Italy and the UK.

We talked about:

💸 How early should founders be thinking about monetisation.
🇬🇧 The collaborative and international nature of the UK and why that’s a huge advantage for the country.
🤔 How the psychology of the founder impacts their decision making, accepting that the experiment hasn’t worked can be very difficult.
🧠 Why founders need deep intellectual honesty.
👹 The ecosystem owes it to founders to not demonise failure.
🧪 Everything starts with experiments.
🇪🇺 Can we innovate on the old economy of Europe and rebuild productivity the region has lost.
🤨 Andrea’s contrarian take – sometimes you have to judge the reasoning not the output.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts!

If you have any feedback on the podcast or the newsletter, just reply to this mail or ping me online!

If you like what I’m putting out, do give me a follow on LinkedIn and Twitter.

(If you are trying to connect with me on LinkedIn, maybe read this post I wrote and make sure to start your request with “Off Balance” and, importantly, tell me why you’d like to connect 💪🏾)

Now let’s get into it.

Off Balance

Finance is full of acronyms and a variety of terms that, if you haven’t really learned them, can be easy to get wrong (I recall one founder I worked with who insisted on calling the cap table a capX table – conflating capex and capitalisation).

One of my bug bears is when folk talk about EBITDA as if it was the exact same thing as their burn.

New flash.

It’s not.

Here’s why…

Founders stop shorthanding EBITDA for your burn.

There is a reason that it’s not formally recognized by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), or Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

But for tech founders that don’t have a strong understanding of finance, it feels like a power move to quote EBITDA and, as I have seen far too often, sub it in for burn.

Let’s break it down.

Take a SaaS business that sells 5 annual contracts at $50k a pop, has monthly payroll of $100k and, for the sake of simplicity has no other costs running through it.

On the Income Statement they’d actually show the following:

➡️ Revenue = $20.8k
➡️ Costs = $50k
➡️ EBITDA = $(29k) – loss.

Now let’s assume they capitalise 50% of their payroll to the balance sheet as they are creating long term IP.

The income statement now looks like this:

➡️ Revenue = $20.8k
➡️ Costs = $25k
➡️ EBITDA = $(4k) – loss.

But neither of these equate to their <actual> burn which looks like this:

➡️ Inflow = $250k
➡️ Outflow = $50k
➡️ Net burn = $200k inflow

These are three pretty different numbers and all three are correct from an accounting perspective, but only one of them shows the actual cash performance of the business.

Yes there is further complexity, yes there are other reasons to point to EBITDA, yes you can wrangle business numbers till the cows come home.

But I’m just here to inform and hopefully educate.

Cos you can trip yourself up and look naive if you get it wrong and it gets picked up.

So if you’re not sure what your actual burn is, have a chat to someone that can help you figure it out and remember,,, cash really is king.

As always, my office hours are open, if you’d like to chat about this or anything else, just grab some time 😊.

I hope you found Off Balance #52 useful. As always, I’d love to get your feedback and understand the sort of topics you would love to hear about.

Just hit reply to this mail or drop me a line at [email protected] and let me know 😊

🚀And that’s a wrap for this edition of Off Balance – I’d appreciate your feedback so just reply to this email if you’ve got something you’d like to say.

📨 And if you think someone else might love this, please forward it on to them,

🎧 Finally, if you’re a fan of the Nothing Ventured podcast, please don’t forget to like, rate and subscribe wherever you get your pods – it really helps us spread the word.

That’s it from me so until next time…

Stay liquid 🙂

Aarish

“Like Morning Brew (but for venture capital)”

Join 15,000+ VCs and investors getting smarter on venture capital by reading this free daily newsletter.

Start getting the headlines that matter, lists of companies breaking out, and other resources and playbooks you won’t find anywhere else.

Become a smarter investor in < 5 min a day.

Subscribe for free

👋🏾 Hi friends!

Even as autumn descends, it seems like we’re starting to see some green shoots in the venture ecosystem, a bit of life – or to put it more bluntly, a bit of cash coming back into the system – fingers crossed we start seeing a bit more activity so we can see 2024 out with a bang 🤞 🧨 

Don’t forget, I’ll be speaking at Niyo Fest this Saturday where I’ll be talking about Levelling the Playing Field: The Gender Finance Gap – come join me in Birmingham for a celebration of technology, culture and community 💪🏾

As you know, I’m well underway writing about all the things I’ve learned from the last couple of decades as founder, CFO and CEO, so sign up for early access to Off Balance – The Book and feel free to share with anyone else you think might enjoy it 😄. I’m setting myself the target of getting through a large portion of it whilst I’m away in Italy during August – wish me luck!

Now let’s get down to business…

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗙𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗮 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 📈

In this week’s episode of Nothing Ventured, I sat down with Alokik Advani, Managing Partner at Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, building and investing in fintech businesses and technologies that are strategic to Fidelity International.

Alokik’s career has spanned over two decades in finance setting up a strategic investment unit for Merrill Lynch in Europe after which he spent a decade building out Goldman Sach’s Strategic Investments team and practice in Hong Kong before joining VC firm Eight Roads as the MD for Fintech Strategic Investments.

In this episode we covered:

→ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗽𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗩𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹: Alokik discussed the common misconceptions surrounding CVCs, often labeled as “dumb money” or slow-moving entities. However, he emphasised that strategic investors can bring significant value beyond just capital. By aligning incentives and actively participating in the growth of startups, CVCs can foster meaningful partnerships that drive innovation and revenue potential. This shift in mindset is crucial for founders to understand as they navigate their funding options.

→ 𝗘𝗺𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗥𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝘀: In today’s market, many startups face the reality of down rounds. Alokik encouraged founders not to dread this scenario but to view it as an opportunity for recalibration. By focusing on building sustainable businesses with solid fundamentals—like achieving $100 million in ARR rather than chasing billion-dollar valuations—founders can create long-term value. This perspective shift can help startups weather economic uncertainties and emerge stronger.

→ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗗𝘂𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝗩𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹: Alokik highlighted the need for flexibility in investment duration, especially in a rapidly changing market. Traditional 10-year fund structures may not suit all startups, particularly those in sectors experiencing significant shifts. Fidelity’s approach allows for a longer-term view, enabling them to support companies that require more time to realize their potential. This adaptability is essential for fostering innovation and ensuring that startups have the runway they need to succeed.

We also spoke about:

🤑 Whether corporate ventures only provide the dumb money and over pay?

👩🏾‍💼 Strategic investors are now involved in 20% of deals or more.

📉 Why you shouldn’t dread the downround

⏳ How startups can outlast the 10 year fund structure.

💸 Why if it isn’t easy to realise returns, everything slows down.

🤯 The mindset shift required to becoming the $100m ARR company rather than the $1bn company.

🐢 Alokik’s contrarian advice – Slow down and take your time sometimes.

Check it out on YouTube!

Else listen on Spotify or Apple

If you have any feedback, or if there’s something you’re desperate to see me include, just reply to this mail or ping me online – I’m very open to conversations.

If you like what I’m putting out, do give me a follow on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.

(If you are trying to connect with me on LinkedIn, maybe read this post I wrote and make sure to start your request with “Off Balance” and, more importantly, tell me why you’d like to connect 💪🏾)

Don’t forget to like, rate and subscribe to Nothing Ventured on Apple, Spotify or YouTube, it really helps more people see what we’re doing – you can find links to these (and more including my Office Hours) right here!

As always, my office hours are open, if you’d like to chat about anything finance, tech or venture releated, just grab some time 😊.

I hope you found Off Balance #51 valuable. As always, I’d love to get your feedback and understand the sort of topics you would love to hear about.

Just hit reply to this mail or drop me a line at [email protected] and let me know 😊

🚀And that’s a wrap for this edition of Off Balance – I’d appreciate your feedback so just reply to this email if you’ve got something you’d like to say.

📨 If you think someone else might love this, please forward it on to them,

🎧 Finally, if you’re a fan of the Nothing Ventured podcast, please don’t forget to like, rate and subscribe wherever you get your pods – it really helps us spread the word.

That’s it from me so until next time…

Stay liquid 🙂

Aarish

Get your news where Silicon Valley gets its news 📰

The best investors need the information that matters, fast.

That’s why a lot of them (including investors from a16z, Bessemer, Founders Fund, and Sequoia) trust this free newsletter.

It’s a five minute-read every morning, and it gives readers the information they need ASAP so they can spend less time scrolling and more time doing.

Subscribe for free

👋🏾 Hi friends!

And,,, we’re back!

Time flies when you’re having fun busier than you can imagine! Having returned back from Italy at the end of August, it turns out things seemed to be moving and shaking in the world of venture.

Last week I was on a panel with Mercia Ventures talking about the joys of bootstrapping (more on that below) and in a couple of weeks or so I’ll be talking at Niyo Fest where I’ll be talking about Levelling the Playing Field: The Gender Finance Gap – come join me in Birmingham for a celebration of technology, culture and community 💪🏾

I’m well underway writing about all the things I’ve learned from the last couple of decades as founder, CFO and CEO, so sign up for early access to Off Balance – The Book and feel free to share with anyone else you think might enjoy it 😄.

Now let’s get down to business…

In this weeks Off Balance:

🎙️ Joe Seager-Dupuy from True on the podcast to talk venture, consumer and retail and his time at the Branson Family Office.
🥾 Some reflections on bootstrapping.

For the first episode of the new season of Nothing Ventured we spoke to Joe Seager-Dupuy, Investment Director in the VC Team at True., a consumer and retail focused investment and innovation advisory firm based in London with circa $1bn of assets under management.

True’s VC Fund invests into Pre-Seed to Series A startups operating in the consumer and retail vertical, both B2C and B2B.

Prior to joining True, Joe was a Director of Corporate Strategy and Development at Virgin Management, the Branson family office, and had spent the early part of his career in strategy at WarnerMedia and OC&C Strategy Consultants.

In this episode, we talked about:

🐐 How there is something to be said to getting beasted pretty hard early in your career.
🤯 How Richard Branson has repeatedly done and created improbable things throughout his career.
❓ How family offices differ from VCs in how they invest in venture.
🌩️ How it’s been a perfect storm for consumer businesses.
🛍️ How 60% of the GDP of most western economies is consumer spending – 60 trillion globally, 15 trillion in Europe.
👖 Will AI agents be buying your clothes in the future?
⚽️ Joe’s contrarian opinion is that Ipswich will win the premiership in the next 10 years.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts!

If you have any feedback on the podcast or the newsletter, just reply to this mail or ping me online!

If you like what I’m putting out, do give me a follow on LinkedIn and Twitter.

(If you are trying to connect with me on LinkedIn, maybe read this post I wrote and make sure to start your request with “Off Balance” and, importantly, tell me why you’d like to connect 💪🏾)

Now let’s get into it.

Off Balance

On a recent panel in Leeds, I got the chance to sit down with Kiran Mehta, investor at Mercia, Michael Cleavely – founder of CoComply, Dan Rosenberg – cofounder of LinkyThinks and Lucy Bulley – fractional COO to talk about the intricacies, issues and opportunities that bootstrapping your business offers.

It was a pretty robust conversation and some super interesting questions from the audience, I’ve tried to distil it all down into my top takeaways below…

Yes, but what does bootstrapping actually mean…?

Firstly, let’s clarify something, some folk think that if you’ve only taken on a bit of angel investment, you’re a bootstrapper, but the reality is that bootstrapping means literally funding the business on its own steam with revenue as the only source of capital you’ve got to grow.

With that out of the way, here were the things that really stood out for me by the end of the conversation:

1. Not all (most!) businesses should not take on venture money.

If it wasn’t apparent already, whilst I work with a lot of VC backed businesses (or maybe precisely because I do), not every business is suitable for the venture model. It needs to be in, or creating, a market that has the potential for incredibly outsized outcomes (the famous fund returning unicorns so sought after amongst VCs).

If your business doesn’t fit the profile of scaling hard and scaling fast whilst generating incredible value without needing costs to scale linearly with revenue – then venture probably isn’t right.

2. Know yourself first, character and ambition will have an impact.

Beyond the ability to scale, you have to really understand yourself before taking on venture funding (or any funding for that matter).

I’ve found over time that I really don’t like being beholden to others (probably why I consider myself unemployable) so I would probably not take on external investors in anything I might build from here on in (having done it once I know for sure it’s not for me!).

Unless you – on top of the ability for your business to scale – have the ambition and unrelenting drive to push your business in a certain fashion, you might well be better of bootstrapping.

3. Scarce capital requires focussed decisions, but not necessarily slow ones.

When you don’t have a lot of cash to play with, you have to think very hard about what is going to move the needle most and provide the best return on what you spend. But that doesn’t mean that you should run your business in a state of decision paralysis.

Be considered, thoughtful and thorough in your decisions, but make those decisions as quickly as you can.

When you have a lot of cash, you can afford to take more bets to see what works best – that’s not to say you should spend without thinking, but at least you have the option to run experiements in parallell.

4. There is no magic number to get to if you do want to raise external capital – market, traction and speed to scale matter more.

Lots of people think there is some kind of revenue number that you have to reach in order to raise VC money, but many of the VC backed businesses I know raised very early in their lifecycle and often pre-revenue.

The more important thing to consider is whether it has the technology and shows the traits to be able to get to venture scale.

5. R&D heavy businesses lend themselves less to bootstrapping as you need capital to build.

If you’re building in the hardware space, or a very tech heavy business then it’s a lot harder to bootstrap. Most of these types of ventures need a lot of cash to get off the ground and to build out product substantially enough to start testing the market.

Many bootstrappers will go out and do some consulting to fund their development which works better for pure software / SaaS ventures, but might be a bit harder for the R&D heavy businesses I mention.

But it’s also not impossible, you can apply for grants, take out loans and potentially find a reference customer that might fund part of the devlopment – but the reality is that it’ll be hard to find someone who can fund enough to make it work.

6. Get out of the building and talk to customers – keep iterating.

Both founders on the panel said this a few times, and let’s face it, whether you’re bootstrapping or not you have to get out of the building and speak to customers.

Not only will that help inform your product, but it’ll also help you ensure that you’re spending money in the right areas.

7. Enterprise customers need a complete solution, consumers might be a bit more forgiving.

When you’re bootstrapping, you have to think about how ‘complete’ your product (if it’s a software business) needs to be before you can take it out to potential clients.

The reality is that enterprise clients are going to be less inclined to buy a half baked product so you’re probably going to have to spend more time and money to build out something acceptable whereas consumers can be a bit more forgiving – one of the founders told us that for their edtech business, they spent most of their energy on getting the content right and left the platform fairly raw until they had validated demand for the content.

8. Your tech is almost always better if you can build in house.

This might be slightly contentious, but you might find that if you outsource your tech development to an agency, you either don’t get the product you commissioned, or don’t get it in the time you need it, or don’t end up paying what you thought you would.

In fact, even if you do use an agency, ultimately you’re going to have to find a way to bring your development in house in any case.

Clearly, when you are bootstrapping it’s hard to bring on employees full time, but you might want to consider bringing someone on part time or as a contractor as opposed to hiring an agency, this way you’ll probably be closer to the development proceess and more able to course correct in real time.

9. You can still get to great outcomes when bootstrapping, it just might take longer.

People often assume the only way you can get to a huge outcome is by taking on venture capital, but there are some pretty famous businesses that boostrapped their way to success – look at MailChimp, BaseCamp or GitHub if you want some inspiration.

Equally, Shopify bootstrapped for 6 years before taking on venture funding and is now valued at well over $100 billion.

10. Building a business is HARD whichever route you take.

Frankly, whether you choose to bootstrap or take on venture capital, building a business is difficult and in either case, you are going to have different challenges to consider.

The most important thing is that you’ve chosen to build, and there is nothing more gratifying than that 🚀

As always, my office hours are open, if you’d like to chat about this or anything else, just grab some time 😊.

I hope you found Off Balance #50 useful. As always, I’d love to get your feedback and understand the sort of topics you would love to hear about.

Just hit reply to this mail or drop me a line at [email protected] and let me know 😊

🚀And that’s a wrap for this edition of Off Balance – I’d appreciate your feedback so just reply to this email if you’ve got something you’d like to say.

📨 And if you think someone else might love this, please forward it on to them,

🎧 Finally, if you’re a fan of the Nothing Ventured podcast, please don’t forget to like, rate and subscribe wherever you get your pods – it really helps us spread the word.

That’s it from me so until next time…

Stay liquid 🙂

Aarish

👋🏾 Hi friends!

As summer comes to a close, I’ve been battling the heat in Italy and, dare I say it, am now looking forward to getting a bit of cool weather back in London 😅

In the final episode of Nothing Ventured for the season, I had the incredible pleasure to interview Piers Linney – ex Dragon from the BBC’s show, Dragons’ Den. All I can say is that it was an absolute pleasure getting the chance to explore how Piers got to where he has gotten to and his thoughts on everything from exiting his first business (a newspaper round!), to appearing on the Den and his thoughts on AI and why we need to do more than pay lip service to DEI – you don’t want to miss out on this episode 💪🏾

I’m going to be taking a break for a couple of weeks so this is the last you’re going to hear from me for the rest of the month, hope you have an incredible end to the summer and I’ll catch you on the other side!

Ciao for now 😃 

I’m well underway writing about all the things I’ve learned from the last couple of decades as founder, CFO and CEO, so sign up for early access to Off Balance – The Book and feel free to share with anyone else you think might enjoy it 😄.

Now let’s get down to business…

In this weeks Off Balance:

🎙️ Ex Dragons Den Dragon Piers Linney on Nothing Ventured 🤯
📈 How to move from growth at all costs to the new holy grail of Efficient Growth

𝗬𝗼𝘂’𝗹𝗹 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗴𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗼𝗻’𝘀 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀… 🐉

As this season of Nothing Ventured wraps, I couldn’t be more excited to introduce our final guest for Season 5, someone that really needs no introduction at all…

I spoke to Piers Linney, best known as an investor on the BBC show The Dragons’ Den in which budding entrepreneurs get three minutes to pitch their business ideas to five investors, he has also featured on Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire.

But beyond the media, Piers has had 25 years across a variety of sectors, be it law, entrepreneurship, Venture Capital, investment banking, innovation or technology.

He has been a NED at the British Business Bank and is currently Adviser to Sky on their Diversity Advisory Council, Chair of Atherton Bikes whose bikes took both first and second place in the 2023 World Championships and is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Implement AI.

My top takeaways from this wide ranging conversation:

1️⃣ 𝗔𝗺𝗯𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗱: Piers talked about the importance of recognising that ambition knows no boundaries. Regardless of background or circumstances, ambition is a universal trait that can drive success in entrepreneurship and beyond.

2️⃣ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝗻 𝗦𝗠𝗘𝘀: Piers delves into the significance of integrating AI into small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). He emphasizes the need for businesses to adapt and embrace AI technology to enhance productivity and efficiency in the evolving digital landscape.

3️⃣ 𝗔𝘂𝗴𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗜: Piers discusses the concept of augmenting human capabilities with AI technology. By leveraging AI agents for repetitive and mundane tasks, businesses can empower their workforce to focus on more meaningful and strategic work, ultimately driving innovation and growth.

We also talked about:

🗞️Exiting his first business – a paper round!
🧮 How there weren’t many business role models in the Lancashire mill town he grew up in, so he was told to be an accountant.
🔮 From hustling businesses, delivering newspapers, going into law then banking and into tech.
💃🏽 Why DEI is about both about being asked to the party but more importantly invited to dance.
📊 How ambition is evenly distributed.
🤑 How he got a 45x exit from on his Dragon portfolio.
🌎 How and why nation states are obsessed with AI and why we should be too.
⚖️ Equality of access to opportunity.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts!

If you have any feedback on the podcast or the newsletter, just reply to this mail or ping me online!

If you like what I’m putting out, do give me a follow on LinkedIn and Twitter.

(If you are trying to connect with me on LinkedIn, maybe read this post I wrote and make sure to start your request with “Off Balance” and, importantly, tell me why you’d like to connect 💪🏾)

Now let’s get into it.

Off Balance

There’s been a fair amount of ink spilt on the shift in the VC landscape (not least by me), and the new mantra of efficient growth has taken hold as a catchphrase of how you need to build a VC backed business in 2024 and beyond.

But this doesn’t necessarily give founders the tools to understand how to move from pure growth to efficient growth so here are some ideas from me on how that can be achieved.

On efficient growth.

I speak to ALOT of VCs and founders and our CFOs are in the thick of things every single day.

Over the last couple of years there has been a major inflection in the whole VC industry that hasn’t gone unnoticed.

The first phase was a slowing of both the velocity and volume of deals – fewer companies getting funded and over more time.

The second was a reversion to, anecdotally at least, more R&D heavy companies – lots of life sciences, hardware and – of course – AI startups.

The third phase has been the one that has a lot of founders and frankly CFOs scrabbling to figure out how to proceed:

Efficient growth.

What the heck does that even mean?

VCs tended to look at businesses that could scale quickly.

A template growth pattern would be 33322 meaning a tripling of revenue for a couple of years followed by several years of doubling.

If $1m was the starting point it would go:

1m ➡️ 3m ➡️ 9m ➡️ 27m ➡️ 54m ➡️ 108m

Reaching the $100m mark on a 10x revenue multiple would lead to the hallowed unicorn status of a $1bn valuation.

The ‘traditional’ way of getting this growth was to pour VC dollars into acquisition and product sprinkled with the odd M&A to juice the numbers up.

But that worked when money was “cheap”. You could burn capital and simply go out to raise more.

But Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore…

As money became more expensive and investors retreated they still wanted large outcomes from the businesses they backed but want them to do it with less capital, fewer rounds and a more thoughtful approach to burn and runway.

Enter efficiency.

CFOs around the ecosystem have been working out how to make each dollar work harder for longer without impacting scale.

This is not a simple circle to square for most young businesses as they are starting from a low base, marketing was the tool that got them further, faster.

So how can CFOs help drive efficiency without impacting scale? A few pointers:

Trim and manage headcount – the impetus to hire when you land new funding is strong. You have to resist and make the case for each new hire. No ‘fat’ in the system.

Move from acquisition to retention – it’s cheaper and more valuable in the longer term to retain customers rather than trying to bring ever harder to land new ones.

Focus on reducing churn – coupled with that is understanding why customers churn and reducing leakage – as Ivan Hoo recently posted, don’t keep trying to fill a leaky bucket.

Stop cash leaking through poor working capital management – chase debts, negotiate terms with creditors, manage inventory tightly.

Add debt to the mix – debt makes businesses more efficient immediately as repayments force ventures to treat their cash as a more precious resource.

Forecast, forecast, forecast – if you aren’t planning you’re planning to fail. Know numbers intimately.

Double down on unit economics – Ensure every part of your business model adds up. CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), LTV (Lifetime Value), and gross margins need to align to ensure long-term profitability. CFOs will use these metrics to allocate resources in the most efficient manner, driving sustainable growth.

Optimise operational efficiency – Streamline your internal processes. Evaluate your tech stack, automate repetitive tasks, and eliminate bottlenecks. Every operational improvement frees up resources and allows teams to focus on activities that directly contribute to growth.

Partner strategically – Explore strategic partnerships that can extend your reach without heavy investment. Partnerships can unlock new customer segments, distribution channels, or technology capabilities that fuel growth while sharing the cost burden.

Prioritise profitable growth – Shift the mindset from growth at all costs to growth with profit in mind. Focusing on profitability as you scale creates a healthier financial foundation and makes your business more attractive to investors in this capital-constrained environment.

Whilst this is not an exhaustive list, it gives you a foundation to work from. Review your business from the bottom up and understand exactly what levers you have to shift how the business operates to a more efficiency driven profile.

Ultimately, in this market and environment, it’s going to be critical to figure out how you can drive efficiency throughout every aspect of the business, from automation to maniacal obsession over metrics and unit economics, this will allow you to survive longer and make sure you’re not just burning cash in pursuit of the holy grail of growth.

As always, my office hours are open, if you’d like to chat about this or anything else, just grab some time 😊.

I hope you found Off Balance #49 useful. As always, I’d love to get your feedback and understand the sort of topics you would love to hear about.

Just hit reply to this mail or drop me a line at [email protected] and let me know 😊

🚀And that’s a wrap for this edition of Off Balance – I’d appreciate your feedback so just reply to this email if you’ve got something you’d like to say.

📨 And if you think someone else might love this, please forward it on to them,

🎧 Finally, if you’re a fan of the Nothing Ventured podcast, please don’t forget to like, rate and subscribe wherever you get your pods – it really helps us spread the word.

That’s it from me so until next time…

Stay liquid 🙂

Aarish

👋🏾 Hi friends!

It’s just a smidge hot out here so my brain doesn’t seem to be working at full spec right now! Apologies for the late send on today’s newsletter, I just got back from a few days of full on down time and forgot it was a Tuesday 😬 

As you know, I’m well underway writing about all the things I’ve learned from the last couple of decades as founder, CFO and CEO, so sign up for early access to Off Balance – The Book and feel free to share with anyone else you think might enjoy it 😄. I’m setting myself the target of getting through a large portion of it whilst I’m away in Italy during August – wish me luck!

Now let’s get down to business…

𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲, 𝗽𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻

On today’s episode of Nothing Ventured, I spoke to Cintia Mano, the Chief Executive Officer of COREangels a global brand of hands-on angels, investing in early-stage startups through local portfolio funds.

Cintia has a rich background in computer science, corporate strategy, and early-stage investing. Her passion for mentoring and supporting early-stage companies led her to join a group of angel investors, eventually investing in 27 startups. Recognizing patterns and opportunities, she decided to create her own network and was soon invited to lead COREangels, one of the most active angel networks in Europe where under her leadership, it has grown to encompass 11 angel funds, with plans to launch five more this year across various countries including Portugal, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Egypt, the US, and Chile.

The network focuses on pre-seed and seed investments and includes vertical funds, such as the Climate Tech fund in Italy. Cintia’s efforts are directed towards formalising angel funds, fostering best practices, and providing valuable learning experiences for angel investors.

On this episode, we talked about:

😇 Building angel funds to bring capital and investors together.
😓 Why sometimes it’s hard for an angel to make a decision on their own.
🌎 How COREAngels is investing across geographies and verticals to facilitate expansion and cross pollination amongst both angels and startups.
🤦‍♀️ Why we shouldn’t need more female angels to invest in more female founders.
🚫 Female founders does not equal only femtech.
💸 Angel investing is a game of patience.
🧘‍♀️ Cintia’s contrarian opinion is that we are always alone, and we need to build ourselves before we rely on anyone else.

Check it out on YouTube!

Else listen on Spotify or Apple

If you have any feedback, or if there’s something you’re desperate to see me include, just reply to this mail or ping me online – I’m very open to conversations.

If you like what I’m putting out, do give me a follow on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.

(If you are trying to connect with me on LinkedIn, maybe read this post I wrote and make sure to start your request with “Off Balance” and, more importantly, tell me why you’d like to connect 💪🏾)

Don’t forget to like, rate and subscribe to Nothing Ventured on Apple, Spotify or YouTube, it really helps more people see what we’re doing – you can find links to these (and more including my Office Hours) right here!

As always, my office hours are open, if you’d like to chat about anything finance, tech or venture releated, just grab some time 😊.

I hope you found Off Balance #48 valuable. As always, I’d love to get your feedback and understand the sort of topics you would love to hear about.

Just hit reply to this mail or drop me a line at [email protected] and let me know 😊

🚀And that’s a wrap for this edition of Off Balance – I’d appreciate your feedback so just reply to this email if you’ve got something you’d like to say.

📨 If you think someone else might love this, please forward it on to them,

🎧 Finally, if you’re a fan of the Nothing Ventured podcast, please don’t forget to like, rate and subscribe wherever you get your pods – it really helps us spread the word.

That’s it from me so until next time…

Stay liquid 🙂

Aarish

All your news. None of the bias.

Be the smartest person in the room by reading 1440! Dive into 1440, where 3.5 million readers find their daily, fact-based news fix. We navigate through 100+ sources to deliver a comprehensive roundup from every corner of the internet – politics, global events, business, and culture, all in a quick, 5-minute newsletter. It’s completely free and devoid of bias or political influence, ensuring you get the facts straight.

Subscribe to 1440 today.