Entrepreneur, Father and Financial Strategist
SaaS and subscription business models are increasingly more pervasive each day. Benefits and conveniences are high for customers: they subscribe to a cloud-based service that is updated and maintained for them. Netflix or Office 365 are SaaS, as are subscription-based physical services such as BirchBox or Dollar Shave Club. But the accounting and analysis can […]
As Edward Demings, the famous management consultant, once said, “In God we trust. All others bring data.” Getting (and digesting) good data is key to running your company wisely and well. For our new clients, typically high-growth startups, one of the first things we do is to put together a comprehensive financial reporting package. I […]
As both a business owner and as a CFO, I’ve worked with dozens of early-stage startup and growth companies. These business owners and entrepreneurs often ask me what I do for my company’s financial and operational reporting. What do I look at? And why do I look at it? Companies vary significantly in their reporting […]
I’m often asked by early-stage startups, “What processes do we need to formalize? What apps should we get to start out?” If you’re ready to build some financial accounting structure, I recommend these five apps to build your back-office tech stack. All provide three benefits: They scale with you as you grow, They are low-cost […]
Two different startup owners recently called me with this same question. “Do I need a valuation to set the sale price for my company?” Good question. Valuations can be expensive—not something you want to mess around with if you don’t need to. And it makes sense to assume that having a reported business value would […]
I’m walking you through five main steps to setting up an equity-granting program in an LLC. Frederic, the owner of a $15 million e-commerce firm, asked me how to compensate a new COO he wanted to hire to 10x his company. At the end, I’ll tell you what he decided. In part 1, I went […]
Frederic runs a $15 million a year e-commerce company that he has grown steadily for the last 10 years, pretty much by himself. Now he wants to bring on a highly experienced operational executive to focus on logistics, fulfillment and e-commerce, allowing him to focus on sales, marketing and product. Because he wanted the COO […]
RELATED: 5 Steps to Designing an Effective Sales Compensation Plan (Part 1 of 2) Creating (or adjusting) a sales compensation plan can be tricky. Horror stories abound about poor sales comp plans that cost too much or encouraged bad behavior activity. These are the 5 steps I walk clients through to make sure they develop […]
Grats—you’re ready to grow and/or scale your sales team. As your team grows, as your customers change and as your growth objectives become a bit more clear, it can be challenging to create a bullet-proof sales comp plan that is both simple and understandable. You have probably heard horror stories about a sales comp plan […]
Cash is king in a new and growing business. The faster cash comes in after your work, product or invoice goes out (your cash conversion cycles), the better. But short cash cycles alone don’t grow your business. For one, they don’t deliver the fundamentals of profitability or good unit economics. In Part I, we talked […]
