Hey founder, I'm Mariya.
I'm the startup CFO turned founder, and the one landing in your inbox every Thursday.
I get a little too excited about a clean P&L, and a little too fired up watching brilliant founders build brilliant things, then lose the company on the numbers no one ever taught them to read.
Think like a CFO. Build like a founder.
No matter where you are in your company's journey, you should have the autonomy to make your own calls and the optionality to choose what comes next. That freedom doesn't arrive with a bigger round. It comes from understanding your own numbers.
In 12 years working with founders, I've watched too many brilliant ones get stuck in a kind of startup neverland: too small to raise at venture scale, too bloated to run lean and profitable. Caught between two playbooks, running neither well.
Almost every time, the thing keeping them there was the same. They treated their numbers as an afterthought, or something to be intimidated by, instead of the clearest map they had. So here's the line I'll stand on: founders should be empowered by their numbers, never second-guessed or scared off by them. That's the whole reason this newsletter exists.
Warren Buffett likes to say that “risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.” In startups, not knowing what you're doing usually means not really understanding your own numbers.
Three beliefs I won't compromise on.
- 01You can't scale without knowing your numbers.
- 02You can't scale what your leadership can't hold.
- 03You can't scale what you haven't clearly defined.
Where I earned the opinions.
I've coached and mentored 100+ founders through some of the programs that build them, and at FounderFirst my team and I steward $120M+ in combined client ARR. As a fellow founder, I've sweated every one of these calls from your side of the table too.
A few non-CFO facts.
- I yap a lot on LinkedIn. I think a founder's personal brand is now as much of an asset as the product, sometimes more.
- Always yes to gelato, mountain trails, and a good bookshop.
- Still rooting for the underdogs, especially the ones building on their own terms.
And before all of it, Bulgaria.
Long before the spreadsheets, my first real venture was back home in Bulgaria. It taught me more about cash, grit, and betting on yourself than anything since.
The story of my first-ever gig is in this issue →I write Tiny Margins like a letter to a friend who happens to run a company. If something here lands, hit reply. I read every one.
