Tactical insights for first-time founders to outsmart the burn, the churn & the breakdown.

Hey Founder,

Profitability isn’t the goal; it’s the threshold.

Once you’re there, obsessing over “more profit” can quietly cap your growth. Because profit hides things: weak systems, patchwork ops, and decisions that don’t scale.

The shift most founders miss? After profitability, it’s no longer about squeezing margins; it’s about building enterprise value.

Not “how much do we make,” but “how well do we run?”

Even if you’re not planning to sell, using a buyer’s lens surfaces what profit masks: fragile workflows, founder dependency, growth bottlenecks.

Let’s dig into that.

Reaching profitability feels like a milestone, and it is, but for many founders, it quietly becomes a trap.

Once the business is covering itself and money isn’t tight, urgency fades. Founders stop questioning systems, pricing remains stuck in legacy decisions, and dashboards replace actual insight. Profit gives the illusion of control, but often hides the underlying fragility.

I recently sat with a SaaS founder: $8M ARR, 26% growth, confidently profitable. On the surface, it looked solid. But under the hood? No proper financial reporting. No clear revenue recognition. Pricing decisions based on “what feels fair.” Internally, everything still ran through the founder’s brain.

When we mapped it against industry benchmarks, the result was obvious: not a bad business, just an undervalued one. Not because of revenue, but because the business wasn’t structured to scale without friction.

A buyer would see the gaps instantly and price them in.

This isn’t rare. Evernote made the same mistake at a different scale. While they focused on preserving profit, Notion was compounding long-term value, improving product, widening use cases, and building defensibility. Notion went from $2B to $10B. Evernote got sold for less than its peak valuation.

The lesson: profit isn’t the goal, it’s the baseline. What matters next is whether the business gets more valuable over time. And that requires a different lens.

Ask yourself: Would I buy this business tomorrow?

That one question surfaces fragile systems, messy books, and risks your P&L won’t show.

Building for EV means tightening your numbers, simplifying decision-making, and designing systems that don’t rely on your constant oversight.

Buyer-ready businesses, clean, scalable, founder-independent, trade at double or triple the multiple. Ignoring EV doesn’t just slow you down. It costs you millions.

Enterprise value isn’t just for exits. It’s how you scale smarter, and build something that actually lasts.

It’s not just Revenue × Twitter multiple. Here’s what buyers and investors really pay for:

If it’s not documented, diversified, or automated, it’s at risk. And here’s the stat that matters: 70–80% of companies that go up for sale don’t sell.

Why? They fail on these exact points: messy ops, weak numbers, or businesses that break without the founder in the room.

Fix these levers, and suddenly your business becomes not just fundable but desirable.

Check your concentration: >40% from your top 3 clients = risk.
Churn, repeat purchases, retainer rates, if you can’t track them, start this week.
→ Action: Pitch 5 new clients if one makes up >30% of your revenue.

Compare your metrics to trusted benchmarks:
SaaS Capital, Bessemer, Shopify, or top-tier agency data.
→ What’s below par? Fix that first.

Know your numbers:
Gross Margin: SaaS >75%, ecom >50%, services >50–60%.
LTV: CAC should be 3:1 or better.
→ Action: Raise prices 10–15% on your top offers this week.

Could you send clean financials + contracts in 10 minutes?
You should.
→ Create a basic data room and update it monthly: P&L, contracts, KPIs, org chart, IP docs.

Find the 3 tasks that only you touch.
→ Record a Loom, assign an owner, or automate it by Friday.

A founder wrote me recently:

For lean teams, too many metrics slow you down faster than too few. You don’t need complexity, you need clarity. Not dashboards for dashboards’ sake, but a clear direction that everyone can rally behind and actually act on.

The goal isn’t more numbers. It’s alignment.

Pick what matters, make it visible, and build a team that knows how to move it.

Send it my way, just hit reply.

Best picks this week:

Before you go…

Profit keeps the lights on.

Enterprise value keeps the business standing when you step away.

This week, ask yourself: Would I buy this business tomorrow, at full price?

If the answer isn’t an immediate yes, that’s not failure.

That’s the start of your roadmap.

That’s the moat you build next.

See you next Thursday

— Mariya

Hit reply and let me know. I read every single one (for real).

Hey, I’m Mariya, a startup CFO and founder of FounderFirst. After 10 years working alongside founders at early and growth-stage startups, I know how tough it is to make the right calls when resources are tight and the stakes are high. I started this newsletter to share the practical playbook I wish every founder had from day one, packed with lessons I’ve learned (and mistakes I’ve made) helping teams scale.

Mariya Valeva

Find me on LinkedIn