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

Hey Founder,

Happy New Year! 

Once again, the internet is overflowing with word-of-the-year posts, reset rituals, and promises that this will be the year everything shifts.

But 2025 already sparked a different kind of shift - one where founders started saying what they meant, publishing without second-guessing, and trusting their voice without asking ten people if it sounded “professional” enough.

In 2026, the shift gets quieter and harder. It’s not about showing up louder; it’s about not asking for permission.

Because most founders aren’t blocked by skill, capital, or opportunity - they’re slowed down by other people’s narratives: the investor who ghosts, the friend who doubts, the silent chorus of LinkedIn opinions you never asked for.

So here’s the question I’m starting the year with:

If your customers already voted “yes” with their time and money, and you stop listening to everyone else, how would you lead 2026 differently?

But somewhere along the way, most of us started waiting for it.

We grew up with an invisible panel in our heads. First, it was teachers and parents, then bosses, investors, and “smart” voices we quietly over-indexed - even when they’d never built what we’re building.

Over time, that panel wrote a silent rulebook:

You didn’t choose those rules; they just seeped in.

Meanwhile, your customers already voted.

They paid you. They referred you. They stayed.

That’s the only approval that ever counted.

Take Justin Welsh. He runs a multi-million-dollar solo business with more freedom and margin than most funded founders ever touch.

And yet, even he’s admitted to questioning whether he’s a “real” founder - because his world doesn’t look like Demo Days or YC batches.

That’s what a fake scoreboard does. You can be winning on every metric that actually matters - freedom, profit, autonomy - and still feel behind, simply because you're playing by someone else’s rules.

Or take Oliver Cookson, founder of Myprotein. No investors, no network, no fancy credentials - just a hunch about where the margin was, a £500 overdraft, and a basic website.

He sold. Customers came back. Last year, the business did over $200 million in sales. No permission. just a clean scoreboard.

Same with Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch. No media pedigree, no economist internship, no green light from “real” journalists. He launched a blog, published obsessively, and let readers decide if it was legit.

Some dismissed it as a noisy link farm. But attention, trust, and cash speak louder than opinions ever could.

Different stories, same lesson: Ignore the fake scoreboard (who approves of your path).

Obsess over the real one (who buys, stays, and tells others).

Founders run into trouble when they start performing for a fourth group: spectators. People with opinions but no skin in the game - no cost if you're wrong, yet somehow renting space in your head.

Here’s the 2026 filter: “Does this person pay a price if I get it wrong?”

If not, they don’t get a vote.

Resolutions are usually performative, crafted to impress, easy to forget, and rarely anchored in what truly moves a business forward. They sound great on social media, filled with revenue goals and new habits meant more for optics than impact.

They’re easy to declare - and just as easy to abandon - because they’re about how things look, not what they require.

Responsibilities are different.

They don’t need to be shared or validated.

They quietly ask whether you’ll show up for the parts of the business only you can hold - even when no one’s watching.

That includes how you lead when things aren’t working, how you make decisions under pressure, and how you decide what’s worth your time - and what’s not.

When you anchor your year in responsibility, the outcomes tend to follow: revenue, retention, trust, clarity - they all compound on top of what you refuse to delegate.

So instead of asking “What are my resolutions?”, ask:

What are the three responsibilities I refuse to outsource this year?

For example:
“I own the quality of our decisions.”
“I own the health of our culture.”
“I own the clarity of our strategy.”

Everything else can flex.
These don’t.

Here are three concrete plays you can run in January to shift from intention to ownership and start building with margin, not just motion.

Pick one decision you keep circling (a hire, pricing, focus, or product call) and run it through SPADE:

One clean SPADE usually beats a month of indecision masked as strategy.

[link to the guide]

Build a scoreboard that cuts through noise and only reflects what matters.

Review monthly. If any line dips two months in a row, change behavior, not goals.

A great subscriber question this week:

At your stage, the goal is simple: cover the risks your customers and regulators care about - without buying a Series B insurance stack.

Must-haves for an early-stage B2B SaaS:

Send it my way, just hit reply.

Some cool picks that you won’t find anywhere else:

Before you go…

Richard Montañez was a janitor at a Frito-Lay factory when layoffs threatened his job. He took home a few plain Cheetos, added the flavors he grew up with, and made his own version - Flamin’ Hot.

Then he did the unthinkable: skipped the org chart, cold-called the CEO, and pitched it himself.

That one decision didn’t just change his title - it helped save the factory and the jobs around him.

Founders forget this sometimes: No one is coming to save you. And that’s not a threat - it’s an advantage.

Choose your responsibilities accordingly. That’s the real moat.

Wishing you a clear, committed start to 2026.

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

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