Cash flow, runway, and financial planning for bootstrapped founders. Burn rate management, when to raise vs. bootstrap, reading your own financials.
There's a version of "business is good" that should worry you more than "business is bad." It's the one where a single client is quietly carrying the company.
You made a budget. Somewhere around January, or the start of a new quarter, or maybe that afternoon when your accountant nudged you for the third time.
Every founder I know has had this conversation with themselves at least once. Usually in the bathroom. Sometimes in the car.
The numbers came out recently, and I've been chewing on them ever since. Median fundraising cycle in 2026: 23 months.
The calendar flips to the last week of June, and somewhere a founder feels it before they can name it. A low hum. The quiet awareness that the quarter is ending, the books need closing, and the person whose job that would be is, well, them.
A guide to the financial patterns that are systematically reassuring — right up until they're not. The most expensive financial problems don't announce themselves. (MAVI x MyRunwayHealth collab — Blog 2.4.)
A few weeks ago I hosted a webinar with Duncan from Lunos.ai about cash flow forecasting for startups. One question came up three separate times, from three different founders, in three different industries: "How do I get my clients to pay faster?"
Every founder has the spreadsheet. You know the one. It has a tab nobody else could navigate, a formula that only works because of something you did back in March and never wrote down, and a row shaded yellow for a reason you've long since forgotten but are afraid to delete.
Brex acquired Pry Financials for $90 million in April 2022. A few years later, they announced they were winding it down, effective Feb 2026 (ironically after Brex was acquired by Capital One).
What-if modeling isn't just for big companies with finance teams — it's how you stop being surprised by the future.
The hidden costs that eat your runway — and why most founders miscalculate how much time they actually have.
Practical posts on runway, burn, and the boring-but-critical math of bootstrapping. Sent occasionally — never spammy.
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