Cash flow, runway, and financial planning for bootstrapped founders. Burn rate management, when to raise vs. bootstrap, reading your own financials.
Your pricing page was written by a version of you who had no customers, no payroll, and no idea what anything actually cost. That version picked a number. Probably in an evening.
It's 4:40 on a Tuesday. You're twenty minutes into a call with an investor you actually like, and she's been generous with her time. Then she asks it, casually, the way you'd ask about the weather.
Most founders I know can tell you their runway to the week. Almost none of them can tell you who actually holds their money.
You covered payroll from your own checking account once. Maybe twice. You told yourself you'd true it up later.
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.)
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.
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?"
Practical posts on runway, burn, and the boring-but-critical math of bootstrapping. Sent occasionally — never spammy.
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