The CFO Lab

[s35 candidate] Compared to what? The board question that comes next

SpaceX grew 161%. Here's what the cash flow statement says.

Cash flow statement explained: when one customer holds everything up

Your biggest customer signed short. Your loan did not.

How to raise money for a startup: cheapest money first

Who funds you first decides how much you keep.

Business line of credit: buy a summer hat in winter

Bill Ackman paid for protection when nobody wanted it. The small-business version is borrowing arranged in a good month, and one count you run every month.

Revenue per person: the hot dog that couldn't move

Revenue per person sits in a band your model sets. Three levers move it, and one of them fits your business this quarter.

Quality of revenue: same invoice, different asset

The revenue chart cannot tell you which line comes back on its own. Four columns and one yes-or-no mark can, and pen and paper is enough.

Cash conversion cycle: the one lever you own

Two of the three levers are structure you will never copy. The third is stock days. Pull your five figures this weekend.

The order you pay people in when you can't pay everyone

There is an order, and it ranks by what breaks first. Write yours down this weekend.

What's actually normal? The financial benchmarks that matter (and the ones that lie)

Five numbers to grade yourself on, the published band for each, and the line I watch instead.

The ad number you're reading backwards (and the line nobody drew for you)

Revenue-ROAS hides COGS and fulfilment, so a celebrated 3x can lose money on every sale. Here is the one division that draws your own line.

The self-running weekly report

One threshold, four parts, and a report that sends itself

AI is sloppy until it isn't

A non-human-sounding AI is just a poorly instructed one.

Fifteen years for this

The cheapest money you will ever raise is already inside your business.

The 7 Levers of Cash Flow: Where Cash Hides in a Profitable Business (and What a 1% Move Frees)

The number your P&L will never show you.

It's missing two zeros.

A founder turned down a life-changing offer this week. What he saw that the buyer didn't.

My favorite model lost.

A blind test on my own client documents. I picked against it 77% of the time.

what's actually working in agentic finance

8 operators. 90 minutes. Off the record.

Week 6. The first surface.

By week six, the AI started showing me things I'd forgotten I knew.

The belief that's ruining your finance AI

The architecture that makes hallucinated numbers structurally impossible.

3 founders found money you would've walked past

50% overhead cut. 23% shipping recovered. A 6-figure business hiding in plain sight.

I'm not paid to be paranoid

I used to be the antibody. Now I curate exceptions.

I have the cure for amnesia

Two types of memory. One gatekeeper. Zero blind spots.

I paid $500K for filthy books

Three years. Expensive lesson. One scanner.

Two spreadsheets disagreed. The deadline didn't care.

One of them was wrong. Both teams were confident.

I have trust issues with revenue growth

I pulled 15,000 transactions. The story changed.

Revenue dropped 27%

Compared to what?

My AI roasted me

4.5% airtime. In my own meetings.

An email 10Xed my meetings

The US President gets one every morning. Now you do too.

The secret file that cures AI amnesia

One file turns a generic AI into yours. Here's how to set it up.

I hired Warren Buffett (and you can too)

And he reads every P&L with me now.

Airbnb's $7B Secret (You Have One Too)

The number your P&L won't show you.

Something I built for you

The gaps you didn't know were holding you back

Closer in 2026