Finance from zero — revenue, margin, cash flow and the three financial statements — then the startup-specific numbers: MRR, burn, runway, CAC, LTV, churn and payback. Budgeting and scenario planning.
The numbers that decide whether you survive
Lessons
Revenue, costs and profit — The three numbers everything else is built on, and the difference between the money that comes in and the money you keep. (10 min)
Profit is not cash — Profitable companies go bankrupt. This is the single most important idea in company finance and almost nobody explains it to founders. (12 min)
MRR and ARR — Recurring revenue is the number investors care about most — and the one founders most often calculate wrongly. (10 min)
Burn rate and runway — The number that decides whether your company survives. If you learn one thing from this whole Academy, learn this. (12 min)
Gross margin — Why software gets funded and services usually do not, and why a low-margin business cannot grow its way out of trouble. (10 min)
CAC, LTV and payback — Whether each customer makes you money — and whether growing makes things better or just makes the hole bigger, faster. (15 min)
Reading an income statement — The P&L, top to bottom. Fifteen minutes and you will never be lost in an accountant's email again. (12 min)
Reading a balance sheet — What you own, what you owe, and what is left. A snapshot rather than a period — and the one that has to balance. (10 min)
Reading a cash flow statement — The statement that reconciles 'we are profitable' with 'we have no money'. Three sections, one answer. (10 min)
Building a startup budget — A budget is not a prediction. It is a decision about what you will spend, made once, calmly, instead of forty times under pressure. (12 min)
Scenario planning — Three versions of next year — conservative, base and aggressive — so that a bad quarter is something you prepared for rather than something that happens to you. (12 min)
Fixed and variable costs — The split that decides what happens when you grow, shrink, or have a bad quarter. Most founders classify their own time as neither, and that is where the trouble starts. (11 min)
Contribution margin and the CM ratio — How much of each sale is left to cover everything else. One number, and it answers most of the questions founders take to spreadsheets. (13 min)
Break-even and operating leverage — The revenue that makes you self-sufficient, and why the same structure that makes growth spectacular makes a bad quarter dangerous. (12 min)
Working capital and why growth eats cash — The money trapped between doing the work and being paid for it. It is why profitable, growing companies run out of money — and it is the cheapest financing you are not using. (12 min)