[stevievee]

This is just a bad piece of content marketing.

If you just raised a $30-60+ million Series A and are relying on anything in this article, you will have bigger problems. It is this self-righteous approach to finance/accounting that gets companies into trouble down the line.

[refrigerator]

Hey man, the target audience is normal Seed/Series A companies —

$30m–60m+ Series A rounds are extreme outliers, especially in 2023, and the $1m MRR number you quoted in another comment is 5x higher than where most Series A companies are at.

Would genuinely appreciate feedback on anything specific in the post that you disagree with, with that target audience in mind :)

[stevievee]

So this is the level of finance/accounting sophistication now expected for a business with a valuation of $30m–60m? Maybe I'm out of touch. I think this guide lowers the bar unnecessarily.

[danielmarkbruce]

Wasn't worth responding. It's a totally decent write up.

[stevievee]

It's really not. The overall tone is "You don't know anything about finance/accounting as an inexperienced leader but that's okay! - Just outsource it! Oh and here are some tidbits so you can pass off as knowledgeable in conversation"

[danielmarkbruce]

It's not tone - it's explicitly targeted at people who don't know much/anything about finance/accounting and almost by definition are relatively inexperienced at running a business.

There isn't a great alternative. Taking the time to become an expert certainly isn't a good idea. Hiring a CFO with seed money isn't a good idea.

[petilon]

This is not a helpful comment. Why not point out the actual issues, instead of just calling it "self-righteous", and assuming everyone understands what you mean?

[stevievee]

Too much to address so I generalized.

I don't have time to go into details but the very big problems you could encounter mainly revolve around misses on compliance because you took a very lax approach to Finance ie. accounting standards, tax rules, payroll records, stock options and more. Just as a very simple example - I've seen a $1 million MRR company get eviscerated for not paying attention to something as basic as sales tax rules.

[phphphphp]

Most finance rules are quite reasonable and problems can be fixed retroactively. A serious company should absolutely approach their financial controls with the rigor it deserves but the cost implication of making mistakes early on is overblown.

If a company is turning over tens of millions per year and has missed something as basic as taxes then yes, absolutely, pain is inevitable, but it’s both solvable (after all, they’re doing tens of millions in revenue!) and very different from the type of problem a startup might encounter if they are cavalier with their finances early on.

The OPs post is of great benefit because often the key to avoiding problems is going from oblivious to aware… and so while a post like the OPs may not be exhaustive, it does put people on the right path, as it is heavy on the recommendations of getting a professional involved — and explains how to do that in a very accessible way.

How many startups have died because they didn’t know they had to charge sales tax? How many startups have died because they spent hundreds of hours obsessing over operational minutiae before they earned their first dollar?

(I don’t know the OP, but coincidentally I have worked with one of the companies he recommends, and I was very impressed — it’s clear to me this isn’t just churned out content marketing that uses the first Google result for “accountant”)

[mrkurt]

This would be more interesting if you did have time to go into details. I'd love to hear about the company getting eviscerated for messing up sales tax.

[danielmarkbruce]

If someone doesn't pay taxes, they are in trouble. It doesn't it need to be in this write up. Taxes are always there, always complicated and always need to be calculated and paid.

It's a write up on finance basics, not a treatise on all issues at the intersection of finance/legal/compliance.

[satvikpendem]

If you have time to write more about this, or even as a blog post to submit to HN, I'd be very interested to learn more.