What’s A Challenge You Faced Early On?

A recurring challenge was cash flow. Having enough for payroll.

Nothing sucks more than sitting there at your desk at midnight saying “how am I going to pay all my staff” in a week if we don't close this deal.

In 2008, during the financial crisis, a third of my clients canceled our projects.

We had to adapt, updating our business model to be less dependent on individual projects and more on retainer deals. We also increased our margins so we could save more to weather a storm.

That was pre my MBA, so I didn't have anyone telling me “make sure you have 6 months of runway at all times because you never know. 

We were very lax with our customers on payment timelines. It wasn't until we started penalizing them (like we said we would in the contracts: threatening to sue or pull servers), that we were taken seriously.

The takeaway is to build in buffers for any of your assumptions, because you don’t know which ones will be right or wrong along the way.