Startups
Know your burn and runway
Wilson defines burn rate as the speed at which a company's cash balance is falling and shows a back-of-the-envelope way to work it out from two cash balances and the months between them. Dividing the cash left by that burn gives the months remaining, and he says entrepreneurs, CEOs and CFOs should always know the date they would run out. He also describes a more detailed method that separates gross burn from net burn.
“Your burn rate is the speed at which your cash balance is going down.”— Fred Wilson, Burn Rate, Dec 2011
Do this: This week, take today's cash and last month's cash, work out your monthly burn, and divide the cash left by it to get your months of runway.
Cash-flow business
Write down your routine tasks as SOPs
Kahl explains that standard operating procedures describe each activity in enough detail that someone else can take it over without extra information. He suggests starting in a shared document, trying a couple of formats on one process, and rereading the procedures every few months.
“Delegation is most effective if there is an Operations Manual for the company.”— Arvid Kahl, Standard Operating Procedures: Managing Your Future Self, Jul 2020
Do this: Pick one task you repeat every week, write its steps as a checklist in a shared doc, and hand it to a helper.
Startups
Judge burn against new ARR
Sacks proposes measuring capital efficiency as net burn divided by net new ARR, a ratio he calls the Burn Multiple. In his example a quarter that burned $2M to add $1M of ARR is a reasonable 2x for an early-stage startup, while burning $5M for the same gain is a 5x that should probably prompt cost cuts. He adds that the multiple should improve as the startup matures.
“The lower the Burn Multiple, the more efficient the growth is.”— David Sacks, The Burn Multiple, Apr 2020
Do this: This week, divide last quarter's net burn by your net new ARR and put that multiple at the top of your next team update.
Cash-flow business
Make yourself unnecessary to daily decisions
Sivers tells how, with eight employees and every question still going through him, he began answering each question by explaining his reasoning and having someone write it in a manual. After two months the questions stopped, and he contrasts being self-employed with being a business owner.
“I had to make myself unnecessary to the running of my company.”— Derek Sivers, Delegate or die: the self-employed trap., Jan 2011
Do this: Next time someone asks you a routine question, answer it, explain why, and ask them to add it to a shared manual.
Startups
Send one weekly numbers email
Collin describes sending the whole company a weekly email with the same structure at about the same time, a habit that began as a daily revenue update. She says sharing the good and the bad gives accountability, and that she also sends her direct reports a note of her goals for the week every Monday morning. She says the roughly hour it took her to write it in the early years was vital.
“Sharing the good, the bad and the ugly provides accountability and a forcing function.”— Mathilde Collin, The Founder’s Guide to Discipline: Lessons from Front’s Mathilde Collin, Dec 2018
Do this: This week, choose the one number your team should move and email it to everyone in the same format, then send it again at the same time next week.
Cash-flow business
Know your hourly rate before you delegate
Welsh says that before getting help for your business you should calculate your hourly rate. He gives an example of paying someone $30 an hour for admin and support, and of paying $300 for a permanent fix and documentation after a payment problem cost him hours twice.
“Buy back your time at its lowest value and reinvest it at its highest.”— Justin Welsh, Leverage is the solopreneur cheat code., Sep 2025
Do this: Calculate your hourly rate, list the tasks worth less than that, and hand one of them to a contractor.
Startups
Plan a warm first day
Guthrie says companies work hard to win candidates and then drop the ball on onboarding, even though the first day is a chance to be who you said you were while recruiting. She suggests having everyone expect the new hire and know their name and role, and removing small worries such as where they will eat lunch. She recommends starting the onboarding process early, with someone owning it.
“Everyone wants to feel cherished, especially after being so vigorously pursued.”— Carly Guthrie, Employee Onboarding at Startups Is Broken – Here’s How to Fix It, Jan 2015
Do this: Before your next hire starts, tell the team who is arriving and write down where they will sit, who will take them to lunch and what they do first.
Cash-flow business
Put a weekly cost on feeling overwhelmed
The article lays out a seven-step process for hiring. The first step is to find the real bottleneck behind feeling overwhelmed and put a number on what it costs each week, and it says that if you cannot answer clearly you are not ready to hire.
“"We're overwhelmed" isn't a problem, it's a symptom.”— Contrarian Thinking, How to hire (and keep) A-players, Jul 2026
Do this: Name the one task that overwhelms you most and write down its weekly cost in dollars before you post any job.