Thomas Clawson

When cash gets tight, most founders freeze. They panic and cut everything. Marketing stops. Hiring stops. Even the tools that actually work get slashed. Then revenue tanks because they just killed the things driving growth. I've watched this happen over and over. Business hits a rough patch, fear kicks in, and founders start cutting blindly. But here's the truth: cutting everything is just as dangerous as overspending. The businesses that survive don't wait until they're down to two months of runway to figure this out. They make these decisions today when they still have options. Here's the framework I use with founders and business owners: → Tier 1: Revenue-generating expenses Tie every dollar to revenue and calculate the ROI. If you can't measure it, fix that first. Marketing that converts? Keep it. Sales team closing deals? Keep them. Product delivery? Non-negotiable. If cutting it kills revenue, don't touch it. → Tier 2: Mission-critical operations The stuff that keeps your business alive. Core team payroll. Essential systems. Legal and compliance. These aren't up for debate. They're survival mode. → Tier 3: Everything else New hires that don't directly impact revenue. Office perks. Premium tools when free versions exist. Conferences. Experimental projects. This is where you get ruthless. The best practice? Don't wait for a crisis. Run this exercise quarterly. Categorize every expense. For anything in Tier 3, make the call today. Cut it or justify keeping it. Be diligent. Act now. Kill anything draining cash without delivering returns. The businesses that make it aren't the ones that spend the least. They're the ones that spend smart and act fast. What's the toughest expense cut you've had to make? #CashFlowManagement #StartupReality #BusinessStrategy

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Growth and profitability are not opposing forces. If anything, they're sequential. Once your unit economics work - every additional customer can spread fixed costs thinner, every transaction can make ops more efficient, and every bit of volume can give you better terms with suppliers. Solving for fundamentals will ensure growth makes you profitable, and doesn't become the thing that keeps you from it. Shreyans wrote a great piece on it, link in comments.

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LvlUp Ventures just dropped some uncomfortable data for 2026. Even founders with strong traction are spending 3–6+ months in market before closing seed rounds. Not pre-revenue. Not "idea stage." Traction. Still 3–6 months. I've been talking to founders going through this in real time. Three patterns keep showing up: 1. The fund ask is vague. "We're raising between $500K and $2M" is not a fund ask. It signals you haven't done the work. Investors want: exact amount, runway target, and what you'll prove with it. 2. The narrative breaks under pressure. The deck looks fine. Then an investor asks "why now?" — and the founder stumbles. Paper story ≠ conversational story. 3. Momentum dies between meetings. Most pre-seed rounds don't fail because investors say no. They fail because founders run out of energy to keep the process alive. The math is brutal: 50 investors × 3 touch points × 2-week gaps = 9 months of your life. Minimum. That's not a pitch problem. That's a process problem. The founders closing faster in this market aren't pitching better — they're running tighter pipelines. What's taking you the longest right now — finding investors, getting meetings, or closing commitments? -- We built Fundraisly — specifically for the pipeline problem. Happy to share what patterns we're seeing.

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One of the biggest mistakes I see founders make before $5M ARR is caring too much about average opinions. Average customers do not build $1B businesses. When we look at NPS, the formula is simple: Promoters (9–10 ratings) minus Detractors (0–6 ratings). The 7s and 8s don’t count. They’re neutral. They don’t love you enough to share, and they don’t dislike you enough to leave. They’re just fine. And that’s the real trap. Great products are built for outliers. The ones who can’t live without what you’ve built. If your product is a 10/10 for a small group of people, you can build from there. They’ll tell their friends. They’ll stick around when things break. They’ll root for you to win. 7/10's churn. They don't give great referrals. They don't advocate for your software during budget cuts. The same logic applies everywhere: • When hiring, look for the people who light up about your mission • When fundraising, find the investors who immediately “get it” • When dating (yes, even then), you don’t need to be liked by everyone. Just loved by the right one This is why you need to refine your ICP. Most founders make the mistake of trying to serve everyone at once: SMB and enterprise, growth and sales and content teams, startups and Fortune 500s, tech and non-tech companies. Every attempt to please everyone turns more 9s and 10s into 5s. Find your core audience. Solve their pain better than anyone else. Get a small group obsessed before worrying about everyone else. You can worry about TAM after $5M ARR. Any ICP can get you there to start. But only one that truly loves your product will get you started.

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If you don't know your LTV by payment plan, you're flying blind. Most high-ticket coaches think they're collecting 80%+ on payment plans. Reality? It's closer to 50-60%. That gap is costing you $50K-$200K+ annually. Here's the LTV tracking system I use for info/coaching businesses: MONTHLY (1st of each month): → Export Stripe data (last 30 days) → Update total collected per client → Calculate collection % by plan → Flag clients >30 days late → Update dashboard QUARTERLY (Every 90 days): → Review collection rates by plan → Identify drop-off patterns → Calculate average LTV per plan → Make pricing recommendations RED FLAGS TO WATCH: - Collection rate <50% on any plan - 3+ failed payments from same client - Pattern of drop-offs at specific month (e.g., all 6-pay clients quit Month 4) WHAT THIS DATA TELLS YOU: ✅ Which payment plans are actually profitable ✅ Which plans to push harder in sales ✅ Whether to adjust pricing ✅ When to offer PIF discounts REAL EXAMPLE: I ran this analysis for a $60K/mo coach and found: - 1-Pay: 100% collection (low volume) - 3-Pay: 80% collection ($9.6K avg LTV) ← sweet spot - 6-Pay: 60% collection ($7.2K avg LTV) ← bleeding $288K/year THE FIX: 1. Phase out 6-pay (or increase price to offset risk) 2. Push 3-pay harder (proven model) 3. Offer 10% PIF discount (more cash upfront) 4. Stricter failed payment follow-up for long plans IMPACT: - Shifting 20 clients from 6-pay to 3-pay = +$48K in collections - 10% PIF uptake = +$43K immediate cash - Total: $91K recovered without a single new sale Most coaches optimize for closes. Top 1% optimize for collections. Track your LTV. Know your numbers. Make data-driven decisions. P.S. If you're running a high-ticket coaching/info business and want to audit your LTV by payment plan, DM me. I'll show you exactly where money's leaking (free, 15 mins, no pitch).

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Consolidation is creating compounding chaos. Every acquisition adds another tech stack. Another CRM. Another portfolio system. Another layer of complexity. Most aggregators just absorb the mess and move on. Jim Dickson didn't want to repeat that cycle. When he launched Elevation Point, he built an accelerator—not just another roll-up. That means taking control of data from day one and putting it to work in a compounding, impactful way for partner firms. We're honored to be their data infrastructure partner. Already deep in the build—connecting Practifi, Salesforce FSC, Addepar, Orion, Goldman Sachs FICC and Equities and everything in between into one unified layer and a world class application and workflow layer. Real-time dashboards. Automated workflows. Data that compounds value instead of chaos. This is what intentional growth looks like. Excited for what's ahead with Jim and the entire Elevation Point team. 🔗 ThinkAdvisor coverage in comments

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