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Another post crossed my feed today drawing a line between a “strategic CFO” and a CFO in name only, someone doing “controller” work for CFO pay. The implication whether intended or not is that companies with CFOs involved in the close, setting processes for year end and ensuring reconciliations are done are overpaying for glorified…
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Much of modern management thinking is built on a narrow and deceptively comforting habit: studying winners and working backward. From a small set of outliers, we extract traits, frameworks, and moral lessons, then present them as generalizable insight. This habit has consequences. When winners become the primary dataset, success is treated as evidence of virtue,…
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Do you ever reflect back on business school lessons — however hazily recalled, perhaps even misattributing the author — and think: now I get it? I had one of those moments recently. I remembered a phrase from many years ago that I’ve quoted more than once over the course of my career: logical incrementalism. For…
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I see no shortage of posts aimed at owners warning about valuation gotchas. Founder dependence is usually near the top of the list: no capable lieutenants, no delegation, value looks more like a job than a business. There’s truth in that. But it’s also incomplete. In many early and mid-stage companies, a founder-centric model isn’t…
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Founder Dependence Isn’t Always a Problem — Until You Want Options I recently read a LinkedIn post highlighting a red flag in acquisitions: if the founder can’t step away and the business can’t run without them, you’re not buying a business — you’re buying a job. Yes! Great insight. Dead on. For cash-flow–driven acquisitions, standalone…
Financial Foundations with Jim Curham 