Category: Industry Insights

ARM, SaaS, and other sector-specific lessons and trends.

  • The market often struggles to define the difference between a CFO and a Controller – Let me offer Exhibit A

    We developed some genuinely effective outreach tools in the 3P collections world. The model was straightforward: collect more, generate more revenue, improve cash flow. Operationally and economically, everything aligned nicely. Even the revenue recognition under ASC 606 was intuitive enough that the executive team and Board immediately understood it: revenue was earned as a percentage…

  • The Hidden Politics Inside Dashboard Metrics

    One Board request sounded straightforward enough: explain monthly revenue variance. In the ARM world, we initially approached it using a standard three-factor decomposition: Simple in theory. Except variance attribution models are rarely as objective as they appear. The problem emerged almost immediately: sequence mattered. If volume variance is calculated using: …you get one answer. If…

  • Neither a Borrower nor a Lender Be — A Financial Foundations View

    Shakespeare, through Polonius, warns: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” It’s one of those lines that sounds outdated in a modern credit economy. Credit fuels growth. Borrowing accelerates opportunity. Lending creates return.All true. And yet, spend enough time in the back end of the system—the part where things break—and the line starts to sound…

  • Founder Dependence and Unforced Errors in Valuation

    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…

  • The Missing Identity of Money

    The Question That Wouldn’t Go Away A few months ago, I participated in an ARM industry webinar focused on a topic that most people outside of finance rarely think about: how to properly maintain and reconcile multiple trust bank accounts across multiple clients, with payments flowing through multiple third-party processors.We discussed internal controls, segregation of…