Emerging Founders by fraction

We didn't see anything ???? ???? ???? #startuppitch #startupthings #startupmeme #foundermeme #vcmeme #fyp #pitchdeck #seriesa

Being profitable means an "exit" before you exit - $9M in profits before selling HiddenLevers - Startup Story 6 Founders often think of profit in abstract terms, as something that helps you get funding... Profit is not abstract, it's cold, hard cash in your pocket! At my last startup, HiddenLevers (wealthtech SaaS serving financial advisors) - here's how it played out: Year 1: Totally broke, tons of sweat equity, no revenue, thousands in total expenses, and lots more in implicit losses (since we were not paying ourselves a dime) Year 2: 102k in revenue, not totally broke, but as cofounders we only made 30k each Year 3: 406k in revenue, got our salaries up to 100k. Year 4: 650k in revenue. Got to 200k in founder comp, decided beyond that would be profit sharing. Years 5-7: slow growth from 1M to 1.6m in rev, 200k in profit each year for three years Year 8: 2.12M in revenue, 300k in profit Year 9: 3.4M in revenue, 1.5M in profit Year 10: 4.54M in revenue, 2M in profit Year 11: 7M in revenue, 3.7M in profit Final Quarter: ~2M in rev, 1M in profit Total Profit = 9.1M before exit Stop thinking "profitable" is just a thing you say to investors. We put "exit" money in our pockets before we even sold! P.S. It was a long journey, but once we got to year 5 we controlled our destiny, we were making more than anyone would pay us.

Where my US-based gen applied AI engineers at? Keep your day job and pick up a fractional role with us! If you've done RAG work, know the impact of different chunking strategies, have tried stepping past all that and moving to agentic workflows - we are seeing demand for it. Application link in the comments.

The Vital Role of a Technical Co-Founder for Non-Technical Entrepreneurs - Praveen Ghanta, Co-founder and CEO of fraction.work, on The Customer Wins with Rich Walker Full Episode: https://lnkd.in/gaw7XXVB

Team structure at 4M+ ARR? At that level, even at 10M ARR, the CEO needs to stay hands on in at least one area of the biz. Whether that's marketing, sales, product/engineering - a CEO has to lead by example. And so does all of the exec team - that's how I look at team structure. More in the video!

The lesson from the Deepseek vs AI giants news? What NOT having gobs of capital teaches you: The backstory: Sam Altman is busy raising $500B for his Stargate ML data center project, while Deepseek produced state-of-the-art results for 1/100,000th of that! The lessons: 1. When you don't have infinite capital, it forces you to work smarter, instead of just brute forcing every solution with more money. 2. Raising gobs of cash seems like an opportunity, but it can be a cage - you are forced to spend that money, even when you don't have the right plans yet. 3. The returns for founders and early investors are higher when startups aren't over-capitalized - you still own a meaningful stake at exit. Don't obsess about capital - obsess about results that drive sales and revenue growth!

How to fry an egg, as told by AI. I was in tears over this it was so funny... The AI overlords may put half of us out of work soon, or whatever, but for now, we can still laugh at them!

We all know, most of LinkedIN is garbage. I love to pretend I haven't contributed to the problem, but I have posted my fair share of click-bait. About three times a year, someone posts something that is actually useful. The post below is one such case. Thank you Michael Lin. And for all of "iNfoSeC" obsessed actors and actresses that play a leading role in today's modern security theater, this Bud is for you!

Goodbye Atlanta Tech Village... we hardly knew ye. Kidding - we spent almost two years up in Suite 500, it was a good run, with Fraction growing from nothing to almost 100 folks working today! We're heading down to the Beltline now, GoodWork loft offices in Virginia Highlands. On to the next, maybe we'll eventually do like we did at HiddenLevers and buy a building. But for now, on to chasing the number on our last suite, heads down to getting 500 people working via fraction.work !

Awesome podcast with Connor Tomkies and Praveen Ghanta Want to learn about bootstrapping? Start here!