Before PFM

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for a startup that hasn’t yet achieved PFM to keep their burn rate low. Most startups need time to run the right experiments and spending money on more people or more dev work doesn’t accelerate time.

And by “low”, staying under $200K of monthly burn is a completely different ballpark than a $500K monthly burn rate.

To be clear, not all startups can be built keeping their burn low because the initial product takes many man years of dev work and licensing and 3rd party integrations to create.

But what I can say having guided many early stage companies is that “those extra hires” aren’t always necessary and might hurt the chances of success.