SaaS startup CFO services: make the cash-out date a decision

Runway and burn: one honest number, two views of it

Runway is cash divided by net burn, and both inputs get flattered in founder spreadsheets. Gross burn is what you spend; net burn subtracts cash actually collected — collections, not MRR, because an annual contract billed monthly and an invoice aging at 60 days are different companies. We keep two views running: a 13-week cash forecast for operating decisions and an 18-month model for strategy and raise timing. SR&ED deserves particular honesty. The enhanced 35% refundable credit for CCPCs is real money, but we plan runway around when the refund is assessed and paid, not when the fiscal year ends — a claim still being prepared is not cash. The discipline metric on top is the burn multiple: net burn divided by net new ARR, reviewed quarterly, because growth that costs too much burn per dollar of ARR is the earliest sign the model is not working.

Unit economics: CAC, LTV, and payback with the caveats attached

Early-stage unit economics are mostly assumptions wearing formulas, so we report each metric with its caveat attached before a pitch-deck number drifts into internal truth:

Below a few hundred customers, LTV is a guess with a decimal point. CAC payback in months is the number we trust first, because it requires no lifetime assumption at all.

Fundraise readiness: the data room is a monthly habit

Diligence is a re-computation exercise: investors rebuild your ARR from invoices and your churn from cohorts, and if their number does not match your deck, trust and valuation leak away together. So the data room is maintained monthly, not assembled the week a term sheet lands — an MRR schedule reconciled to both the billing system and the general ledger, churn cohorts, signed customer contracts, a clean cap table, IP assignments from every contributor, and revenue recognition that treats annual prepayments as deferred revenue rather than a growth story. The habit costs a few hours a month. The alternative costs a renegotiated valuation in the week you have the least leverage.

Pricing experiments: the highest-leverage lever, run with controls

Pricing changes outperform most growth work per unit of effort, and they are the experiments founders run most carelessly. We run them like finance: a hypothesis, a defined cohort, a measurement window, and the revenue-recognition consequences understood before launch. Annual-prepay discounts trade margin for cash and extend runway without cutting burn — often the cheapest financing available to a startup. Grandfathering existing customers on old plans usually costs less than the churn a forced migration triggers, but it should be a priced decision, not a reflex. Success is measured in cohort NRR and payback, not signup counts. And every new US state your pricing wins customers in is a potential sales tax obligation, because many states tax SaaS — nexus mapping and the Delaware-flip question live on our cross-border tax page for SaaS startups.

Source: CRA — Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax incentives.