Hey friends 👋
This week we’re tackling something every founder obsesses over but few actually understand: burn rate and runway.
But we’re going way deeper than just how many months you have left.
Runway isn’t just a countdown clock. It’s actually about what you’re buying with every dollar you burn. Are you learning? Growing? Building infrastructure that matters? Or just... burning to feel productive?
The episode gets real when we throw down three startup scenarios and rate them on our conviction scale. One’s spending $85K/month with only $18K in MRR (yikes). Another’s blowing $28K/month on Facebook ads in a single city. The third? Actually seems to have figured something out.
We break down why team size against customer count matters, why “investing in growth” often means “gambling on growth,” and how to think about your next major milestone in terms of evidence, not just revenue targets.
Plus, we get into the distinction between default alive and default dead—because where you land on that spectrum changes everything about how you should be spending.
And, of course, we have frivolous thoughts: JDM discovers a Lord of the Rings fitness challenge (walking from the Shire to Mordor), and Cameron explains why loan data is called “tape.”
—Cameron and JDM
