Book an intro call
Thirty minutes. No deck, no discovery process, no slides from me. Three questions, an honest read on whether I can help, and a written scope within two business days if I can.
What the first call is
I ask three questions. You answer from memory — if you have to go look something up, that is useful information too. Most calls run 25 to 35 minutes.
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1. Where is the cash?
Bank balance today, net burn over the last three months, and what you think runway is. I do not need a model. I need the number you would say out loud to an investor.
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2. Who are you hiring next?
The next four to six roles, roughly when, and roughly at what cost. Hiring plan is the single biggest driver of burn at your stage, and it is usually the least documented.
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3. When is your next board meeting?
The date, who sits at the table, and what they asked for last time that you did not deliver. That gap tells me most of what I need to know.
At the end I tell you one of three things: this is a fit and here is roughly what it costs, this is a fit in about two quarters so call me then, or this is not my work and here is who to talk to instead.
Contact details
Email is fastest. Phone works if you would rather talk than type — leave a voicemail with a company name and I will call back.
- hello@example.com
- Phone
- +1 (604) 555-0142
- Based in
- San Francisco, California
- Call hours
- 07:00–18:00 Pacific, which covers Eastern, UK, and most of the EU working day
- Typical reply
- Within one business day; same day if you write before noon Pacific
- Fundraise or board week
- Say so in the subject line and I will reply within four hours
Short enquiry form
Five fields. Estimates are fine — I would rather have your rough number now than a precise one next week. Nothing here goes anywhere except my inbox.
If your mail client does not open, just write to hello@example.com with those same five answers. That works exactly as well.
What happens after the call
No proposal deck, no second call to "align on scope." You get a document.
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Within two business days
A one-page written scope: what I will build, in what order, what I need from you, and the monthly fee. Usually 400 to 600 words. You can forward it to your board without editing it.
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Fixed monthly fee
Stated in the scope, not "starting at." No hourly billing, no surprise line items. Thirty days notice either direction, and the first month is the trial for both of us.
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First 30 days
A clean three-statement model, a defensible runway number, and a board pack you can present. If your next board date is inside 30 days, we work backwards from it.
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What it will not fix
I will not make a bad month look good, raise the round for you, or replace a bookkeeper. If your books are twelve months behind, the first job is catching them up, and I will say so on the call.
Not a fit right now?
About a third of the calls I take end here, and that is fine. Take the things below and go.
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Board pack template
The nine-slide pack I build for every client, as a spreadsheet and an outline: cash and runway, ARR bridge, pipeline, hiring plan against plan, and the three asks. Email me and I will send it, no form, no follow-up sequence.
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Under roughly $200k ARR
You probably need a good bookkeeper and a payroll provider, not a CFO. I keep a short list of three bookkeepers who work well with early SaaS and will introduce you to whichever fits your stack.
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Books badly behind
Two cleanup firms I trust, both fixed-fee, both used to Stripe and QuickBooks messes. Get current first. Then a model is worth building.
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Ready for a full-time hire
Past roughly $6M ARR you want someone in-house. I will happily spend 30 minutes on the job spec, the comp band, and the interview questions that actually sort candidates. No fee for that.
Rowan told me on the first call that I did not need him yet and sent me a bookkeeper instead. We hired him nine months later, right before the Series A, and he already knew the whole story.
Priya Raghunathan, co-founder, Lattice Route
Thirty minutes, three questions
Bring your bank balance, your next four hires, and your board date. That is enough to start.