I keep you alive
while you break things.

I work with founders solving hard problems — venture-backed or bootstrapped, pure software or technology transforming an old industry, building in one city or simultaneously across continents. My job is to give you maximum room to build while keeping you out of legal trouble and off the cap table cliff. Founder DNA. CFO discipline. In that order. The chaos still feels like home. I just know where the cliffs are now.

Finance is the heart of a startup.
Not the brain.

The brain gets the credit. The heart just keeps the blood moving — making sure every part of the organism has what it needs to do something extraordinary. When the heart is working right, nobody thinks about it. When it fails, everything stops.

My job is not to control how you spend money. My job is to make sure you have enough runway to keep experimenting, enough structure to survive a term sheet, and enough clarity to tell a story that investors actually believe.

I learned this from the inside — as a founder. I've pivoted companies from failing products to ones that found real market fit. I've watched what happens when a finance person tries to apply institutional-grade control to a creative process. It stunts growth. It kills momentum. It drives the best people out.

I also learned storytelling with numbers from the best possible teachers: marketing people. In a tight capital raise, what you're doing is marketing — you're just selling equity instead of product. The numbers are the narrative. They have to be built with the same intentionality as a campaign.

This is where I tell you
who I'm not for.

Pre-Series B, and bootstrapped too. I work with founders at the stage where the financial architecture is still being built — venture-backed or self-funded, it doesn't matter. What matters is the problem you're solving and how much you care about solving it.

The founders I work best with tend to be deeply technical, product-obsessed, science-minded people with very high curiosity and very low tolerance for spreadsheets. They love building as much as they hate being buried in financial models and legal documents. That's the gap I fill — and I genuinely love that work, which means we complement each other rather than compete for the same headspace.

What I'm looking for in a founder is what I was as a founder: love for the craft, building to solve real problems, and doing it in a way our children will be proud of. The founders I don't tend to get along with are the ones optimizing for a quick exit at any cost. That's not craft. That's arbitrage.

I'm also acutely aware of what building actually costs — not just financially. Anxiety and depression among founders are as common as morning coffee and talked about far less. I've seen it up close, in others and in myself. When I work with someone, I'm paying attention to more than the numbers. I see the early signs. I'll say something. And I'll be there.

Some of my best work has been invisible. Behind the scenes, I'm the one helping a founder think through a hard decision, work on a difficult message, or prepare for a conversation they're dreading. Publicly, I'm in their corner — cheering them on, hyping them up, making sure they look as good as they actually are. They should be in the limelight. That's where they belong. My job is to make sure nothing is quietly pulling them under while they're standing in it.

• Founders who treat building as a craft. That means the product people who are still deep in architecture decisions at midnight. The science geeks turning a research insight into a company. The construction veteran who knows exactly what's broken in their industry and is finally doing something about it. Craft means love for the problem, not just the outcome. It means the work gives you energy at 2AM when the kids are in bed and you need to send one more thing that can't wait.
• Founders who are parents. Not because parenting makes you better at this — it doesn't, it just makes everything harder — but because parents understand stakes at a different level. They're building something that has to survive.
• Founders with a chip on their shoulder. The ones who have something to prove. The ones who can't stop even when it would be easier to.
• Family and friend founding teams. I've worked closely with founding teams where co-founders are spouses, siblings, cousins, or people who've known each other their whole lives. I've also been a co-founder alongside people who had those kinds of relationships with each other. I know what these dynamics actually look like under pressure — and how to work inside them without breaking the relationship or the company.
• Cross-border founders — US founders expanding into Europe, EU founders doing Delaware flips and entering the US market. I've done this work at depth, in both directions, for years.

The real work,
not the brochure version.

I build financial architecture from scratch — not pro-forma templates, actual models. Revenue build-up with cohort-level detail for every customer segment. Sales team ramp models for every role. Functional headcount plans. P&L, balance sheet, cash flow. Separate models for operations, board reporting, and fundraising because they serve different audiences and tell different stories.

I handle every round from seed through B: term sheet negotiation, due diligence, close. Angel rounds, VC rounds, venture debt, bridge rounds, extensions. I've also owned the seller side of a ~$100M M&A transaction end-to-end — diligence, transaction, and post-merger transition.

I do cohort analysis at a level that actually tells you something. I've used data enrichment to reclassify customer cohorts and repositioned entire fundraising rounds based on what the data revealed. Numbers are the argument you're making to the next investor. They need to hold up in a room you're not in.

When I come in late

Sometimes I arrive after years of decisions made under pressure, with books that need cleaning up and structures that need replacing. I'm not a historian. Every decision was made with what was known at the time, and I understand that. There are always skeletons — in every company I've ever touched, including ones I built myself.

My job is not to judge what came before. It's to understand it, fix what needs fixing without drama, and free you up to do what you do best. I'm here to be a multiplier — to take your talent and make it go further, not to audit your past.

Two ecosystems.
One set of problems.

I've spent years working across the US and European startup ecosystems — not as an observer, as an operator. I understand the specific pain EU founders face when they try to raise US capital: the PFIC problem, the CFC structures, the Delaware flip mechanics, the investor expectations that nobody explains clearly until a term sheet falls apart.

I've done this work repeatedly. Formed entities across multiple US states and internationally. Navigated cross-border tax structures. Prepared European companies for US fundraising rounds. Helped US investors understand why a Baltic or Central European company is worth the complexity.

If you're a European founder thinking about a Delaware flip, a US round, or a full HQ move — I can walk you through the real process, including the parts that will surprise you. If you're a US founder expanding into Europe, I know what the compliance landscape actually looks like from inside a company moving fast.

I also work with US investors who want exposure to European opportunities — particularly in the Baltics, where the talent density and technical depth are extraordinary and still underpriced relative to US markets. Navigating that as a US investor is genuinely complex: PFIC rules, CFC structures, fund formation, LP considerations. I help investors understand what's actually there and how to access it without incurring tax and administrative burdens that kill the thesis before it starts.

Tool agnostic.
Technically deep.
No new stack.

I don't bill for overhead. I don't manage a team on your dime. When you work with me, you get me.

Some things worth
knowing.

I built a cohort analysis for a SaaS company that revealed the real story in their revenue mix — not what the top-line numbers suggested, but what the customer segments actually looked like when you classified them properly. We repositioned the entire next fundraising round around that analysis. It changed who we talked to, how we told the story, and what we asked for.

I owned a seller-side M&A transaction of approximately $100M end-to-end — from the first term sheet through post-merger transition. Not as an advisor sitting in the room. As the operator running the process.

At Robin Powered, where I was co-founder and COO/CFO, we achieved 180%+ net revenue retention and under 10% annual logo churn in core cohorts through a full product pivot. That's not a number you manufacture. That's what happens when the financial architecture is built to support the right decisions at the right time.

Seven companies co-founded or built from early stage across SaaS, logistics, AI/ML, e-commerce, behavioral science, professional services, food and beverage, and venture fund operations. Multiple recessions. Multiple pivots. Multiple continents.

I started in talent management and entertainment. Moved into operations. Learned finance by building companies through it, not studying it. Left my MBA program — youngest admitted — because entrepreneurship was faster. The right founders recognize that arc immediately. Because they have one too.