Ferenc Fekete

Helping non-tech Founders transform Ideas into SaaS products @ VeryCreatives | Product Agency, SaaS & MVP Development | Startups

I've watched many startup founders fail at the same exact point: turning their validated idea into actual software.

They waste months (or even years):
→ Trying to hire the right developers
→ Burning cash on poor planning and execution
→ Second-guessing every technical decision along the way

Meanwhile, competitors move faster, investors demand traction, and the pressure to deliver keeps building more and more.

After watching this pattern destroy countless promising startups, we built VeryCreatives to fix it.

But here's what makes us different:

We don't just build your MVP and disappear. We're product people who think like founders, not just developers who code to spec.

👉 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵: We start by pressure-testing your assumptions before writing a single line of code. If the market doesn't want it, we'll tell you straight.

👉 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗲𝘁 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗼𝗻𝗲: We build like it's our own startup, obsessing over user experience, scalability, and investor readiness from the first sprint.

👉 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱: Whether you're at napkin sketch or Series B, we've been there. We've helped founders go from zero to acquisition, and we stick around for the entire journey.

For the past 14 years, we've built products for venture-backed startups, fast-growing scale-ups, and globally recognized brands like Red Bull, Nestlé, and Philips.

The startups we work with have:
✅ Launched investor-ready MVPs in under 90 days
✅ Secured funding from top-tier investors and VCs
✅ Scaled from first users to thousands of paying customers
✅ Successfully exited to strategic acquirers

Got a SaaS idea that's been sitting in your head for months? 
Let's map out your 90-day path to launch → https://verycreatives.com/book-a-call

Co-Founder

At VeryCreatives, we are a team of expert developers who create powerful SaaS apps that solve problems and drive growth for founders with initial funding. We believe in empowering our clients with innovative software that helps them achieve their goals and stand out in their industry.

Our audience consists of driven and ambitious founders who have just received initial funding for their startup. They are looking for a software development partner who understands their vision, can help bring their ideas to life, and deliver results that will help them achieve their business goals.

Founders with initial funding have a pressing need to build their product quickly and efficiently to maximize their chances of success. At VeryCreatives, we understand this need and are dedicated to creating high-quality SaaS apps that not only meet their requirements but also exceed their expectations. We are committed to delivering value and results that help our clients succeed.

VeryCreatives stands out in the market for our ability to deliver high-quality, innovative solutions that meet the needs of our clients. Our unique approach to software development, coupled with our expertise and commitment to excellence, is what drives us to provide outstanding results to our clients.

Industries our clients operate in, using the SaaS products we've built: 
- Digital marketing, Event marketing & Influencer marketing SaaS
- Foodtech & Delivery 
- Fintech, Banking & Investments
- 2-sided marketplace platforms
- Agriculture & Livestock management
- Packaging compliance & Waste

Markets we cover: UAE, EU, UK, US.

The UK is shipping world-class SaaS 🇬🇧

Here's 20 UK startups and the core feature that makes each one worth watching:

Attio (Nicolas Sharp) → AI-native CRM that auto-enriches contacts in real time. ARR quadrupling YoY.

Synthesia (Victor Riparbelli) → Text-to-video with 230+ AI avatars in 140+ languages. $180M Series D.

PolyAI (Nikola Mrkšić) → Voice AI that handles live customer calls in 45 languages. Backed by Nvidia.

Xelix (Paul Roiter) → AI agents for Accounts Payable. Processes 115M+ invoices per year.

Granola (Christopher Pedregal) → AI meeting notepad. Auto-generates structured notes and action items from calls.

Vertice (Eldar Tuvey) → SaaS spend platform that auto-negotiates your renewals. 437% growth rate.

Signal AI (David Benigson) → Real-time monitoring across millions of sources for reputation and regulatory risk.

Plain (Simon Rohrbach) → API-first support where AI agents resolve tickets autonomously. Used by Vercel and Cursor.

Griffin (David Jarvis) → UK's first full-stack Banking-as-a-Service with a full banking license.

Primer (@Paul Anthony) → Single API connecting 100+ payment processors with no-code routing.

hyperexponential (​Amrit Santhirasenan) → No-code pricing models for commercial insurers. Backed by a16z.

Raycast (Thomas Paul Mann) → Keyboard-first productivity launcher. 800+ app integrations with built-in AI.

StackOne (Romain Sestier) → One API to connect 200+ enterprise SaaS integrations. Built for AI agents.

Lindus Health (Meri Beckwith) → Runs full clinical trials 3x faster than traditional CROs.

Metaview (Siadhal Magos) → Auto-generates structured interview notes from live conversations. Used by Sony and Brex.

Sylvera (Allister Furey) → Satellite imagery and ML to rate the actual quality of carbon credits.

Robin AI (Richard Robinson) → LLM trained on 2M+ contracts. Reviews and negotiates legal docs for UBS and Pfizer.

BVNK (Jesse Hemson-Struthers) → Stablecoin payment infrastructure for cross-border business transactions.

Shop Circle (Luca Cartechini) → AI-powered suite for Shopify merchants. Inventory, SEO, analytics in one dashboard.

Tessl (Guy Podjarny) → Forces AI coding agents to write specs before generating code. Prevents hallucinations.

Every one of these started with a sharp product decision: solve one problem exceptionally well, then expand.

What UK startup has caught your eye recently?

Launch products customers love, then exit | 5x exits, $100M ARR created for founders

I’ve developed products for 5x exits

Shock: Don't hire a developer in 2026

Every week, a non-technical founder asks me: "Where do I find good developers?"

My answer: "Why do you need one?"

Usually they don't. Not yet.

Before you hire a developer, you need:

1. Validated problem

→ Real people willing to pay. Not just "interested."


2. Clear scope

→ What are you building? What are you NOT building?


3. User journey mapped

→ Every screen. Every interaction. Every edge case.


4. Prioritized features

→ What's V1 vs V2 vs never?

Without these, you'll waste $15-20k per month while you "figure it out."

If you DO need a developer:

Red flags:

→ Promises fast/cheap (you'll pay later)
→ Doesn't ask about your business model
→ Jumps straight to coding
→ Can't explain trade-offs in plain English

Green flags:

→ Asks more questions than you expect
→ Pushes back on features
→ Talks about users, not just tech
→ Shows similar work (not just "we can do that")

The best developers will tell you what NOT to build.

"The project will cost $50k." - Developer
 
3 months later: $120k. Sh*t. What happened?

Every non-technical founder has heard this: "It will take longer than expected."

But you can prevent it (with some high-school math)

Here's how to build an accurate cost forecast:

Step 1: Break it down absurdly small

Not "user authentication: $5k"

But:

→ Login page design: $500
→ Login backend: $1k
→ Password reset flow: $1.5k
→ OAuth integration: $2k
→ Security testing: $500


Step 2: Add complexity multipliers

→ Simple feature: 1x
→ Medium complexity: 1.5x
→ Complex/uncertain: 2x
→ Integration with third parties: 2.5x


Step 3: Add the "unknown unknowns" buffer

→ New team: +30%
→ Existing team, new domain: +20%
→ Experienced team, known domain: +10%


Step 4: Phase the budget

→ Phase 1: Core features (40% of budget)
→ Phase 2: Secondary features (30% of budget)
→ Phase 3: Polish and optimization (20% of budget)
→ Buffer: (10% of budget)


Step 5: Define cut points

If Phase 1 goes over, what do you cut from Phase 2?

Decide BEFORE you're in crisis mode.


The rule:

If you haven't scoped it in detail, you haven't scoped it.

And if you haven't scoped it, any number is a guess.

So…

Maybe pause that developer project.

I've been part of 5 SaaS acquisitions.

Here's what buyers discuss privately:

When a company gets acquired, founders focus on revenue, growth metrics, and the pitch.

But after the presentation, when the acquirer's technical team goes back to their office, the conversation shifts completely.

I've seen this happen five times now. The questions they ask each other are almost always the same:

→ "Can we maintain this code without them?"

If the answer is no, the price drops or the deal dies. One of our clients got acquired by Adesso ($1.3B IT company) and one of the deciding factors was code quality. Their team reviewed the codebase and actually kept us as the development partner post-acquisition.


→ "How much technical debt are we inheriting?"

Every shortcut the original team took becomes a line item on a spreadsheet. They calculate what it costs to fix and deduct it from the offer. This can knock six figures off valuations.


→ "Can this handle 10x the current load right now?"

Not after a rebuild. Right now, as-is. If the answer requires re-architecting, that's another cost they subtract.


→ "Is the data clean enough to migrate?"

Messy data means months of integration work on their side. They price that in aggressively.


→ "What happens when the founders walk away?"

If all the product knowledge lives in two people's heads with nothing documented, the acquirer just bought a risk.


Most non-technical founders don't think about any of this until they're already in due diligence. By then the damage is done.

Build like someone's reviewing your codebase tomorrow. After 13 years, I've watched acquisition offers show up when founders least expect them.

What would you want to clean up in your tech stack before a buyer looked at it?

I run a 28-person agency. I used to feel guilty about an ‘empty calendar’ on a Monday. Now I try cancel all of my meetings:

And it’s helped us grow revenue 30%+.

Previously I was in every delivery meeting, every project review, every standup at VeryCreatives.

I thought I had to be in the room for things to run.

Now, our fantastic Head of Delivery meets with the PMs directly. 

And an ‘empty calendar’ means brain space to strategise on growth.

Here's what my Monday looks like now:

1. Strategy session with my co-founder Mate
→ Previous week, pipeline, finances, what's planned
→ Keeps us both aligned so neither of us needs to check in again all week

2. Sales sync
→ New leads, who handles what, timing

3. Afternoon: wide open
→ This is the whole point
→ We use that time to plan new internal tools, shape future services, figure out where we're going next

By lunchtime, the operational part of my day is done.

Everything after that is thinking time.

What's one meeting you could delete from your Monday to create space?

My 6-year old son tells $100M private equity firms if product ideas are ‘good’ (I’m serious).

If you can't explain your product to a 6-year old, I’ve got $100,000 on the fact that no one else will get it either.

I sit through dozens of product pitches every year.

The pattern is always the same:

Founder: "So basically, we're building a platform that leverages AI to optimize cross-functional workflows while integrating with existing enterprise systems to enable seamless collaboration and data-driven decision making."

Me: "What does it actually do?"

Founder: "...It helps teams share files."

The 6-year old test:

Can someone who has never heard of your product understand:

1. WHO it's for
2. WHAT problem it solves
3. WHY they should care

In 5 seconds?

If not, here's the formula that works:

"We help [specific person] [do specific thing] so they can [achieve specific outcome]."

Examples:

→ "We help freelancers send invoices so they get paid faster." 
→ "We help HR teams track applicants so they hire better candidates."

Trust me… my 6-year old is a great product idea validation filter.

Can you explain your product in one sentence?

Clay is one of the only companies I’ve seen do this 🔥

When you open the dashboard:

→ There's an AI chat text box.
→ It asks: "What do you want to build?"
→ You type your goal. It takes you to a chat screen. 
→ Then their AI (Sculptor) builds the workflow for you.

I think this solves three problems at once:


1. The blank canvas problem

Clay is powerful but notoriously hard to start with (lot’s of features).

Beginner users will open it, see an empty table, and don't know where to begin.

This prompt box removes that moment. 


2. Slow learning curve

A lot of tools teach you their features via an onboarding. 

But then over a few years they launch 10+ other features you have no clue how to use.

This Clay feature speeds up the learning curve:

→ You describe the outcome
→ The product figures out which features to use
→ You learn by watching it build


3. HUGE time and cost savings. 

For a lot of large products such as Clay, there are off shoots of service based agencies that build with the product for you.

Now you literally do not need to hire an agency.

The product builds what you need for you.

Making it more fun to use.

-

Have you seen other tools do this?

Why US innovation labs pay $500K for what Hungarian teams build for $100K (and get better results):

I just watched an enterprise innovation lab spend $500K on a product that never saw a single real user.

Then in same quarter, we shipped a similar concept for a German client. 

It took six weeks, it cost much less…. and in the end was live and taking payments vs the US one (zero payments).

The problem is US labs have been trained to solve every problem with a 20-person team.

Think about what happens when you have a massive budget:

→ You hire a product manager.
→ You hire three designers.
→ You hire a scrum master.
→ You hire eight developers.
→ You hire two QA engineers
→ And a DevOps team.

Everyone needs to justify their role. So they build. And build. And build.

👉 The PM adds features to show progress
👉 Designers polish screens nobody asked for
👉 Developers architect for scale you don't have
👉 QA tests edge cases that won't exist for years

Six months later, you have a beautiful product that solves nothing particularly well.

OR-

With that same $500k budget, you could run 10 separate validation sprints at $50k each. Even if 8 fail completely, you still walk away with 2 validated concepts to scale.

Compare that to putting the budget on one product that takes six months to discover nobody wants.

Agree or disagree?

Fireflies.ai hit a $1B valuation.

How to copy their MVP strategy:

Founders Sam Udotong and Krish Ramineni would dial into calls as "Fred from Fireflies.ai", sit silently, take notes by hand, and send them 10 minutes later.

They did 100+ meetings like this. Completely manual. 🤯

→ Zero development cost to validate
→ Learned exactly what users needed (by doing the job themselves)
→ Proved people would pay $100/month BEFORE investing in code
→ Only automated after hitting $750/month revenue

What I take from this:

Before you scope features, before you wireframe, before you hire anyone:

Can you deliver the core value manually? Without hiring any developers?

If yes, do that first. Talk to those customers. Understand the problem deeply.

Then build.

-

P.s.

We use Fireflies.ai at VeryCreatives.

We switched from Fathom because it felt more complete and could even log our internal calls in Hungarian. 🇭🇺

Could you imagine Fred joining your call to take notes?

What's stopping you from delivering your product's value manually this week?

The fastest way to make $100k MRR with SaaS 

Copy all of your competitors features:

No, seriously.

But only once you take this into account.

Your competitor has 50 features. 
They’re proven over 5+ years.
They’re clearly making revenue.

Just copy them all right?

Here's the problem:

Your competitor built those 50 features over 5 years.

They added most of them because:

→ A big customer asked for it
→ Someone on the team thought it was cool
→ They were trying to justify a price increase

They probably regret half of them.

What to do instead:

1. Identify their core value proposition (usually 2-3 features)
2. Find which features their customers actually use (check G2 reviews, Reddit, support forums)
3. Identify what they do poorly (read 1-star reviews)
4. Build that. Better.

Don't compete on feature count. 

You'll lose.

Compete on solving one problem exceptionally well.

What's the one thing your competitor does that you could do 10x better?

Hiring a developer is the most expensive mistake a non-technical founder can make. Do these 7 things to save $50k+ for your MVP (avoid Upwork/Fiverr):

1. Define your product strategy first

→ Spend 2-3 days defining exactly what you're building and why. 
→ Don’t scroll Upwork/Fiver for a developer.


2. Create detailed user journeys

→ Every screen. Every interaction. Every edge case.
→ If you can't draw it, you can't build it.
→ Otherwise you’ll end up trusting a developer with the entire thing.


3. Prioritize features ruthlessly

→ What's your V1? V2? Never?
→ Cut 50% of what you think you need.


4. Wireframe everything

→ Before design and before code. Do wireframes.
→ It’s cheap to change (trust me on that one). 


5. Weekly demos with the developer

→ See progress. Catch misunderstandings early.
→ Fast feedback loops save thousands.


6. Fixed scope, not fixed time

→ Tell the developer "Build these 10 features" not "work for 3 months."
→ Not "work for 3 months." or "work for 10 hours this week."


7. Kill features that aren't working

→ Sunk cost fallacy kills startups.


The math:

A few days of product strategy work upfront can prevent $50k-$100k in wrong features.

I've seen founders spend $80k building the wrong thing. Then start over.

Don't be that founder.

Wispr Flow is blowing up right now 🔥

Their onboarding is why:

→ It’s a Voice-to-text app valued at $700M.
→ They are currently growing 50%+ month-on-month.
→ In 2025, they 10x’d customers in 5 months.

During onboarding, you speak to configure your settings. 

By the time setup is done, you've already used the core feature without realizing it. 

Brilliant!

After 13 years of building products, the biggest onboarding mistake I see is separating setup from usage. 

Founders build welcome sequences with videos and walkthroughs. But then… The customer finishes onboarding having never done the one thing the product exists for.

Wispr Flow makes setup and the core action the same thing.

The whole point of onboarding is getting the customer from zero to value fast. 

If your product needs 10 steps before a user sees value, think about what you can cut. 

The best V1 products I've worked on put the core experience first and build everything else around it.

How fast does your product get a new user to the thing they signed up for?

Wispr Flow Has The Best Onboarding:

Former GE Capital Executive | I help founders and executives see what their financials aren’t telling them.

I spent 25 years inside the machine.

GE Capital. GE Vernova. NBCUniversal. Unilever. Structured finance, capital markets, project finance across Latin America. I was the CFO who sat across from banks, governments, and Fortune 500 boards and made the numbers make sense. I closed an $800 million power plant deal. I managed capital market teams and hundred-million-dollar sales budgets. I built financial models that moved real money in real markets.

I was good at it. For a long time, that was enough.

Then it wasn't.

I stayed almost eight years past the moment I knew I was done. Eight years of golden handcuffs, institutional momentum, and not having a single person in my corner who could help me think through what leaving actually looked like -- financially, strategically, personally.

When I finally left, I made mistakes. I jumped into a startup that looked great on paper and had no financial foundation underneath it. I learned the hard way that passion without financial intelligence is just expensive optimism. Then I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars learning the things corporate never taught me -- how to sell, how to communicate with conviction, how to walk into a room and make people feel what I knew to be true about their business.

That education nearly broke me. And it turned me into something rare: a former Fortune 500 CFO who can read your financials like a surgeon reads an MRI and sit across from you like a partner who actually gives a damn.

That's what I do now.

I work with a small number of founders and executives -- people who've already built something substantial and want a strategic partner with real financial depth. Not a coach. Not a consultant recycling frameworks. Not a bookkeeper calling themselves a fractional CFO. Someone who's been in the rooms, closed the deals, read the balance sheets, and came out the other side with a clear point of view about what actually matters.

If you're a founder past $1M who can feel that the way you got here won't get you to the next level, I can show you exactly where the growth is hiding and where the model breaks.

If you're an executive who knows you're meant for something bigger than the title on your business card, I've been where you are. I made the leap. I can help you think through yours.

I don't work with everyone. I'm selective about who I take on because the work only works when both sides are all in.

One conversation is all it takes to know if we're the right fit.

Cruz Gamboa

Most founders don’t go bankrupt overnight.

They bleed slowly.
From numbers they refused to look at.

Revenue looks good.
Growth feels exciting.
Ego feels validated.

But:

➡️ Cash flow is tight
➡️ Margins are thin
➡️ One client controls everything
➡️ Burn rate is “we’ll figure it out”

That’s how businesses die.

Not from lack of ambition.
From lack of financial discipline.

Here’s the cheat sheet I wish every founder read earlier.

Ignore red flags early → pay the price later.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities,
check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.

If this helped, save it.

Your P&L Is Hiding the Real Problem.

Most founders check 3 things:

Revenue.
Profit.
Growth rate.

Then they relax.

That’s the mistake.

Because your P&L is a scoreboard.

Not a diagnosis.

And scoreboards don’t tell you why you’re winning,
or why you’re about to lose.

Here’s what it’s not showing you 👇

If revenue is growing but cash is tight…

You don’t have a profit problem.
You have a cash flow problem.

If sales are strong but margins are shrinking…

You don’t have a demand problem.
You have a pricing or delivery problem.

If profit exists but stress keeps increasing…

You don’t have a money problem.
You have an operational problem.

Most businesses don’t collapse overnight.

They erode slowly:

➡️ Slightly rising CAC
➡️ Slightly lower margins
➡️ Slightly higher payroll
➡️ Slightly longer collections

Small leaks.

Compounded monthly.

And because the P&L still “looks fine,”
no one panics.

Until they should have.

Here’s what real operators track:

✓ Gross margin trends
✓ Cash runway (in months) 
✓ Revenue per employee
✓ CAC payback period
✓ Churn rate

Those numbers tell you where the fire is starting.

Revenue is vanity.
Profit is sanity.
Cash flow is survival.

Read your P&L.

But interrogate it harder.

Because the businesses that scale aren’t the ones with the best revenue.

They’re the ones who catch problems before they show up on the bottom line.

Your financial reports are perfect.

Clean P&L.
Accurate balance sheet.
Cash flow that ties out.

Yet decisions still feel slow, reactive, or unclear.

That’s because reports don’t create leverage.
Interpretation does.

Most founders read numbers like history.
High-performing operators read them like instructions.

Every metric should force a decision:
→ double down
→ fix fast
→ kill it

If nothing changes after reviewing your numbers,
you didn’t review them, you admired them.

This cheat sheet breaks down:

➡️ The questions that actually matter
➡️ The metrics that lie
➡️ And how to spot 1% changes that unlock outsized results

Save this before your next finance review.

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cruzgamboadrive

patagonia-solar-llc

Most people would’ve quit.
They didn’t.

➡️ 2003.

Waco, Texas.
No hype.
No capital.
No backup plan.

Chip and Joanna Gaines quit stable jobs to flip houses.

They slept on air mattresses.
Made $300 in some months.
Maxed credit cards.
Half-finished renovations.
Joanna pregnant.
Chip doing the labor himself.

Friends kept asking the same question losers ask winners early:
“When are you getting a real job?”

Here’s the part most people misunderstand.

They weren’t building houses.
They were building taste.
A repeatable look.
A clear point of view.
Something people could recognize without a logo.

While others chased bigger markets,
they stayed small.
Cheap.
Ignored.

That was the advantage.

A local producer didn’t care about their revenue.
He cared about their authenticity.

How they treated clients.
How they worked together.
How real it felt.

➡️ 2013.

HGTV launched Fixer Upper.

By season two:

5M viewers per episode.
#1 show on the network.

Then they did what confused everyone.

At the peak…
They walked away.

Because TV was attention.
Not leverage.

So they built Magnolia.
A shop.
A restaurant.
A platform.

They stayed in Waco.
Lower costs.
Total control.
The town became the moat.

Today:
1.2M+ visitors every year.
$750M+ valuation.

Lesson:

Don’t chase scale.
Earn trust first.
Don’t compete where everyone goes.
Dominate where no one is looking.

That’s how you turn $300 months
into a generational business.

#scalingup #growth #ceo #founder

Founder Stories

This guy bought one random car dealership.
Turned it into a $5B empire.

No fancy startup.
No venture capital.

Just one smart business move.

Terry Taylor started like most people in the auto industry:

Working inside dealerships.

Climbing the ladder.

But he realized something important:

No matter how hard you work…
You’re still building someone else’s business.

So in 1982, he bought his first dealership in Daytona Beach.

Most people would stop there.

He didn’t.

But the real genius wasn’t buying more dealerships.

It was how he structured them.

Instead of hiring managers, he:

• Gave them 20–25% equity
• Helped finance their buy-in
• Let them run the store

Now managers weren’t employees.

They were owners.

And owners think differently.

They protect profits.
They grow the business.
They care about reputation.

So scaling became easy.

1 dealership → 10 → 50 → 120+ dealerships

Today the network does $5B+ in revenue.

Simple lesson:

People work harder for ownership than salaries.

Build partners.
Not employees

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities,
check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.

If this helped, save it.

Terry Taylor

Some people launch snacks.
Some create global empires from leftovers.

Arch West did the second.

➡️ 1960s. Disneyland.

Casa de Fritos. Tons of stale tortillas. Wasted daily.
A small vendor saw opportunity.
“Cut them into triangles. Fry them. Add some seasoning.”

No PR. No hype. No flashy launch.

Just execution.
Just obsession.
Just seeing value where others saw trash.

1966 → Plain Doritos, national launch.
1972 → Nacho Cheese.
From leftover tortillas → multibillion-dollar snack empire.

Scaling lesson:

Opportunities are everywhere. Most ignore them.
Those who see the leverage, execute relentlessly, and scale turn accidents into legends.

Some people chase attention.
Some quietly turn scraps into billions.

#scalingup #ceo #founder #businesslessons

Doritos

Most people think billion-dollar companies start with experts.

Crumbl Cookies started with two tech guys who had never baked a cookie.

In 2017, they noticed something simple:
Cookies were America’s favorite dessert, but the category hadn’t evolved.
So they focused on a few key moves:

▶ Perfected one cookie first
▶ Kept the menu simple (1 classic + 4 rotating flavors)
▶ Turned weekly flavor drops into social media events

That simple strategy turned a 900 sq ft store and $10K into

✅ 800+ locations
✅ 1M cookies sold daily
✅ $1B+ valuation

They didn’t win by doing more.
They won by focusing on the few decisions that drive everything.

That’s true in finance too.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, go to scalingcfo.io
Take the free assessments and see exactly where to focus first.

Crumbl Cookies

Some people build loud brands.
Some build legendary ones in silence.

Michele Ferrero did the second.

➡️ 1924. Alba, Italy.

A small pastry shop. Almost bankrupt.
A father gone too soon.
A 24-year-old forced to take responsibility.

No press.
No hype.
No spotlight.

Just obsession.

He worked like an alchemist.
Formulas locked away.
Factories run with discipline.
Focus so sharp it scared distractions away.

1964 → Nutella
1968 → Kinder Chocolate
1974 → Kinder Surprise

Not just chocolate.
An experience.

A chocolatier quietly became one of the world’s largest toy creators.

But the real genius wasn’t just the products.
It was the culture.

➡️ No interviews
➡️ No politics
➡️ No yachts
➡️ No show-off wealth

Instead:

✓ Free buses for employees
✓ Above-average wages
✓ Summer camps for kids
✓ Generations of families hired together

He built belonging before it became a leadership buzzword.

Michele understood something many still miss:

Loyalty isn’t bought with bonuses.
It’s earned through care.

Iconic products don’t come from marketing noise.

They come from:

➡️ Absolute focus
➡️ Strategic silence
➡️ Obsession with the user experience

➡️ 2015. Monte Carlo.

He passed away at 89.
He left behind €23 billion.
And brands the world grew up with.

Proof that you don’t need to chase attention
to build something unforgettable.

Sometimes, the quiet builders win the longest.
#scalingup #ceo #founder

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Growing companies don’t stall because of the market.

They stall because the CEO doesn’t scale.

Here are the real 3 mistakes:

1.⁠ ⁠The Founder Stays the Hero

You’re still:

➡️ Approving everything
➡️ Solving every problem
➡️ Closing every big deal
➡️ Fixing every fire

You built the business by being the best operator.

But scaling requires becoming the best architect.

If you’re still the hero, you’re the bottleneck.

2.⁠ ⁠No One Owns the Outcomes

Titles don’t equal accountability.

If revenue drops, who owns it?
If churn spikes, who owns it?
If margins shrink, who owns it?

If the answer isn’t ONE name, you don’t have ownership.

You have collaboration theater.

3.⁠ ⁠They Confuse Activity with Leverage

More hires.
More meetings.
More tools.
More initiatives.

But no single constraint identified.

Scaling is constraint removal.

Find the bottleneck.
Attack it.
Repeat.

That’s it.

Growth doesn’t require more effort.

It requires:

➡️ Better structure
➡️ Clear ownership
➡️ Founder evolution

Most businesses don’t hit a ceiling.

The founder does.
#scaling #CEO #growth #founders

Most “profitable” companies are one bad month away from dying.

Here’s why.

Profit is an opinion.
Cash is oxygen.

You can look profitable on paper and still miss payroll.
I’ve seen businesses doing 7 figures collapse because one client paid late.

Revenue doesn’t matter if:

• It’s delayed
• It’s unpredictable
• It’s already spent in your head

Growth makes this worse.

You hire early.
Lock in fixed costs.
Sign long-term tools.
Upgrade lifestyle.

Now your burn is permanent…
…but your income isn’t.

That’s the trap.

Another hard truth:
If the founder steps away and sales stop, you don’t have a business.
You have a high-stress job with employees.

Margins won’t save you.
Busy won’t save you.
Brand won’t save you.

Only cash flow will.

Simple rules that keep companies alive:

• Collect faster than you spend
• Keep fixed costs boring
• Build 3–6 months of runway
• Systems before scaling
• Liquidity before vanity growth

The strongest businesses aren’t the loudest.

They’re the ones that can survive a bad month without panicking.

That’s real leverage.

Stop treating video like content.

That’s why it’s not making you money.

I was in Austin and went to Aleric Heck’s “Video Authority” book launch at Self Publishing.com.

I expected marketing fluff.
I got a mental reset.

Aleric built Ad Outreach into an 8-figure company from a college dorm.

No VC babysitters.
No Silicon Valley permission.
Just execution.

Here’s the mistake I see founders make with video:

They post to be seen.
Not to be useful.

Views become the goal.
Virality becomes the metric.
Sales become the mystery.

Aleric’s framework is the opposite:

If someone doesn’t buy from you, they should still feel stupid NOT to follow you.

Give so much value that:

➡️ They trust you
➡️ They respect you
➡️ They assume you’re expensive

Counterintuitive part?

The more you give away, the more you make.

Because trust compounds faster than attention.

This is leverage.

You record once.
It sells for you while you sleep.
While you work.
While you scale.

But only if you do it right.

Here is one of the pearls I took away from his talk...

One test Aleric shared wrecked most “AI content strategies”:

In the lecture, he talked about a split-test they ran at his firm:

✓ Full AI videos
✓ Talking head
✓ AI hook + real human

The winner? Hybrid. By a landslide.

Full AI lost.

Why?

AI gets attention.
Humans get trust.
Trust gets money.

Tools multiply.
They don’t replace.

Your face.
Your voice.
Your thinking.

That’s the asset.

If you’re a coach, consultant, or expert business doing $1M–$10M and video isn’t part of your growth system…

You’re choosing slow growth.

Not because video is magic.
Because leverage is.

Read Video Authority.
It’s not theory.
It’s a playbook.

Congrats on the launch, Aleric Heck.🔥🤝

If you want the exact framework behind this, not opinions, not theory,
Aleric put the full system in Video Authority.

👉 https://lnkd.in/eN7v7eqi

#sclaing #founder #ceo #growth

$30,000 → $7 BILLION.
No hype. No fluff. Just strategy.

Dennis Washington was 30, broke, and borrowing $30k from a Caterpillar dealer.

He bought one bulldozer and started doing construction in Montana.

Within 5 years? He was the largest contractor in the state.

But he didn’t stop there.

He asked a simple question:
"Where is everyone running from?"

Then he built a formula:

✅ Buy failing businesses that everyone else ignores.
✅ Fix the basics cut costs, improve management, unlock cash flow.
✅ Use the profits to buy the next one.
✅ Repeat.

First test: a worthless copper mine.
Bought for $15M → $100M profits in 3 years.

Next: a struggling global construction firm, merged it → Washington Group International → sold for $2.6B.

Now? Real estate, aviation, railroads, marine services… a $7B empire all from turning broken things into cash.

Most people run from broken businesses. Dennis Washington built a $7B empire fixing them.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.
If this helped, save it.

Dennis Washington

What’s one AI tool you wish existed, But still doesn’t?

Share your thoughts!

I will share more in about a week.

Best

Cruz

#scalingup #growth #ceo

graphical user interface, text, application

Power of One Cash Flow Hack!

“1% changes that multiply profits”

Most businesses chase “big moves.”
The real winners? They obsess over tiny tweaks that stack.

➡️ Increase Revenue

✓ +1% Price → Big EBIT jump
✓ +1% Volume → More cash in the bank
✓ Upsell/Cross-sell → Little effort, huge gain

➡️ Cut Costs

✓ -1% COGS → Direct profit hit
✓ Trim overhead → Kill inefficiency
✓ Better processes → Faster & cheaper

➡️ Optimize Capital

✓ Collect faster → Cash now
✓ Reduce inventory → Liquidity unlocked
✓ Extend payables → Stronger cash position

➡️ Track & Multiply

✓ Measure every 1% → See compounding magic
✓ 1% here, 1% there → exponential growth

Truth: 

Small tweaks everywhere > chasing “big moves.”

👉 If you want to see where your biggest 1% opportunities are, check out scalingcfo.io

Take the free assessments and find out exactly where to focus first.

The trillion-dollar scoreboard isn’t just impressive.

It’s a warning. ⚠️

AI is no longer a feature.
It’s infrastructure.

Distribution beats product.
Platforms compress margins.
Specialisation scales faster than breadth.

And the giants NVIDIA, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Apple aren’t just companies anymore.

They’re rails.

If you’re a $1M–$10M founder, here’s the real play:

➡️ Build on top of giants, don’t compete with them.
➡️ Own your audience, don’t rent it.
➡️ Go narrow, dominate a micro-niche.
➡️ Push recurring revenue.
➡️ Move faster than anyone with a board meeting.

The economy is consolidating at the top.

But execution speed is still decentralised.

That’s your edge.

If you're building between $1–$10M and want to scale intelligently, not just aggressively

Come to the workshop → https://lnkd.in/efBiFQRg

I keep having the same conversation.

Founder calls me. Revenue is up -- sometimes way up. 

But they're taking home less than when the business was half the size. 

They hired the consultants. They wrote the plan. They pushed harder on sales. And somehow the business keeps snapping back to the same number like a rubber band.

After sitting across from enough of these founders, I started seeing the pattern. It comes down to three things nobody wants to talk about -- and none of them have anything to do with selling more.

I broke it all down in this week's newsletter.
#scalingup #founders #growth #CEO

I talk to a lot of founders. Like, a LOT. And something keeps coming up that I can't ignore anymore. Almost every conversation -- doesn't matter what 

Open article: The 3 things nobody tells you about getting stuck by Cruz Gamboa • 5 min read

The 3 things nobody tells you about getting stuck

99% of founders do this backwards.

They try to scale a business
that no one has proven they want.

Then they try to sell a business
that only works because they exist.

Here’s the real order:

1. Start
Don’t build the product.
Sell it first.

If no one pays, it’s not a business.
It’s a fantasy.

2. Scale
Do less. Better.
One offer. One audience. One channel.

Systemize everything.
If it needs you to survive, it’s not scalable.

3. Sell
Buyers don’t pay for hype.
They pay for predictable cash flow.

Clean books.
Recurring revenue.
Low founder dependency.

Start with proof.
Scale with systems.
Exit with leverage.

That’s how you build something that prints money, not something that prints stress.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities,
check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.

If this helped, save it.

Most people saw a ping pong table.

Max Koehler saw a business.

In 2019, he noticed something strange:

Table tennis is one of the most played sports in the world,
but in U.S. cities there were very few places to play regularly.

Most founders would open a traditional club.

Max built PingPod instead.

Small glass studios.
Open 24/7.
Booked entirely through an app.
No staff. No front desk.

But the real genius?

A camera above every table.

Every rally gets recorded.
One tap → instant replay → share on social.

Players created the content.
The content created the marketing.

Clips went viral.
Bookings exploded.

Today PingPod is valued around $40–60M.

All from one simple observation.

The best founders don’t just build products.
They build systems that grow themselves. 🚀

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, go to
scalingcfo.io

Take the free assessments and see exactly where to focus first.

#scalingup #founders #CEO

Max Koehler

Most founders don’t fail overnight.

They bleed slowly.
From decisions they ignored.
From processes they never set.
From metrics they refused to measure.

Revenue looks fine. Growth feels exciting. Ego feels validated.

But underneath:

➡️ Decisions get delayed → chaos spreads
➡️ Processes depend on you → hero culture burns out
➡️ Metrics are “nice to have” → guesswork rules
➡️ Accountability is optional → everyone points fingers

That’s how scaling dies.

Not from lack of ambition.
From lack of rules.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.
If this helped, save it.
#scalingup #founders #ceo

Most founders don’t have a growth problem.
They have a focus problem.

Their dashboards are full.
Their results are not.

Tracking more KPIs doesn’t make you smarter.

It just gives you more ways to avoid the hard decision.

Here’s how serious founders think about metrics:

If a number doesn’t change what you do this week,
it doesn’t belong on your dashboard.

That’s why the only startup metrics that actually matter answer 4 questions:

1. Is demand growing?
2. Are customers staying?
3. Are they paying more over time?
4. Are we running out of cash before we figure it out?

Everything else is noise.

The best operators I’ve seen track 5–7 metrics max.
They review them weekly.
And they tie each metric to a clear action.

Everyone tracks KPIs.
Very few track the right ones.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities,
check out scalingcfo.io.

Free assessment.

If this helped, save it.

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The Battle

Ferenc Fekete

Cruz Gamboa

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taplio

The Battle

Ferenc Fekete

Cruz Gamboa

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Ferenc Fekete's LinkedIn Performance

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