fuelfinance

Built Fuel from a Google Sheets MVP to a financial platform managing $500M+ in customer revenue.

Leading a team of 50+ across product, finance, GTM, and operations. 

Building the finance system I wish I had as a CFO – combining AI, data, dashboards, forecasting, and human expertise in one place.

Founder & CEO

Chief Financial Officer

Hampton

Hampton Member

2C/Construction Synergy

Auditor

Intern in Corporate Tax

CEO & Founder at Fuelfinance / make finance easy for founders

I never planned to become a founder.

I spent most of my life as a CFO — building models, analyzing numbers, and helping businesses grow. I loved it. Still do.

But in 2019, something shifted. I built a simple Google Sheets MVP to help my first customer (Petcube, YC’18) understand their finances better. Five months later, they were profitable. A year later, that client became my co-founder.

That’s how Fuel started.
Today, Fuel is a financial management platform paired with a real CFO. 

We manage over $500M in customer P&Ls. 
We’ve grown from a no-code MVP to a full web platform used by hundreds of businesses.

Along the way:

→ Partnered with HubSpot, Carta and Brex
→ Helped 100+ agencies and SMBs become profitable: Petcube, ColdIQ, Oceans, Hampton & more

Outside of Fuel, I’m:

→ A cross-continental swimmer (4.04 miles from Europe to Asia in open water)
→ Dog mom to Haku, my husky (and Fuel’s unofficial Chief Food Officer)
→ Into skateboarding, wakesurfing, snowboarding (anything that reminds me to feel fear and move through it)
→ Exploring longevity — 1.5 years alcohol-free, lifting weights, and learning to cook for myself

My mission is simple: make finance easy (and sexy) for founders.

If you wanna have a founder-to-founder chat, shoot me a DM.

I fed GPT-5 our real finance data.

I asked it to create a financial report.
I run the same prompt used in the GPT-5 official launch.

It delivered:

✅ A clean, pretty layout (looked like the OpenAI demo).
❌ Numbers that were COMPLETELY wrong.

And in finance, one wrong number is enough to throw off an entire report.

If the revenue, COGS, or margin is even slightly off, every decision that follows is based on bad data.

Here’s why GPT-5 is nowhere close to replacing your CFO or financial manager:

1. No company context → AI doesn’t know why your numbers look the way they do. It can’t tell the difference between a one-off expense and a systemic problem. Your CFO can.

2. Needs perfectly prepared data → Real companies don’t have one clean data source. They have messy, scattered inputs across QuickBooks, Stripe, payroll, and spreadsheets. Cleaning, mapping, and syncing them is 50% of the battle — GPT won’t do that for you (yet).

3. No judgment → A good finance leader knows when a COGS spike is just seasonality… and when it’s a red flag. GPT treats them the same.

4. Zero trust margin → In finance, you get one shot at credibility. If one number is wrong, the whole report is worthless. A “mostly right” P&L is still wrong.

At Fuel, we’re building AI differently — trained on clean, structured, finance-ready data, battle-tested with 600+ companies.

And every AI insight is double-checked by a human CFO before it hits your desk.

Speed is nice.
Accuracy is survival.
And AI (imo) is nowhere near to replace the CFO or financial software anytime soon.

CFOs — have you tried GPT-5 for reporting yet?
What did you get back?

Alyona Mysko 

Fun fact: when we switched to revenue-to-SQL planning, we cut 30% of our marketing and didn’t lose a $ in revenue.

For years, our #1 company target was MQLs.

We hit them. But revenue? Profit?? Not always in sync.
Classic mistake.

You can win the lead game and still bleed cash.

So in 2025, we killed MQL-first planning.

🔴 Old playbook:

MQL target → Sales tries to convert → Hope revenue shows up.

🟢 New playbook:

Start with revenue goal → Back into pipe target → Back into SQLs + pipeline → Then decide activities.

Here’s how it looks in practice:

1️⃣ Start with revenue goal – I (CEO) set revenue based on the profit we need to hit company goals.

2️⃣ Reverse-engineer SQLs – Sales runs the math: revenue ÷ deal size ÷ win rate = SQLs. No MQLs as a goal.

3️⃣ Full GTM alignment – Sales + marketing chase the same number. Marketing only runs plays that feed SQL targets. (Marketing can still track MQLs and conversions to SQL by channel, but they’re not the company goal)

4️⃣ Risk planning – We run “what if” scenarios in our Playground so there’s no panic when things wobble.

5️⃣ Budget by ROI – More to what’s working. A small fund for experiments. Ruthless cuts otherwise.

We run this whole system in Fuel.

If you want the Revenue → SQLs Google Sheet we used before (the one at the screenshot) — comment or DM me.

It’ll calculate SQL targets for every team the second you plug in your revenue goal and conversion rates.

How I’d tell my CEO bad financial news
(If I were a CFO again)

If you’ve been a CFO for more than… a month?
You’ve been here:

The numbers aren’t pretty.
Margins are shrinking.
Runway just got shorter.
That “safe” forecast isn’t looking so safe anymore.

And now you’ve got to walk into your CEO’s office (or ping them on Slack) and say it out loud.

Here’s how I’d do it:

1. Rip off the band-aid.
Don’t warm up with 10 minutes of context. I start with:
“We’re looking at a $1.2M shortfall this quarter — here’s why and what I suggest.”

2. Always bring a plan.
Bad news without next steps is just stress.
I’d bring 2–3 real options, with pros, cons, and trade-offs.

3. Speak human, not finance.

“$250K OPEX overrun” means nothing to most people.
I translate it into:
“We’re overspending by $250K — that’s two fewer hires this year.”

4. Own it if it’s on you.
If it happened on my watch, I’d say it.
Trust comes from accountability, not excuses.

5. Stay calm.
If CFO panics, the CEO panics.
My job would be to be the steady one in the room.

6. Follow up in writing.
Quick recap in email/Slack so there’s zero confusion later.

The point isn’t to “deliver bad news.”
It’s to make sure you’re making decisions based on reality and everyone’s on the same page.

Because the worst financial news?
It’s the one your CEO finds out too late.

CFOs — how do you handle these moments?
Any scripts, tricks, or lessons?

Did two salary reviews this week.
One person got a raise. The other didn’t.
Does that make me a bad boss?

Honestly, I used to struggle with this.
You want to reward great people —
but you also have to keep the company financially healthy.

And when there’s no clear system, every raise convo feels... personal.
That’s the trap.

That’s how you lose great people — or blow up your burn.

When I first had the idea for Fuel, I didn’t just want a tool to answer
“Should I spend more on marketing?”
I wanted to answer:
“Can I give this person a raise?”

Now, it’s way easier.

→ Every team has dashboards tied to actual KPIs — pipeline, CAC, ROI, MRR.
→ We see how their work drives revenue or margin
→ We track the ROI of their projects/channels
→ And it’s all right there, in one dashboard

So when someone asks for a raise, it’s not a game, not an awkward, stressful 30-min meeting.
It’s a shared look at reality.

First teammate came into the review with clear data:
“Here’s the CAC on my campaigns. Here’s the ROI. Here’s how I increased conversion by 20%.”
They got the raise.
The value was obvious — to both of us.

The second couldn’t show impact. So we mapped it together.
Built a 90-180-360-day KPI plan. Now they know exactly what to focus on.

That’s how raise conversations should go.

Not: “I’ve been here for a year.”
But: “Here’s what I’ve done for the business.”

Fuel helps make that possible.
It brings clarity to decisions that are otherwise... too emotional.

Happy to show you how Fuel works — dm me.
And, what’s your framework for giving or negotiating raises, guys?
(wanna make our process even better

If I were a CFO again, this would be my 30-60-90 day playbook.

I used to be a CFO. I also used to hire dozens of FP&A managers, CFOs, etc.

And you know what separates the great ones?

What they do in their first 90 days.

Not just what they say. But what they set up.
What they prioritize. How they listen.

So I wrote the full 30-60-90 day guide I wish I had when I started.
Here’s how I’d break it down:

🟢 Phase 0: Before day 1

Goal: Stalking mode activated. Learn everything about the company before you even get the Slack invite.

To-do:
→ Ask the CEO and COO to send you everything:
— The latest financial model.
— Forecasts and annual/quarterly plans.
— The most recent P&L, cash flow statement, and balance sheet
— The finance team’s org chart and KPIs
— Any strategic docs, pitch decks, investor updates.
→ Write down every question that pops up.
→ Learn what the business is trying to achieve — not just what it reports.

You’ll walk in more prepared than 90% of CFOs.

🟢 Phase 1: Week 1

Goal: See what’s actually going on and don’t touch anything yet.

To-do:
→ Meet with your CEO. Ask what KPIs for the next quarter and year, what is the key financial goal for founders and the CEO (valuation, cash flow, profitability). Ask about strategic objectives for the business: any plans for M&A, revenue scaling, fundraising, etc? Lunch is better than a Zoom call (I promise you).

→ Review the full finance stack. What tools do they use? Where are the spreadsheets? What’s broken? How is data consolidated? Gather everything better in a map format (you can use Figma or any other visual tools for that) with data flows, reports, etc.

Don’t change anything yet..

Ok, I know this post is getting long… so I've dropped the full 30-60-90 day CFO plan in a Notion doc.

If you're interested, please comment and I’ll send it over.

And tell me:
→ What’s one thing you’d want your CFO to do in their first 90 days?
(or, if you are a CFO — what’s your go-to move when joining a new company?)

I’m speaking at Inbound SF next week.
And I’m talking about a topic most founders and CMOs think they’ve nailed…
until they see the math.

“Building a data-driven marketing budget that works”

Last year, we spent $300K on marketing at Fuel.
80% of it brought… nothing.

Painful? Yes.
Worth it? Absolutely — because it forced us to completely change the way we plan, track, and kill underperforming spend.

I’ll share:

→ The 70-20-10 marketing budget rule we now live by.
→ How we connect financial and marketing data in real time.
→ Why most teams fail at experiments (and how to fix it).
→ How we always know LTV, CAC, and payback period down to each campaign.

It’s the same framework we now run for customers.

If you’re in SF next week, come find me — I’ll be the one talking about profit at a marketing conference… and probably in a green jersey.

The link for registration is in the comment.

And if you can’t make it, drop a comment and I’ll share my slides + templates after the event.

Apparently, women don’t build AI.
At least, that’s what the stats say:

Only 22% of AI talent globally is female.
Less than 14% make it to senior roles.

At Fuel, our entire AI team is women.
(Okay, it’s two people — but still 100%.)

They’re the ones building:

→ AI Dashboard & Metric Builder – create any metric, chart, or report with just one prompt.

→ Fuel AI Copilot – connects to QuickBooks, Stripe, HubSpot & more — and answers like your smartest FP&A hire.

→ AI Anomaly Detection – catches errors and weird behavior before it costs you.

→ AI Benchmarks for SMBs – shows you exactly where you stand.

I’m proud.
They’re brilliant.

And they’re just getting started.

Getting to $10M ARR taught me one big thing:
What gets you from 0 → 1 will not get you to 10.

When we were chasing our first $1M ARR, it was chaos (in the best way).

We’d launch a new feature in a week.
Start a brand-new channel on a random Tuesday.
I’d drop “let’s try this” Slack threads every day — and the team would run with them the next day.

It worked.
Some ideas crushed it. Others were just beginner’s luck.

And because we tracked everything and killed bad experiments fast, we didn’t burn through too much cash.

(I tracked burn, runway, CAC/LTV, ROI by channel in my Fuel dashboard)

The problem:
We tried to keep that same playbook after $1M.

We didn’t double down on what actually worked.
We just kept chasing new ideas we found on LinkedIn, FOMO and dopamine from launching a new thing.

Fun? Yes.
Smart? Absolutely not.

So a few Q back we’ve flipped the script:

→ 80% of our time is spent scaling what’s proven.
→ 20% is for experiments.

It’s less thrilling than launching exciting projects every week…
but WAY more profitable.

If you’re between $1M–$10M ARR — how do you decide what gets the 80% vs. the 20% of your time?

Just heard from a founder:
“Why did my competitor get 8× EBITDA on their exit… and I’m being told 4×?”

Same industry. Same year.

Well, here’s the uncomfortable truth:

EBITDA × Multiple sounds like clean math.
But the inputs are messy as hell.

🔴 What drags your multiple down

SaaS:

→ High churn or unpredictable enterprise deals = shaky future cash.
→ Messy deferred revenue or “creative” revenue recognition = buyers don’t trust your numbers.
→ Whale dependency = one platform change or big client churn tanks revenue.
→ Flat EBITDA + slowing growth = no obvious ROI for buyer.
→ Founder bottleneck = buyer sees risk, not a scalable asset.
→ No predictable pipeline growth = hard for buyers to see upside.

Agencies:

→ Feast-or-famine projects = revenue volatility kills valuation.
→ Two clients = 60% of revenue = goodbye deal multiple.
→ Aged receivables, scope creep, no job costing = profits are fiction until the cash hits.
→ EBITDA whiplash year to year = buyer haircut.
→ Founder-led delivery = you leave, value leaves.
→ No marketing pipeline = growth story stalls.

🟢 What pushes your multiple up

SaaS:

→ Sticky ARR + low churn. Predictable cash flows buyers can lever.
→ High net revenue retention(>100%) + upsells. Customers grow, not shrink.
→ 25%+ year-over-year growth and improving margins. Proof of scale.
→ No customer >10% of ARR.
→ High gross margin, low capital expenditure = cash-rich EBITDA.
→ Clear KPIs like lifetime value to customer acquisition cost (LTV/CAC) and payback <12 months.
→ Executive team beyond the founder — scalable org chart and leadership in place.
→ Data showing healthy mix of new customer revenue and expansion revenue

Agencies:

→ Retainers or long-term contracts = repeatable revenue.
→ Growth in both revenue and average client spend.
→ Client concentration <15% per account.
→ 15%+ EBITDA margin with clean work-in-progress and accounts receivable processes.
→ SOPs + leadership team = scalable delivery without the founder.
→ Marketing and sales engine that produces predictable, growing pipeline.

Ballpark:

🟢 SaaS: ~6–10× EBITDA (or 3–8× ARR if high-growth, low-profit)
🟢 Agencies: ~3–5× EBITDA (tiny shops may trade at 2–3× on seller’s discretionary earnings)
🟢 Size premium: Add 1–2× just by being bigger + de-risked.

Note: Multiples vary significantly by geography. U.S. private equity buyers often pay higher multiples than European buyers for the same profile of company.

For anyone wondering where to start — the fastest multiple boost I’ve seen is reducing concentration risk.

If 40%+ of your revenue comes from one client (or one channel), it’s the first thing buyers will ding you on.

Question for you: 
What’s ONE move you’d tell another founder to make today to make their business less risky to a buyer?

AI now spots financial mistakes 30% better than a human expert.
And yes — even the best finance teams miss stuff:

An expense dropped in the wrong category
A COGS spike without matching revenue
A duplicated invoice that quietly ruins your P&L

Not because they’re bad at their jobs…
But because no one has time to check every transaction, every day.

Most of the time, your CFO or finance manager can find them —
but only after hours of manual checking.

We built AI Anomaly Detection so they don’t have to.

Here’s what it does:

→ Flags unusual patterns in transactions and metrics based on your historical data.
→ Surfaces small, non-obvious errors that humans often miss — but that compromise reporting accuracy.
→ Lets you drill straight into the problematic transactions and resolve them instantly.
→ Allows you to customize rules so you only see what matters for your company.

Why CFOs love it:

✅ Cuts hours of manual review into minutes.
✅ Catches issues before they hit your reports.
✅ Keeps financial data clean, reliable, and audit-ready.

It’s now live in beta for all Fuel customers.
Next up — we’re integrating it directly into AI Chat so you can ask:

“Show me anomalies in August expenses over $5K”
… and get the answer instantly.

Finance leaders: Your job is hard enough.
Let’s make at least this part easier.

DM me if you wanna see AI Anomaly Detection in action and test Fuel:)

IMO, the worst time to get an FP&A system is AFTER you need it.
I’ve seen founders raise $20M, hire a team, start spending…

…and two months later, they can’t answer “How much runway do we have?”

Then, panic sets in.
They wish they’ve set up finance sooner.

So I made a decision tree for founders:
👉 “Do I really need an FP&A system now?”

(Scroll down, save it, use it.)

Here’s what I wish every founder knew:

1/ You don’t need an FP&A system if you’re doing <$1M ARR and have one bank account. Just keep your accounting clean and track cash manually.

2/ But once you raise funding, manage multiple tools/entities, or build forecasts in Excel… That’s when cracks start to show.

3/ Most founders think they’re “on top of it” — until an investor asks:

“What’s your burn multiple?”
“What happens if churn goes up?”
“What’s the ROI on this campaign?”

And they don’t have an answer.

Things like scenario planning, marketing ROI tracking, multi-entity reporting, setting KPIs for your team —

They’re not “nice-to-haves” once you cross $2M ARR.

They’re literally survival tools.

That’s exactly why we built Fuel —

✅ AI-powered FP&A platform + real human CFO
✅ Dashboards, forecasts, budgets, insights — done for you
✅ Model any business decision in seconds

If you’re hitting this stage — DM me.
Or just save decision tree for later :)

In F1, the driver doesn’t win alone.
Financial planning works the same way.

It’s the pit crew, strategists, and engineers working in sync.
Here’s how it works in finance — and who’s in the cockpit at each stage:

Step 1: Set annual goals & KPIs → Decide the race strategy.
👥 Founders, CEO

Step 2: Plan projects and resources in detail → Engineer the car & crew for the track ahead.
👥 Exec team, CEO

Step 3: Build a consolidated plan across several scenarios → Run the simulations, prepare for different weather conditions.
👥 CFO, FP&A Director, CEO, Execs, Founders

Step 4: Translate into quarterly plans (KPIs, budgets, projects) → Map each lap of the race.
👥 CFO, CEO, Execs

Step 5: Break it down into monthly plans → Assign pit stops, tire changes, and fuel loads.
👥 CFO, Execs

Step 6: Track weekly progress, adjust monthly plans → Monitor the race in real time, tweak the strategy mid-lap.
👥 CFO, Execs

Step 7: Review monthly/quarterly results, adjust future plans → Analyze the race data, improve for the next track.
👥 Founders, CEO, Execs, CFO/FP&A

Financial planning is pretty much the same as F1 race.
Miss a step or fail to collaborate, and you’re out of the race.

Taplio

Alyona Mysko 's Linkedin Analytics

What is Alyona talking about?

Who is engaging with Alyona

's Best Posts (last 30 days)

Want to drive more opportunities from LinkedIn?