Fundraising Fundamentals Chapter 2: Counting What Counts
This is the second part of our three-part series on funding readiness. Last time, we made the case for treating due diligence as the quiet foundation of every successful raise, not a panic exercise. Now we turn to your numbers, but not the ones you trot out on pitch day to impress a room. We mean the numbers that show whether your business is actually working, whether your growth is real, and whether you will survive.
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: revenue growth is addictive. Every new customer, every uptick in recurring revenue, feels like a high. It is easy to get hooked on the vanity metrics. But if you are spending two pounds to earn one, the high will not last. Investors know this. They will nod through your glossy deck, but the question in their minds is simple: can your business sustain itself, or is it burning bright before burning out?
The Story Behind the Spend
Many founders like a neat, single customer acquisition cost. It looks clean in board packs and keeps conversations short. But when you blend every channel; ads, sponsorships, partnerships, into one tidy number, you are hiding the truth from yourself.
Better to slice your customers by cohort. How did they arrive? What did it cost? Who stays, who leaves, and who is actually worth the effort? This is where you discover that the fancy video campaign everyone loved delivers half the lifetime value of the customers who found you through a recommendation. It is where you realise that your best customers might not be the ones you are spending the most pennies to win.
This is the kind of forensic clarity a good fractional CFO brings. They do not just tidy up your spreadsheets. They help you see which pounds are working, and which are quietly leaking away.
The Churn You Cannot Ignore
Churn is the polite term for customers leaving, and many founders treat it like a weather report; unpleasant, inevitable, and best skimmed over quickly. But churn is not a single problem. It is two stories hiding in one metric.
There is churn by choice. Customers who leave because your onboarding was clunky, your message was unclear, or your product did not do what they hoped. Then there is churn by accident. Cards expire, payment details fail, and your systems shrug and let them go.
The fix is not the same for both. One demands you look at your customer journey with brutal honesty. The other requires tightening up your payment systems so a failed transaction does not become a final goodbye.
A fractional CFO will help you pull these stories apart, so you can stop guessing and start fixing the right things.
Reading the Burn
Then there is your burn multiple. If churn shows who leaves, your burn multiple shows how you are spending to grow. How much cash are you burning to bring in each pound of recurring revenue? A SaaS business should see a burn multiple under one. A marketplace can live with a bit more. Go much higher, and you are in trouble.
This is not a number you check for a slide. It is a pulse check, something you watch quarter after quarter, asking hard questions when it drifts in the wrong direction. Which customer groups are costing you more than they give? Which campaigns are burning cash with little to show for it? Are you spending to grow, or spending to look like you are growing?
A good CFO will not let you dodge these questions. They will sit with you, sleeves rolled up, until the plan actually matches the reality.
Making Cash Work
Even if you do not sell physical products, your business has its own kind of inventory. Work in progress, hours worked but not yet billed, invoices waiting in drafts. Every day they sit unbilled is a day your cash is stuck in limbo.
Send the invoice the moment a milestone is hit, not at month end. See if your suppliers will extend terms. A day saved here, a day there, and suddenly you have the cash to hire that next person or fund the campaign you keep postponing.
This is what a fractional CFO will quietly bring into your business. Not sweeping gestures, but practical, clear improvements that free up cash without drama.
Why It Matters
Unit economics are not slides for your pitch deck. They are the truth about your business. The more you understand them, the fewer awkward questions you will face in board meetings. The clearer they are, the more you will raise on your terms, not out of panic.
You don’t need a full time CFO to get this right. But you do need a CFO’s hand on the wheel. Someone who can read what your numbers are really saying, help you act before the market forces your hand, and keep you moving in the right direction.
Because growth is not enough. Growth that lasts is the foundation of every successful raise.
If you are ready to build yours, book a discovery call with Fractionality today.
