Hi {{first_name | Reader}},
This week I spent more time with humans than AI.
I usually spend Saturdays writing about what I'm building. This Saturday is different. Three founders, three conversations, all in seven days. Different industries, different stages, completely different problems. But every one of them did something this quarter that changed the trajectory of their business.
I took notes. Here's what I'd steal.
1. The retailer who cut overhead by 50% without losing a dollar of revenue.
A consumer brand I spent time with this week made the call most B2B+B2C founders avoid: they killed one of the two channels.
Result: 50% overhead gone. Revenue untouched. They went from burning to near breakeven, and now they can raise on their terms instead of a lender's.
The trick wasn't the cut. It was how they got there.
They started with a blank sheet, not last year's budget. Then they asked first-principles questions: what actions actually need to happen to run this business? Who needs to handle each one? And what does that cost — freelance, part-time, or full-time? Every line item had to earn its way in, not inherit its place.
Then they ran every customer cohort against three axes:
most profitable
easiest to serve
fastest to convert to cash
Whatever didn't survive that ranking got cut, including a whole channel.
Three other founders I worked with this year hit the same fork. Same conclusion every time. Running B2B and B2C in parallel feels like diversification. In reality, it's two half-built companies pretending to be one, and the math only shows up when you force a zero-based view.
What to copy this week:
Step 1 — rebuild your cost base from a blank sheet. For every line item, ask: what action does this fund, who runs it, what's the right form of labor (freelance, part-time, full-time)?
Step 2 — score your top 20 customers on those 3 axes (profitability, serve-cost, days-to-cash). The bottom half is almost always subsidizing your sense of momentum. Cut, don't optimize.
2. The B2B equipment company that stopped bleeding margin to their 3PL.
Most founders running physical product treat shipping and handling as a fixed cost of doing business. Your 3PL is happy to keep it that way, because it's the most opaque line on your P&L.
A B2B equipment company I worked with this week pulled their 3PL's granular cost detail (route, weight class, fuel surcharge, accessorial fees) and ran it against their own pricing. The leak: 23% of their shipping spend was going to routes where they were charging customers below their true delivered cost.
They renegotiated provider pricing on the worst routes, repriced customer shipping by zone, and recovered the spread. No volume change. Pure margin.
What to copy: any service provider who bundles a complex service into one invoice line is obscuring their own pricing drivers, and with it your ability to negotiate. 3PLs do it with shipping. Agencies do it with retainers. Processors do it with "blended" rates. SaaS does it with seat tiers. Demand the unbundled view: cost by route, hour, transaction, user, or whatever the underlying driver actually is. The ones who refuse to share are the ones with the most to hide.
3. The landscaping company a wife built secretly while her husband watered the lawn.
Rayan Fakih is one of my favorite people on earth.
He's also the quintessential all-around entrepreneur. He runs ventures across geographies and across industries at the same time. He goes all-in on every single one. When he believes in something, the lack of background doesn't slow him down. He's currently building in robotics without the technical pedigree most founders would tell you is mandatory.
So when Rayan did a landscaping project at his own house in Dubai, his wife watched the whole thing, said nothing, then quietly registered a company, set up the branding, opened an Instagram, photographed the garden, and closed the first client. Then she walked over to him and said: "congratulations, you have your first customer."
Twelve months later, Something Planted has 15 employees, six figures in revenue, and has been profitable from day one with zero upfront capital. (His wife, it turns out, is an incredible entrepreneur in her own right.)
The flywheel runs itself. Every garden they finish gets seen by 3 to 5 visitors, and the question is always the same: who did this? The product is the ad.
What to copy: Two things.
First, the people closest to you can see your unfair advantages clearer than you can. Ask your spouse, your best friend, your last 3 clients what you do effortlessly that they'd pay for.
Second, build a business where the artifact IS the marketing. Visible craft compounds for free. Hidden craft requires Acquisition Spend.
Why I'm telling you all this.
Three founders. Three completely different problems. One thing in common: every move they made started with seeing data they previously couldn't see. The retailer needed customer-level economics. The equipment company needed route-level shipping costs. Rayan needed to see his own garden through a stranger's eyes.
That's the actual job of the modern CFO. The job isn't closing the books, it's surfacing the data the founder couldn't see in time to act on it.
That's why I'm building AI-CFO. Most fractional CFOs charge five figures a month and still take three weeks to answer "should I cut this channel?" The AI-CFO answers it tonight, with the granularity of those route-level shipping costs and the customer-cohort scoring story 1 used.
If you want to see where your business is leaking margin you can't see, take the free AI-CFO assessment. 8 minutes, no signup wall, tells you what your numbers are hiding.
One more thing before you go.
Which of these 3 hit hardest? Hit reply and tell me. I read every one, and the patterns shape what I write next.
Next week we're back to the build. After what story 2's founder pulled off with their 3PL, I'm wiring the AI-CFO to do the same thing automatically. Different angle, same idea: most founders are flying blind on costs they could see if anyone bothered to surface them.
Talk soon,
Samer
Your spreadsheet is now Claude Code
Do not get intimidated. Do not put this off for later.
Know who the knocker-upper was? Before alarm clocks existed, there was a person whose job was to walk through town with a long stick, tapping on windows to wake people up for work. That job disappeared overnight when alarm clocks became cheap.
Spreadsheets are the long stick. Claude Code is the alarm clock.
Don't be a knocker-upper.
