default alive
Know, at all times, whether your current trajectory reaches profitability before the money runs out. Almost nothing else matters as much.
Paul Graham gave founders the one question worth answering at any moment: on your current growth and spending, do you reach profitability before the cash runs out? If yes, you’re default alive. If no, default dead. Most founders can’t answer it cold, and not knowing is the actual problem.
I say a blunter version on calls. If you can make money, stop thinking about funding. Reinvest it. Ten deliveries a day should be a hundred next week. Your bank balance isn’t supposed to grow — your transactions are. A business that’s alive on its own terms is also the easiest thing in the world to raise on, because now the investor is chasing a chart instead of carrying you.
Fundraising is where the question goes to hide. A round resets the clock and makes default-dead feel like default-alive for eighteen months. It doesn’t change the trajectory, it just moves the wall further away. And the money quietly makes you worse: budgets expand to the money, deadlines expand to the time. Hand someone ten dollars for ice cream and they eat ice cream; hand them ten thousand and they eat the same ice cream and waste the rest. Ask for the number of darts you need, not the number of dollars.
So carry the real number in your head. Not a projection — projections are always wrong and shouldn’t even be in the data room. The real one: money out of the account this week, to the rupee, and the cost of an active user over time. If you spend half on marketing and traffic falls by half, you’re default dead and expensive. If the gap between what a user costs and what they pay you shrinks every month, you’re default alive and everyone wants in.
The two levers are growth and burn. You almost never have to touch burn if growth is real. Fix growth first; cut only when growth won’t come. Just know, cold, which lever you’re reaching for and why.