Insights for modern B2B growth

Explore expert articles on finance, operations, and technology for scaling companies. Practical guidance, industry updates, and actionable strategies—no jargon, just results.

Fractionally Speaking

Your go‐to spot for hands‐on finance + tech playbooks. Each post cuts through the jargon with step-by-step tutorials, real-world case studies, and ready-to-use templates—so you can move fast, avoid pitfalls, and drive cash flow immediately.
Your Start Up Checklist
Midwood Consulting's "The Comprehensive Startup Checklist" provides a detailed, living document for new ventures across various industries, covering 60 critical tasks before major milestones like cutting a PO or pitching investors. It systematically breaks down startup essentials into ten key areas: Entity & Legal, Cap Table & Equity, Strategy & Market, Product & Technology, Financial Model & Metrics, Operations & Team, Go-To-Market, Compliance & Risk, Funding & Investor Readiness, and Timeline Checkpoints. This robust guide emphasizes strategic decision-making, such as choosing the right entity and tech stack, alongside practical steps like conducting customer discovery and setting up financial forecasts, ultimately serving as a rigorous framework for building a scalable and compliant business foundation.

Industrial Edge: Using Technology to Drive Revenue per Employee
Midwood Consulting's "Industrial Edge" emphasizes that increasing revenue per employee is the ultimate efficiency metric and a key competitive advantage. The article advocates for automating high-value, low-skill tasks and building smart approval workflows to free up staff for revenue-generating activities. It provides a roadmap for implementation, starting with simple tools like Zapier and scaling to ERPs or custom development, with real-world examples illustrating significant gains in order processing and inventory management. The core message is to view technology as an investment that directly impacts profitability by optimizing operations, reducing manual intervention, and ensuring time saved is reinvested into core business growth drivers.

Entrepreneurial Bricolage: Turning Constraints into Competitive Advantage
Midwood Consulting's "Entrepreneurial Bricolage" explains that resourceful, "duct tape" solutions are essential for early market entry and testing. While bricolage accelerates initial progress and minimizes investment, the article stresses it's a temporary survival tool, not a permanent strategy. Companies must recognize when these temporary fixes become "technical debt," leading to scaling breakdowns and increased costs. The playbook outlines when to strategically replace bricolage with professional systems, progressing from pure improvisation to selective professionalization and, eventually, enterprise operations. Ultimately, successful businesses master the balance of using bricolage for innovation and rapid prototyping while investing in robust solutions for core, mission-critical functions.

Build for Scale: Setting Up Your Startup's Finance, Ops & Tech Foundations Right
This Midwood Consulting playbook, "Build for Scale: Your Finance, Ops & Tech Foundations Playbook," guides founders on strategically selecting technology to avoid future headaches and enable scalable growth. It stresses the importance of first mapping core business processes to identify automation opportunities and bottlenecks. The guide then outlines an evolutionary approach to financial and CRM systems, advocating for simple, centralized hubs that scale with business complexity. A "Buy • Borrow • Build" framework helps founders judiciously decide between off-the-shelf solutions, SaaS platforms, or custom development for different capabilities. Finally, it highlights the benefits of headless architecture for future-proofing and urges constant vigilance against "tech debt" signals, emphasizing that proactive system mapping and strategic pivots are crucial for sustained business health.

13-Week Cash-Flow Model in 90 Minutes
Midwood Consulting presents "The 90-Minute Cash Flow Forecast," a crucial guide for business survival. The author, a fractional CFO/CTO, demonstrates how to quickly build a rolling 13-week cash flow forecast, acting as an early warning system and strategic planning tool. The framework emphasizes gathering key data, building a confident Week 1 foundation, and extending the vision to 13 weeks with informed assumptions. Crucially, it highlights scenario planning (best, most likely, worst case) to proactively address potential cash shortfalls. This practical approach aims to provide businesses with clarity and control over their financial future.