When you're an early-stage founder, your cap table is one of the most intimate pieces of your company — a ledger that records who owns the dream and who gets to steer it. I've negotiated my fair share of cap table changes with early investors, and I can tell you: it’s entirely possible to raise...
Apr 11, 2026
• by Éloïse Dupont
Latest News from Business News
Hello — I’m writing from the perspective of someone who has spent years analyzing startups, advising founders, and helping investors separate signal from noise. When a founder hands me a pilot customer case study, I read it like a detective: I’m trying to understand traction, unit economics, customer fit, and the likelihood that this pilot can scale. Over time I’ve noticed a pattern:...
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When I launched my first startup, cash flow felt like a living organism: predictable one week, chaotic the next. Bank transfers, payment holds, and mounting fees ate into runway more quickly than I expected. I eventually discovered Stripe Treasury and it changed how I managed company cash—by giving me a programmable bank account that integrated directly with payments, cards, and payouts. In...
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Choosing the right financing path for a startup is never a purely financial decision — it's strategic, operational, and deeply personal. When I started writing for Business News, I spoke with founders who had taken every route: friends and family, angel rounds, traditional VC, and the more recent rise of revenue-based financing (RBF). Over time I became convinced that RBF deserves serious...
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When I first started building products, I chased data like a detective chasing clues: pageviews, bounce rates, signups, and the dazzling vanity metrics that make dashboards look busy. But what I really needed was a single page that answered the most important question for any early-stage product: do people want this? Over time I learned to turn raw metrics into clarity. In this article I’ll...
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I remember the day I realized our freemium model was a leak rather than a funnel: engagement was healthy, sign-ups were growing, but revenue barely moved. We were subsidizing users who never intended to pay. Over the next 90 days I led a focused, measurable push to convert freemium users into profitable paying cohorts. Below I walk you through the exact playbook I used, the experiments that...
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Paying remote contractors in crypto can feel like navigating a maze — exciting, full of potential, but fraught with regulatory dead ends if you’re not careful. Over the past few years I’ve helped founders and small businesses pilot crypto payrolls, and I’ve learned that compliance and clear communication are the two things that separate a successful program from a costly headache. Below I...
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Securing non-dilutive grant funding can feel like finding a golden ticket for your startup: it doesn't take equity, it can validate your technology, and it gives you runway to hit meaningful milestones. I've negotiated a handful of these grants myself, and I’ve seen teams both thrive and stumble when grant terms collide with their product roadmap. Here’s a practical, first-person guide on how...
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I remember the first time a VC pitch felt like the only way forward. We had rapid top-line growth, aspirations to scale internationally, and a roadmap that looked great on a slide. But as we dug deeper into the options, revenue-based financing (RBF) began to look like a smarter, more flexible path for that stage of the business. Over the years I’ve helped founders weigh these choices, and I...
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I often get asked how entrepreneurs and busy professionals — people who travel, juggle meetings, and prize efficiency — can still enjoy sports that give them both a physical outlet and networking opportunities. For me, padel has become that perfect blend, and one question comes up more than any other: where do I find the right padel racket uk that matches my level, playing style, and budget?...
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I remember the first time I suspected a subset of our users would pay more for a premium feature: the support tickets kept coming, product tours showed repeated engagement, and a few customers even asked, “How can we get this faster?” That curiosity is the seed of every strong pricing experiment. If you want to prove customers will pay more for a SaaS feature, you need a methodical, low-risk...
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