I was thinking last night about:
1. expansion cycle
2. how would I effectively spent $5MM to gain speed
3. growth risks.
Through all this thinking, the big conclusion that I keep coming back to, is that Finance is now biggest obstacle. In particular, having a strong financial system in place is what will allow me to mitigate risk that will be associated with high level of growth. The only pain about having a strong finance section, is that finance, on its own does not actually generate revenue. But, what finance does is an enable that provides risk management, date and controls.
So, looking at the areas where growth would occur, such as scaling up marketing, scaling up technology, investing technology, etc. – all those things are simple, easy to accomplish things. BUT the safety net for doing that is financial systems.
So, with that in mind, my focus will be on brining on board a strong CFO – one with capabilities to handle operational issue and as well fund raising issues. This will be an additional overhead BUT it will also be an enabler.
Once this is in place, the rest is going to be quite straightforward.
So, having gone down this path – what becomes clear that I should focus on a full time CFO position – and let that person build a strong system that they are comfortable for. Outsourcing it and then operating it without a CFO is likely not a good choice.