Bryan Johnson

Helping founders run profitable, cash-strong businesses. Strategic CFO. Cash flow, margin, M&A. Founder of Johnson Strategic Advisory. Opinions, not advice.

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

An annual contract isn't a discount. It's a loan from your customer. 10% off list for 12 months of cash up front is the cheapest growth capital on your menu. Are you asking for it on every renewal, or letting customers pick monthly because it's easier?

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

Your gross margin says 80%. Your contribution margin might say 35%.

Gross margin stops at cost of delivery. Contribution margin adds the cost to win and keep the customer. That gap is where SaaS profit hides.

Which customer cohort is actually contribution-positive?

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

A $100M round used to be a milestone. In 2026 there have already been 250 of them. 18 cleared $1B.

Bigger checks bring bigger board math: more dilution, a higher burn bar, and liquidation prefs stacking ahead of your common.

Raising big isn't the win. Surviving the terms is. #CFO #venture

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

The Fed decides today. Markets price a 99% chance rates hold at 3.5-3.75%.

For founders that means your cost of capital isn't moving this week. Plan runway on today's rate, not the cut you keep hoping for.

How many months of runway at your current burn? #CFO #FedWatch

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

@shiffgil We have some very interesting times ahead of us. Seems like everything Is changing at such a rapid pace.

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

Adyen just bought Orb for $335M to pull billing and payments into one stack.

Every billing migration underprices one thing: billing is your revenue source of truth. Get it wrong and every forecast downstream is wrong.

Who owns billing accuracy, finance or eng? #CFO #fintech

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

BlackRock just paid $40B for a data center operator. Q1 venture funding hit $300B.

Your AI bill is funded by these deals. When the capex peak ends, model APIs reprice up. Plan your 2027 budget around 2x today's cost.

What's your AI line as a percent of opex now?

#CFO #AI

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

Capital One is buying Brex for $5.15B.

Half the founders I work with run AP, expenses, and cards through it. Three line items, one vendor. Acquisitions reset pricing and roadmaps inside 18 months.

What's your stack if Brex pricing doubles next year?

#CFO #fintech

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

Median SaaS now spends $2 of S&M per $1 of new ARR. CAC payback up 12.5 percent since 2022.

Boards still ask about growth rate. They should be asking about payback months.

Growth without payback is a tax bill in 2028. How many months is yours?

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

Your DPO is the cheapest line of credit you will ever access. Most founders waste it.

Pay vendors on day 15, 30, 45. The cash you don't spend yet is free working capital. Banks charge 9 percent for that same liquidity.

Net-60 terms aren't paperwork. They are runway.

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

Suno raised $400M last week at $5.4B. Eighteen months ago it was worth $500M. It is also being sued over 61,000 songs.

Contingent liabilities don't show on a pitch deck. They show on a closing memo. Where's yours hiding?

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

@Sam_Rosati @SMB_Attorney Not a deal killer when the gap is real normalization. It becomes one when the add-backs were optimism, not policy. Diligence sorts which inside an hour.

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

@TechLayoffCC The worker-side terms are a board-side lever too. Signing deadline and benefits bridge are what stop the payback leaking back out as backfill and a second round.

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

$130M severance. $500M a year saved. Snap's payback: under four months.

After that the layoff prints free cash. Boards never see the post-cut number, because most founders run the math after, not before.

What's your real payback?

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

@Codie_Sanchez Surviving 2008 and clearing real cash are different tests. Plenty of 20-year shops ran on the owner working for free. Buy the margin, not the longevity.

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

@jasonlk Watched this sink a Series A. The drop isn't the VP, it's proof the founder was the process. You can't hand off a motion nobody wrote down.

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

The #1 mistake I see founders make when they hire their first VP of Sales …

Is that the founder stops doing much sales themselves.

It doesn’t work that way. Sales almost always goes down as a result. Oftentimes, dramatically so.

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

@gregisenberg Most of it isn't lying, it's the definition. Annualize a usage spike, count signed-not-live, call a pilot recurring. The number's real, the word isn't.

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

Rule of 40 was built for $100M ARR companies. At $5M ARR it's a trap.

Growth plus margin above 40 is fine at scale. Below $10M the metric tells you to cut sales spend right when you should be loading it.

Use net new ARR per dollar burned instead. Above 0.5 is healthy.

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

@sweatystartup $920M/mo from one buyer isn't recurring revenue. It's customer concentration. Diligence calls that credit risk.

[Bryan Johnson @johnsonstratCFO]

@Sam_Rosati @JermanMichael @Hollywellteam Where QoE breaks first-time searchers: NWC peg gets set on a quarter that flatters the seller. Six months of cash gone in trueup before the keys are warm.