Haven

Helping Entrepreneurs and Business Owners get their Finances Right from Day 0 🤝

[Cyrus Shirazi @Cyrushshirazi]

This weeks Haven Newsletter covers:

- How our cracked team sent almost 900,000 slacks last year
- The third chapter of our Tax Code University
- Another new case study
- Fundraising news and investor insights
- Wins from our customers
- The antidote to AI Slop

And much more.

Give it a read so we can keep cooking these up for ya.

https://t.co/LQM9xeN4um

[Haven @usehaven]

https://t.co/s3YWRTYk9K

[Haven @usehaven]

@lucawashenko what can we do to help?

[Haven @usehaven]

https://t.co/XF9ga10Ee4

[Haven @usehaven]

@ItzSuds why aren't they a @usehaven customer?

[Haven @usehaven]

@_m27e @excid3 Happy to still do your migration for free @_m27e - just shoot us a DM!

[Cyrus Shirazi @Cyrushshirazi]

Green Flags to look for in your accountant:

1. Replies to you within 4 minutes
2. Freak in the sheets
3. Knows the difference between Balance Sheet, P&L, and Cash Flow (and how they talk)
4. Always delivers books on-time
5. Accurate Runway Projections
6. Customer Support Forward
7. Trustworthy
8. Has a good group of friends (700+) at VCs and Startups

FYI - I know a ton of these at @usehaven

[Cyrus Shirazi @Cyrushshirazi]

Each Haven Newsletter is designed to put our own spin on whats happening in and around finance, accounting, and the startup ecosystem.

They all have:
- News from Haven i.e. welcoming the legendary John Martin
- One practical finance insight/takeaway for readers to deep dive into (this week it's cash flow)
- Updates on recent funding announcements
- Customer shoutouts (because we love gassing up our partners cc Harry Blumsack and Infera)
- Content we're loving
- Other quick hits

Let me know what you like, don't like, and what you wanna see more of. This is for you all!

https://t.co/HSZjnrRfoD

[Haven @usehaven]

Did he call us boring?

[Cyrus Shirazi @Cyrushshirazi]

Boring businesses are hands down the best companies to build.

Trust me. I’m two years into building a “boring” company and we’re already at $9M ARR.

Before I started @usehaven, I was obsessed with @sweatystartup boring business list.

I must’ve looked at it 100+ times. I even incorporated an LLC to start a lawn care company at one point.

Why?

Because I kept seeing the same thing:

Prospective founders spend way too much time trying to “think up” a brilliant idea instead of doing the boring, painful, guaranteed-hard thing that people will actually pay for.

Everyone wants the clever moonshot.
- The viral consumer app
- The next era AI solution
- Killer AR/VR
- Trendy bs like web3 and crypto

But nobody wants the actual work.

The real-world ops. The door-to-door grind. The face-to-face, hands-on, unsexy execution that actually turns into cash flow.

My mindset was the opposite:

Fuck it. I’m just going to do something boring, but do it exceptionally well.

The fact of this matter is… boring compounds.

Every day you show up, you get a little better.
Every client you save creates two more.
Every small refinement snowballs.

There is no silver bullet.

You don’t need a 6-month idea hunt, and you definitely don’t need the perfect concept.

You need to pick something real, painful, and valuable.

And then out-execute everyone else for a long time.

Most people are looking for leverage in the idea, but the actual leverage is in the consistency.

So here’s my advice to you:

Do the boring thing. Do it better than everyone else. And let compound interest do the rest.

[Cyrus Shirazi @Cyrushshirazi]

The chief of @sequoia is quitting b/c venture is toast and the math doesn’t work anymore.

Everyone keeps asking why so many top operators are stepping down from big jobs, leaving prestigious firms, or skipping the “career ladder” entirely to start their own companies.

People want some conspiracy theory answer.

But there’s a simpler explanation:

The most important thing you need to build a generational company is an exceptional team. And it has never been harder to assemble one.

Not because talent disappeared.

But because all the exceptional people left to build their own companies.

Twenty years ago, if you were a cracked engineer, you’d go join Google or Amazon, get a ridiculous comp package, stack your RSUs, and coast.

That was the playbook. The smartest people went to the biggest companies because that’s where the upside lived.

Today?
- You can raise a pre-seed from your kitchen table.
- You can ship a product in a weekend.
- You can find customers on X, LinkedIn, Reddit, hell even TikTok

The distribution is global from day one.

Starting a company has never been easier. But because of that, keeping exceptional people has never been harder.

It’s not ego, or pride, or impatience. It’s access.

The people who would’ve spent 5–10 years “earning their stripes” at a big company don’t need to anymore.

They were always going to build companies. Now they can just do it way quicker.

I left @meow after basically a year to build my own company.

Other early staff left and did the same.

We found problems in a market we were passionate about and were raising capital in no time.

This is happening everywhere.

There’s so much more capital and opportunity in the ecosystem that the best people no longer feel the need to “wait their turn.”

They don’t need the credibility badge. They don’t need the résumé. They don’t need permission.

Which sounds great for innovation… but there’s a consequence no one is talking about:

Talent is now fragmented across thousands of small companies instead of concentrated inside a few great ones.

This means that we'll see way more companies succeed…but far fewer companies scale to generational size.

Not because the ideas are bad.
Not because the markets are small.
But because the talent density isn’t there.

The best founders in the world still need other exceptional people around them.

You can’t brute force a generational company alone.

And if all the best people are building their own thing, the firms (VC or otherwise) that rely on assembling an A+ team inside a single institution are screwed (kind of).

They won’t get the returns they’re used to. Their bets won’t compound the way they did in the past.

Because when access increases, concentration decreases. And when concentration decreases, generational outcomes become rarer.

Everyone celebrates how easy it is to start something today.

Nobody talks about how hard it is to build something great in a world where your best possible cofounder, early engineer, or right-hand operator is already off running their own startup.

It’s not good or bad. It’s just the new reality.

If you want to build something with longevity today, you need two things:

1. A mission that exceptional people are willing to pause their own ambitions for.
2. A culture so high-standard and so aligned that talent density becomes your moat.

Everything else is noise.

[Haven @usehaven]

https://t.co/DUH1R4ZyZq

[Cyrus Shirazi @Cyrushshirazi]

This growth hack that got Haven from 0 to 3 million in revenue.

No ads. No automation. No marketing. Just a year of showing up, meeting people, and building a space founders actually wanted to be a part of.

Here’s the full story:

When I started Haven, I was already part of a bunch of founder communities.

Slack groups, WhatsApp chats, little circles of people building real companies.

I was spending an enormous amount of time talking to founders directly. Probably 10 founders a day.

And I was meeting a ton of VCs too, not because I was raising, just organically getting to know people in the ecosystem.

At some point I realized:
Why don’t I just create my own group with the best people I’m meeting?

So I did.

The first 30–50 people were just my existing friends. Founders and investors I already liked, trusted, and talked to regularly.

But after that, every new person came through one rule:

The only way in was an introduction. And if you got in, you HAD to introduce me to one more founder or VC you thought should be there too.

That was it.

That tiny requirement turned into a compounding machine.

From November 2023 through the summer of 2024, my calendar was slammed.

I took every call. I met every person. I hosted small events in New York. I added every great builder I met into the group.

And over 9–12 months, those introductions kept stacking.

50 people turned into 500. Founders met other founders. VCs met operators. Everyone got value from everyone else.

The reason it worked wasn’t because we were plotting to turn all these people into Haven customers.

It’s because we knew that while we couldn’t solve all of their problems, we could solve one of the biggest and most universal problems in entrepreneurship:

Loneliness.

The truth is, as a founder, you spend most of your time dealing with problems the people around you don’t understand.

What you really want is to talk to someone who’s in the trenches like you are.

By giving people a place to do that, the relationships became real. And because they were real, they compounded.

We met founders before they were ready to become customers.

They’d join the community, go back to building, raise money five months later, and then they’d come back to us asking to become a Haven client.

The group became a flywheel for the business. Not because we pushed Haven on anyone. But because trust compounds faster than CAC.

That’s how we got from 0 to 3M.

Not by optimizing funnels. Not by running ads. Not by automating every touchpoint like everyone else.

Just by showing up every day, talking to people, and creating a place founders actually wanted to be, long before they needed us.

[Haven @usehaven]

One of our accountants tried the Gen Z challenge where they sit in complete uninterrupted boredom for 15 minutes.

Safe to say it did not go well.

[Haven @usehaven]

Legacy accounting firms have hoodwinked and bamboozled their clients for far too long.

If you or a loved one has been a victim of:
- “Strategic advisory” that’s really just billable hours
- Verbal neglect by an AI help desk agent
- Email threads longer than your runway
- Broken QuickBooks integration “getting fixed” for six months

Then it's time to move on.

Haven is putting an end to it - once and for all!

Because finance should move as fast as your business does.

[Haven @usehaven]

https://t.co/9uYGE1tYTL

[Haven @usehaven]

Huge shout to the @trygoodword team, who just launched publicly and announced a $4M raise led by HUMAN CAPITAL to bring back the art of real networking!

We're stoked to continue working with you as you scale!

Full story here: https://t.co/BxtLsa7mqT

[Haven @usehaven]

Full case study: https://t.co/yZraURL5z2

[Haven @usehaven]

New case study from the Haven team just dropped.

Check it out to see how we helped @floraai save 150+ hours in bookkeeping, and uncover $17k in R&D credits.

#taxtwitter

[Cyrus Shirazi @Cyrushshirazi]

Pumped to announce the launch of The Haven Newsletter!

Here’s 5 reasons why we’re doing this:

1. Founders deserve financial clarity.
Most business owners are building in the dark when it comes to their numbers. We’re here to change that.

2. The pace is insane.
We’re launching, hiring, and scaling faster than we can post. The newsletter is where everything lands.

3. The rules are changing.
AI, automation, and new tax policy are rewriting startup finance. We’ll help you stay ahead.

4. We want more real conversations.
The best insights come from builders, operators, and investors swapping notes. We plan to keep that going here.

5. Accountability matters.
Publishing what we’re building keeps us sharp and transparent.

Give it a subscribe!

Haven Weekly Newsletter 10/31 https://t.co/LfIPguGfxP

[Haven @usehaven]

It's pretty cool when our customers become Unicorns...

Huge congrats to the team at https://t.co/1p9J9OGa4p on raising $103M to transform plaintiff law, and hitting a $1B+ valuation along the way!

Some stats:
- 450+ firms use Eve
- 200,000+ cases processed this year
- $3.5B+ recovered for clients

The round was lead by @sparkcapital , with participation from @a16z , @lightspeedvp , and @MenloVentures.

We're proud to support teams building real leverage with AI, talking to you @jayanthmadhesw1 and Natalie