CEO & Founder at Fuelfinance / make finance easy for founders

I never planned to become a founder.

I spent most of my life as a CFO — building models, analyzing numbers, and helping businesses grow. I loved it. Still do.

But in 2019, something shifted. I built a simple Google Sheets MVP to help my first customer (Petcube, YC’18) understand their finances better. Five months later, they were profitable. A year later, that client became my co-founder.

That’s how Fuel started.
Today, Fuel is a financial management platform paired with a real CFO. 

We manage over $500M in customer P&Ls. 
We’ve grown from a no-code MVP to a full web platform used by hundreds of businesses.

Along the way:

→ Partnered with HubSpot, Carta and Brex
→ Helped 100+ agencies and SMBs become profitable: Petcube, ColdIQ, Oceans, Hampton & more

Outside of Fuel, I’m:

→ A cross-continental swimmer (4.04 miles from Europe to Asia in open water)
→ Dog mom to Haku, my husky (and Fuel’s unofficial Chief Food Officer)
→ Into skateboarding, wakesurfing, snowboarding (anything that reminds me to feel fear and move through it)
→ Exploring longevity — 1.5 years alcohol-free, lifting weights, and learning to cook for myself

My mission is simple: make finance easy (and sexy) for founders.

If you wanna have a founder-to-founder chat, shoot me a DM.

Alyona Mysko

There is this YC application question I love the most:

“Tell us about the most impressive thing, other than your startup, that you have achieved”

And my proudest achievement is how I hacked my fear of swimming.
Spoiler: I've learned nothing about B2B SaaS from it 😅

All my life, I was afraid to swim because I nearly drowned several times as a child.

At 25, I decided it was time to conquer this fear.
I started training in a swimming pool.

I remember how I used to be afraid and constantly refused to swim to the second half of the pool, where I couldn’t touch the bottom.

My coach strapped a special belt to me, like the ones for kids, and hold me from the pool's edge.

After 6 months of training, I was ready for something bigger. I decided to push my limits and signed up for an open-water swim across the Bosphorus in Istanbul — the annual event that bridges Europe and Asia.

The first ten minutes were pure fear, gripping me with every breath.
But with each stroke, I could feel myself inching closer to the finish line, to proving I could do this.

Finally, I swam 4.04 miles in open water, becoming a Bosphorus cross-continental swimmer.

This photo is from that day.

Since then, I’ve never been afraid of swimming.

What is the most impressive thing you've achieved, other than your startup?

Alyona Mysko 

Founder of Fuelfinance | building the future of finance for SMBs

With all the AI tools out there, I still take meeting notes by hand.
This is probably one of my best habits.

I know, it sounds a little silly coming from someone who lives inside dashboards, automations, and AI agents all day.

I use Fireflies to transcribe calls.
I have a Notion system for everything.

And yet… I still take my own notes every single 1:1.

Because when I write manually, I think better.
I stay more present in the conversation.

Over the years, it became one of my favorite rituals.
I even built a small workflow around it:

→ Every 1:1 note goes into a Notion page called “CEO Hub.”
→ I tag each meeting summary (product, leadership, growth, etc.).
→ Once a week, I upload the highlights into a ChatGPT thread called “How to be a better CEO.”
→ There, I ask AI to challenge me: What am I avoiding? What patterns do you see? What can I communicate better next time?

It’s weirdly therapeutic. And it works.
Some of my biggest leadership insights came not from new tools – but from re-reading my own notes.
The tone of voice I used. The things I wrote in all caps. The stuff I didn’t write at all.

So yeah – this isn’t a productivity hack and a “10 tools I use” post. It’s a reminder that sometimes, the slowest habits are the ones that actually make you better.

Every entrepreneur needs to have a hobby.
For me, that challenge is skateboarding.

Every week, I go to the skate park.
The routine is always the same.

I fall. I bruise. I get back up.
I have a few target tricks I want to be able to do.
But first, I need to fail 100 times to get them right.
On the concrete, I'm just another person learning something new.

With every training, I get a little better and I have less and less fear.
My brain is literally rewiring itself. Neuroplasticity in action.
Each new trick is a small victory. Each fall is a lesson.

Skating is my personal way of embracing a beginner’s mindset (something I learned from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind).
To let go of what I think I know.
To approach all challenges with curiosity and openness.

Being a beginner at something taught me far more than I expected.

What hobbies do you guys have?

(7) Activity | Alyona Mysko | LinkedIn

li_at

JSESSIONID

Talks about #enterpreneurship, #financemanagement, #financialanalysis, #financialmodeling, and #earlystagestartups

How will business finances look in two years? This is how I see it…

Recently Jason M. Lemkin made a bold prediction: 
CRMs will become the backend, and agents will be the main interface. 

You won’t even touch the sales platform directly. You’ll just talk to an agent, and it’ll get things done. 

Finance is next. Actually, it’s overdue. 

In two years, here’s where we’ll be:

🟢 AI agents will be main interface.
Every company will have AI agents sitting on top of their ERP and FP&A systems. The old infrastructure with the messy spreadsheets, the stitched-together accounting tools will be hidden underneath. The agent will be the front door.

You’ll just ask for what you need: How did our margins compare to last quarter? What’s the safest way to improve profitability? Benchmark us against last year’s top performers?

🟢 Finance team’s capacity won’t be bottlenecks anymore. 
Data won’t be trapped in one department or buried in some analyst’s drive. Suddenly, every founder, every team lead, every board member can act like they have their own personal CFO on call, 24/7.

🟢 No special training. 
Just clear answers, in plain language, right when you need them.

Of course, we’re not there yet.

Ask any CFO: AI loves to hallucinate, and clean data is still a battle. Common agents need rules, standards, and expert training otherwise, you get faster bad decisions, not better ones.

But we’re building for this future at Fuel. We’ve just introduced Fuel AI CFO that is reliable, accurate, and actually helpful, so founders, and teams can finally get finance out of the back office and into the real-time conversations that drive the business.

Fuel AI CFO already do

→ Instant what-if modeling to evaluate pricing, hiring, and cash-flow impacts.
→ On-demand dashboards and reports.
→ Automated board-ready reports.
→ Real-time anomaly detectiona
→ Real-time benchmarking
→ Data quality check score

Get early access in the comments.

The future of finance isn’t static reports, or yet another dashboard you barely use. 

The future is where everyone can be a financial analyst talking just plain English.

Founder, CFOs, your thoughts?

just introduced: FUEL AI CFO

the lovable/cursor for midsize businesses’ finances.

get early access at

Open article: Introducing AI CFO for SMBs | Fuelfinance by fuelfinance.me

Introducing AI CFO for SMBs | Fuelfinance

💚 10 principles we use to build reliable AI CFO 💚

1. All the data in one warehouse — clean and ready for AI.
We take all your data from 300+ sources like QuickBooks, Stripe, HubSpot, banks, payroll, etc.

2. Accuracy > 1-click. 
Training agents using your data, not just general data. In finance AI to have the highest accuracy — less is more.

3. Human-backed. 
Trained on thousands of founder↔CFO questions and continuously validated by our in-house finance team.

4. Full transparency. 
Data Limitation Disclaimer shows the quality score (e.g., 40/100) and marks insights as directional until validated.

5. Proactive anomaly checks. 
Fuel flags issues the moment they appear (missing dates, mismatched invoices, odd entries) — before they become bad answers.

6. Root-cause + actions tips. 
When something drifts off target, Copilot explains why it happened and gives a clear fix-it playbook you can follow.

7. Built for your industry. 
SaaS, agencies, ecommerce, consulting — knows the metrics and benchmarks that matter.

8. Decision safeguards. 
When data is thin, Copilot widens confidence bands, de-scopes risky analyses, and prompts data-fix steps before action.

9. Auditability, always. 
Every conclusion is tied to the exact sources, time range, and transformations used — so finance can double-check.

10. One platform. 
Built into the Fuel FP&A stack (what-ifs, dashboards, alerts) so your planning, analysis, and actions stay consistent.

Get early access at https://lnkd.in/gx95mJzt

If you work with finance, please don’t rely on ChatGPT for calculations.

I recently rewatched a conversation with Andrej Karpathy (one of the smartest people in AI), and something he said finally explained to me why different LLMs behave so differently with numbers.

He mentioned that most models compress trillions of tokens into a few billion parameters. 

All of that becomes what he calls a “hazy recollection.”

So when you ask a model to calculate CAC or quarterly revenue growth, it often doesn’t calculate at all, it just tries to predict what the answer should look like.

This is why ChatGPT can explain your problem beautifully, and then give you a gross margin that makes zero mathematical sense.

Claude behaves differently.
It treats numbers like a reasoning task, not a writing task.

And because it uses the context window almost like working memory, it can actually go line-by-line through your dataset instead of filling in the blanks.

For finance teams and founders:

→ Claude recomputes ARR and gross margin instead of inventing them
→ It quarterizes your monthly metrics correctly
→ And it follows your formulas as written, not whatever it vaguely remembers from its training data

In short:

ChatGPT is great at narrative. 
Claude is better at math.

But here’s the part I loved from Karpathy:

He said he doesn’t think AI will reach full “agent-level reasoning” in the next 10 years.
Not for complex judgment calls. Not for multi-step decision-making.

Definitely not for “replacing your CFO.”

So if you want to use LLMs to speed up your finance team, treat them like powerful tools, not decision-makers. 

Spend time understanding how different models work and where each one fails.

At Fuel, even as we ship more AI features, every number still goes through a human CFO.

(And imo, that’s a good thing)

Let’s see where the next decade takes us.

Interview with Andrej Karpathy in the comments – would love to hear your thoughts.

The CFO role is changing more than any other role.
For years, there’s been this pyramid in how we think about finance:


At the bottom: data collection and manual reporting.
At the top: strategic finance and decision-making.

And for most finance teams, 80% of the time still goes to the bottom of that pyramid: spreadsheets, reconciliations, and manual workflows.

But what happens when all of that gets automated?

When AI and automation take over the manual 80%, what will finance teams (and CFOs) do with that time?

That moment is coming faster than we think.
Not tomorrow, but soon enough that it’s time to prepare.

Imo, mediocre finance professionals have 2–3 years to grow before AI replaces everything they do.

And the answer, I believe, lies in one thing: thinking strategically.

The best CFOs won’t be the ones who can close faster or reconcile cleaner.

They’ll be the ones who can ask better questions:
→ Where should we go next?
→ What will this decision mean for our valuation six months from now?
→ How can we use data to make every team (marketing, sales, product) smarter?

The CFO role is moving closer than ever to the CEO or VP of Ops.
It’s about connecting dots across the business, not just closing the month.

In the next few years, finance will no longer live inside the finance department.
It will live everywhere – empowering every team to make decisions with data and context.

That’s the future I see: where CFOs don’t just report what happened, but shape what happens next.

And for finance professionals, this shift brings both challenge and opportunity.

The manual roles will shrink.
But those who grow their strategic, communication, and leadership skills – they’ll thrive.

So the question is no longer “will AI replace finance?”
It’s “what will finance do with the time it frees up?”

Everyone wants AI agents to be senior specialists.

But let’s be real — most AI agents today are more like junior employees.

At Fuelfinance, this shift in mindset completely changed how we build and use finance AI agents.

Here’s what managing AI like a junior looks like:

🟢 You need a senior human reviewing the work.
If you wouldn’t let a new analyst send reports to investors without review, why trust AI to do it? AI does the groundwork, but experienced CFOs make the final calls.

🟢 Visibility into the process matters.
When a junior builds a financial model, you want to understand their logic and see their steps. With AI, black box outputs are useless. You need to see every calculation, every assumption.

🟢 Feedback needs to be specific.
Telling a junior “this forecast looks wrong” doesn’t help. Same with AI. Instead, point out exactly what’s off: “You used last quarter’s growth rate instead of adjusting for Q4 seasonality.” That’s how both humans and AI learn.

🟢 Assign the right tasks to the right agents.
You wouldn’t ask your junior AP clerk to build an investor deck. AI agents are no different—one for cash flow, one for expenses, one for planning.

🟢 Repetition builds skill.
New employees get better with repetition and good feedback. AI agents need the same—consistent workflows, clear metrics, and chances to improve.

The companies getting value from AI are the ones building management structures around it.

Stop expecting AI to be your CFO. 
Start training it to be your best junior analyst and soon they will grow to CFO level.

Curious how other founders are managing AI agents right now. 
Have you tried a similar approach?

Planning season is here. This is the most wonderful time of the year... or not 😅 It can be a complete nightmare, or it can be the best strategic exercise your entire team does together.

Other founders often ask me what in financial management impacts profitability the most. No surprise — it's great execution by all team members.

To have that, you first need to be aligned on where you're going and what the goals are.

And the second step is to be able to make decisions fast about whether this execution was efficient or not.

In the first case you have planning.
In the second one - plan/actual analysis.

That's why planning is so important for everyone on the team, not just the CFO.

It transforms your forecasting from a dreaded spreadsheet exercise into a powerful alignment tool where: 
→ Your sales team knows exactly what new revenue to hit 
→ Your marketing team sees what pipeline is needed for this goal 
→ Your product team understands which features drive retention or sales conversions 
→ Everyone has a clear path showing how their metrics impact big business goals in your P&L (revenue, profit, etc.)

Sure, planning is just 30% and execution is 70%. That's why the second step is to always have plan/actual analysis systems in place that help everyone see progress toward the goals every day, week, month, and quarter.

For everyone diving into planning season right now - here's the cheat sheet our team created after helping 500+ companies nail this process.

Get an HD version in the comment if you need one ⇒

Treat profit as the must expense during your planning

The default approach looks logical: Forecast revenue → list expenses → profit “should” appear at the bottom.

But in real companies, costs expand.
Tools, headcount, contractors, “just this one more initiative.”
None of these decisions are crazy on their own.

But without a cap, spending quietly grows to match revenue — and profit becomes whatever survives.

Here’s the flip that actually creates discipline:

Instead of asking: “What can we spend?”
Ask: “What must we keep?”

Cash comes in → you allocate Profit / Taxes / Owner Pay first → the remainder becomes your operating cap.

So you treat profit like the first slice of a pie, not the crumbs at the end.

These are the rules I’d hand myself on day one:

1/ Planning and budgeting are different jobs.
Planning answers: “Where are we going?”
Budgeting answers: “What can we afford while we go there?”

2/ Set profit as a small, non-negotiable allocation. Decide how much profit you want first. Treat it like a non-negotiable expense. Only then figure out what you can actually spend.

Note: There’s no universal “right” profit %. Your industry, revenue level, and growth stage all matter. Start with a sustainable number (even 1–2%), keep it consistent, then adjust as your industry, scale, and operating needs become clear.

3/ Build scenarios, not one “perfect” budget.
At least two:
< Baseline scenario: keeps the business safe (runway, essentials)
< Optimistic scenario: investments only if the numbers support it

4/ Give money a job (“buckets”).
This is literally labeling money so it doesn’t disappear. Example buckets: Profit, Taxes, Owner Pay, Operating (day-to-day), Sinking fund (annual stuff like renewals, hardware, legal/accounting, Debt payment (if you have it).

5/ Separate accounts make it real.
In one account, every dollar looks spendable.
With separate accounts, your “Operating” balance is visibly smaller — so the limit is obvious.

6/ Plan vs Actual = the feedback loop.
Budgeting isn’t predicting perfectly. It’s correcting quickly.
Example: you planned $20k for marketing but spent $32k.

Instead of guilt, you ask: why? and then decide: cap, cut, or move budget from somewhere else.


Profit shouldn’t be a surprise at the bottom of a spreadsheet.
Build it in at the top — as a simple system.

Want the full cheat-sheet on How to Create a Profit-First Budget? Write “CHEAT-SHEET” or DM me.

Most businesses, whether they're making $3M or $50M, are still guessing when it comes to real financial planning.
Here's what I hear all the time:

— What's the best way to forecast?
— Who should set the goals: the CEO, CFO, or leadership team?
— Should we use Excel or a different tool?
— How often should we review our plan?
— Should goals be ambitious or realistic?

I could list dozens more.

In reality, most teams just take last year's revenue, bump it by 25%, and call it a plan.

After working with 500+ SMBs from $2M to $50M, I've seen the seven biggest planning challenges that keep teams stuck:

1/ No real plan, just big annual or quarterly goals with no clear path
2/ Planning only happens once or twice a year, then sits on a shelf with no updates, no reviews, no system in place
3/ Every department has its own plan, running in different directions
4/ Revenue targets are often 30% off, with no reforecasting when they found a gap.
5/ No regular (weekly/monthly) review process for early warning signals
6/ Financial plans are disconnected from day-to-day execution and projects
7/ Time-consuming process that is killing momentum when you need this plan to be in place to make a decision

From the outside, a financial plan might look bulletproof.
But underneath, it's mostly guesswork.

The best-run SMBs do it differently:

→ Their revenue targets connect to operations, hiring, and cash flow
→ All plans roll up into a single source of truth, even if they're built in different tools
→ They use scenario planning: best case, base case, downside
→ Every leader owns real numbers: pipeline, churn, launches, costs
→ They review what works and adjust every month

The teams that break through stop treating growth as a wish.

They treat it as a plan. 
With owners, actions, and accountability.

We put together a forecasting cheatsheet How Planning Should Changes by Revenue Stage after seeing 500+ businesses and helping them fix forecasting. 
It shows how your planning should evolve as you scale, what works, what to avoid, and where to focus next.

Want a full copy? Comment CHEAT-SHEET below.

CEO Rebase | DevOps co-pilot | No YAML, No Terraform | Angel Investor

Building Rebase - 10x DevOps and Platform Engineering Teams.

Mudassir Mustafa ⌥

"You're capturing 70% unnecessary data. And paying for it."

Research on observability trends revealed something that explains your cloud bill.

Organizations are capturing 70% unnecessary observability data.
70%.

That means:

70% of your log storage is noise
70% of your metrics aren't used
70% of your traces never get analyzed

But you're paying for 100% of it.

Storage costs.
Ingestion costs.
Query costs.
Retention costs.

All accumulating for data you'll never look at.
The pattern is always the same:

"Let's log everything. We might need it someday."

So you enable debug logging in production.
Capture every metric from every service.
Store every trace for 90 days.

Then when an incident happens:
You still can't find what you need.

Because the signal is buried in noise.
The log analytics challenge:

Long-term storage costs overshadow query value.
You're paying thousands per month to store logs that:

You'll never search
Don't help debug incidents
Exist "just in case"

So teams make impossible choices:
Which logs do we keep?
Which do we archive?
Which do we just discard?

This is the observability paradox:
Capture everything = Find nothing
Pay for everything = Afford nothing

Your monitoring costs shouldn't exceed your infrastructure costs.
But for some teams, they do.

taplio

The Battle

Alyona Mysko

Mudassir Mustafa ⌥

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreAlyona Mysko's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreMudassir Mustafa ⌥'s LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Alyona Mysko

Mudassir Mustafa ⌥

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Alyona Mysko's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreMudassir Mustafa ⌥'s LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreAlyona Mysko's LinkedIn Performance