Cameo Doran

Chief Product Officer ⇢ Fractional Prices with Full-Time Impact ◆ Digital Transformations ◆ Advising Startup Founders and Executives Building Innovative Products ⇢ AI / XR / Web3

I’ve always been fascinated (and a little frustrated) by how many great companies can’t seem to ship great software. I’ve sat inside teams where brilliant ideas died in Jira backlogs, and I’ve watched the opposite too: features rushed out fast, only to flop because they were poorly executed or customers didn’t care. Both hurt. Both waste time and burn cash.

Cameo Labs is my answer to that problem. I started it because I couldn’t stand watching founders lose momentum on ideas that should have changed their business and their lives. 

My mission is simple: help founders build the right product, fast enough to matter.

Since starting, I’ve led projects that:

- Shipped an EdTech platform that closed $3M in contracts in under five months.
- Migrated 1,000+ servers with zero downtime, saving $6M.
- Built an AI training platform that scaled to $1.5M ARR in 9 months.

I’m dorky about this stuff. I love the messy early product conversations, poking at assumptions, figuring out where speed really matters, and then helping a team pull off what feels impossible. That’s what gets me up in the morning.

If you’re a founder under pressure to ship something that can’t wait, I’d love to hear about it.

Chief Product Officer / Fractional Product Management

As the owner and founder of Cameo Labs, I am dedicated to helping CEOs and executives of $100M - $500M businesses in the Edtech, Fintech, and SaaS sectors achieve rapid and transformative innovation. 

At Cameo Labs, we understand that staying competitive in today’s market requires more than just innovative ideas—it demands strategic execution and a customer-centric approach.


I founded Cameo Labs to empower our clients by streamlining their product development processes, aligning their business strategies with technological advancements, and fostering a culture of continuous innovation.

We operate differently than most agencies. 

Our holistic approach combines technology, strategic foresight, and customer insights to create cohesive and impactful product visions. Our clients have experienced faster innovation cycles, improved product success rates, and higher customer satisfaction.

With a proven track record of success, we are committed to turning your challenges into opportunities for growth and success. Our goal is to be your trusted partner, helping you achieve your business vision and lead your industry.

Let’s Connect:
Discover how Cameo Labs can transform your business. Visit http://cameolabs.com or reach out to me directly to explore how we can work together to drive your business forward.

This headline cracks me up.

OpenClaw runs on the infrastructure Linux built. Without it, there’s nothing to achieve in 3 weeks or 3 decades.

I don’t know if this is a direct quote, but if it is, it doesn’t make Jensen look smart. It makes him look butthurt. 

Linus has been openly dismissive of NVIDIA for years, and this feels less like an actual data point and more like a score he is trying to settle.

From Vision to Execution | Faster Products, Better Results, Bigger Impact | SaaS Companies | Strategic Software Partner

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IP is the bedrock of modern capitalism. 

It’s the promise that if you build something, you own it and you get paid for it. But that promise is crumbling. 

Of course, LLMs were trained on thousands of copyrighted works without permission. And tools like Claude Code let you screenshot a product and whip up a clone in an afternoon.

And these Ai company’s are so confident they’ll get away with it that they’re not even being subtle anymore. 

Earlier this week, Grammarly got caught promoting the ability to have an literary expert edit your content. Except they never asked the experts if they could use their names, and never had any intention of paying them. 

They didn’t just steal their work, they stole their name and creative identity. 

Grammarly would only do something like this if they believed everyone’s already cavalier about identity, ownership, and the rest of it. 

I don’t believe these are edge cases. The are testing to see what we’ll tolerate. 

If IP protections become unenforceable, we’re not just losing copyright law. We’re dismantling the incentive structure that we built modern business around. 

People talk a lot about jobs being lost, but are we actively destroying the very foundation that makes our economy work?

And if so, what comes next?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

As a side note, Grammerly quickly turned it off after the backlash. But I am sure they will try to do something like it again.

graphical user interface, text, application

Today is the 2026 Utah Tech Week debrief, where hosts and participants will come together to figure out how to make next year even better. 

As I was filling out the pre-debrief survey, I just had to stop and say it:

I love Utah Tech Week.

I remember years ago seeing Trent Mano’s post announcing the whole thing. He’d gone to LA, saw what their tech week looked like, came home, bought the domain, and announced it the next day. From the moment I saw that post, I knew I wanted in.

So that first year I co-hosted two events: 
A Web3 in 2023 panel with Krystee Miller, Derek Wride, and Nicki Sanders. 

and an Assumptions and Risk workshop with Connor McLeod and Jacob Crockett

The next year, I co-hosted three events: 
AI acceleration - using AI to map assumptions with Lucy Harrison, 
a PMF panel with Jennifer Moore, 
and a strategic foresight working session with Christopher Federer (which somehow I have 0 pics of)

The next year I didn’t run anything of my own. I just showed up as a volunteer and spent the week helping where I could. 

And this year, I co-hosted one event. Vibe Mania with Krystee Miller and it was a huge success.

4 years and honestly it has been life changing. 

But the best part has never been the events. It’s been the people. Meeting new people that turned into true friends. Collaborators who turned into business partners. Individuals who became customers. 

So may people who have changed the direction of my life and I met them because of Utah Tech Week. 

So thank you Trent Mano for imagining what could be possible, and thanks to Kyle Spencer and the rest of the team for making it happen every year.

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cmeo-labs

voyantai

productinnovationlab

theory-of-anything-podcast

wow3

Utah Tech Week

Pre-seed investor/GP @ Convoi Ventures

Head of Product | UX Strategist | Designer | All the things

Founder & CEO @ CPAI - Crypto Tax Intelligence

Blockchain & Crypto Tech/Strategy Leader and Consultant | Engineering Leadership at Anchorage Digital

AI, GTM, and Product at SageCreek.ai and SageCreek Partners

fixing the hiring bottleneck for home services || ask me for my cookie recipe

CEO at Voyant AI | Driving Enterprise AI Adoption | From Readiness to Deployment

Chief Product Officer | Board President | Keynote Speaker | Community Builder

I share tips and tricks for strategists working in Experiential Learning industries.

Helping others buy or try campervans Operations | Strategy | Events

Most of the crap in your backlog isn't worth building. 
And AI is about to make that problem a whole lot worse.

I know that sounds harsh but it's true.

According to the product analytics company Pendo, close to 80% of features in the average software product are rarely or never used. 

Now hand your team AI coding tools and watch what happens. They will build faster. If they are smart and have good fundementals, it could be way faster. 

Oh YAY, now you are building more things your customers dont want. 

So instead of using AI to continually think of new things to add to your product, figure out how to eliminate more out of your backlog. 

Then you can truly focus on things that bring impact and value. 

The teams winning with AI aren't the ones generating the most code. They're the ones who figured out what not to build, and then used AI to build the right things really well.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi 👋 I am Cameo
▶ Helping startups fast-track product success! 💡

All these data centers will be worth it, right?

Claude code can’t fix everything!

That was my takeaway from yesterdays The AI Collective Utah Claude Code event (sponsored generously by Anthropic) 

Josh Dennis did a fantastic job demonstrating how his company is using Claude code to build their customers custom marketing solutions. 

But then I got home and noticed I had this enormous chocolate blob on my shirt, which means I was talking to people and networking with people all night with this enormous chocolate blob on my shirt, and Claude didn’t do one damn thing to fix it. Seriously what’s even the point of AI?

So as much as Claude has improved and changed my life, it hasn’t figured out how to eliminate my remarkable ability to embarrass myself. 🤦‍♀️

Thanks to Leslie Koch and the rest of the amazing AI Collective on a great event. The chocolate cookies were delicious even if I’m not sure if they were worth it.

SheTech Explorer Day is a full day experience designed to expose teenage girls to the possibilities of working in technology.

This year that meant 3,500 girls from across Utah coming together in one place. And let me tell, that is a lot of teenage girls.

I was grateful for the opportunity to host an AI workshop with Leslie Koch and The AI Collective. 

Even though research shows that women are adopting AI at a slower pace than men, I was pleasantly surprised to see how engaged and thoughtful these young women were about AI and how they are using it in their day to day. 

Thank you to Cydni Rogers Tetro, Kristin Wright and the whole team at Women Tech Council for creating such a critical annual event for our girls. 

I believe it doesn’t only change the trajectory for the girls who attend, but it changes the perspective for any adult who gets to be there as a mentor or volunteer.

Growth Marketing & AI Strategist | B2B, Creator and Social Marketing | Ex-TelevisaUnivision, CNN, HBO

The AI Collective

Growth Leader| AI Women Power List | 3× CEO & Co-Founder | Board Director | Investor | xSwire Coca-Cola | xDisney

Programs Director at Women Tech Council

Women Tech Council

$14 billion can buy a lot of things. But apparently it can't buy your way into AI leadership.

In this week's Build Signal, I break down how Mark Zuckerberg's record-breaking investment in Scale AI and its founder, Alexandr Wang, has unraveled in less than a year.

I think this matters for anyone building in AI right now because the core mistake is one I see constantly: Confusing expertise in one area with the ability to lead the whole thing.

Read it, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

There's a specific type of mistake that executives keep making when hiring or promoting AI leadership. They find someone who is clearly brilliant, cle

Open article: The Most Expensive Hiring Mistake in AI History by Cameo Doran • 4 min read

The Most Expensive Hiring Mistake in AI History

Say it with me:
It’s dumb to build without talking to customers.
It’s dumb to build without talking to customers.
It’s dumb to build without talking to customers.

This year you are going to see this argument a lot: “Software is so easy now, so the constraint moved to marketing.” Or sales. Or distribution.

Nope!
If you’ve been building for months and haven’t talked to a single customer, the constraint didn’t move anywhere. You’re just doing it wrong.

CB Insights analyzed 431 VC-backed startups that shut down since 2023. The number one root cause? 43% failed due to Poor product-market fit, and two-thirds of those were early-stage companies that never found a market at all. 

These weren’t teams that had a marketing problem. They had a “We spent a boatload of VC money and we still built the wrong thing” problem.

Vibe coding and agentic development can be a trap if you’re not careful. It feels so easy and productive while you are building that you never stop to ask whether anyone cares. 

You can ship in days features that used to take weeks and mistake speed and velocity for validation.

A product that’s easy to market doesn’t happen because you figured out distribution after the fact. 
It happens because you solved a problem that actually matters to real people, in a way that resonates with how they think about it. 

That requires thoughtful discovery and customer work. 

Knowing what to build is still the whole game. The speed at which you can generate code doesn’t change that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hi 👋 I am Cameo Doran 
I help your org move faster by identifying the right thing to build the first time.

It sure is easy to start things 

And vibe coding is like magic.
New project? Ten minutes and you've got a working prototype. You get the dopamine hit and start to think you a genius.

Now all you have to do it polish it, publish it, and promote it, right?

Except you said that about the last four projects too. And the six before that. And you've never done anything with them either. lol

Starting has always been the easiest thing. No matter how many times you see hyperbole that says the first step is the hardest, it's actually continuing to take step after step that's really hard.

LLMs make it easier than ever to start.
You better get damn good at finishing.

”Who is a woman who's made an impact on your career? Celebrate her with a post or video.”

I’m sure you’ve seen this prompt from LinkedIn for International Women’s Day. 

Yeah, That’s nice. Go ahead and do that.
But don’t pretend it’s anything other than being performative. It’s weak sauce.

Women don’t need more celebration or more empowerment. We don’t even need more mentorship.

We need to get paid. 

We need sponsorship. We need partnership.
We need more promotion. And we need more investment. 
We need to get funded and we need to get elected to office. 

Anything else is just lip service.

Anthropic wants you afraid. 

They released this chart last week.
And if you are in the blue zone, your job is disrupt-able with AI. 

But look at it carefully. The blue is what AI could theoretically do. The red is how people are actually using AI. 

That gap is massive. For industries supposedly facing replacement within 12 months, real adoption sits at 10-20% of potential. And that is across every category.

This matches what I see with every client. There is a high desire to adopt AI. But organizations don’t have the capability to execute on it.

I think this chart tells more truth than Anthropic meant. We are nowhere near the disruption that they are selling. The organizations aren’t ready.

The savviest companies aren’t just buying AI tools. They’re doing the change management work to make sure people actually use them.

I’m partnering with Voyant AI on executive training built around exactly that. Drop a comment or message me if you want details.

Hey Anthropic, where's the data?

I'm sure by now you've seen these charts. 
The first is the radar graph Anthropic released with their labor market report last week. 
The second is a bar chart version that Peter Walker made by extrapolating values off that radar graph, because that was literally the only way to get the numbers.

I went and read the full report. And guess what?
Other than computer/math and a passing mention of office & admin, they don't publish the actual percentages for any of the occupational categories. 
Not anywhere in the report in the report, not in the appendix and not in a supplementary table.

Interesting... The only place that info appears is in that unlabeled spider chart. 👀 

The entire point of this paper is introducing a new metric called "observed exposure" that they want researchers and policymakers to adopt as a framework for tracking AI's labor market impact. 

They go out of their way to describe their methodology. They make a big deal of how they came up with their unemployment analysis. So it's super baffling that the central finding of the paper doesn't provide any actual numbers. It's almost like it's all made up.

The report still tells an important story though. There iss a massive gap between what AI can theoretically do and what the vast majority of organizations are actually doing with it. 

If you're an executive trying to figure out how to close it, send me a DM.

Your developers aren't the problem. Your decisions are.

I sat in a meeting last month where a CEO realized his CTO and head of product had been building toward a different vision from his for five months. He thought they were close to release, but now he's looking at something that is likely to miss the mark.

This kind of thing happens all the time.
In this week's newsletter I talk about the 6 decision that would have caught and prevented this problem early.

The single biggest factor in whether a project succeeds or fails isn't methodology, team size, or technology. It's how fast leadership makes decisions

70% of Software Projects Fail. Here Are the 6 Decisions That Beat the Odds

Have you heard that Spotify's engineers haven't written a single line of code in months?

A lot of CEOs are seeing that headline and now they are mad at their teams. 
Why can't their team do that? 

They want their developers using AI that effectively. Hell, they want their whole company using AI that effectively.

They want to achieve what Spotify has, and they're looking around wondering who to blame. And they should want that. But most of them aren't being honest about why they don't have it.

Spotify didn't just hand their engineers AI tools one day and watch magic happen.  This isn't a bunch of schmucks who got lucky with AI. They worked for years on this foundation first. 

- clean data 
- clear processes 
- reliable architecture
- consistant standards

So when AI showed up, it had something to work with.

But at most companies, it's the opposite. Their data is a mess, and their processes are fragmented. Nobody's following the same playbook because there isn't one. And now they've dropped AI in the middle, and they're wondering why it's not performing miracles

So before you get mad at your team for not being Spotify, ask yourself what foundation they are working with.

How important is AI accuracy?

It really depends on what you are using it for. 
If you're generating marketing copy or brainstorming product names, close enough might be fine. Nobody dies if your tagline is a little off.

But 40 million people are using ChatGPT Health every day to decide whether they need to go to the ER.

And according to a new study in Nature Medicine, the results are abysmal. 

ChatGPT Health failed to recommend emergency care in over half of actual emergencies. Among a host of other issues, It told patients with impending respiratory failure to wait 24-48 hours instead of going to the emergency room.

and the suicide crisis safeguards didnt perform any better. In some cases, when patients described specific plans for self-harm, the crisis banner didn't appear at all.

We keep hearing that speed and scale are the metrics that matter. But speed without accuracy is worthless when the situation is life or death. 

And remember this is the same systems that the US government is going to let make autonomous decisions...

What are you willing to sacrifice to make a good impression? 

If you're like me, you get daily reminders from LinkedIn about how important it is to have a verification badge. 

Oh, and how exciting! It's free! 

I have spoken out several times about LinkedIn’s verification service, and the dark patterns they use in promoting it and how unnecessarily invasive it is, but I honestly didn’t realize the full horror of what they are doing 

This article is a pretty shocking breakdown of what they are asking you to give up to get that blue badge, and "make a stronger Impression"

I highly recommend you read it. A lot of the info in the article is specific to the EU and rules like GDPR, but if you're American, you don't even get that protection, so it is even more horrifying.
https://lnkd.in/gguNZ53v

Is it worth it to you? Its a hell no for me. 
Also LinkedIn, I get plenty of profile views, even without verification, thank you very much.

Nano Banana 2 dropped today and it is so impressive! 

But damn my productivity took a hit today.

I am a big fan of leaders being willing to take risks and make mistakes.

But also, this seems egregious for someone in this role.

The Director of AI Safety at Meta just let an AI agent delete her entire inbox. 
She told it “confirm before acting.” It did not confirm. It just deleted everything. 

She had to physically run to her computer to disable it.
She called it a “rookie mistake.” 

But she is the person Meta hired specifically to make sure AI doesn’t do things it’s not supposed to do. That’s the whole job.

I don’t want to pile on her personally. She has gotten plenty of that, including from Elon Musk.

But the lesson here is that if the head of AI alignment can lose control of her agents, what does that mean for the rest of us handing AI access to our business systems and customer data?

The answer isn’t to stop using the tools. But you best make damn sure you are taking the guardrails a lot more seriously than most people currently are.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi 👋 I’m Cameo. I turn AI pilots into production software for companies that can’t afford to get it wrong.

Former GE Capital Executive | I help founders and executives see what their financials aren’t telling them.

I spent 25 years inside the machine.

GE Capital. GE Vernova. NBCUniversal. Unilever. Structured finance, capital markets, project finance across Latin America. I was the CFO who sat across from banks, governments, and Fortune 500 boards and made the numbers make sense. I closed an $800 million power plant deal. I managed capital market teams and hundred-million-dollar sales budgets. I built financial models that moved real money in real markets.

I was good at it. For a long time, that was enough.

Then it wasn't.

I stayed almost eight years past the moment I knew I was done. Eight years of golden handcuffs, institutional momentum, and not having a single person in my corner who could help me think through what leaving actually looked like -- financially, strategically, personally.

When I finally left, I made mistakes. I jumped into a startup that looked great on paper and had no financial foundation underneath it. I learned the hard way that passion without financial intelligence is just expensive optimism. Then I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars learning the things corporate never taught me -- how to sell, how to communicate with conviction, how to walk into a room and make people feel what I knew to be true about their business.

That education nearly broke me. And it turned me into something rare: a former Fortune 500 CFO who can read your financials like a surgeon reads an MRI and sit across from you like a partner who actually gives a damn.

That's what I do now.

I work with a small number of founders and executives -- people who've already built something substantial and want a strategic partner with real financial depth. Not a coach. Not a consultant recycling frameworks. Not a bookkeeper calling themselves a fractional CFO. Someone who's been in the rooms, closed the deals, read the balance sheets, and came out the other side with a clear point of view about what actually matters.

If you're a founder past $1M who can feel that the way you got here won't get you to the next level, I can show you exactly where the growth is hiding and where the model breaks.

If you're an executive who knows you're meant for something bigger than the title on your business card, I've been where you are. I made the leap. I can help you think through yours.

I don't work with everyone. I'm selective about who I take on because the work only works when both sides are all in.

One conversation is all it takes to know if we're the right fit.

Cruz Gamboa

Most founders don’t go bankrupt overnight.

They bleed slowly.
From numbers they refused to look at.

Revenue looks good.
Growth feels exciting.
Ego feels validated.

But:

➡️ Cash flow is tight
➡️ Margins are thin
➡️ One client controls everything
➡️ Burn rate is “we’ll figure it out”

That’s how businesses die.

Not from lack of ambition.
From lack of financial discipline.

Here’s the cheat sheet I wish every founder read earlier.

Ignore red flags early → pay the price later.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities,
check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.

If this helped, save it.

Your P&L Is Hiding the Real Problem.

Most founders check 3 things:

Revenue.
Profit.
Growth rate.

Then they relax.

That’s the mistake.

Because your P&L is a scoreboard.

Not a diagnosis.

And scoreboards don’t tell you why you’re winning,
or why you’re about to lose.

Here’s what it’s not showing you 👇

If revenue is growing but cash is tight…

You don’t have a profit problem.
You have a cash flow problem.

If sales are strong but margins are shrinking…

You don’t have a demand problem.
You have a pricing or delivery problem.

If profit exists but stress keeps increasing…

You don’t have a money problem.
You have an operational problem.

Most businesses don’t collapse overnight.

They erode slowly:

➡️ Slightly rising CAC
➡️ Slightly lower margins
➡️ Slightly higher payroll
➡️ Slightly longer collections

Small leaks.

Compounded monthly.

And because the P&L still “looks fine,”
no one panics.

Until they should have.

Here’s what real operators track:

✓ Gross margin trends
✓ Cash runway (in months) 
✓ Revenue per employee
✓ CAC payback period
✓ Churn rate

Those numbers tell you where the fire is starting.

Revenue is vanity.
Profit is sanity.
Cash flow is survival.

Read your P&L.

But interrogate it harder.

Because the businesses that scale aren’t the ones with the best revenue.

They’re the ones who catch problems before they show up on the bottom line.

Your financial reports are perfect.

Clean P&L.
Accurate balance sheet.
Cash flow that ties out.

Yet decisions still feel slow, reactive, or unclear.

That’s because reports don’t create leverage.
Interpretation does.

Most founders read numbers like history.
High-performing operators read them like instructions.

Every metric should force a decision:
→ double down
→ fix fast
→ kill it

If nothing changes after reviewing your numbers,
you didn’t review them, you admired them.

This cheat sheet breaks down:

➡️ The questions that actually matter
➡️ The metrics that lie
➡️ And how to spot 1% changes that unlock outsized results

Save this before your next finance review.

cruzgamboadrive

patagonia-solar-llc

This guy bought one random car dealership.
Turned it into a $5B empire.

No fancy startup.
No venture capital.

Just one smart business move.

Terry Taylor started like most people in the auto industry:

Working inside dealerships.

Climbing the ladder.

But he realized something important:

No matter how hard you work…
You’re still building someone else’s business.

So in 1982, he bought his first dealership in Daytona Beach.

Most people would stop there.

He didn’t.

But the real genius wasn’t buying more dealerships.

It was how he structured them.

Instead of hiring managers, he:

• Gave them 20–25% equity
• Helped finance their buy-in
• Let them run the store

Now managers weren’t employees.

They were owners.

And owners think differently.

They protect profits.
They grow the business.
They care about reputation.

So scaling became easy.

1 dealership → 10 → 50 → 120+ dealerships

Today the network does $5B+ in revenue.

Simple lesson:

People work harder for ownership than salaries.

Build partners.
Not employees

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities,
check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.

If this helped, save it.

Terry Taylor

He spent 31 years running Trader Joe’s.
Mastered pricing. Supply chains. Consumer psychology.
But one thing bothered him more than anything else: food waste.

Every year, the U.S. throws away 120 billion pounds of perfectly good food.
Not unsafe. Just didn’t fit profit models.

Millions of families struggle to afford groceries.
Most CEOs see this as “business as usual.”
Doug saw it as broken design.

After retiring, he didn’t join a board. He didn’t consult.
He asked a different question:

💡 What if food waste became the foundation, not a byproduct?
What if access mattered more than margin?

✅ Daily Table is born.
✅ Grocery store built on surplus food.
✅ Affordable meals. Nutritious produce. Dignity first.
✅ No charity branding. No eligibility checks.
✅ Nonprofit by design. Every surplus reinvested in lowering prices.

Critics say it can’t scale. Doug agrees.
It wasn’t meant to dominate. It was meant to fix a failure everyone ignored.

From grocery CEO → noticing waste everywhere → building a store that feeds people, not profits.

If you want to rethink how systems work, look at incentives, not supply.
This is the anti-profit grocery model.

Daily Table

He was a waiter at Red Lobster.

He had $40.

Most people would complain. He built a $6B brand.

Here’s how:

✅ Saw a problem: kids in his neighborhood paying too much for hats.

✅ Took action: taught himself to sew, made hats at home.

✅ Scaled smart: sold locally → hip-hop stars wore FUBU → national attention.

✅ Got creative: turned his living room into a factory, raised money when banks said NO.

✅ Played the long game: built FUBU → became Shark Tank investor → mentors hundreds of startups.

Most people chase attention.
He chased problems that matter.

Critics said it wouldn’t work. He did it anyway.

You don’t need permission. You don’t need hype.
You need clarity, hustle, and persistence.

From $40 → living room hustle → global empire → Shark Tank.
That’s how legends are built

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.
If this helped, save it.

Daymond John

Most people think billion-dollar companies start with experts.

Crumbl Cookies started with two tech guys who had never baked a cookie.

In 2017, they noticed something simple:
Cookies were America’s favorite dessert, but the category hadn’t evolved.
So they focused on a few key moves:

▶ Perfected one cookie first
▶ Kept the menu simple (1 classic + 4 rotating flavors)
▶ Turned weekly flavor drops into social media events

That simple strategy turned a 900 sq ft store and $10K into

✅ 800+ locations
✅ 1M cookies sold daily
✅ $1B+ valuation

They didn’t win by doing more.
They won by focusing on the few decisions that drive everything.

That’s true in finance too.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, go to scalingcfo.io
Take the free assessments and see exactly where to focus first.

Crumbl Cookies

Some people launch snacks.
Some create global empires from leftovers.

Arch West did the second.

➡️ 1960s. Disneyland.

Casa de Fritos. Tons of stale tortillas. Wasted daily.
A small vendor saw opportunity.
“Cut them into triangles. Fry them. Add some seasoning.”

No PR. No hype. No flashy launch.

Just execution.
Just obsession.
Just seeing value where others saw trash.

1966 → Plain Doritos, national launch.
1972 → Nacho Cheese.
From leftover tortillas → multibillion-dollar snack empire.

Scaling lesson:

Opportunities are everywhere. Most ignore them.
Those who see the leverage, execute relentlessly, and scale turn accidents into legends.

Some people chase attention.
Some quietly turn scraps into billions.

#scalingup #ceo #founder #businesslessons

Doritos

$30,000 → $7 BILLION.
No hype. No fluff. Just strategy.

Dennis Washington was 30, broke, and borrowing $30k from a Caterpillar dealer.

He bought one bulldozer and started doing construction in Montana.

Within 5 years? He was the largest contractor in the state.

But he didn’t stop there.

He asked a simple question:
"Where is everyone running from?"

Then he built a formula:

✅ Buy failing businesses that everyone else ignores.
✅ Fix the basics cut costs, improve management, unlock cash flow.
✅ Use the profits to buy the next one.
✅ Repeat.

First test: a worthless copper mine.
Bought for $15M → $100M profits in 3 years.

Next: a struggling global construction firm, merged it → Washington Group International → sold for $2.6B.

Now? Real estate, aviation, railroads, marine services… a $7B empire all from turning broken things into cash.

Most people run from broken businesses. Dennis Washington built a $7B empire fixing them.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.
If this helped, save it.

Dennis Washington

He had nothing.
No friends. Barely spoke English. ADHD made school unbearable.

At 16, he dropped out. Taught himself to code. Became obsessed with modifying video games.

At 22, he moved to Canada. New country. No network. Just a laptop and a love for snowboarding.

Started an online snowboard store → it failed.

But the software he built to run it? People wanted it.

💡 Lightbulb moment: Forget snowboards. Sell the software.

✅ Shopify is born.
✅ Made e-commerce simple.
✅ Millions of stores. 175 countries. Even Amazon switched.

From high school dropout → coding every week → building the internet’s mall worth $147B.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, check out scalingcfo.io
Free assessment.
If this helped, save it.

TOBIAS LÜTKE

Most “profitable” companies are one bad month away from dying.

Here’s why.

Profit is an opinion.
Cash is oxygen.

You can look profitable on paper and still miss payroll.
I’ve seen businesses doing 7 figures collapse because one client paid late.

Revenue doesn’t matter if:

• It’s delayed
• It’s unpredictable
• It’s already spent in your head

Growth makes this worse.

You hire early.
Lock in fixed costs.
Sign long-term tools.
Upgrade lifestyle.

Now your burn is permanent…
…but your income isn’t.

That’s the trap.

Another hard truth:
If the founder steps away and sales stop, you don’t have a business.
You have a high-stress job with employees.

Margins won’t save you.
Busy won’t save you.
Brand won’t save you.

Only cash flow will.

Simple rules that keep companies alive:

• Collect faster than you spend
• Keep fixed costs boring
• Build 3–6 months of runway
• Systems before scaling
• Liquidity before vanity growth

The strongest businesses aren’t the loudest.

They’re the ones that can survive a bad month without panicking.

That’s real leverage.

Peter Steinberger could have built “cool” software.

He didn’t.

He built useful software.

PDFs were everywhere. Developers were stuck with messy workflows. Peter asked:

What if developers had tools that just worked? That solved real problems, not just looked good on a portfolio?

✅ PSPDFKit → powers PDF apps across mobile & web.
✅ Open-source projects → simplify workflows, save engineers hours.
✅ OpenClaw → personal AI agent that actually helps you code.

Most people chase attention. Peter chases problems.

Critics say niche tools won’t scale. Peter doesn’t care.
He’s not in it for hype. He’s in it for impact.

From engineer → spotting friction everywhere → building tools that make developers’ lives better.

If you want to build something meaningful, solve real problems.
The market rewards results, not ideas.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.
If this helped, save it.

Peter Steinberger

Most founders don’t fail overnight.

They bleed slowly.
From decisions they ignored.
From processes they never set.
From metrics they refused to measure.

Revenue looks fine. Growth feels exciting. Ego feels validated.

But underneath:

➡️ Decisions get delayed → chaos spreads
➡️ Processes depend on you → hero culture burns out
➡️ Metrics are “nice to have” → guesswork rules
➡️ Accountability is optional → everyone points fingers

That’s how scaling dies.

Not from lack of ambition.
From lack of rules.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.
If this helped, save it.
#scalingup #founders #ceo

LVMH is worth $292.9 billion.

You're worth $10M and stressed about payroll.

Same industry. Completely different money game. Here's why.

I've sat inside dozens of $5M–$50M businesses as a fractional CFO.

The pattern never changes.

Founders confuse 3 separate problems:

❌ "We have a cash flow problem."

No. You have a timing problem. Revenue is fine. Your money is just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's fixable in 90 days.

❌ "We have a scaling problem."

No. You tried to grow before your operations could hold the weight. Every single time. Growth didn't break you, the lack of systems did.

❌ "We have a fundraising problem."

No. Investors don't fund vision. They fund numbers that prove the vision is real. You don't have a pitch problem. You have a financial story problem.

Now look at the billion-dollar brands:

Inditex built Zara to $193B by selling inventory before the bill came due.

Hermès built $235B by turning scarcity into a balance sheet strategy.

Fast Retailing scaled Uniqlo globally because they built finance infrastructure first.

None of that is luck.
All of it is decisions, financial decisions dressed up as brand decisions.

The difference between them and you isn't capital.

It's that they stopped running on gut feel and built a machine that tells them exactly where every dollar is going, and why.

You don't need a $500K CFO on payroll.

You need 10 hours a month of the right financial brain in the room.

That's the actual arbitrage most $5M–$50M founders are sleeping on.

If your finances are running you instead of the other way around,

Comment "CFO" below and I'll show you exactly where to start.

Most people saw a ping pong table.

Max Koehler saw a business.

In 2019, he noticed something strange:

Table tennis is one of the most played sports in the world,
but in U.S. cities there were very few places to play regularly.

Most founders would open a traditional club.

Max built PingPod instead.

Small glass studios.
Open 24/7.
Booked entirely through an app.
No staff. No front desk.

But the real genius?

A camera above every table.

Every rally gets recorded.
One tap → instant replay → share on social.

Players created the content.
The content created the marketing.

Clips went viral.
Bookings exploded.

Today PingPod is valued around $40–60M.

All from one simple observation.

The best founders don’t just build products.
They build systems that grow themselves. 🚀

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, go to
scalingcfo.io

Take the free assessments and see exactly where to focus first.

#scalingup #founders #CEO

Max Koehler

The trillion-dollar scoreboard isn’t just impressive.

It’s a warning. ⚠️

AI is no longer a feature.
It’s infrastructure.

Distribution beats product.
Platforms compress margins.
Specialisation scales faster than breadth.

And the giants NVIDIA, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Apple aren’t just companies anymore.

They’re rails.

If you’re a $1M–$10M founder, here’s the real play:

➡️ Build on top of giants, don’t compete with them.
➡️ Own your audience, don’t rent it.
➡️ Go narrow, dominate a micro-niche.
➡️ Push recurring revenue.
➡️ Move faster than anyone with a board meeting.

The economy is consolidating at the top.

But execution speed is still decentralised.

That’s your edge.

If you're building between $1–$10M and want to scale intelligently, not just aggressively

Come to the workshop → https://lnkd.in/efBiFQRg

I keep having the same conversation.

Founder calls me. Revenue is up -- sometimes way up. 

But they're taking home less than when the business was half the size. 

They hired the consultants. They wrote the plan. They pushed harder on sales. And somehow the business keeps snapping back to the same number like a rubber band.

After sitting across from enough of these founders, I started seeing the pattern. It comes down to three things nobody wants to talk about -- and none of them have anything to do with selling more.

I broke it all down in this week's newsletter.
#scalingup #founders #growth #CEO

I talk to a lot of founders. Like, a LOT. And something keeps coming up that I can't ignore anymore. Almost every conversation -- doesn't matter what 

Open article: The 3 things nobody tells you about getting stuck by Cruz Gamboa • 5 min read

The 3 things nobody tells you about getting stuck

99% of founders do this backwards.

They try to scale a business
that no one has proven they want.

Then they try to sell a business
that only works because they exist.

Here’s the real order:

1. Start
Don’t build the product.
Sell it first.

If no one pays, it’s not a business.
It’s a fantasy.

2. Scale
Do less. Better.
One offer. One audience. One channel.

Systemize everything.
If it needs you to survive, it’s not scalable.

3. Sell
Buyers don’t pay for hype.
They pay for predictable cash flow.

Clean books.
Recurring revenue.
Low founder dependency.

Start with proof.
Scale with systems.
Exit with leverage.

That’s how you build something that prints money, not something that prints stress.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities,
check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.

If this helped, save it.

Most founders don’t have a growth problem.
They have a focus problem.

Their dashboards are full.
Their results are not.

Tracking more KPIs doesn’t make you smarter.

It just gives you more ways to avoid the hard decision.

Here’s how serious founders think about metrics:

If a number doesn’t change what you do this week,
it doesn’t belong on your dashboard.

That’s why the only startup metrics that actually matter answer 4 questions:

1. Is demand growing?
2. Are customers staying?
3. Are they paying more over time?
4. Are we running out of cash before we figure it out?

Everything else is noise.

The best operators I’ve seen track 5–7 metrics max.
They review them weekly.
And they tie each metric to a clear action.

Everyone tracks KPIs.
Very few track the right ones.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities,
check out scalingcfo.io.

Free assessment.

If this helped, save it.

The Hidden Cost of Optimism in Your Financials

Optimism doesn’t build businesses.

Cash flow does.

Here’s how optimism quietly kills companies:

1. Optimism delays action
“I’ll hire a CFO at $10M.”
No.
You’re stuck at $3M because you didn’t.

2. Optimism ignores the downside
You planned for the average outcome.
Business gave you the worst one.
That’s not bad luck. That’s bad planning.

3. Optimism spends future money
You’re spending like next quarter’s revenue is guaranteed.
It isn’t.
Hope doesn’t clear payroll.

4. Optimism hides leaks
2% margin loss feels small.
Until it happens across 4 lines.
Now you’re bleeding 8% and wondering why growth feels hard.

5. Optimism skips the buffer
No cash reserve isn’t confidence.
It’s arrogance.
Survivors don’t guess right, they prepare longer.

6. Optimism assumes peak performance
Your model requires you to crush it every quarter.
You won’t.
Systems beat motivation. Every time.

7. Optimism creates fragile plans
If losing one client breaks your business,
you don’t have a model.
You have a wish.

8. Optimism avoids hard calls
Cutting bad products.
Renegotiating vendors.
Walking away from “almost profitable” deals.
These feel bad.
They work.

9. Optimism makes scaling harder
The best founders plan pessimistically
and execute aggressively.
Everyone else just “stays positive” until reality shows up.

Here’s the truth:
Real confidence isn’t thinking things will work out.
It’s knowing your numbers so well
you can survive when they don’t.

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The Battle

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