Dirk Sahlmer

Acquiring SaaS companies @ saas.group | saas.wtf Newsletter

Engineer turned M&A professional. After 20+ transactions on the buy-side, I'm now helping tech founders run a structured exit process.

Posting regularly here on LI and in my saas.wtf newsletter on SaaS and  M&A topics.

Head of Origination

It's Sunday and you're scrolling LinkedIn instead of doing anything productive? Cool, I have something for you..


Alexander from MRR Unlocked 🚀 asked me to contribute to a playbook for SaaS founders scaling from 0 to €1M ARR.

My brief: Share your #1 tip.

If you've been following me for a while, you can probably guess what mine was ab

(Spoiler: It involves KPIs)

The article also includes insights from many other people who are smarter than me covering positioning, ICP, content strategy, pricing, and CRM.

Definitely worth a read: https://lnkd.in/es-EzACY

One more thing: Alex asked me to post about it tomorrow. But I'm doing it on Sunday evening because I like to make life difficult.
 
Please engage and help me send this to the moon, so he won't complain that I didn't follow directions.
 
Thanks in advance. 🫶

I help Tech founders exit | Partner @ FE International | saas.wtf Newsletter

Colin Hewitt

Float Cash Flow Forecasting

Float - the award-winning cash flow forecasting tool for small businesses.

Float makes forecasting cash flow really accessible by integrating with FreeAgent, Xero and QBO. Create budgets, add scenarios, and change the expected payment dates of invoices and bills to see your forecast on a daily, weekly or monthly level. 

www.floatapp.com

CEO & Co Founder

IfLooksCouldKill Ltd.

Brand development
Communication Strategy
Marketing initiatives.
Website User Interface design.
Website stategy
Content Management System design and integration

IfLooksCouldKill Ltd

New Business Development, Project Management and Team Leadership

Director

Freelance Web Developer

CEO & Co Founder @ Float | cash (flow) is King 🦍

With over two decades of experience in the software industry, I am the CEO and co-founder of Float, the award-winning cash flow forecasting tool for small businesses. My passion is to make small business finances make sense, by providing easy and accurate scenario planning and budgeting features that integrate with popular accounting platforms. 

Float is the culmination of my previous entrepreneurial journey as the founder and MD of IfLooksCouldKill, a digital agency that specialised in brand development, communication strategy, and website design. I co-founded Float in 2011, after facing the challenges of managing cash flow for my own business and clients. Since then, Float has grown to serve tens of thousands of customers worldwide, and has been recognised as one of the top accounting apps by Xero and QBO. I am also an active participant and supporter of the startup ecosystem in Scotland, having helped TechCube get started and being based in CodeBase, Scotland's largest tech incubator. 

I enjoy mentoring and supporting other entrepreneurs, and sharing about financial management and scaling businesses. 

Float Cash Flow Forecasting is evolving!

Up until this point we’ve been laser focused on one thing...

Short-term cashflow.

We’ve become the market leading solution for 13-week cashflow.

But there’s always been a gap for us around what we can do to help businesses that can spot a cash crunch coming - and need to take action quickly.

Yes - in Float, you can explore scenarios where you adjust budgets, or adjust payment dates. But sometimes even then you just need cash in the bank quickly.

So I’m delighted to announce our latest partnership with TRIVER 🥳 

 When Jerome Le Luel and I spoke first back in 2023 this seemed like a great idea, but we’d too many other things competing for engineering time.

Something changed in 2025 - and we realised the power of providing access to affordable cash flow finance at the point of need.

Letting small businesses unlock the cash they have tied up in an invoice when they need it most is a game changer. It is a very simple and flexible cash flow solution.

Now you can see the impact of getting an invoice paid within hours for a really affordable rate.

Want to know how it works? 

Check out https://buff.ly/p3Q5u2O 

#cashflow #cashisking #finance #accounting

CEO & Co Founder @ Float | Cashflow Intelligence💡 for Xero and QBO

Five fractional CFOs. One recurring theme.
Legacy systems and thinking aren't just slowing teams down - they're blocking decisions entirely.

📈 Barry Hynd’s client had a payment system that shifted decimal places for a decade. £16k kept showing as £1.6m. They'd sent the wrong figures to their bank three times before anyone caught it.

Meanwhile, Karen Stephen's client had predictable cash dips every year. With proper forecasting, they now plan six months ahead. Crisis dodged before it starts.

Nina Bernardin described years of analysis paralysis at large corporations. Teams are stuck troubleshooting black-box errors instead of making strategic decisions.

The shift these CFOs are driving ↓

Monthly reports → Weekly check-ins with numbers CEOs actually need

"We can’t do that" → "Here's what happens if we do X" (with scenarios ready)

47-row spreadsheets nobody reads → One chart flagging cash dips and pinch points

As Andy Mellor put it: "We tell stories with numbers. Modern CFOs just tell better stories because we know the numbers better."

Sign up to the Cash Flow Intelligence Hub to catch up on The CFO Huddle Episodes 1 and 2: https://buff.ly/s7SQM3r 

What legacy tool is blocking decisions right now? 

#CFOHuddle #FractionalCFO #FinanceLeadership #Float #CashFlowIntelligenceHub

Episode 1 of The CFO Huddle

Most forecasts look fine until you dig deeper.

So we asked three fractional CFOs the red flags they spot before the numbers crumble.

Here's what they told us ↓

Stacey Borrow: “The first [thing I look] for is what’s missing. Where’s your vat? Where’s your corporation tax? Because your corporation tax could be the biggest bill you pay in a year, and there’s no budget for it. Is Xero being reconciled correctly? When they pay the salaries, are they weirdly posting them to an expense account instead of a payables account?”

Ramzi Al-Masri: “I would look at the really short-term operational inflows and outflows. I would be checking those back to the aged receivables and the aged payable reports. Are things where they should be? Is there any sense at all in what’s been built?”

@Ciaran O'donnell: “My biggest bugbear is when I’m the last person to be told about something. ‘They’ve done 150k’s work, they just haven’t invoiced for it.’ And the first you know about it is when this thing turns up and you go, What is this? It’s quite frustrating to provide an output that people are making decisions on that’s not complete.”

The pattern's clear: forecast failures don't come from big surprises.

They come from small things slipping under the radar.

Missed Episode 2 of The CFO Huddle? 
13 Weeks to Save a Business - The Forecasting Choice that Makes or Breaks Your Strategy
Watch Now → https://buff.ly/cNfNH2V

What are the red flags you look out for?

#CFOHuddle #FractionalCFO #FinanceLeadership #Float #CashFlowIntelligenceHub

"These people are very resourceful, but they need time."

Ciaran O'Donnell said this on The CFO Huddle, and he nailed something critical.

He's right. CEOs often don't fail because they lack options. They fail because they see the problem too late.

His point: "If you've got 60 days, you probably have 60 days to do something about it."
60 days is enough to:

→  Renegotiate terms with suppliers

→  Arrange invoice financing

→  Cut non-essential spend

→  Line up emergency funding

But only if they know they have 60 days.

That's what short-term forecasting does. It buys time by giving clarity.

Stacey Borrow and Ramzi Al-Masri also shared their take on short-term forecasting:

Stacey Borrow: "One big client [for agencies] could literally just throw everything out... anything past three months is probably irrelevant because by the time we get there, it will all be different."

Ramzi Al-Masri: "There are very few cases where a short-term cash view is not useful."
Resourceful CEOs are good at problem-solving—if you give them enough time to act.
Elliott Gaspar summed it up perfectly: "What an impact to have… to let people sleep at night."

That's the real value. Peace of mind.

We explored this in CFO Huddle Episode 2.

Watch it here →  https://buff.ly/cNfNH2V

How much runway do your clients need to turn things around? 

#CFOHuddle hashtag#FractionalCFO hashtag#FinanceLeadership hashtag#Float hashtag#CashFlowIntelligenceHub

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The Battle

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Colin Hewitt

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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);}Dirk Sahlmer's LinkedIn Performance

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