We help stagnant professionals fast track their careers for more impact, influence and income. DM me for a complementary strategy call.

Seeing 𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥-𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 drives me, and I thrive on leading teams to make it happen—for patients who need it most.

𝐏𝐡𝐃-𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 20+ 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞, I accelerated my career quickly, building and leading international teams within just 2.5 years of starting in the corporate world. I’ve managed complex clinical and commercial projects, 𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬-𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬, 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥, and ultimately served on the Board of Directors of a global organisation.

I thrive at the 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧—aligning people, simplifying complexity, and driving teams to 𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐬 that improve patient outcomes.

Ei-Ling Tan, Ph.D.

Fractional CFO | Helping Founders Scale Beyond $2M ARR with Strategic Finance & OKRs | Founder @ FounderFirst

There's a point where you just can't wing it anymore.

Usually around $2M ARR.

When growth is real, but messy. When the business works (but the numbers don't fully add up). When pricing gets risky, hiring gets heavy, and suddenly every "quick decision" starts showing up in your burn.

That's where I come in.

I step in as your Fractional CFO to help turn momentum into structure.

We build pricing, capital allocation, operating constraints, and targets the team actually runs on.

Over the last decade, I've worked with 20+ early and growth-stage companies, both VC-backed and bootstrapped, across SaaS, fintech, edtech, and agencies. I've helped scale revenue from $500K to $20M, grow teams from 10 to 200+, and build finance and ops foundations from scratch.

I've been in the room for pivots, layoffs, down rounds, near-bankruptcies, and exits - not as an observer, but owning the financial logic behind what happened next.

In 2024, I founded FounderFirst to go deeper with this work, helping teams build finance that actually supports growth, long before they're ready for a full-time CFO. Since then, we've partnered with 70+ founder-led startups and SMBs, including leading accelerators and venture studios.

That's the professional story. Here's the real one.

I grew up in Dimitrovgrad, Bulgaria - no English, no tech exposure, no obvious path.

At 17, I taught myself English.
At 19, I earned a scholarship to study in the U.S.

I arrived with a suitcase, less than $300, and no backup plan, and did whatever scrappy thing it took to stay afloat.

Eventually, I found my way into startups. The chaos, the ownership, the pressure, for the first time, I felt like I fit.

What started as survival became a decade of building behind the scenes.

Now I bring all of it - the scrappiness, the strategy, and the systems - to founders who are ready for real financial leadership.

When I'm not deep in spreadsheets or board decks, you'll find me hiking a national park or nose-deep in a book. (Always open to recommendations.)

If the next set of decisions actually matters, let's talk: https://bit.ly/3NEYTqT

Mariya Valeva

Jeff Bezos always left one chair empty in Amazon meetings.
That chair was for the most important person in the room:
the customer.

Not as a gimmick.
Not as a story to tell on podcasts.
But as a forcing function.
Every strategy discussion.
Every product decision.
Every uncomfortable trade-off.

All of it had to start with one question:
“How does this serve the customer?”
That empty chair is a reminder most companies forget once they start scaling.
Amazon didn’t.

Bezos built the company around four principles that sound simple, but are brutally hard to live by:

1. Customer obsession
Not competitor obsession. Not internal politics.
The customer always came first, even when it hurt in the short term.

2. Long-term thinking
Bezos was willing to look “wrong” for years if it meant being right for decades.
Short-term pain was the price of long-term advantage.

3. Relentless innovation
“If it’s not broken, break it anyway.”
Amazon didn’t wait for disruption - it created it, often cannibalizing its own successes before someone else could.

4. High standards
“Good enough” was never good enough.
Because standards, once lowered, almost never come back up.

The lesson isn’t to copy Amazon.
It’s to steal the discipline.

Ask yourself:
- Who is the “empty chair” in your leadership meetings?
- What gets optimized when no one is watching?
- Are your decisions serving today’s comfort or tomorrow’s customer?

Culture isn’t what you say you value.
It’s what your decisions protect when trade-offs appear.
And the empty chair makes sure you never forget that.

*video credits: simplyougrow insta

Fractional CFO for B2B SaaS ($2M+ ARR) | Founder @FounderFirst

Steve Jobs once said he envied Alexander the Great.
Not for the empire.
But for his mentor.

Alexander had Aristotle by his side - someone he could question, challenge, and learn from directly.
Jobs could read everything Aristotle ever wrote…
but he could never ask him a question.

In 1985, while visiting Sweden, Jobs shared a vision:
What if one day we could build machines that simulate the thinking of great minds?
Machines that allow us to ask Aristotle a question.
Or Einstein.
Or Da Vinci.
Not just read their ideas - but interact with them.

Nearly 40 years later, large language models are the closest thing we’ve come to that idea.
We’re starting to move from static knowledge to interactive knowledge.
From reading history…
to having conversations with it.

The real question now isn’t whether the technology works.
It’s how we choose to use it.

Because tools that expand human thinking can either:
- amplify wisdom
- or amplify noise

The responsibility is ours.

*Video credits: foundedarchive insta

Steve Jobs didn’t save Apple with more features.
He saved it with people.

When he returned in 1997, Apple was close to bankruptcy.
Too many managers.
Too many mediocre projects.
Too much noise.

So he did something most leaders are afraid of:
He cut ruthlessly.
Because B-players cost more than no players at all.

Jobs’ rule was simple and brutal:
Only hire people you’d gladly work for if roles were reversed.
No egos.
No passengers.
No “good enough.”
He believed small, elite teams beat large average ones every single time.
That’s why core product teams stayed under 100 people - with overlapping skills, extreme ownership, and zero excuses.

And the bar wasn’t just talent.
It was commitment.
“We’re here to put a dent in the universe.”
That level of belief is uncomfortable.
It repels people who want safety.
And it attracts people who want impact.
The result?
iMac.
iPod.
iPhone.
iPad.
Not incremental improvements - entire industries reinvented.

Fast forward to today:
Apple’s market cap sits north of $4 trillion.

The real lesson isn’t about tech.
It’s about leadership.
Great teams don’t come from hiring fast.
They come from hiring intentionally.
And most scaling problems I see today?
They’re not strategy problems.
They’re people problems disguised as growth.

Small teams.
Clear standards.
Shared obsession with the mission.
That’s how you build something that lasts.
Great teams don’t just build products.
They change the world.

*video credits: multiprenur insta

16 restaurants closed.
456 people without a job.
And the business was still making £190m.

That’s what happened to TGIF’s UK business.
But this wasn’t a sudden January collapse.
It was a structural failure that finally became visible.

On the outside, nothing looked dramatic.
The brand was still there.
Customers were still walking in.
Revenue hadn’t fallen off a cliff.
But somewhere between Christmas trading and year-end numbers, the decision had already been made..

→ The warning sign wasn’t decline. It was “fine.”
TGIF UK revenue was only down ~3% YoY.
In hospitality, that’s not stability.
That’s erosion hiding in plain sight.
Flat revenue in an inflationary year quietly destroys margin.

→ Costs rose where flexibility didn’t exist
UK casual dining absorbed:
- 8–10%+ labour inflation
- Energy costs that reset permanently higher
- Business rates and rents locked into long leases
These aren’t costs you can “optimize” away.
They compound whether sales grow or not.

→ Pricing power lagged reality
TGIF UK couldn’t raise prices fast enough without losing volume.
So instead of passing costs on, margins absorbed the shock - month after month.
Nothing broke loudly.
It just kept getting tighter.

→ The estate was built for a different world
Many UK locations were legacy bets:
- Pre-Covid footfall assumptions
- Shopping centres and edge-of-town sites
- High fixed rent relative to sales
Some sites weren’t underperforming.
They were structurally wrong.
Those 16 closures weren’t sudden failures - they were the tail that had been dragging the whole business down.

→ Debt removed time
The UK operator was carrying ~£25–30m of net debt.
That meant:
- Free cash went to survival, not reinvention
- Refurbs slowed
- Systems aged
- Optionality disappeared
Debt doesn’t kill businesses.
It kills waiting.

→ Now, let’s move to the US business
Same brand. Same menu. Same logo.
Very different outcome.
In the US, TGIF had already shifted risk outward:
- Heavier franchising
- Fewer corporate leases
- More royalty-based income
- Less balance-sheet exposure
When costs rose, pain was fragmented across franchisees.
In the UK, it pooled centrally.
That’s why the US survived.
Not because it was healthier, but because it was structured to absorb failure.

→ January forced the reset
By early 2026, there was no gradual fix left.
So the solution wasn’t a turnaround plan.
It was a pre-pack administration:
- 16 loss-making sites closed
- Estate reduced to 33 restaurants
- 456 jobs lost, ~1,384 preserved
- Business reset under the global TGIF brand owner

This wasn’t brand failure.
It was financial triage.

Brands don’t fail evenly.
They fail where rigidity meets leverage,
and geography decides where the damage shows up first.

If your revenue went flat tomorrow,
would you know which part of your business would break,
or would you find out in January?

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Ei-Ling Tan, Ph.D.

Mariya Valeva

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The Battle

Ei-Ling Tan, Ph.D.

Mariya Valeva

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);}Mariya Valeva's LinkedIn Performance

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