3 Lessons I Learned the Expensive Way

I raised venture capital, won pitch competitions, pitched Microsoft's President, and still watched my startup shut down. Here's what my MBA taught me that I wish I'd known while building it.

In 2023, my team turned a lost hackathon into a funded freight tech startup called AizenFlow. Two years later, we couldn't raise our next round, and the company closed.

The market played a role. My decisions played a bigger one.

This free guide breaks down the three mistakes that cost us the most, and the frameworks I now use so they don't happen again:

• Financial statements are a steering wheel, not a report card. How to use burn, CAC, LTV, and the macro picture to decide when to hire and how to protect your runway.

• Earn the right to build. Why raising before proof leads to costly pivots, and how marginal analysis keeps you building what customers will pay for.

• Build your culture from who you are, not what you read. What happens when you borrow principles from books, and how to build values from your actual team.

If you're a founder, an aspiring founder, or building anything with other people's time and money, this will save you some of the tuition I paid.