Cash is King

It seems simple enough to understand but the amount of time and effort spent managing cash in a business can be quite astonding. More than sales and pipelines and forecasts CASH is the most important thing to plan and intimately know in your business as a CFO. Knowing in detail what is coming in and what is going out on a daily, weekly, monthly basis is absolutely critical to you, your founder/CEO and your VC's. There is no such thing as the micromanagement of cash. Raising cash is never easy and in today's market even more so which means being aware of your burn rate and the length of your lifeline is imperative. But how??? This is the fun part! As CFO's we MUST get out of the office and really truly understand the business. In order to plan and manage the cash we need to have a fairly intimate understanding of every functional area in our business. We need to be our CEO's right arm and his/her business partner. The more we engage and know about the business the more we can leverage all our other skills in bringing value added feedback, thoughts and direction to our organizations. Try to do a walkabout at least twice a day and interact with your peers to understand the business through their eyes so you can improve the focus of your eyes!