A business that's growing and a business that's healthy are two different organisms.

One looks like momentum. New customers, bigger contracts, a team that's expanding. The numbers go up and the founder exhales.

“We made it.”

The other looks almost identical, except for one difference. You can check its pulse.

I think about this distinction a lot because growth is intoxicating. It has a way of acting like anesthesia, numbing the pain signals our businesses fire off.

Revenue climbs, and the hunger that used to keep you sharp starts to dissolve. You hire a little ahead of schedule. Commit to that bigger office. Stop checking the bank balance every morning because, well, things are good now.

Here's the thing about anesthesia, though. It doesn't fix anything.

It just makes you comfortable enough to stop paying attention.

The data on this is stark. According to Bluevine's 2026 Business Owner Success Survey, 94% of small business owners expect growth this year. That's an all-time high for the survey. I'd love to give us all a pat on the back and call it a day... but that isn't very helpful.

Especially when you dig deeper, and find this buried in the same report: only 31% are actively managing their cash flow to sustain the growth they expect, while 39% of small businesses have less than one month of operating expenses in reserve.

That gap between confidence and preparation keeps me up at night, because it's where good businesses die. Quietly, and with a full pipeline.

The founders who treat a simple spreadsheet like a vital organ tend to be the ones still standing a decade later. This week, I want to show you why, and how.

There's software hiding in your spreadsheet. You just can't see it yet. Every row, every column, every formula… It's all a description of how your business actually runs. You built it without thinking about it. Added to it over time.

Now it holds the shape of your work. The processes are already mapped out. Glide takes what you've built and gives it a new form. Something your team can use effectively.

Isn't it time for your spreadsheet to become software?

Start with a spreadsheet at Glide.

Gregory Galant had a philosophy degree, a podcast about entrepreneurship, and a very small idea.

He and his co-founder Lee Semel noticed a gap while running the Shorty Awards. Journalists were using social media to find sources and track stories. PR teams needed a way to find the right journalist for the right story.

Nobody was connecting the two.

They launched the MVP of Muck Rack in 2009 as a free website for journalists to build portfolios. Ten thousand people signed up in the first year.

It was good validation, but the site still wasn't doing the trick. To get to the next level, they needed to build a software layer into Muck Rack.

Then came the hard part. Actually, five years of hard part.

From 2009 to 2014, Muck Rack crawled toward its first million in revenue. Galant had briefly worked at a venture capital firm and found the fundraising world draining.

Most ideas get turned down. Besides, every hour spent pitching investors was an hour away from clients. So he made a decision that would define the next thirteen years: no outside money.

Growth would come from revenue. Revenue would come from listening to customers.

But this is where the story splits from the typical founder narrative. For most bootstrapped founders, "no outside money" translates to "we're going to grind it out and hope the numbers work."

Galant built a system instead.

It wasn't anything special. Just a simple financial spreadsheet to get his worries out of his brain, and onto the page. Less elegant, and more E-Galant.

Every month, he updated a cash flow forecast. Projected revenue in, projected expenses out, balance remaining. One rule reigned absolute: spend less than you earn.

No exceptions.

He kept 2 to 3 months of operating expenses in reserve until Muck Rack crossed $10M ARR. He trained his entire team in frugality. Shared hotel rooms at conferences. Rejected budget overages.

Galant employed "every trick in the book," as one account described it, to keep burn below the revenue line. That rule, "spend less than you earn," sounds deceptively simple.

You probably skimmed it without thinking twice. When pressed for understanding, most of us would reply with "of course. That's budgeting 101!"

But here's how it plays out in practice. You're about to land a big contract, and you look to celebrate before the ink is dry. Revenue is up 30% this quarter, so you green-light the marketing spend you've been sitting on. A new client signs, and the team celebrates by upgrading the tools, the office, the headcount.

It's alluring. It's proof that you did the thing. That all your hard work has paid off.

It's human.

But Galant did none of that... and the results compounded over thirteen years.

Muck Rack hit $1M in 2014. $6M in 2016. $21M in 2018. $34M in 2020. $50M ARR by 2022. All bootstrapped. All profitable.

They never got bloated in good times. More importantly, they never had to do a layoff in bad times.

When they finally raised outside capital in 2022, a $180M Series A from Susquehanna Growth Equity, it was the largest investment in PR tech history... yet Galant and Semel retained majority ownership.

They raised on their terms, after thirteen years of proving the model worked. Now, compare this with the survival stories most of us hear. The podcast interviews where someone says, "We almost went bankrupt three times, but we made it."

Stories like Anton Fagerberg's, who bootstrapped construction SaaS iControl to $50k MRR. He hired so aggressively that if the team missed a single sales record, they couldn't make payroll.

He survived, but he doesn't glorify the approach. Instead, he very avidly says he'd do it differently now, maintaining reserves instead of hiring to the edge.

And yet... Fagerberg gets the interview over Galant, because the survival story is more interesting. More anxiety inducing. It's gripping for the same reason we watch horror movies and read thrillers. But it isn't realistic.

How many founders made the same bet and lost?

The data gives us the answer: 82% of business failures trace back to cash flow. Meanwhile, 88% of small businesses face regular cash flow disruptions.

Yet the report we looked at in the beginning of this newsletter showed that a third of owners who expect growth this year are unprepared to handle a financial downturn of any kind.

The founders who survive without a system get to tell their stories. And that's okay. I like reading them. But we have to make sure we don’t start confusing what's interesting with what's a good idea.

I call this the Oxygen System, because cash is to your business what oxygen is to your body. You don't think about it when you have enough. You think about nothing else when you don't.

The best time to build this system is when your revenue is climbing. Here's the framework:

Open a spreadsheet. Create twelve columns, one for each month ahead.

In each column, list three numbers:

Use conservative projections. If you think you'll close $40k in new revenue next month, forecast $30k. If you're certain a contract will renew, forecast it at 80% probability until the dotted line is signed.

The goal is to see where cash gets tight before it gets tight.

Update this sheet every month. It might be annoying, but think of Muck Rack. Galant did it for thirteen years, and now he has enough money to buy an island. Twelve months isn't so bad.

Pick a reasonable timeframe, like 2 months. Total up your operating expenses for that time. This is your floor.

Cash in the bank should never drop below this amount.

If you're at $30k/month in operating costs, your floor is $60k. If you're at $80k, it's $160k.

Your bank balance - your reserve floor = your actual available cash. Everything above the floor is spendable. Everything below it is off limits.

PS: For most founders in the $20k to $200k/month range, 2 months is the right starting point. If your revenue is seasonal or contract-based, push it to 3.

Growth creates pressure to spend. New hires, new tools, new marketing channels. The trigger replaces impulse with a rule.

If yes, approve it. If you need revenue to grow to afford it, wait.

If this sounds infuriatingly slow, that's because it is. That's the point.

On the first of every month, ask yourself "what happens if revenue drops 20% next month?"

Look at your forecast. Look at your reserve.

Could you cover 3 months at 80% of current revenue without cutting anyone or anything essential? If yes, you're healthy. If the answer makes you uncomfortable, that's a good thing. You've found the problem before it found you.

The stress test takes fifteen minutes, but I promise you, it's worth it. It replaces anxiety with cold, hard facts.

Say you're running a SaaS company that brings in $45k MRR. Operating costs are $32k/month. Your reserve floor is $64k. You have $78k in the bank.

That's $14k in available cash above the floor.

A strong month pushes MRR to $52k. The instinct is to hire.

Instead, you update the forecast. Two quarterly contracts renew in 60 days. There's a 20% chance one doesn't.

Stress test: at 80% revenue, can you cover the new hire for 3 months? No.

So you wait.

The contract renews. Now the math works. You hire from confidence instead of excitement.

That's the difference between Galant's approach and Fagerberg's. Same levels of ambition, growth, and grit. One squeaked through by the skin of his teeth. The other had a system.

You control budgets, manage pipelines, and make decisions, but you still have trouble keeping up with everything going on in AI. If that sounds like you, don’t worry, you’re not alone – and The Deep View is here to help. 

This free, 5-minute-long daily newsletter covers everything you need to know about AI. The biggest developments, the most pressing issues, and how companies from Google and Meta to the hottest startups are using it to reshape their businesses… it’s all broken down for you each and every morning into easy-to-digest snippets. 

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Pulse — Free 30-day trial, from $59/mo

Cash flow forecasting without the accounting bloat. Just inflows, outflows, and projections. Works best if you’re already using accounting software like Xero or Quickbooks.

Tiller Money — Free 30-day trial, from $79/yr

Automatically feeds your bank transactions into Google Sheets or Excel. A good alternative to Pulse if you aren’t using Xero/QB and don’t want the extra cost, but still don’t want to enter data manually.

Brex — Free for Essentials plan

Corporate cards with built-in spend limits and real-time expense tracking. Useful for enforcing the spending trigger from the Oxygen System across your team.