A BOOK IN PROGRESS
Storytelling with Numbers
How NOT to kill your startup
by Kayode Odeleye
There are plenty of books on startup finance. Most of them describe how things should work. Clean cap tables, rational investors, founders who understand their unit economics from day one.
That's not what this book is about.
This one starts with the data. What actually happens to startups after they raise. Where the money goes. What the power dynamics look like between founders and investors when things get complicated. The financial literacy gaps that nobody talks about until they've already cost someone a company.
It's being written in public, and it's being written with input from founders, investors, and operators who've lived through the parts that don't make it into case studies.
ABOUT THE BOOK
WRITING UPDATES
Why I'm writing this book in public
Most books about startup finance tell you what you should do. They skip the part where 74% of venture-backed startups never return capital to investors. I keep meeting founders who've raised Series A rounds and still can't explain their burn multiple to a board member without rehearsing it the night before. That gap between what gets taught and what actually happens is where this book lives.
The table of contents, for now
Five sections, twenty-three chapters. Starting with what startups actually look like from the inside, not the pitch deck version. Then financial literacy, because most founders skip it and pay for that later. Fundraising. Exits. And the part nobody wants to write about: when things go south.
What 'default alive' actually means when you do the math
This one's still being written.
If you've built, funded, or worked inside a startup, you've probably got a story about the moment the numbers stopped being abstract. The moment a metric actually meant something, or the moment you realized nobody in the room understood the financials well enough.
Those stories belong in this book. Anonymous contributions welcome. The best ones will be featured as case studies throughout the chapters.
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