On a good day, being an entrepreneur is a bit like juggling flaming chainsaws while riding a unicycle across the Nullarbor. On other days it’s less rewarding.

In my experience, startup founders are bold adventurers. They’re visionaries. They’re the sort of people who believe, against all evidence to the contrary, that they can turn the ‘chicken scratch’ on the back of a beer coaster into a global empire between now and next Tuesday.

But, the reality of early-stage entrepreneurial life leads inevitably to unexpected feats of outback circus acrobatics. Their world becomes a world of pressing problems. They’re working 18-hour days trying to build a product, find customers, keep the lights on, and snatch a brief moment for a quick coffee in the lunch room only to be forced to choose between 37 kinds of oat milk because the strategic plan didn’t allow for adult supervision of the work experience kiddie when restocking the fridge.

And, in these lives crowded with incident it’s common for the need to find someone to help with financial management to get overlooked.

The truth is, most entrepreneurs don’t start companies to become an Outback Apocalypse Clown. And they certainly don’t do it because of dreams of bank reconciliations or calculating depreciation with the sum-of- the- years-digits method. They start companies because they have an idea – something that could change the world, or at least make it slightly less annoying. And yet, they often cling tightly to managing their own finances – which is admirable in the same way that performing your own dental work is admirable: bold, painful, and occasionally messy.

For a while, it even works. When the company is small, founders can run on instinct and adrenaline. They know every customer, every invoice, and every conveniently hard-coded spreadsheet cell intimately.

The problem is that entrepreneurs frequently lack a deep understanding of cash flow management, profit margins (gross and net), financial statement interpretation, and unit cost economics. This knowledge gap creates problems – many problems. The result is a venture that is technically “making money” but can’t afford to buy paperclips (which may, in part, be related to a former work experience kiddie who found enough petty cash to buy 96 cartons of oat milk). As companies grow, the problem only gets worse. What worked perfectly fine when the business was turning over $500,000 a year suddenly starts setting small fires when it hits $5 million, and by $20 million, they’re one invoice away from Krakatoa.

The consequences extend beyond operational inefficiencies. Boards struggle to make informed decisions about pricing strategies, resource allocation, and investment priorities without a solid financial grounding. Management teams find themselves “flying blind,” making critical strategic choices based on gut feeling rather than data-driven analysis.

The result? A yawning knowledge gap that leads to all sorts of exciting business adventures – like running out of money while hitting the best sales numbers ever or being shocked to learn that cash flow is not, in fact, the same as profit.

The problem is one of resource constraints. Entrepreneurs are expected to be visionaries, engineers, psychologists, marketers, fundraisers, and (if they employ anyone under the age of 30) childcare workers. Somewhere in that chaos, professional financial management becomes a “nice-to-have.”

And yet, when it all comes crashing down, people shake their heads and say, “They should have known better.” Perhaps., but knowing better requires time, bandwidth, and a few nights of uninterrupted sleep, some of the most constrained of resources.

Founders and entrepreneurs should not be expected to be management accounting experts. We should applaud them for even trying. They’re the brave ones out the front, charging into the fog of the free market armed only with an idea, a pitch deck, and a stubborn refusal to give up.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt for them to at least keep someone on speed dial who doesn’t think EBITDA is the name of a Scandinavian death metal band – just in case the Mad Max version of Cirque du Soleil wants their chainsaws back

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