Startup Capital Efficiency
Welcome to the Seventy-second edition of Unstoppable Founders!
👑 #Unstoppable Female Founder
This week, my Unstoppable Female Founder is a special one. She is a venture and tech builder currently working on building the future of AGI. She is Christel Buchanan, Founder & CEO of Pivotal.
I met Christel a number of years ago at a Summer garden party hosted by the Super Connector Mike Butcher. We randomly started chatting about ML and AI and quickly got into a deep conversation about the technology and its capabilities. Since then I’ve been fortunate to get to know Chrstel and have the honor of calling her a friend.
You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who is perpetually on a quest to learn, absorbing as much information as possible about a wide range of subject matters that interest her. And when Christel starts learning and researching, she goes all in. For example, when her curiosity about artificial intelligence led her beyond surface-level applications to the core technical aspects, Rather than casual exploration, she enrolled into a Masters course at Oxford with a focus on AI. She then went on to graduate with a dual Masters in AI!
She is someone whom I have great admiration for as she goes all in on everything she does 150%. Whether that’s from a professional or personal perspective, she gives everything her all.
She enjoys staying physically active and working out, she’s completed 2 Ironmans.
She enjoys fine wines, so became a budding sommelier.
She’s interested in gut health and healthy living, she has about 300 personal devices tracking her health data. (300 is an exaggeration, but you get the point.)
As mentioned, was interested in AI, enrolled in a Masters course at Oxford.
So you get the point, Christel goes all in and really seeks to understand concepts, ideas and products entirely! She’s a lifelong learner, unafraid of putting herself back into the shoes of a beginner and starting from zero despite all of the incredible life and professional experience and accomplishments she has under her belt. Again, one of the many reasons I truly admire her.
Christel's professional trajectory reflects this same commitment to excellence. After beginning her career at one of the big six advertising agencies, she went on to lead the content team at Twitter. She later spearheaded the Asian-Pacific market expansion for UK-based Brandwatch, which was subsequently acquired by Cision.
Her entrepreneurial vision then led her to co-found Bolt, a global social network focused on democratizing economic creation through smart contracts. Today, as Founder and CEO of Pivotal, Christel is working to transform the creator economy by removing technical barriers between imagination and implementation.
Pivotal recently announced a $2.5 million funding round, with Christel articulating the company's mission:
"When we founded Pivotal Research, we saw a future where Bitcoin transcends passive storage to become productive capital in the Intention Economy."
Her vision is simple - anyone should be able to build anything and truly own everything they create. She is building the future of generative technology (AI) and broadening the appeal of blockchain-based applications.
We had the pleasure of welcoming Christel as a speaker at Unstoppable Founders Summit last month where she discussed what it takes to run a capital efficient startup to ensure longevity. You can watch the recording here, simply login and navigate to the Auditorium page.
📣 #TheRant
Startup Capital Efficiency
A strong founder isn’t someone who can raise the most money. Strong founders are the ones who build businesses that give them options and flexibility. The best way to ensure you have options for your startup is through capital efficiency and strategic financial control. This allows you to structure your business in a way that allows you to scale on your own terms, without being overly reliant on external investment. So if or when the time comes for your business to raise funding, it means you’ll already be in a strong negotiating position.
The goal - make your startup as financially strong as possible so that funding is a choice, not a necessity.
This was a popular topic we covered at Unstoppable Founders Summit with Gabriela Matic of Metta, Christel Buchanan of Pivotal, and Sophie Winwood of UnlockVC who shared their tips and frameworks to optimize for sustainability, scale, and leverage in fundraising. Based on their panel discussion and insights, I’ve put together a playbook for capital efficiency:
Set Your Next Financial Milestone & Work Backward
Many founders make the mistake of raising funding without a clear financial milestone in mind.
How to action:
Define your next funding or revenue milestone—the point where you’ll either raise again, hit profitability, or achieve a major inflection point.
Work backward to map out exactly what resources you need to reach that milestone—team, product, marketing, etc.
Raise just enough to hit that milestone—nothing more. Investors fund progress, not potential.
Expert tip: If you can push out your next fundraise by extending runway with revenue, do it, you’ll be in a stronger position for it.
Build a Cash Management System with Unlockable Spending Phases
Too many founders blow through funding without financial guardrails.
How to action:
Establish a detailed cash management system—divide spending into phases that only unlock once revenue or business milestones are met.
For Example:
Phase 1 (MVP Validation): Only product & customer discovery expenses.
Phase 2 (Go-To-Market Fit): Unlock marketing & sales hires once CAC:LTV is proven.
Phase 3 (Scale): Invest in team expansion only once repeatable revenue is confirmed.
Expert tip: Review burn rate weekly. If you don’t know exactly how much cash you have left and what it's buying you, you’re already behind.
Hire Like Your Business Depends on It—Because It Does
Employees are your biggest cost—and your biggest risk if you get it wrong.
How to action:
Be ruthless about early hires. Ask yourself: “What’s the revenue impact of this hire?”
Avoid hiring managers too early—focus on executional hires who directly contribute to growth.
Consider alternatives: Fractional talent, contractors, and equity-based incentives.
Be intentional about compensation—founders set the precedent for salary expectations. Keep it lean, but fair.
Expert tip: Every hire should be able to “pay for themselves” within 6-12 months, either through revenue generation or cost savings.
Tie Every Dollar to a Concrete Business Outcome
Money spent on vanity metrics or “nice-to-haves” kills runway.
How to action:
Before spending on anything, ask: “What’s the ROI?”
Cut anything that doesn’t drive revenue, growth, or retention.
Example:Bad Spend: PR firms for a seed-stage startup with no revenue.
Good Spend: A growth hire that shortens your sales cycle or expands distribution.
Wasteful Spend: Fancy office space before hitting profitability.
Expert tip: Treat capital like an investment, not a budget. Spend when the return is clear, not because the money is there.
Validate Core Assumptions Before Heavy Investment
Building before validating is the fastest way to burn cash on the wrong thing.
Create a working prototype before scaling product development.
Use landing pages, waitlists, or paid ads to validate demand before committing full resources.
Leverage no-code and low-code tools before investing in expensive engineering work.
Expert tip: You don’t need a full product to start selling. Pre-sell, test demand, and prove there’s a market before building.
Maximize Revenue & Reduce Funding Dependence
The more revenue you generate, the less you need external capital.
Launch monetization early. Free users don’t validate business models—paying customers do.
Price based on value, not cost. If customers love your product, they’ll pay what it’s worth.
Experiment with revenue-based financing, grants, and alternative capital—not just VC.
Expert tip: If you can make $1, you can make $100. If you can’t make $1, don’t raise millions hoping it will fix that.
The Goal - Build Optionality, Not Dependency
Capital efficiency doesn’t mean cutting budgets or spending less, it’s about spending on the right things that will move the needle and drive revenue. Make every dollar work harder, and if you do raise, it will be a choice, not a necessity.
You can watch the recording from our session on Capital Efficiency at Unstoppable Founders Summit here. Simply login or create a login and navigate to the Auditorium.
💰#HypeCorner
This is where we cover funding rounds raised by female founders and their teams across Europe. With less than 2% of VC funding going to female led startups, the HypeCorner is simply our way of congratulating and celebrating these founders!
🇮🇹 Federica Lettieri Co-founder of BEVY
🇩🇪 Mona Feder & Charlotte Rothert Co-founder of doinstruct
🇬🇧 Lia (Ying) Li Founder & CEO of Zero Point Motion
🇪🇸 Natalia Villora Founder & CEO of Flowww
🇫🇷 Inna Menkova Founder & CEO of Allogenica
🇬🇧 Prof. Iris Quasar Grunwald MD Co-founder of Brainomix
Huge congratulations to these founders and their teams. Wishing you all continued success!
🎤 Events for founders
🇫🇷 {Paris} GLOBAL SUMMIT by hello tomorrow celebrates the DeepTech community on the 23rd & 24th of March with over 3,000 founders, industry leaders and investors.
🇦🇹 {Vienna} LTST25 hosted by Female Founders is back May 8th & 9th and this years theme is ‘The Real Deal for Founders’ Early bird tickets on sale now! Grab your tickets now!
🇬🇧 {London} SXSW lands in London June 2nd - 7th taking over the city merging creativity, culture and technology. SXSW London are now taking applications for musicians, film makers and speakers!
🇪🇸 {Madrid} South Summit Madrid - June 4th - 6th brings together global innovators, bold entrepreneurs, leading corporations, and visionary investors. Early bird tickets now available.
🇳🇱 {Amsterdam} European Women in Technology is a must for your calendar, happening June 25th & 26th. 5,000+ women in tech, diversity advocates, allies and change makers for Leading the Digital Revolution!
🇬🇧 {London} Sifted Summit is back 8th & 9th of October, bringing together 3,000 founders, startup and scaleup operators and investors to celebrate the resilience of the ecosystem and how its leading players are preparing for the long-haul.
🇫🇷 {Paris} UnlockVC (formerly WVCE) is hosting its annual Summit from the 13th - 15th of October. This event brings together ambitious investors, trailblazing thought leaders, and industry pioneers for two impactful days of networking, learning, and growth.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Jen
👋🏼 Are you a founder in need of support with you startup? A few ways I can help:
1. I support founders with their fundraising strategy and securing capital.
2. I build winning Go-To-Market and Growth Marketing Strategies
3. I provide mentoring and advisory services for founders, senior marketers and general startup operators.