Upwork home
Sign up
Secondary
Shuai P. Status: Offline
Saint Johns, United States
100% Job Success
Expert-Vetted

Startup CEO & Growth/Funding Consultant, CFO/CRO/CMO --- Expert-Vetted

Expert Vetted by Upwork. I'm currently the co-founder and CSO of a startup. I was previously co-founder/CEO of a mobile app startup. "C.E.O." really stands for Chief Everything Officer. I started my mobile app startup with no prior tech/startup background and have been through it all, so I know what works and doesn't work. I know how to build businesses and sell businesses to investors. I consult on the following: - Growth, capital-efficiency-oriented, and process-driven fractional CFO - Building Initial Enterprise Sales Funnels - Finding initial product market fit, early customers - Product/Sales/Marketing Strategy - Process design and implementation for customer acquisition funnel (huge champion of automation and AI integrations) - Startup/Management/Strategy - Product Development/Go-To-Market/Growth Hacking - Angel/Venture Funding Strategist Here are a few secrets: - Capital raising: You don't need a written business plan to get funded. No one reads them. To get funded, you need a strong team, good storytelling, a pitch deck, financials (historicals are 10x more valuable than forward projections), revenue/customer retention analysis, and an appendix. - Since Q2 2022, enterprises to SMBs have shifted their focus towards margin preservation, emphasizing cash flow, and being as lean as possible. The future of management is labor force elasticity based on gross margins, running your company with an extremely lean and elastic approach that is grounded on gross margin preservation/expansion -- having a system in place that allows you to quickly ramp up and ramp down your operations to match market demand, regardless of the economic conditions. Highlights: - CFO at an AI-driven software development SaaS company. (2023 - Present) - Currently VP of Strategy & Growth for an early-stage B2B DevOps SaaS startup. (2021-present) Results during my tenure: Reduced our S&M spend by 60%, Reduce our average CAC from 11.4K to 2.6K. Accelerate our LTM ARR growth from 49% to 94%. Our forward NTM ARR growth rate is +160%. - Fractional CFO at 3 startups, including a smart light bulb e-commerce startup with $30M+ LTM revenue; responsibilities include capital raising/planning and M&A advisory. (2021-present) - Startup consultant primarily focused on capital raising, strategic planning, market sequencing, critical path, GTM strategy, sales funnel, process improvement/automation -- Industry/vertical agnostic - B2B, B2C, B2B2C, Marketplace, On-Demand models. (2016-present) - Consultant for G2VP, San-Fran-based ESG VC (2020-2022) - Ex-CEO/Cofounder of a B2B (pivoted from B2C) AdTech mobile keyboard app startup (raised outside capital and exited). (2013-2016) - Ex-CPA for Ernst & Young in NYC, working in the Financial Services Transaction Services group. I provided valuations for private businesses in M&A deals ($1 billion+ market cap) and illiquid financial instruments. (2008-2013) I love the startup community and want to give back. My time is limited and valuable so I only want to work with companies I know I can add a lot of value. Sorry, need to exclude pre-revenue companies and companies below 250K ARR. I will pass on work for another startup if I do not think I can help it become successful or are below
Work history
Shuai P. has more jobs. Create an account to review them
Skills

Skills

Browse similar freelancers