What if the key to survival isn't cutting costs—it's spending smarter?

Most founders facing a cash crunch default to slash-and-burn mode, gutting their teams and operations in a panic. But CB Insights reveals that thirty-eight percent of failed startups died not from spending too much, but from cutting the wrong things at the wrong time. When DataVox CEO Pete Caputa faced six months of runway, he did the unthinkable: he doubled sales hiring. Revenue grew three hundred percent in eighteen months.

In this episode, Chris Franks sits down with Loic Potjes, a former scale-up CEO who managed over four thousand employees across seventeen countries. Loic breaks down the paradox of runway management—how to distinguish strategic burn from wasteful spending, why flexibility matters more than frugality, and the harsh truth about your number one responsibility as a founder. Discover why the death of a thousand cuts kills more companies than one bold decision ever could.

Keywords: runway management, cash flow, startup expenses, strategic spending, business scaling, founder decisions, Loic Potjes, burn rate, cost cutting