Puzzle x Felicis Ventures
Take it from Dasha Maggio, now Co-Chief Operating Officer at Felicis. This interview reflects her earlier role as Partner and Head of Founder Success. The firm's $825 million ninth fund was announced in 2023; Felicis later raised a $900 million tenth fund in June 2025.
For our expert funding series, we sat down with Dasha to get into topics like:
Read on for more...
TL;DR
- Founders who understand their numbers (burn, runway, margins) maintain control over what they can actually influence, even when macro conditions turn hostile.
- Great investor updates show real-time KPIs and variance from the prior period; transparent, consistent reporting builds trust and keeps investor relationships healthy.
- Data and gut instinct aren't opposites: use numbers to quantify decisions limited by your runway and to give stakeholders an objective rationale for the choices you make.
- Investing in clean bookkeeping from day one is a green flag to investors, and in Dasha's experience, inconsistent numbers in a pitch deck have become deal-killers that cause investors to walk away entirely.
- Clean books help founders explain burn, runway, and growth. Burkland's 2026 Series A guidance calls for repeatable results and consistent metric definitions, not a universal funding threshold.
“Knowing your numbers is fundamental to figuring out how to turn strategy, capital, people, and inputs into something that will eventually deliver your vision.”
Here’s the deal: Founders need to understand their company’s engine to know exactly what’s in vs. what’s out of their control.
There will always be movement outside your company’s bubble that you cannot control: macro conditions, competitive moves, you name it.
So, focusing on your own business formula and understanding its inputs and levers can help you make better decisions.
The internal engine of a company is composed of two things:
That’s why knowing your numbers from day one is integral to your ability to turn strategy, capital, people, and inputs into the brand vision you’re striving for.
While KPIs vary dramatically by business, there are still metrics that all founders should track, including the core startup metrics like burn rate and runway. To see how Puzzle tracks these numbers, book a demo.
When Dasha reads a great investor update, it gives an instant snapshot of the company. The update typically includes KPIs like:
| Investor Update Metric | What It Signals | Include Variance? |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue & total dollars raised | Top-line growth trend and how effectively capital is used | Yes: show period-over-period change |
| Current headcount | Burn composition and hiring pace relative to growth | Yes: flag new hires or reductions |
| Margins | Unit economics health and path to profitability | Yes: flag compression or improvement |
| Burn rate | How fast the company is consuming capital | Yes: compare to prior period and plan |
| Runway | Months of capital remaining at current burn | Yes: critical for investor confidence |
Superior updates also indicate variance, AKA what’s changed since the previous check-in. This includes both positive and negative spikes to investors so they know what’s working.
The investor update is a source of truth and visibility into company dynamics. In Dasha’s experience, founders who send consistent updates with transparent numbers have a better handle on their runway and more comfortable investor relationships.
“Understanding the engine of what you're building so that you know your level of control as a founder is, in my opinion, the critical piece. I think it is never too early to get connected with that.”
Often, founders have the right gut instincts about what growth levers to pull. The instinct to hire, expand a channel, or double down on a product bet is usually grounded in pattern recognition, and that matters.
But some decisions can't run on instinct alone, because the constraint is a hard number. Take a hypothetical scenario: your cash on hand divided by your current monthly net burn gives you 4 months of runway left. Your gut says hire 3 engineers to accelerate the roadmap. Before you act on that instinct, you have to stress-test it against the number: what does adding 3 salaries do to your runway? Does it drop you to 2 months, leaving too little time for your planned raise? The data doesn't override your judgment; it tells you whether you can afford to act on it right now, or whether you need to sequence the decision differently.
A simple rule of thumb: use your gut to identify which levers to pull, and use your data to determine how far you can pull them given your current runway and burn. When the two conflict, that tension is the signal: it usually means you need to either find more capital or reorder your priorities before you move.
Also, numbers help convey decision-making rationale to stakeholders. When you've already stress-tested a decision against your financials, you walk into that board conversation with objective input alongside your conviction. Tools like real-time accounting software help keep those numbers current so you can spot changes sooner.
Felicis founder Aydin Senkut compared venture investing with Formula 1 in a June 2025 Fortune interview: both involve taking calculated risks under pressure.
In F1 racing, car sensors send data to the team during a race. Real-time measurements (tire pressure, fuel load, brake temperature) help inform pit-stop decisions before something fails. A startup's burn rate can play a similar role: tracking it helps you judge whether you can spend more or need to conserve cash before you're forced to react.
This allows the teams to achieve their ultimate internal goal: getting more from their resources.
The name of the game isn’t building as many features as possible or spending the most money. It’s figuring out how to translate inputs into outputs efficiently. The team at Felicis stresses that this approach is also directly applicable to companies and metrics.
As companies mature, they tap into that telemetry: complex, real-time metrics that provide a rigorous way of assessing trade-offs and options.
“There's no one correct path that works across every single company. You need toweigh your gut instinct and the data against each other.”
Founders are constantly trying to avoid different types of debt: tech debt, organizational debt, financial debt, trust debt, and more.
You can reduce the risk of accounting errors by investing in your accounting and bookkeeping from the beginning.
Putting your accounting first is a green flag to investors
Imagine the concept of a trust battery between investors and founders (the ‘trust battery’ concept comes from Tobi Lütke, CEO of Shopify). You risk exhausting that battery if you blindside investors or make bad decisions due to accounting errors.
Accounting often gets lost in the push to hire the right people and find product-market fit. However, errors can put your startup at risk, and a smooth month-end close can help you catch problems before sharing financials.
The key here is that bookkeeping is within your control, so you should strive to own it.
In addition, when investors see great accounting, it signals that this company understands potential risks and has the tools to handle them. Founders heading into diligence should review their book value due diligence prep to avoid the inconsistencies that have caused Dasha to see investors walk away entirely from companies with inconsistent numbers in their pitch decks.
“If you believe in maintaining trust with investors, investing in bookkeeping is an important ingredient in maintaining that trust. It allows for consistency, visibility, predictability, and a sense of control over your growth.”
Dasha stresses that no matter the market environment, founders should strive to be as nimble as possible and determine their own paths.
When capital is harder to raise, founders have less margin for error.
At the same time, Dasha notes this doesn’t mean “doom and gloom” for founders.
The macro-environment may not be within their control, but how dialed in they are to their business inputs and understanding of business mechanics absolutely is.
Founders can make great decisions when they arm themselves with the right financial tools.
Dasha's advice still matters in 2026, but funding expectations depend on stage. Burkland's July 2026 Series A guide draws a clear distinction: seed investors back a team and a thesis, while Series A investors want evidence of repeatable growth. That is different from requiring public-company financial discipline at seed.
| Stage | Investor focus |
|---|---|
| Seed | The team and investment thesis |
| Series A | Evidence of repeatable growth |
A July 2026 analysis by Burkland describes Series A diligence as a test of repeatability. Its listed red flags include entering the process with less than 6 months of runway, changing metric definitions between the pitch and the data room, and forecasts the team cannot explain assumption by assumption. These are preparation risks, not proof that every investor uses the same pass/fail test.
For your next raise, keep burn, runway, and revenue definitions consistent across investor updates, your pitch, and the data room. Burkland's preparation guidance calls for historical financials and a forecast you can explain. Clean books support that work, but they do not guarantee funding or remove the need for accounting review.
As of its October 12, 2026 update, Dealroom data puts global VC funding at $685.2 billion for Q1-Q3 2026. Its $913.6 billion full-year figure is an annualized projection, not a completed-year total. In the trailing four quarters through Q3 2026, 79% of capital went to rounds of $100 million or more. That concentration does not create a universal Series A cutoff: Burkland's Series A guide treats a burn multiple under about 2x as a favorable early-stage SaaS benchmark, with thresholds varying by sector, segment, and market cycle.
As October 2026 ends, the same funding market can tell two different stories. Crunchbase's Q3 2026 funding report, based on data as of October 2, puts global venture investment at $159 billion: down 25% from the previous quarter, but up 53% from a year earlier. Neither comparison tells you when your startup's next round will close.
That makes Dasha's distinction between instinct and data useful for your 2027 plan. Use your conviction to choose the next milestone, then check whether cash on hand and current burn can fund it. Before committing to hires, model what happens if revenue arrives later or fundraising takes longer than expected. Keep those assumptions separate from actual results in investor updates, and explain what would trigger a spending change. A stronger funding headline is context, not cash in your bank account.
| Decision | Numbers to check | Question before you commit |
|---|---|---|
| Choose the next milestone | Cash on hand and current burn rate | Can your available cash fund the work? |
| Add hires | Burn rate and runway after adding salaries | Can you afford to hire now, or should you change the timing? |
| Plan for the next raise | Runway if revenue arrives later or fundraising takes longer | What would trigger a spending change? |
| Send an investor update | Actual results, prior-period changes, and forecast assumptions | Are assumptions separate from results, with consistent metric definitions? |
Use accounting software that connects your bank, spending, and payroll data and tracks cash on hand, burn rate, and runway together. A bank balance shows available cash, but it does not explain your spending pace or upcoming obligations. For investor updates, you need current numbers and a clear record of what changed.
Puzzle is an AI-native accounting firm with software that updates cash position and financial statements daily and tracks burn rate and runway. Native integrations include Mercury, Brex, Ramp, Stripe, and Gusto. Founders can review the books themselves or add Expert Reviewed or Full Service bookkeeping. Daily visibility does not make every entry final: human review still matters before sharing financials. Puzzle does not include budgeting or scenario planning, so model hiring and fundraising delays separately.
Agree on a clean cutover date and validated opening balances with your accountant before moving data. If cleanup is still in progress, keep uncertain historical entries separate from the balances you plan to carry forward. Do not assume that importing raw transactions will fix past errors. Puzzle's migration guide describes a review of account mapping before import and a review of migrated books afterward. Confirm the historical scope with the migration team before starting.
The available history depends on the bank, account, and connection settings. Plaid's Transactions documentation sets a default request of 90 days and a maximum of 730 days (about 24 months). That maximum is not a promise that every bank or accounting app supplies the full period. Confirm the actual import window before choosing your start date, and export older records from your bank if needed. Do not assume a named bank or credit union has a fixed limit without checking its connection.
Consider accrual reporting when cash receipts and payments stop giving investors a useful picture of performance. Annual subscriptions paid upfront, unpaid customer invoices, and prepaid expenses can make cash-based results uneven. Raising funding alone is not a universal deadline to switch. Agree on the reporting basis with your accountant and investors before preparing financials for diligence or board updates.
Cash accounting records receipts and payments; accrual accounting records revenue as earned and expenses as incurred. Puzzle maintains cash and accrual books simultaneously, so you can track available cash while reviewing performance on an accrual basis. It supports automated revenue recognition, prepaid expense amortization, and straight-line depreciation. Revenue recognition is Stripe-centric; non-Stripe billing requires manual journal entries. Have your accountant check opening balances, schedules, and adjustments before relying on the accrual results.
Puzzle's monthly checklist covers data completeness, bank reconciliations, transaction categories, fixed assets, financial statement review, and finalizing the month. Categorized transactions and matching bank balances alone do not prove every financial statement is correct. Have your accountant review relevant accruals, liabilities, revenue timing, and adjustments before you share finalized financials. Puzzle does not provide tax services, and a completed checklist is not an audit opinion.
Start with a validated opening balance and work forward through the periods you need to complete. Puzzle's monthly checklist recommends chronological order when completing multiple months. If you are moving years of history, agree on the cutover date and historical scope with your accountant and migration team. Keep records for earlier periods; choosing a new start date does not resolve errors in those records.
Do not assume access to your previous accounting system lasts forever after migration. Intuit's cancellation guidance says QuickBooks Online provides read-only access for one year after cancellation. Other providers have their own terms. Export the reports and supporting records you need before canceling, and confirm what will move with Puzzle's migration team. Check the migrated financials before relying on them for investor updates; do not assume every historical transaction or attachment transfers.
AI can prepare transaction categories, but some entries still need your business context. Puzzle's categorization guidance describes requests for extra context, documentation, or confirmation from a decision-maker. Keep receipts available and check uncertain entries instead of assuming document capture removes every manual task.
For founders, the work becomes reviewing entries and supplying context when needed. A bookkeeper still checks the financial statements and completes the month-end close. Puzzle's checklist includes reviewing outputs for consistency before finalizing the month. Current transaction data is useful, but it is not the same as reviewed financials.
Puzzle's AI prepares transaction categories and asks for context when needed. Its categorization tools can use a plain-English reply to help assign a category. Categorization works at the transaction level, so a mixed purchase may still need a manual split. Review the proposed treatment before finalizing your books.
Puzzle is an AI-native accounting firm: accounting software plus accountants who review and finalize the books. You can manage review yourself or add bookkeeping services, paid separately from your software subscription. Expert Reviewed adds a bookkeeper who checks, corrects, and completes the monthly close for eligible accounts. Full Service assigns a named bookkeeper to manage categorization, reconciliations, accruals, and financial statements. Puzzle accountants or vetted partner firms do this work in the same ledger you see, and you approve the month. Puzzle's monthly checklist guidance describes the bookkeeper's role in those services.
An API or MCP connection is not a bookkeeping service. Puzzle's headless API is waitlist-only. MCP is in alpha, starts read-only, and requires opt-in write access and confirmation of proposed transaction updates. Neither removes human review before you share financials with investors. Puzzle does not provide tax services.
Puzzle has native payroll integrations with Gusto and Rippling. Its payroll guide describes automatic imports of wages, payroll taxes, benefits, and clearing transactions. You still need to review those imports and match payroll amounts to bank withdrawals.
For Gusto, review the imported run in Puzzle's Payroll tab and check the entries in the general ledger. Match bank withdrawals through payroll clearing. If the imported amounts need correction, Puzzle supports editing the payroll run or replacing it with manual journal entries. Do not treat automatic import as a substitute for checking the totals.
For Rippling, use the same review process: check the imported run, review its general ledger entries, and match the bank withdrawals. The Rippling integration has an additional monthly fee per employee and contractor, separate from your Puzzle subscription. Puzzle's payroll documentation includes correction steps for integrated payroll. Verify how your payroll categories and reporting needs carry into the books with your accountant; do not assume a connected integration makes every entry final.
