In this conversation, we get into the specific moves every founder needs to start making 36 months before a sale. We break down normalized EBITDA, and the add-back game buyers play in diligence. We get into fully-loaded CAC, unit economics by channel, and the Grow–Ramp–Scale framework for knowing when to level up your finance function. And we get into why 75% of M&A deals fall apart - and why the ones that close almost always share the same 36-month prep story.

What you'll learn:

00:00 - The million-dollar decisions founders make on gut feel and bank balance

00:54 - Hot take: most CFOs are controllers with a bigger title

02:15 - Three questions to tell if you have a real CFO or just a controller

03:33 - "I can't predict the future" — why that answer is a red flag

04:46 - When month-end financials should actually hit your desk (and why the three-day close is a lie)

05:50 - The "so what?" test for every financial report you receive

08:45 - Capital allocation: funding your growth divisions vs. propping up the laggards

09:13 - Why cash in the bank is the worst decision-making tool a founder can use

11:06 - How revenue complexity dictates the CFO skill level you actually need

12:46 - EBITDA in plain language (and why every lender treats it as profit)

13:40 - Normalized EBITDA explained: the add-backs every private business owner should document now

16:10 - The buyer arbitrage play on unnormalized EBITDA — and how to neutralize it

18:07 - Why time kills all deals and what a 36-month prep window actually looks like

18:38 - The founder, CMO, and CFO sitting at the same table — and why most conversations break down

21:31 - How a strategic CFO partners with growth instead of blocking it

23:26 - Fully-loaded CAC vs. vanity CAC, and why the number alone means nothing

25:43 - When to start segmenting CAC by channel, ICP, and trailing twelve months

27:30 - Grow, Ramp, Scale — the finance shift each phase demands

30:24 - The real cost of launching outbound as a brand-new channel

33:10 - Starting exit prep 36 months out: the first moves every founder should make

33:39 - What separates a clean diligence from a deal that falls apart mid-process

37:20 - The exit prep checklist to start on tomorrow morning

38:47 - Enterprise value in plain language — and why your current financials don't show it

40:40 - Strategic vs. financial buyers, and why every founder should court both

41:35 - Why 75% of M&A deals fall apart (and what the other 25% have in common)

42:38 - Where to find Susan

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Susan Richards is a CFO and cofounder of Numbercrunch, a fractional finance function that supports growing companies from startup through exit.

Follow Susan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-richards-fcpa-fcma-53b2176/

Check out Numbercrunch: https://numbercrunch.ca

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Connect with Krystyn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystynharrison/

Or book an intro call at Horizon Advisors: https://withhorizon.co

Subscribe for new episodes every week.

Most founders build profitable businesses. Very few build sellable ones. There's a massive difference, and it could cost you millions.

In this first live recording of Inside M&A: Opening the Playbook, Krystyn Harrison (Co-Founder & CEO, Horizon Advisors) sits down with Jackie Dinsmore (Managing Partner, Caravel Law, 3x exited founder) and Brent Holliday (Founder & CEO, Garibaldi Capital Advisors) to break down what actually makes a business sellable, how valuations really work, what kills deals, and the exit timeline math every founder should know.

Whether you're exploring your options or actively working toward an exit, this session gives you the insider playbook, straight from people who've been on every side of the table.

Want to be in the room live at the next Inside M&A? Subscribe to the series → https://luma.com/horizonadvisors

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
- 0:00 – Why this conversation matters right now, and who's in the room
- 2:45 – How to tell if your business is actually sellable (not just profitable)
- 6:30 – How to "stage" your business for a buyer the way you'd stage a home for sale
- 9:15 – The deal-killing blind spots most owners don't see until it's too late
- 14:00 – The exact things to say (and never say) when a buyer calls out of the blue
- 18:30 – How EBITDA normalizations work in plain English, and why they can add millions
- 22:00 – How adjusting your owner salary can add millions to your valuation
- 25:00 – Who to tell about a potential sale, when to tell them, and how much to share
- 28:30 – The real exit timeline: how long a sale actually takes from first call to close
- 31:00 – How to know when NOT to sell your business
- 34:30 – Why hitting $5M in revenue unlocks 65% more of the buyer market
- 37:00 – Rapid-fire: the biggest green flags, red flags, and the one question founders never ask a buyer
- 40:00 – The single sentence that separates owners who get great exits from those who don't

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Jackie Dinsmore— Managing Partner of Caravel Law. 3x exited founder. Successfully sold a consumer products company and two professional services firms. Now leads 120+ lawyers across Canada and is disrupting how legal services are delivered to entrepreneurs.

Follow Jackie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline-dinsmore-3a11a55/
Check out Caravel Law: https://www.caravellaw.com

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Brent Holliday - Founder & CEO of Garibaldi Capital Advisors, Canada's first tech-focused M&A advisory firm, founded in 2013. 30+ years in tech and finance. Former venture capitalist. Now advises entrepreneur-owned tech companies on exits, with a team of 8 across Vancouver, Toronto, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Follow Brent - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentholliday/
Check out Garibaldi Capital: https://garibaldicapital.carrd.co/

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Connect with Krystyn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystynharrison/
Or book an initial call at Horizon Advisors: https://withhorizon.co

AI is rewriting the rules of what makes a software company fundable. Switching costs are dissolving. Code is getting cheaper to write. And the SaaS metrics that used to guarantee a term sheet? They're not enough anymore.

Josh Axler has deployed over $200 million into growth-stage companies as Managing Director at Flow Capital, a publicly traded alternative lender. He sits between venture capital and traditional banking, funding founders who want to scale without giving up ownership. He's reviewed thousands of data rooms, and the patterns he sees are changing fast.

In this conversation, we get into why AI is eroding the moats that protected SaaS companies for the last decade, what actually makes a business defensible now, and how founders should think about capital, ownership, and exits in a world where vibe coding can replace an engineering team and one model release can make your product a feature. We also break down why a $20 million exit can put more money in a founder's pocket than a $200 million one, and why most founders never do the math on the real cost of equity.

What you'll learn:

00:00 - What is venture debt and how is it different from VC or bank lending?

00:37 - AI is dissolving software moats. Is brand the only one left?

02:17 - Vibe coding and what's actually defensible in SaaS right now

03:38 - Where AI costs land on the P&L (and why nobody knows yet)

04:55 - "SaaS is dead." What's really happening from the lending desk

06:14 - Is your product a feature or a real product?

06:49 - The metrics that matter before you talk to a lender

08:05 - Seed strapping explained: raise a seed, then grow on your own terms

09:49 - What separates a sustainable company from the VC treadmill

11:12 - Why 40 to 100% annual growth isn't exciting enough for venture anymore

11:52 - Equity is the most expensive capital. Here's the math founders miss

13:05 - Revenue multiple expansion explained in plain language

14:31 - Venture debt as a tool: what it actually unlocks for founders

15:31 - Who Flow Capital works with and typical deal terms

17:04 - Leverage works both ways. Common blind spots in funded companies

18:14 - The number one data room breakdown (the gap between story and forecast)

20:31 - Hockey stick projections with no sales team behind them

22:57 - LTV to CAC: why most founders aren't fully loading their costs

24:04 - CAC payback and how to pick the right capital partner for your stage

26:15 - Services plus software: why the old VC bias against services is flipping

28:14 - Deal structure, liquidation preferences, and the $20M vs $200M math

30:15 - Is capital still abundant? And does every business need outside funding?

-

Josh Axler is the Managing Director at Flow Capital. He has deployed over $200 million in capital across hundreds of deals. Josh focuses on companies in the $2M to $10M revenue range that are growing 40 to 100%+ year over year and working toward cash flow positive. He posts daily on LinkedIn about venture debt, AI, and founder finance.

Follow Josh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshaxler/

Check out Flow Capital: https://www.flowcap.com

-

Connect with Krystyn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystynharrison/

Or book an initial call at Horizon Advisors: https://withhorizon.co

Subscribe for new episodes every week

She didn't plan to be a founder. She was on mat leave with two kids when her future co-founder pitched her on what would become Borrowell — Canada's first free credit score platform with over 4 million members.

In this episode of Worth Owning, Krystyn Harrison sits down with Eva Wong, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Borrowell, to talk about what it really takes to build a fintech from zero — the failed first product, the pivot that changed everything, acquiring a company bigger than yours, and why the confidence of a 15-year-old boy might be the best founder advice you'll ever hear.

What you'll learn:

00:00 — Are entrepreneurs made or born? 

02:08 — Where Borrowell is today (4M+ members, Deloitte Fast 50)

03:23 — How AI is changing product strategy at Borrowell

06:02 — The 2-week volunteer stint that became a co-founder role

07:07 — De-risking entrepreneurship: "I'd just get a job"

13:48 — The first product failed — what happened next

16:47 — How a conference sparked the pivot to free credit scores

24:03 — What product-market fit actually felt like

26:16 — OKRs for life: sleep, focus, and the power of 3

30:24 — Acquiring a company bigger than yours (during COVID)

34:00 — Integration playbook: culture-first M&A

38:33 — Does self-doubt ever go away at scale?

42:09 — Her advice for anyone feeling doubt

⸻

Eva Wong is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Borrowell, a Canadian fintech with 4M+ members. Former management consultant. Queen's School of Business alum. Mom of two. Named to Deloitte's Fast 50.

Follow Eva https://www.linkedin.com/in/evatoronto/

Check out Borrowell: https://borrowell.com

⸻

Connect with Krystyn - https://linkedin.com/in/krystynharrison

Or book an initial call at Horizon Advisors: https://withhorizon.co 

Subscribe for new episodes every week.

Wendy Brookhouse built a financial planning firm, co-owned a software company, and helped sell it. Then she turned around and started telling founders the thing nobody wants to hear: most of them don't actually have a sellable business.

In this episode, Krystyn sits down with the founder and chief strategist at Black Star Wealth to talk about the gap between what founders think their business is worth - and what a buyer would actually pay. Wendy breaks down EBITDA normalizations in plain language, explains why a shareholders agreement can make or break an exit, and shares why female founders in particular leave money on the table when it comes to pricing and negotiation.

This isn't a conversation about someday selling. It's about building a business right now that gives you options - whether that means stepping back, scaling up, or walking away on your terms.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why "knowing your number" is the first step most founders skip
• The difference between owning a business and owning a job — and what buyers see
• How EBITDA ad-backs work and why they matter more than revenue
• What a shareholders agreement actually needs to protect you
• The psychology of money that keeps founders underpricing themselves

Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Connect with Wendy on Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendybrookhouse/

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang has spent years inside hundreds of organizations watching the same design failure play out: founders who built something real, then quietly became the single point of failure inside it.

He's the author of Rest and The Distraction Addiction, and the founder of 4 Day Week Studio. He's worked with companies across financial services, tech, healthcare, and government — and his data is hard to argue with. One B2B sales firm cut turnover from 40% to 3% after moving to a four-day week, saving £250,000 a year in recruitment costs alone. A Korean software company grew revenue tenfold over a decade while reducing its workweek from seven days to four.

In this episode, Alex walks through the real cost of building a company that only runs on founder adrenaline: the depletion, the retention crisis, the invisible tax of always being on — and why most founders treat these as personal failures instead of what they actually are: design signals.

He breaks down the moment the math inverts — when the founder who works the most becomes the ceiling, not the engine — and how the smallest structural changes, starting with how your team meets, can trigger a cascade that cleans up operations, deepens delegation, attracts better talent, and builds a company that holds its value without holding you hostage.

He also reframes AI as a choice: deploy it to extract more from people, or use it to buy time back for everyone.

If you're a founder who's built something that works but suspects it only works because you haven't stopped, this conversation is about designing a company worth owning — and a life worth living inside it.

Tim Ray sold his first company ten months after launching it. Two million dollars, a clean exit, and one nagging question: was that skill or just a lucky ride on the group-buying wave?

Four ventures later, he has his answer. Tim bootstrapped Verifast—a renter verification platform—to over $1 million in monthly recurring revenue.

In this episode, Tim walks through the real cost of chasing proof instead of purpose: the emotional toll of shutting down companies publicly, the pressure to perform in markets he didn't fully understand, and the dilution trap that quietly kills founder freedom.

He breaks down the moment he inverted his entire playbook—stop chasing hot markets, start solving problems the world will never stop caring about—and how structuring capital with growth debt instead of equity gave him and his co-founders the freedom to think in decades, not quarters.

Tim also shares his framework for what he calls "seed strapping": raise just enough equity to prove concept, then bootstrap with debt to preserve ownership. He explains why the right investors already understand your problem before you pitch, and how to filter for missions with enough gravitational pull to sustain a 20-year run.

If you've proven you can exit but keep asking whether you can build something generational, this one's for you.

In this episode of Worth Owning, Krystyn Harrison talks with Brett Chang, co-founder and CEO of The Peak, who built one of Canada's most read business newsletters from three unemployed founders at home during COVID to $2.3 million in annual revenue with 30% net margins and 165,000 subscribers before selling to Zoomr Media for a reported $5 million in 2023. The remarkable part: he intentionally designed it to run without him, sold it, then bought it back.

Brett shares the hard lessons of his first exit—why catching "lightning in a bottle" during a rising tide gave him false confidence in his abilities, why the power of compounding matters more than he understood at 28, and how reading The E-Myth on a plane completely changed his approach to building systematized, sellable businesses. He reveals why he now believes there aren't many buyers for media companies anymore, and how that's actually freeing—because when you build a great business focused on fundamentals, you create optionality to either sell or hold forever.

If you're a founder who's built something working but wondering whether to optimize for exit or optimize for ownership, or if you're building in a category where valuations have crashed but fundamentals still matter, this conversation will reframe how you think about what's actually worth building—and worth keeping.

Worth Owning is a podcast for founders who want to build real wealth- without burning out to get there.

Hosted by Krystyn Harrison, cofounder of Horizon Advisors, the show features unfiltered conversations with entrepreneurs at every stage: the ones deep in the build, the ones who've exited, and the advisors who understand what it actually takes to win.

We believe healthy founders build more valuable companies. Not "build at all costs" - build with intention.

Each episode covers the stuff that moves the needle: pivots, plateaus, psychology, mindset, and the path from operator to owner. Whether you're scaling, preparing for an exit, or figuring out what comes after- this is for you.

In this episode of Getting to the Deal, Krystyn Harrison talks with Alan Wood, founder of Rally Beer Company, who built Canada's first electrolyte-rich functional beer from a $2,000 garage setup to $1 million in revenue in just 27 months before selling to Muskoka Brewery for approximately $2 million. The remarkable part: he raised only $920,000 while competitors were raising $20-100 million, and everyone on the cap table got their money back.

Alan shares the hard lessons of his first exit—why raising money felt like success when he should have focused on unit economics from day one, why strategic exits are sometimes better than optimal exits, and how "beautiful naivete" helped him move fast despite minimal validation. He reveals why he struggled for 18 months with the fear of "touching fire again" before building his next venture, FRAPS Institute, with no outside capital, better margins, and 100% optionality.

If you're a founder competing in an impossible category with limited capital or feeling underfunded compared to competitors, this conversation will reframe how you think about capital efficiency, sustainable growth, and building a business where everyone wins—even when you're not the unicorn in the room.