Housekeeping Q4 2025

Uncovering unpleasant surprises. Facing the facts, and acting fast.

with the clean up boys.

For the vast majority of the year and years prior, my main goal was to grow the company both in product and in sales (revenue). I’ve been very focused and resilient because I believe in our mission to improve healthcare systems through technology and I see remarkable growth year after year.

This year alone, we’ve seen tremendous customer growth. We’ve added more than 100 new clients and have made significant progress in the business use cases of our products & services. I’ve spent considerable amount of study, travel, and analysis on how I can expand our market outside the Philippines. All were good.

But, after all has been said and done, I didn’t feel the growth. I felt there’s something fundamentally wrong. I didn’t feel the additional revenues going in. It still feels stifled and our revenue tracker doesn’t square with the actual.

There’s something far more problematic, I just couldn’t pinpoint or articulate it.

Ok, let’s backtrack.

Survival first.

Over the course of many years, we’ve hired finance consultants to help the company manage our books — revenues and expenses. I’ve hired 2–3 part timers to handle book keeping, basic accounting work, co-manage with me the disbursements, and other finance stuff. We were able to get by. During the first 5 years, my problem was more into lack of revenue. I have to solve that part first.

I know that if I don’t make new customers, I’d be done already. Besides, we’re so few that managing cash was relatively easy. I’ve entrusted the “deeper” things in finance through the consultants I’ve hired. I told to myself, they should know this better than I. They’re the experts here. They should provide me appropriate guidance and balance so we don’t sink.

Thankfully, we did survive quite long.

But, there’s this nagging problem that never went away. It always felt that I’m always running short of cash — despite all the growth / new customers coming in. I didn’t understand and I couldn’t put my finger on the actual problem.

2017–2019

So to solve this, I hired another finance consultant by the way of a fractional CFO from a company who offered CFO/Accounting services. This was around 2018/2019 (just to be clear), that person was always at odds with some of our team members, especially the sales. I thought, hey, you focus on making sure our books are in good standing and and support me here so we can raise a good capital from reputable investors. I was hopeful but the rift with this person (fCFO) and some of my team grew stronger, I had to part ways with this person (and his entire company) eventually.

I was able to raise a good amount of capital still.

With that person’s exit, I was left with a book keeper who sort of ran bookkeeping system haphazardly. I realized that it was not optimal because it was on a part time setup. I thought I can still manage a bit as I’m needed more elsewhere — grow the company: new customers came in, new developers came in, need to focus on our revenue generating activities.

I was in the middle of another fundraise, I’ve talked to multiple investors to which some have expressed great interest in us. There was serious interest, I was looking to finally make a proper corporate shape up: hire proper admin and finance people among others. I was looking pretty hyped by the end of 2019.

2020 — Pandemic.

We all know what transpired during the global pandemic of Covid19. Our business almost stopped. No new clients. Some old clients disappeared during this time. The investment activity came to a complete halt. My high flying projections went kaput almost overnight.

Our cash is running out fast. We had to make hard decisions. I had to cut expenses, but I don’t want to let go of my team.

I had to cut my own salary even further -down to zero for many many months. I was not getting full salary to begin with anyway. But this time, it was brutal.

Some of our staff members resigned and that enabled me to reduce our burn. I was super stressed. But I had to survive.

By God’s grace, we did. Thankfully, we were kept alive.

Post-pandemic to 2024 (2021–2024)

Coming out of the pandemic, we slowly saw our business get back on track. We’ve seen new members join us. We saw additional customers start to come in. It was starting to feel alive again. This is the back to normal.

2021 to 2022: +67.5% Massive scaling phase. Getting back to normal.

This is expected as businesses coming back to life. The economy is restarting. People are going out and doing business more and more.

2022 to 2023: — 8% Contracted: We made some core decisions to focus more on our claims business and scale down other things. This is for us to scale with a smaller team.

2023 to 2024: +19.5% Recovery growth. More hospitals are coming to Stash; Bigger brands are subscribing to us. We started to tinker on the thought of raising capital once again. We are growing faster and we wanted to position our company for a great investment option.

Starting 2023 year, I’ve noted that we really needed to have someone really capable handle our finance. I was trying to look for a good CFO level person to help me on this area. I wanted to get back to raising capital to finance and sustain the growth of Stash. I am seeing great opportunities in our business that would need serious capital to execute.

I hired 3 new consultants to help me on this. 2 international consultants and 1 local who all boasted strong international US, Europe, and SEA network. They are legit. But.. they didn’t pan out well.

2024 to 2025: +26.6% Growth. Gross Profit is up 21.8%!

We booked 60+ new clients this year. We breached 100 customers (businesses) milestone. Why a do I feel a bit of a disconnect?

I was trying to make sense of this, perhaps due to additional activities we did to expand the business. More activities, more expenses. This is normal as we enter a system of transition, scaling, and operational disruption.

But I was suspecting a bit more fundamental issue going on. I investigated deeper. This was just after our strategic planning and teambuilding. My week after was clear, and so I dug in.

The Insight: 3-Year Average (CAGR) is 11.6%, that number is misleading because of the 2023 drop. The real signal is our recent performance: Stash is currently growing at a ~23–26% pace organically, even with the VAT leaks and collections issues dragging the company down.

Looking at the Data eye to eye.

During my deep dive on our FS and by asking some friends, we found out core issues on how we do our bookkeeping, and generally the finance that led to this. It’s ugly, I felt really drained exhausted seeing the mess. I was greatly distressed by the fact that I, once again, hired consultants to check on this yet, that the deep mess was not caught by them.

From my investigation and audit, I saw that:

1. Some customers don’t pay on time, and the amount ballooned already. Yet this was not flagged by our accountant/finance controller. On average it takes 65 days. We’re essentially acting like a stupid bank lending money to our customers at zero interest!
2. Unmatched receivables;
3. Overstated VAT payments. Our accountant is booking and paying VAT while we haven’t collected the actual payment!
4. Bookkeeping was messy. This has been flagged by our former finance consultant — but they stopped the effort there.
5. We have an accumulated PHP 3.66M AR!

Obviously, this needed some swift action and we will get things in order right away. These things are the reasons we’re not growing fast enough. The mistakes in the finance controllership is super bad and the person needs to be replaced/fired immediately.

Do Clean up. Now. Fast.

As these are still on-going, I will not write them down as of now. But I am very committed to get this solved. There will be major adjustments on the way things are handled in the company especially in the area of collections, finance management, and legal / corporate structure. Once all is said and done, I will write and share about it later.

For now let me share with you the hard lessons I’m learning as I deal with this mess.

Hard Lessons re-Learned.

1. Don’t forget Finance. ever.
2. For consultants and everywhere: Demand what you are promised. It’s ok to be demanding, it’s reasonable. Be objectively reasonable.
3. Collect always. There’s no free lunch. You are not getting free AWS credits, free salary, free electricity, etc.. Nothing is free. You are also paying someone else.
4. Be strict with the cash flow.
5. Factual Data is your friend (deeper realization). Data can be misleading if you’re presented with a false data. That can lead to mistakes and irreversible errors.
6. Search and weed out saboteurs (internal).
7. Identify and Block off saboteurs (external).
8. In all things, seek wisdom from the Lord. There are many things that could cloud right judgement. Pray for a clear mind, discernment.

Founder Reflections

Given this new strain in my 10 year startup journey, this is the real MBA workout I was fantasizing of. This is an actual, real scenario case study where the risk and reward are with real life consequences.

I mentioned on my writing before that being a founder (entrepreneur) is like an MMA with many disciplines. This “finance” is probably one of the areas I’m working on my game today. Finance is so much more than accounting, but it all starts with it — proper booking of where money goes — the fundamentals. Once you get a good footing on it (and I don’t have to be the one doing it) you’ll be able to see clearer on what needs to be done. This is the game changer this Q4 2025 for me.

I see clearer. I can execute faster. Less time second-guessing. Sharper decisions in the horizon for they are sensible and data driven.

The projection for 2026 at the minimum is at 35–40%. It could be so much more with all the business development we did this year. It could be so much more, Lord willing.

Despite the stress I’m having now, I recognize the Lord who allows me to do all these. To my Lord and Savior all the glory and praise!

“To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the children of man. O simple ones, learn prudence; O fools, learn sense.”

‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭8‬:‭4‬-‭5‬ ‭ESV‬‬

https://bible.com/bible/59/pro.8.4-5.ESV