Ecom CFO Notebook - what the $100M Cuts founder didn't say about finance

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I was at Commerce Roundtable here in Austin this week.

Steven Borrelli, founder of Cuts, did a fireside chat with Nick Shackelford (the event host) in a room of about 300 operators.

At one point Nick asked Steven, “Are you a growth founder or a product founder?” 

Steven said “both” … in his mind, product is growth.

But what didn’t he say?

Finance. 

99% of DTC / ecom founders don’t fall into the finance bucket.

I was one of less than five inherently finance people in the room. And zero of the talks were about finance. Instead, the usual meta ads, AI, “how I made $XM”.

But Steven said some really interesting things about finance that flew under the radar. I picked up on a few threads worth sharing.

1. He mentioned 79% gross margin in passing

Steven mentioned 79% gross margin like it was nothing.

That shouldn't be a big surprise.

But I want to underscore it, because this is the single strongest predictor I see for whether a DTC brand scales past $10M.

The data from our 2026 benchmark report confirms it:

In our client base specifically, we don't have anyone who scaled past $10M without top gross margins. 

When Steven dropped 79% like it was nothing, he was telling the room why the rest of his playbook works.

Not that he's smarter or running better ads (but he is). His margin structure gives him room to be wrong and keep going.

Next time a founder on stage shares a tactic that worked for them, listen for their gross margin. If they're north of 75, the tactic is running on a margin structure most brands don't have.

2. He actually made a decision

Steven's response to tariffs was laying off half his team.

Absolutely brutal.

I’ll repeat in case you skimmed. He laid off half his team post Liberation Day.

I'm not saying that's what every brand should have done.

My point is he reacted quickly, intentionally, and made a decision.

Andrew Youderian’s tariff survey showed 40% of brands didn't raise or lower prices. Andrew's survey doesn't tell us whether those brands did anything else.

But that 40% is probably a proxy for the people who did nothing.

What separates brands like Cuts is that he made a call and took action.

And the move itself was counterintuitive.

Steven lowered prices and pushed AOV. That's the opposite of what most of the room was doing, and honestly, the opposite of what I was saying at the time about brands raising prices.

He's first-order profitable while lowering prices into a tariff shock. That's not a common combination. It only works because the margin structure was already there.

The result of cutting half the team was actually a leaner, better structure — according to him. They now run one super senior department head per function, almost like a business unit owner, supported by offshore talent. AI filled a lot of the gaps.

Without the advent of AI, would that decision have been as successful? Hard to tell. But the point is that he acted. He kept using one word during this part of the talk: rethink. Over and over. What's working. What's not. What's sustainable. How are we responding versus what everyone else did.

3. The founder is still the guardrail

Steven said he fired his demand planner and that he moved demand planning to the Marketing department.

I raised my hand at the end of his talk and asked, “You've moved demand planning into marketing, but how are you incentivizing marketing to not over-order?”

His first answer was EBITDA.

But that doesn't actually solve it. Over-ordering inventory doesn't hit the P&L until much later, when you're running heavy discounts to clear it. Incentivizing your head of growth on EBITDA doesn't actually keep them from over-ordering.

His second answer was the real answer. He's still heavily involved in every major inventory buy. That's the guardrail. Him.

And I don't disagree with marketing owning demand planning. They're close to the discounting, the ad campaigns, the sales. Especially in a remote environment, demand planning can get disjointed from marketing.

But marketing still needs the right incentive structure. And demand planning takes a unique skill set that isn't inherently marketing.

When a founder tells you how their team is structured, listen for what they still touch. That's the real system. Regardless of the org chart.

Wrapping up

The reason I'm writing this isn't so you'll listen more carefully the next time you watch a founder talk.

I'm writing it because most founders aren't inherently finance people and that's fine. You don't need to be. But you do need to be aware of how much of what's happening (under all the talk of product, growth, and brand) is actually finance.

Steven wasn't talking finance on stage. 

He was talking product and growth and brand. But his margin is what lets him be wrong and keep going. His first-order profitability is what let him lower prices into a tariff shock instead of raising them.

His hand on every major inventory buy is what keeps the balance sheet from walking away from him. He also raised $7M on the back of that tariff moment going viral — that's content flywheel leverage most founders at $10M to $50M don't have.

Steven has the room to rethink (and actually act on the rethink) because his business was built to give him that room.

A few weeks ago I wrote about filtering decisions through finance before you take action. Listening to Steven this week helped confirm it.

— Sam

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