Burn Rate
topic on 7 shows · 10 statements across 10 episodes · said 6 times in 2 episodes since 2022
How I Built This 6 
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 
the Pitch 
BG2 Pod 
the Official SaaStr Podcast 
Top Founders 
20VC
Mentions by year, every show
tap a year for its mentions
How I Built This 6
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 5 mentions in 1 episode
every mention on every show, scene by scene, with the transcript →
10 statements about Burn Rate, every show
Weeks: Industrial Organic's burn rate was zero during the pitch
“They were asking me what our burn rate was, and truthfully, at that point, it was zero, because we were just sort of in cockroach mode of raising our first round after going through an accelerator”
Gurley: Raising mega-rounds forces high burn and obscures true unit economics
“You're going to have higher burn rates. And so you're going to know less about your unit economics, just by a natural fact, because you get further away when you're operating that way. And you can't raise four hundred million dollars and not have a high burn r…”
Christoph Janz: Growth deceleration coupled with planned spending causes boom-to-bust transitions
“Why is it that companies sometimes go from boom to bust in a matter of months? There can be many reasons for this, but I think the two, like, most important or two most frequent reasons are a couple of things. If you suddenly find your situation, yourself in a…”
Seibel: Retention and burn rate matter more for survival than pitch metrics
“Whereas I'd argue when you're running your company, those numbers are important, but there's also your burn rate, your retention, how much your existing customer accounts are expanding, your revenue expansion over time. Those metrics are the ones that can bett…”
Gurley: 2021 Startup Burn Rates and Capital Raised Are 10-20x 1999 Levels
“The scale is way larger, both in terms of the amount of money being raised by each company and the burn rate. And I would say that's by 10 to 20 X.”
Farid: Modern founders raise massive rounds just to burn money
“We had to take a little money and make a lot, and now people want a lot of money so they can lose a lot, You know, it's sort of like, yeah, our burn rate is three million dollars.”
Divide a startup's funding round by 8 to 10 to calculate burn
“One interesting thing about this phenomenon is you can often take the size of somebody's round and divide it by eight to 10 and get a pretty good approximation of their burn rate.”
Nakache: Ramping burn rate before product-market fit wastes capital
“If the company has not yet reached a stage where there's product market fit and yet the burn rate has been ramped up, To me, that's a yellow flag, and it's interesting, you know, it's one I'm thinking about a lot today in the context of the current environment…”
Ibrahim: Startup burn rates became secondary during 2009–2015 tech growth
“It was a very slow five years but on the other hand, I got to see what it meant to have companies close down, and companies really have to concern themselves with expenses, and burn rates, and all of that yummy stuff that Is less of a concern these days as thi…”