By Mary Blaney | Proven Ventures
Landing your biggest customer should feel like a win.
But what happens when fulfilling that order means buying inventory, hiring employees, and covering weeks of operating expenses before the customer pays?
Sales are up. Cash is tight. And the business owner is wondering how a growing company can feel so financially stretched.
This is where the distinction between revenue and cash flow becomes very real.
Revenue reflects what a business earns from selling its products or services. Cash flow tracks the money actually moving into and out of the business. A company can report strong sales while struggling to cover its next payroll.
Consider a hypothetical business with $500,000 in new orders that needs $150,000 upfront for supplies and labor. The opportunity is real, but so is the funding gap. If the customer pays in 90 days, the company still has to keep operating in the meantime.
Growth creates obligations before it necessarily creates available cash.
The same question shows up in venture capital.
Mary Blaney | CFO, Proven Ventures
At the fund level, there is a related distinction between the value an investment appears to hold and the money investors have actually received.
Carta’s VC Fund Performance Report: Q2 2026 illustrates that gap. Among funds that began investing in 2017, median distributions to paid-in capital, or DPI, stood at 0.37x. For 2018 funds, it was 0.15x.
In plain language, those figures mean the median funds in those groups had distributed approximately 37 cents and 15 cents, respectively, for every dollar investors contributed, as of June 30, 2026.
Those figures do not include the value of investments the funds still hold. They do show how long investors can wait for money to come back.
A fund’s distributions and a company’s operating cash flow measure different things. But both raise a question I believe deserves more attention: When does the value become available cash?
For a business owner, the answer affects payroll, purchasing, and the ability to take on the next opportunity.
At Proven Ventures, we focus on established, revenue-generating companies and consider how capital can support their next stage of growth.
That starts with understanding how the business actually works.
How long does it take customers to pay? What does it cost to deliver a new contract? Does each additional sale leave enough money after expenses? Will the need for capital be temporary, or will it grow with every new order?
These questions help distinguish a timing problem from a deeper financial issue.
Capital can help bridge the gap between paying for an order and collecting payment. But if fulfilling that order consistently costs more than the business earns from it, additional funding alone will not solve the problem.
That is why financial discipline matters alongside access to capital.
Our flexible debt-and-equity approach gives us options to consider how an investment fits a company’s operations, growth plans, and ownership goals. The work is in understanding what the business needs and whether the proposed capital makes sense for it.
Sometimes that means supporting a major contract. Sometimes it means building inventory, improving operations, or entering a new market.
The opportunity does not have to involve a revolutionary product or a billion-dollar valuation. It does need a credible path toward a stronger business.
Because more revenue is only part of the story.
The question is whether the company has the financial foundation to turn that growth into lasting progress.
Source: Carta, VC Fund Performance Report: Q2 2026. Figures reflect median net DPI for the stated fund vintages through June 30, 2026.