Mitch Bader

State conformity to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is creating new challenges for tax leaders — from bonus depreciation to R&D expensing. In \#GrantThornton’s latest D.C. Dispatch episode, David Sites and Jamie Yesnowitz break down what these changes mean for your organization. Listen here. \#SALT \#TaxStrategy \#StateTax https://bit.ly/4n8s6a3

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The Dallas Chapter of the Private Directors Association had a great meeting last night discussing capital raising for private companies. There were 80+ attendees who joined the interactive discussion. My takeaways: ·        Normal lending activity levels are returning but commercial banks are losing market share to private lenders due to less restrictive credit requirements ·        Traditional lending leverage ranges from 2.5 to 2.75x for companies to allow future headroom. Traditional lenders offer cheaper money but only if you are credit worthy ·        Private equity exits have been delayed for those acquired in the 2018 - 2021 time frame. The longer hold periods are leading companies to search for additional capital ·        Advice to owners of private companies: “Run your business like you will have it forever. But be prepared to sell it next weekend.”  #PDA #PrivateCompanyGovernance

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Last week I shared an article detailing a personal account of Jay Koster's experience with merchant cash advance financing. I’ve published a companion piece offering a CFO’s perspective, focused on capital structure, cash-flow governance, and economic substance. This isn’t about one transaction. It’s about how certain financing structures can misalign risk, particularly for entrepreneurial businesses. If you operate a company or advise one, understanding the mechanics matters.

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Most finance teams don’t break because of strategy. They break because workflows don’t scale as volume and complexity increase. Backlogs. Approval chasing. Vendor data inconsistencies. Fraud blind spots. If transaction volume increases tomorrow, would your AP & AR processes hold, or stall? This February, we’re hosting two practical sessions designed to help finance teams assess readiness, improve workflow efficiency, and reduce risk: 📅Feb 24: AP Reset Playbook: Reset AP in 30 days (without adding headcount 📅Feb 26: Tax-Season Fraud Edition: The red flags CFOs & AP teams overlook Register below (Links in comments — join one or all three) #accountspayable #accountreceivable #financeoperations #apautomation #fraudprevention Liz Briggson, CPA, Nico McEown, Sarah-Jayne Martin, Laura Elliston

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I've sat through thousands of pitches. Most of them blur together. Dennis's didn't. He wasn't selling software. He was solving something he'd watched happen his whole life. Dennis Cail II grew up in public housing in Monroe, Louisiana. No banks or credit unions in his neighborhood — just liquor stores and pawn shops that would cash your check for 30% of whatever it was worth. Later, when he joined the Navy, he saw the same predatory lenders lined up outside the base, targeting service members the same way they'd targeted his community back home. That's where the idea came from. His company, Zirtue Pay, automates loans between family members — the kind where your cousin needs $500 for rent or your sister needs help covering a medical bill. The money that moves through text messages and handshakes, that strains Thanksgiving dinners and breaks up siblings. Most fintechs don't touch this. It's too messy. Too emotional. The unit economics don't look like what VCs want to see in a deck. But Dennis understood something most founders don't: friends and family lend each other $184 billion a year. It's one of the largest sources of capital in the country — and it's completely informal. No structure, no accountability, no way to preserve the relationship when things go sideways. His solution is simple: make the loan formal, route payments directly to creditors, and give everyone a clear record of what was agreed to. Take the ambiguity out of something that's already happening millions of times a day. What I noticed when Dennis pitched wasn't just the idea. It was how clearly he understood the problem. He wasn't building for an imaginary user. He was building for his own family, his own neighborhood, his own experience. That's something I've learned to pay attention to over the years. The founders who are solving problems they've personally felt tend to have a different kind of persistence. They're not going to pivot away when it gets hard, because the problem is still there whether they solve it or not. Dennis has since been named EY Entrepreneur of the Year for the Southwest, added to the Forbes Dallas 500, and last year received the Future Texas Legend Veteran Award from the Texas Business Hall of Fame. He's gotten recognition that would have seemed unlikely when most investors couldn't see what he saw. I could. If you're a founder solving a problem you've lived — something most investors don't understand because they've never been close to it — I'd like to hear from you. My DMs are open.

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Proud to share Palmetto's 2025 Annual Shareholder Letter. A few things that stood out to me after another year with this team: -1,134 GWh of clean electricity produced; 1.68 billion lbs of CO₂ reduced -Palmetto runs a sub-400 person team doing what competitors do with 10,000+ -We've doubled our paying customer base five years in a row. -We helped customers save $33M on energy bills in 2025 -We're targeting subsidy independence by 2028. We're building a business that doesn't need them.

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