You are Irene Valcárcel, 38, co-founder and chief executive of Brisolva, a software company in Valencia. It is Monday 13 April 2026, 22:40. Your board meets in ten days, for ninety minutes, and tonight you have to decide what you will ask it for.
The situation
Brisolva sells route-planning and delivery-scheduling software to mid-sized food and beverage distributors in Spain and Portugal: 212 customers, 74 employees and €6.8 million of annual recurring revenue (ARR) at 31 March, against €7.2 million planned. The first quarter brought €0.58 million of new ARR where the plan asked for €1.0 million. Net burn rose from €310,000 to €470,000 a month, mostly from pilots with national distributors and six hires. You have €7.1 million in the bank.
You want to move upmarket: one of the three national distributors that asked for a pilot in 2025 signed for €380,000 a year, your largest contract. Your co-founder and technology chief, Tomás Echeverri, thinks Brisolva should stay in the mid-market and spend on product. You have disagreed since February.
Your draft is the March pack with the numbers updated: 47 slides. The last one, "Where we need your help", carries four asks: approve hiring a chief revenue officer (CRO) with enterprise experience and moving €900,000 of the 2026 budget into an enterprise sales team; a commitment from the investors to lead a €3 million extension before year-end; introductions to enterprise sales leaders; and views on enterprise pricing. Your notebook sums up what you need in four words: "help with go-to-market".
The board has five seats. Its chair, Gonzalo Arrieta-Uribe, from the fund that led your €14 million Series A, reads everything and would "rather hear things with everyone at the table". Nuria Castellví, your seed investor, wants the pipeline deal by deal. Pilar Sandoval-Ortega, the independent director, says that "boards that vote on everything stop thinking". Henrik Aalto has twice offered to "help with hiring" without saying how. The board meets roughly every seven weeks.