Issue 142 · September 2026
A composite founder diary. Hiring one engineer moved our retirement plan from a capped IRS filing penalty into Title I of ERISA, where the daily meter has no ceiling and the liability is personal. The arithmetic between the correction programme and the exposure is about a thousand to one.
In-depth founder interviews, MRR journeys and post-mortems, with the real numbers.
OSRF reported $2,596,521 of revenue for 2024 against $1,943,778 in 2023. But net assets grew $1,563,676 on a $566,754 surplus, and tracing the difference leads to a wholly owned taxable subsidiary with almost no public existence.
A composite founder diary. Four contractors, one policy bought only to satisfy a customer's insurance rider, and a premium audit that asked for certificates of insurance rather than contracts. What I found reading the California Labor Code.
OSI filed $1,093,077 for 2024 and has self-published $667,000 for 2025, a year the IRS does not have. Its accounts and its tax return disagree, and the gap reconciles exactly.
A composite founder diary. Twenty one Forms I-9, sixteen flagged, and not one unauthorised worker among them. What I learned reading 8 U.S.C. 1324a and its penalty table: the good faith defence runs one way only, and the clock that sets the fine is the one I do not control.
OTF's audited revenue hit a record $53,115,458 in the year ended 30 September 2025. In the same year its cash halved to $25,283,707 and it closed with net assets of minus $123,660. Six grant years paid for one fiscal year.
A composite founder diary. At 65K MRR a banking partner asked whether client funds ever touched our balance. Nine days in the statutes turned up a federal felony that says your knowledge is irrelevant, an exemption written for somebody else, and a civil penalty of 10,556 dollars a day that the statute itself prints as 5,000.
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