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Hate using your time to keep track of your business’s finances? You’re in good company. Many business owners consider bookkeeping, accounting, and tax filing the least enjoyable aspects of running their companies.

GAAP. It may seem like accounting jargon, but if your business is entering a Series A round and you’ve begun to have serious discussions with potential sources of capital, those four letters can be the difference between securing and losing out on funding.

Countless startup founders have asked these questions, and yet the answers remain frustratingly long and tedious. Like so many tax-related topics, 409A valuations are in desperate need of a rebrand. The term derives not from a jumble of numbers and letters picked from a hat, but from Section 409A of the Internal Revenue Code, which regulates nonqualified deferred compensation paid to plan participants.

Founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, says, “We cannot be in survival mode. We have to be in growth mode.” Any business must be growing to survive and flourish, especially in its initial years.

First things first, you need to determine the minimal requirements it takes for your business to exist.

One of the most thoughtful and hardworking CPAs I’ve ever met once told me that businesses are like fingerprints—each one is unique and has different ways of tracking and sharing financial information internally.