CEO & CFO
CFO turned SAAS Entrepreneur. I currently do not plan on fundraising for my business. I work with startups to help them build forecasts and financial business plans. My advice on fundraising is to be prepared for a long process (6-12 months) and if you are looking for seed investors, make sure you have a strong 2-minute elevator pitch. Why Growth Mentor? My goal for being part of this community to meet other entrepreneurs and learn how to grow a SAAS business. We are in the scaling phase of our business. The mentors in growth mentor have been invaluable to our business. I view this organization as an alternative to joining an accelerator and as a community of fantastically talented people working toward helping one another reach their goals. My company story: Our product does what Mint.com did for personal finance for Small Businesses and start-ups. I built a very successful Fractional CFO business over the last 7 years in Austin, Texas working with series A and larger start-ups, but what I did was so time-intensive it was a hard business to scale. Building a financial model in excel takes expertise and it take SO MUCH TIME. We started AutoCFO with the purpose to build a software to help other CFO's automate their processes, but after many customer studies (thank you growth mentor!), ended up building a CFO business to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses directly. We we able to turn a non-scalable CFO services model into a scalable, affordable CFO service through building a powerful software tool that allows us to build a forecast in 90 minutes instead of 30 hours. While providing real-time revenue and cash information to CEOs and board-ready KPI dashboards for investors. More on our CFO services: https://autocfo.com/virtual-cfo/
My background is investment banking, private equity and 7 years as a start-up fractional CFO (yes, including fundraises and M&A processes) and now a bootstrapped SAAS founder. I have a lot of thoughts on fundraising from a few different perspectives.
I have bootstrapped my start-up for over three years. I believe some businesses need to raise capital and others are better off with out it. I do not plan to raise capital - ask me why.
This is a tough topic - how do you get product market fit? I think for us the biggest answer is ask your customers. We thought we knew our customers really well, then we asked them the RIGHT questions and the answers surprised us.
Love this tool - we use it for product management and our marketing team. Great collaborative tool with excellent integrations to slack and other tools we use.
Fractional CFO, specializing in budgeting, accounting clean up, mergers and acquisitions and fundraising for small businesses and start ups from $3-10million in Revenue and / or $3-10 million in funding.
CFO services for start ups and small businesses that is supported by dashboard and financial modeling software that gives easy access to usable financial information.
At AutoCFO, we believe business owner's don’t need a finance degree to run their business successfully, they just need a better tool to engage with their financials. So we are re-shaping financial data in a way that is straightforward and practical.
I run a successful fractional CFO business working with Series A and larger start-ups to communicate effectively with their boards as well as improve their runway.
Private Equity in small and midsized businesses in the Texas area. I worked as a Vice President, acquiring businesses, then working with the companies CEO's and CFO's to create clean, clear reporting materials and make the transition the new world of having investors.
I had the opportunity to research and analyze some of the top Venture and Buyout Funds in the country. My job was to track the progress of top VC and Buyout investments and report to our investor base. My favorite part of my job was attending meetings with top tier Venture Teams and meeting the dynamic CEOs and venture capitalists that are shaping and molding the world around them. Worked with top tier Private Equity funds to complete minority co-investments on large ($500mm-$1bn+) deals, including financial due diligence, market sizing and research and operational analysis.
Private Equity Investor investing in large businesses, taking companies private and investing in the top venture capital and private equity firms in the Bay Area as well as across the United States
Mergers & Acquisitions for middle market companies, worked in a lot of industries, preparing companies to be bought and sold, building financial models and selling / buying strategies for public and (mostly) private businesses.
Summer Intern - worked with CEO on market research, internal finance investigation, and other operational and financial projects.
Design, build, and sell custom jewelry pieces through local businesses and home shows. Started business with $40, yes, your math is correct, at 11 years old. Through Highschool I grew the business to total profits of $20,000+ without any additional capital investment. Through this business I fell in love with excel, and what I later learned to be financial analysis, return on investments, cash management, and margins.
Summer Intern - assisted owner/founder Emily Armenta with operations (streamlining manufacturing /identifying bottle necks), IT applications (implementing 3-D design software), and general assistant duties.
