What it looks like when both functions get built.
Client names are withheld unless a founder has agreed to be named. The numbers below are real and came from work I did myself.
No finance function to $10M+ ARR.
First business hire. Built finance, ops and client success from nothing.
Company name withheld at ELM Strategy's discretion. Details verified.
From a bank account to board-ready
Set up the accounting system and a chart of accounts that matched how the company actually spent money. Stood up the monthly close, the budget vs. actuals rhythm and the projections. Ran board and investor reporting through multiple rounds, and took A/R and collections hands on.
The layer that made growth survivable
Built internal bizops from scratch and scaled it with the company through Series B. Operating rhythms and scorecards, SOPs, the vendor and tooling stack, people ops, payroll and compliance, contract and legal ops alongside outside counsel.
Existing clients became the pipeline
Created the client success division before the company had one. Hired and led a seven-person team managing more than $5M in projects. Built the playbooks, the CRM and handoff systems, the renewal and upsell motions and the feedback loops.
Erica was our first business hire and oversaw 20× growth, from a couple hundred K to $10M+ ARR. A talented, easy-to-get-along-with generalist who knows how to run the bizops stuff while founders focus on growth and product. She created our Client Success division and deftly shaped the internal finance and business operations. Highly recommend.
James Slezak · CEO, Swayable · shared with permission
The actual artifacts, not screenshots of them.
Built with sample data so you can click through the real thing before we ever talk about your numbers.
FinanceDash
The financial operating picture I build at the Visibility step. Burn, projected burn, runway, revenue and the handful of numbers that matter for one specific company, in one screen a founder can check without asking anyone.
- Burn and runway on current data
- Budget vs. actuals with variance flags
- Scenario planning by hire and timing
The Handoff Method
Five steps, each with a deliverable a founder can hold. Baseline, Foundation, Visibility, Rhythm and the Ops layer. It's the same sequence every engagement runs, whether the company has nothing or has a tangle of tools that don't talk.
- A one-page baseline in the first weeks
- Clean books in a system you own
- A monthly rhythm that catches problems early
The first 90 days, in plain terms.
This is the shape of a typical engagement rather than a specific client's results. Every company starts from a different mess.
Weeks 1 and 2. I find out where the numbers actually live. Usually that's some mix of a bank account, a few spreadsheets and the founder's head. You get a one-page baseline covering current burn, current runway, the gaps and the three biggest risks in what you have now. Some founders find out here that their runway is two months shorter than they thought.
Weeks 3 through 6. The books get fixed. Transactions categorized correctly, a chart of accounts that matches how you actually spend, the close running on a schedule. This part is unglamorous and it's the part everything else depends on. Miscategorized data means a wrong burn rate, and a wrong burn rate means a wrong runway.
Weeks 6 through 10. The dashboard goes live. Burn, projected burn 12 to 24 months out, runway and revenue, refreshing on current data. The test is whether you pull it up on your own without asking me.
Weeks 10 through 12. The monthly budget vs. actuals review starts running. This is the piece that compounds. The first month is a status report. By the third, the variance commentary is telling you things you didn't know about your own company.
After that we're into the ops layer, which is where the handoff becomes permanent instead of a one-time cleanup.