The financial reporting and audit process is rarely on the list of sexy topics that tech startups wish to tackle. Yet when financial reporting errors comparable to this occur Lyft had this earlier this yrthis will likely have tragic consequences for the company. Ask Lyft.
After years of reporting and auditing for firms like Miro, Autodesk, Dropbox, Flexport, and Yelp, Mary Antony and Kelsey Gootnick decided that reporting and auditing needed some tech love, too.
They each come from accounting backgrounds and met in 2018 while managing the accounting function at Flexport. They have seen firsthand how difficult it is for firms to provide financial statements and disclosures – they will take weeks or months to arrange, and many are liable to errors that may have serious consequences for firms if presented incorrectly.
So they started off based in San Francisco Within in 2023, the use of machine learning and multi-language models to offer financial reporting and audit processes for medium-sized and enterprises. In early 2024, they launched the company in beta for Oracle NetSuite customers.
The first version of the product included GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) automation and non-GAAP reporting, including money flow statements, CEO Antony said.
“It really looks like a Sudoku puzzle that you have to solve by trial and error,” Antony told TechCrunch. “Cash flow statements are one of the most important metrics for a company, so they shouldn’t be a Sudoku puzzle or a puzzle in general. We enable our clients to obtain easy, yet accurate and reliable financial reporting every time.”
Along with money flow statements, Antony said the company will release a feature later this yr that may help customers prepare annual and quarterly financial reports.
InScope’s closest competitor today is Workiva, which also provides finance and audit software. Gootnick, nevertheless, said Workiva’s product offerings are more focused on public firms, while InScope focuses on private firms.
Some legacy skilled services firms offer similar services, making them indirect competitors, but Antony and Gootnick consider InScope’s products are more complementary to them. So much so that they might change into customers, Gootnick said.
InScope has five initial customers and is in the technique of signing six more. The company is currently generating revenue and goals to grow its customer base and revenue 10 times by the end of the yr, Antony said.
This growth has attracted enterprise capitalists, who recently injected $4.3 million in seed capital into the company. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round with participation from a group of individual investors including Vipul Ved Prakash (Founder and CEO of Together AI), Jake Heller (Founder and CEO of Casetext), Debbie Clifford (CFO of Autodesk), Justin Coulombe (CFO of Miro ) and Nadia Asoyan (CFO at Strike).
The founders say their next steps include expanding their customer base to 50 firms by the end of the yr, and they’ll use the investment to scale the product, grow their team and improve its artificial intelligence capabilities.
Better Tomorrow Ventures has advised the company since its inception, and InScope was also a part of Better Tomorrow’s first accelerator program in 2023.
“When we met with the team through our accelerator program, we quickly noticed how committed and passionate they were about fixing a critical element that could be having a detrimental impact on a company’s success,” Sheel Mohnot, co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures, said in a statement . “After advising the team for several weeks, we knew that if anyone could solve this problem, it would be Mary and Kelsey.”