Have a portfolio company in mind?
taylor@countabl.io
For funds & angels

The model still works
at the second board meeting.

The model that won the term sheet was built by a founder who then went back to selling. We keep the close tight, the cash view rolling and the model reconciled to actuals, so board questions get answered in the meeting rather than the following week.

Other partner types
You do the tax returnCPA & tax firms You underwrite the fileBanks & SBA lenders
You sit on the boardFunds & angels
You're selling the companyM&A & fractional execs
The full partner overview: boundary, mechanics, team →
What actually happens

The problems diligence finds,
and the cheap one everyone names.

Bookkeeping is the least expensive of them, and the only one anyone ever names.

The close and the model are ours to run. The other is what happens when nobody owns the function at all.

Within two quarters
The model nobody maintains after the wire
It was a fundraising artifact, not an operating one. By the second board meeting it has not been reforecast, and the founder is answering from memory.
The expensive mistake
"Clean up the books" fixes the cheapest one
Messy books, no close discipline and no forecasting capability are three separate problems. Only the first one gets named, and it is the one that costs least to fix.
What it costs you
You become the finance function by default
The founder calls you for help with a forecast you did not underwrite, and you are doing the work of a function that should have been hired.
The division of labor

Who owns what,
written down.

We work for the company, not the fund. That distinction matters for what we will and will not do with what we see.

You keep
  • The board seat and the governance role
  • Valuation, strategy and follow-on decisions
  • The relationship with the founder
  • Any reporting you require in your own format
We take
  • Monthly close, fast enough to matter
  • A rolling forecast and runway view the founder reads
  • A board pack built from a model that ties to actuals
  • Data room setup and fractional CFO work
What we never do
  • Income tax preparation, tax planning, audit or attest work
  • Marketing the round or setting the price
  • Sharing anything the company has not agreed to
  • Telling a founder what their company is worth
Use this at the next board meeting

Questions that reveal
whether the function is real.

Clean books are not the same as a working finance function. These separate a company that has one from a company that has a bookkeeper and a stale model.

Borrow this line

“Before the next board meeting I want three things: the close date, a reforecast against actuals, and a current runway view. If nobody owns those, that is the thing to fix first.”

Asks for the function rather than the artifact. A founder who cannot answer the first question will not be able to answer the other three, and no amount of bookkeeping cleanup changes that.
Free · no email required

What you can send a founder today

Nothing here asks a founder for an email address. A referral that turns into a lead-capture form makes you look bad, not us.

Note
You diligenced a model nobody at the company can maintain
Written for seed and Series A investors. What to require of a portfolio company finance function, and why the cheap fix is the one everyone asks for.
Read it → send as-is
Checklist · PDF
Diligence-readiness checklist
What has to be true before a data room opens, deliberately not a document list. Short enough to read before a call, ending in the questions a founder should be able to answer out loud. Your fund logo in the header on request.
Download → co-branding on request
Calculator
Runway and dilution calculators
Runway, burn and the raise and dilution math, all running in the browser with example values filled in. Send it to a founder whose dilution assumptions are wrong.
Open it → no signup
How it works

How a referral actually goes

Only the first step is yours.

01
Yours
You send an intro email
That's the whole ask. No form, no portal, no partner tier, and no agreement to sign.
02
Within a week
We scope it in one call
Thirty minutes with the founder. If we're not the right answer we say so on that call and tell them what is.
03
Same conversation
They see a fixed price first
Tiers and scoped projects are published on our site, so they see the price before they talk to us.
04
Once, then never again
You hear from us
A short note confirming what we're doing and where the boundary sits. After that we don't put you in a nurture sequence.
No referral fees,
in either direction.
We don't pay for introductions and we don't accept payment for ours. If we send you a client, it's because they need what you do. It keeps the advice clean, and it means there is no referral fee for you to disclose.

Have a portfolio company
you keep worrying about?

Send them over, or send us the situation first and we will tell you whether it is ours. Either is fine, and neither costs you anything.

Send us the situation
A real reply, not a sequence
taylor@countabl.io

See how the work actually runs
→