The financial reporting and auditing process isn’t often on the list of hot topics tech startups want to tackle. And yet, when mistakes are made in financial reports, like this one Lyft had earlier this year, can have dire consequences for a company. Just ask Lyft.
After years of doing reporting and auditing work for companies like Miro, Autodesk, Dropbox, Flexport, and Yelp, Mary Antony and Kelsey Gootnick decided that reporting and auditing needed some tech love, too.
Both come from accounting backgrounds and met in 2018 while leading the accounting function at Flexport. They saw firsthand how difficult it was for companies to prepare financial statements and disclosures – they can take weeks to months to prepare, and many are prone to errors that can have serious consequences for companies if presented incorrectly.
So they started based in San Francisco InScope in 2023, leveraging machine learning and large language models to provide financial reporting and auditing processes for medium-sized businesses and enterprises. They launched the company in beta in early 2024 to customers using Oracle Netsuite.
The first iteration of the product included automation of GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) and non-GAAP reporting, including cash flow statements, CEO Antony said.
“It’s really like a sudoku puzzle where you have to do trial and error to get it right,” 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 have effortless, yet accurate and reliable financial statements every time.”
Along with cash flow statements, the company will launch a feature later this year that will help customers prepare annual and quarterly financial reports, Antony said.
InScope’s closest competitor today is Workiva, which also provides finance and auditing software. However, Gootnick said Workiva’s product offering is more focused on public companies, while InScope focuses on private companies.
Some legacy professional services firms offer similar services that make them indirect competitors, but Antony and Gootnick see InScope’s product as actually more complementary to them. So much so that they could be customers, Gootnick said.
InScope has five early customers and is in the process of signing an additional six. The company is currently generating revenue and aims to grow customers and revenue 10x by the end of the year, Antony said.
That growth attracted venture capitalists, who recently pumped $4.3 million in seed capital into the company. Lightspeed Venture Partners and Better Tomorrow Ventures 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 (CEO financial services at Autodesk), Justin Coulombe (CFO at Miro) and Nadia Asoyan (CFO at Strike).
The founders say their next steps include expanding their customer base to 50 companies by the end of the year, and will use the investment to scale their product, grow the team and strengthen their AI capabilities.
Better Tomorrow Ventures has advised the company since its inception and was also part of Better Tomorrow’s first accelerator program in 2023.
“When we got to know the team through our accelerator program, we quickly noticed how dedicated and passionate they were about fixing a critical element that can be detrimental to a company’s success,” Sheel Mohnot, co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures, said in a statement. . “After consulting the team for a few weeks, we knew that if anyone could tackle this problem, it would be Mary and Kelsey.”
