Raymond Fitzpatrick : Profitual Providing Financial Intelligence To Startups

Profitual provides financial intelligence to startups focusing on budgeting, forecasting, benchmarking, and reporting using its proprietary platform. We automate routine Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) tasks while using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive deeper insights.

Tell us about yourself?

I worked for large organizations like Irving Oil (the largest refinery in Canada) earlier in my career, and I saw the benefits of having FP&A teams and how they could help operators understand and become better at their jobs with financial insight. When I went to work in Venture Capital, I noticed that startups don’t get the same expertise, as it’s too costly and not industry specific to be relevant to them. That’s where the idea for Profitual came from: Can we provide automated FP&A analysis at a fraction of the cost of hiring traditional full-time analysts? With technological advancements (like open APIs for accounting software like Quickbooks & Xero) and Artificial Intelligence to offer insights, we started Profitual to do just that!

If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

Just do it! I actually had a very hard time leaving my relatively stable job in Venture Capital to start my own startup. I probably waited a bit too long, and I should have made the jump even earlier than I did!

What problem does your business solve?

The high cost of FP&A consultants that aren’t tailored to startups.

What is the inspiration behind your business?

We help startups with financial intelligence as startup founders are usually not from a finance background.

What great startups never got funded because their financials weren’t telling the right story? That’s what keeps the Profitual team motivated each day. Let’s help the next great startups get funded so they can change the world!

What is your magic sauce?

Focusing on startups allows us to be laser-focused on the unique challenges of this segment of SMEs. Usually, these companies are raising money from Angels or Venture Capitalists, and they need to understand the financial metrics they’re looking for to tell the best story possible and hopefully get funded.

Our team comes from Venture Capital and Finance backgrounds, so we know what these metrics need to look like!

What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?

We want to help thousands of startups from the earliest stage (pre-seed) to the later stages (Series-A+) become more financially literate and get funded.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?

We’ve been in a fast growth mode since I started full-time as CEO 11 months ago. At that time, we went from four team members (including myself) to just hiring our 12th team member in August. Onboarding new team members and realigning job responsivities as a result has been challenging, but the team has been up to the task every step of the way!

How can people get involved?

If you’re a startup that needs help with budgeting, forecasting, benchmarking, or reporting, please reach out to us at: www.profitual.io/contact and follow our LinkedIn

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