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By: Steven Goldsmith
Finagraph automates evaluating a business for lenders and business owners alike, pulling in information from balance sheets and other material. Small business owners can use Finagraph to instantly see their business from a financial perspective. Lenders can use Finagraph to evaluate businesses for loans.
What problem are you solving?
Imagine you’re a business owner. Most of your day is spent running your business, leaving no time to work on your business. From coordinating employees and paying vendors to managing inventory and customer service – the demand is endless. At the end of each day, it can be overwhelming to identify inefficiencies and detect where money is falling through the cracks. That's where Finagraph comes in.
By instantly analyzing the business' financials and comparing those numbers to others in the same industry, Finagraph identifies where the business is strong and exactly where it needs improvement. Bankers use Finagraph to quickly evaluate a business borrower for a loan, replacing weeks of back-and-forth collecting financial statements, which is common today. CPAs and accountants use Finagraph to help business owners work on the most important aspects of their business. The best part...no one has to enter any numbers! No data entry. We spent four years making technology for a one-click, no number typing experience.
How do you pay the bills?
We raised $2.1 million via angel investors. Last year, we acquired BBI Financial, a financial services company, which expanded our bank offering to include online education and in-person training. We also just announced a partnership with Experian to deliver a combined solution to greatly increase the financial intelligence of teams that work with small business borrowers.
How will you scale?
Technology scaling these days is rather simple. A few of us used to work at Microsoft where we directly experienced the trials and tribulations of massively scaling a software services business. Based on those learnings, we chose to host our product in the Microsoft Azure cloud and can now quickly scale with the turn of a knob. Sales and support scaling is a bit trickier. As we identify any support issues, we build the fixes into the service, whether that be a small usability issue or something larger like configuration in the field we weren't expecting. Each of those fixes reduces support costs and helps with sales. Lastly, we hire in real-time as we bring on additional clients.
How do you plan to make money?
We charge banks and accounting firms to use our service with their small business clients. This keeps the cost free to the small business owner and increases efficiency, while simultaneously increasing customer satisfaction for the bank or accountant.
What keeps you up at night?
We have a great team, which means I get to worry about losing a key team member. I also worry about the typical startup business risks like a market shift, a new direct competitor or an initiative at a larger company that could compete.