Financial Infrastructure for AI Innovation: Supporting a Robotics Startup’s Growth Journey

One of the highlights for me in this story is that it checked all the boxes in my mind. We were able to help with all three factions of the back office. We were able to bring in additional services from EisnerAmper's umbrella of expertise at the right time. In this case, also this client entrusted us to be their CFO. And when we bring a CFO in, we also bring in a financial analyst very closely aligned with the company, presenting in board meetings, constantly updating the financial forecast, really owning the financial story of the company, and they entrust us with that entirely. We usually stick with the company for about three years. That first year, there's a lot of triage, a lot of making sure payroll's set up and we're onboarding employees and everything's in place. Health benefits are there. We're registered in all the right states.

Just a lot of just cover everything. Don't let anything drop. That second phase is really keeping up with scale. And this is the fun part. This is where our, what I like to call elastic billing model is designed for. It's designed to keep up with how quickly and unexpected these companies grow. And at some point, all of those positions, if the company's growing, are going to justify a full-time focus. So not only do we help replace ourselves, we actually tell the client when and in what order the entire back office function should be replaced. And then we'll stay in there for months and months, holding on to little pieces until the very end, everything is transitioned. So this company was faced with having to hire, which we were able to help with, having to onboard employees, which we handled, keeping up with board meetings and closing books and dealing with inventory.

And these were pain points that we were able to come in and take care of. That's the beautiful thing about bringing them into this environment is anything they need, we can handle. Different to just an outsourced function, we are an in-house fractional team. I tell everybody in my group, you got to have the mentality that you are on the cap table. So think strategically, add value. Don't just close the books and stop because there's a fixed fee or there's a certain margin you want to hit. Lean in, drive the company, help them navigate. This is why clients love to come work with us because this is what we've been doing for 25 years, and so I don't think anybody does this better.