It takes a different kind of executive to lead a finance team at a FinTech startup. Small wonder, then, the person doing the job at Zeni, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered finance concierge for startups, has a different kind of job title: chief financial officer (CFO) of customer success.
“My role is really to serve as a CFO for our customers and provide financial leadership and financial oversight for our customer-facing teams,” Carl Hekkert told PYMNTS recently.
Hekkert is the first executive to hold that role at the company, the company announced on Dec. 15. In addition to performing the duties he described and serving as Zeni’s head of finance, he will develop a controllership team and work with the development team to continue building the company’s finance dashboard.
“First and foremost, my role is customer-facing and acting as a CFO on behalf of our customers,” Hekkert said when interviewed for PYMNTS’ “Day in the Life of a Digital-First CFO” series. “That’s why we’re able to provide CFO advisory services as well as GAAP audit preparation and M&A due diligence preparation.”
Providing Daily Updates on the Number of a Business
Zeni provides CFO advisory services audit-preparation and due-diligence services to clients. The company’s platform also supports clients’ day-to-day operations. Rather than just providing back-office services, Zeni also has a reporting layer and an AI layer.
“That’s really what I found to be unique about Zeni and really transformative,” Hekkert said. “Most everybody is more on an outsourced model rather than a full-on transformative model in terms of how financial reporting is completed as well as being able to have real-time or at least daily updates to the information that’s on the dashboard.”
Hekkert said his typical customers are entrepreneurs who can’t wait three weeks after month end, or six weeks after month end, or whenever their bookkeeper is going to give them the financials; instead, they need to have the numbers of the business — “the heartbeat of the business” — on a day-to-day basis.
“That’s what we’re able to provide,” Hekkert said. “We provide daily updates to our bank contacts, daily updates to the platform, so founders can find that information on a day-to-day basis.”
Rather than doing just a monthly reporting cycle — although it does that, too—Zeni provides financial updates daily. Customers can see their burn rate and their major expense categories, for example, on a day-to-day basis.
“This isn’t historical financial statement reporting as we know it, this is day-to-day ‘Zen and the Art of Financial Maintenance,’ as I call it,” Hekkert said.
Providing a Full Finance Operating Team Remotely
In addition, Zeni can provide a full finance operating team remotely. Founders no longer have to wonder when they’re going to need a dedicated team, a CFO or a VP of finance.
In addition to supporting the day-to-day operations of founders as they grow, Zeni also provides CFO advisory services to support the founders as they look for a potential exit, look for potential financing, and need forecasting and other services to complement what Zeni provides on the dashboard.
“Also, we’re moving into being able to provide additional services going forward through Zeni rather than through another app,” Hekkert said.
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