Preparing financial statements is a complex and tedious process, as anyone who has ever looked at a 10-K or 10-Q can attest. While legacy platforms like Workiva and Donnelley Financial Solutions aim to streamline reporting, longtime accountants Mary Antony and Kelsey Gootnick found themselves exhausted by the manual hurdles within these tools.
The duo met seven years ago at Flexport, where Gootnick served as controller and Antony as assistant controller. They stayed in touch even after Antony moved to Miro and Gootnick to Hopin and later Thrive Global. No matter where they worked, Antony and Gootnick kept encountering the same manual challenges.
They observed that financial statements are often patched together across spreadsheets, moved into Word documents, and emailed back and forth between people. So, in 2023, the pair decided to launch InScope, an AI-powered financial reporting platform that helps companies and accounting firms automate many aspects of the financial statement preparation process.
The startup just raised $14.5 million in Series A funding led by Norwest, with participation from Storm Ventures and existing backers Better Tomorrow Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
While InScope is not yet fully automating the generation of income statements and balance sheets, it automates a vast amount of manual busy work, from verifying math to formatting. Simply ensuring that dollar signs and commas are uniform and correctly placed can save accountants up to 20 percent of their time, according to Antony, InScope’s CEO.
Over the last 12 months, InScope has grown its customer base by five times, attracting significant accounting firms such as CohnReznick.
It may be a while before accountants, a profession Antony describes as risk-averse, feel comfortable letting AI fully automate financial statement preparation. Nonetheless, that remains InScope’s ultimate goal.
Norwest partner Sean Jacobsohn invested in InScope after hearing from multiple clients that the startup’s product saves them considerable time. He is convinced that InScope stands out because few founders possess the specific expertise required to reinvent financial reporting technology. He notes it is a very complex space where you need to have been in the shoes of the buyer.
Antony agrees that accountants are not typically the type to launch startups. Fortunately, she and Gootnick developed their entrepreneurial instincts through years of operating within the fast-paced cultures of other high-growth companies.