For founder-led businesses of 10–50 people
Know which decisions actually make you wealthier.
We are the outsourced CFO and data team for founder-led businesses. We build your strategy out of your own numbers, test every major decision against it before you commit, and stay with you month after month as the business changes.
Your system is live within 60 days — or you don’t pay past month two.
Built and led by Andrew Geller — CFA, MBA, B.A. Hons Economics
- JEMS
- Paramount Paints
- Studio Tzuri
What you’re actually chasing
You didn’t start this to build a bigger company.
You started it to build a better life, and the business is how you get there. Every founder we work with is chasing some version of the same four things.
Profit you can actually feel
Not a number on a statement. Money that reaches you, from a business you understand well enough to repeat the good months on purpose.
Cash that stops surprising you
Knowing in March what April looks like — and knowing it before the payroll run, not during it.
A business that runs without you in every call
Decisions your team can make correctly because the information they need is in front of them, not in your head.
Something worth real money when you want out
A company whose value you can name, defend, and deliberately increase — years before you ever need to sell it.
What’s standing in the way
The problem was never effort. It’s guesswork.
You are not short on work ethic or ideas. You are short on the one thing that would make both of them pay off: a strategy you can check — built from what your business actually does, not from what worked somewhere else.
01
Your numbers live in five places
Accounting in one system, sales in a CRM, marketing in three dashboards, operations in a spreadsheet only you fully understand. None of them agree, and reconciling them costs a day you do not have.
02
Your reports look backwards
They tell you what happened last month. They never tell you what to do next month — or which of the things you did caused the result.
03
The biggest decisions get made on instinct
Hire or wait. Open the second location. Raise the price. Take the loan. These are the choices that determine what the business is worth, and they are the ones with the least analysis behind them.
04
And the advice you can buy is opinion
A coach will tell you what worked at somebody else’s company. A consultant will hand you a framework and a benchmark. Neither can show you the arithmetic for your business, because neither has built a model of it — so you are asked to take confidence as evidence.
05
Nobody has stress-tested the plan
The growth plan assumes everything works. There is no version where the conversion rate slips, the hire takes four months, or the customer pays in ninety days — so you find out by living through it.
21.5%
of new US businesses do not survive their first year, and close to half are gone within five.
27 days
is the cash buffer the median small business holds — under a month of outflows without any money coming in.
Guesswork is not a character flaw. It is an infrastructure problem — and infrastructure can be built.
Your advisor — Andrew Geller
I have been on your side of this.
In my first business, an investor asked me a fair question: what return had their money actually produced? I had the accounts. I had the spreadsheets. I could not answer it — not because the answer was bad, but because nothing I had was built to connect what we did to what it earned.
I spent the years after that closing the gap properly: economics, then a CFA, then an MBA, then the data engineering that none of those three teach you. That combination is unusual, and it is the whole offer — a finance chief who can also build the data capability the advice depends on, in one relationship instead of two hires.
You know your business better than I ever will. What I add is a second opinion that isn’t an opinion: a strategy worked out in your own numbers, and someone who stays to see it through — month after month, decision after decision.
- CFA Charterholder
- MBA
- B.A. Honours, Economics
- Certified Data Analyst
— Andrew Geller, Founder & CEO, Financial Systems Advisors
“The forecast was integral to budgeting our inventory and cash flow needs. It gave us a way to plan that we simply did not have before.”
Emily Charles
Director of Finance and Operations, JEMS
“Andrew saved me time, money and a headache by breaking down the math. I could finally see which parts of the business were actually making money.”
Josh Eidelstein
Chief Executive Officer, Paramount Paints
“Andrew helped me get my business off the ground by structuring it to be profitable from the start, rather than hoping it would become profitable later.”
Kristina Ruddick
Founder, Studio Tzuri
The journey
Two steps to get ready. Then we go to work.
The first two take sixty days and are mostly ours to do. The third is the engagement — and it carries on for as long as the business keeps asking new questions.
01
Weeks 1–2
Map
We work out what you are actually optimising for, and how the business really produces it.
Not a discovery questionnaire. We trace the mechanics: how a stranger becomes a customer, what each channel truly costs, where capacity runs out, how profit turns into cash, and how long that takes. Then we name the decisions in front of you over the next twelve months — because those determine what we build.
- Business and data map
- The decisions that matter
- Definitions everyone agrees on
02
Weeks 3–8
Build
We build the machinery the advice depends on. Live within 60 days.
Every source connected and reconciled into one dataset. Dashboards built around your questions, not a template. And the bottom-up model — revenue assembled from customers, conversion, price and repeat rather than a growth percentage — which is what lets us rank your decisions by what they are actually worth to you.
- One central dataset
- Dashboards and KPI framework
- Bottom-up model and valuation
03
Every month, for as long as you want it
Advise
This is the part you are actually buying. The first two steps exist to make it possible.
Each month we sit down together. We reconcile what happened against what the model expected and fix the assumptions that were wrong. We look at what the model now says your biggest constraint is, and we think through how to actually move it — that part is judgement, not arithmetic. And whatever you are weighing, we run it properly first: what it costs, what it returns, what happens if it goes badly, and what it does to what the company is worth to you.
- Monthly one-to-one session
- Scenarios modelled before you commit
- Ten hours of support included
The method
Most forecasts start with a number. Ours starts with your business.
The usual way — top down
“Revenue grows 30% next year.”
Where did 30% come from? An industry benchmark, last year plus optimism, or the number the bank wanted to see. It cannot be checked, it cannot be wrong in any useful way, and it never tells you what to do on Monday morning.
Our way — bottom up
How many arrive, how many buy, what they pay, how often they return.
We rebuild the forecast out of the things that actually produce the money — leads, conversion, price, mix, repeat rate, capacity, labour, step costs. Every one is a real quantity, attached to something a person in your business does.
Separate variables can be moved one at a time.
That is the whole point. Because each one stands on its own, we can improve exactly one and watch the effect travel through the business — into profit, then into cash, then into what the company is worth to you.
By worth, we mean the present value of the cash this business can actually put in your pocket. So the question every founder wants answered —if I could improve one thing by one percent, which one makes me the most money? — stops being a matter of opinion and becomes arithmetic.
The answer is reliably not the one you would have guessed. We call the variables that come out on top action-based variables: things somebody can actually go and do, ranked by what they are worth to you.
Then we work them like bottlenecks
- Find it. The model says which variable moves your value most right now.
- Break it down. Cost per acquisition is never one number. It is a number per channel, and per stage of each funnel. We keep splitting until we reach something you can act on.
- Track it. A dashboard built for that one variable, so progress is visible weekly rather than felt.
- Work it. Every month, one to one, we think through how to actually move it — that part is judgement, not maths.
- Move on. Once it is settled, the model has already named the next constraint.
You are never chasing everything at once. You remove constraints in the order that makes you the most money, and the system tells you when to switch.
See it work
Move one variable. Watch what it does to the value of the company.
This is a simplified model of an example business, not yours — but the arithmetic is the real arithmetic. Change anything on the left and the ranking on the right re-sorts by what each improvement is worth.
Cash to the owner
per year, after tax
What it’s worth
present value to you
What a 1% improvement is worth
Top constraint — how we’d break it down
Value is the present value of after-tax owner cash at a 18% required return and 3% long-term growth. Those assumptions are stated because they are arguable — in an engagement we set them with you and stress-test them. A real model has far more detail than eight sliders.
Where the numbers come from
A model like this is only worth as much as its inputs, which is why the data foundation exists at all. It is not there to produce dashboards. It is there so the model describes your business and not a spreadsheet’s imagination.
Measured
What your cost per acquisition actually is, per channel, from your own records — not an industry average. Conversion, repeat rate, delivery cost and capacity come the same way. Wherever the data can answer it, the data answers it.
Chosen
The hire, the price change, the new location, the loan. No dataset can tell you what you are going to do next. Those inputs are decisions — so we make each one explicit, put a number on it, and test how much the answer depends on it.
The arithmetic tells you what a one percent improvement is worth. Which one percent you can actually get is judgement — and that is what the monthly session is for.
Where we work
We built our own software so you don’t have to become an analyst.
Every engagement runs in a portal we built ourselves. It is not a product we sell you and leave you to operate — it is the room where the two of us work on your business, and it exists to make your side of that as light as possible.
We do the building
The analysis, the dashboards, the model inputs — that is our job, not a task list we hand you. You never have to learn a tool, write a formula or open a spreadsheet you did not ask for.
Ask the broad questions yourself
Type “which customers grew fastest last quarter, and what did we do differently for them?” in plain English and get an answer built from your own records, with the working shown so you can check it rather than trust it.
Your dashboards, always current
Open them at 6am before a meeting or at 11pm when something is bothering you. No exporting, no refreshing, no waiting for someone to pull it together.
Ask us to change it
Want a view cut a different way, or a variable tracked that nobody was tracking? Tell us. It is part of the engagement, not a change request with a queue in front of it.
One set of numbers
You and we are looking at the same reconciled dataset, so the monthly session is spent deciding what to do rather than arguing about whose figure is right.
Yours, and private
Your data stays in infrastructure controlled for your engagement, access is limited to people you name, and every question asked of it is logged — so you always know what was asked and what was answered.
The part that matters most
Model inputs: where your data meets your strategy.
Every variable in your financial model has to get its number from somewhere. The model inputs view is where that happens — the join between what your business actually recorded and the forecast that decisions get tested against.
It is the reason the strategy is grounded rather than theoretical. Change what the data says, and capacity, inventory, cash flow, financing and the valuation all move with it.
Keeping it honest is our work, every month. You see the result.
Already a client? Your dashboards and analysis live here.
Client login →What you get
The machinery behind the advice.
None of this is the point on its own. It exists so the strategy you are given rests on arithmetic you can check — and so it stays true as the business changes. All of it is yours, and documented.
| Deliverable | Typical contents | What it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| Business and data map | Your goals, operating mechanics, source inventory, owners, definitions and gaps. | One shared understanding of how the business works and what evidence exists. |
| Data collection infrastructure | Connections, export routines, forms, staging tables, validation and documentation. | Less manual work, and numbers that stop disagreeing with each other. |
| Central analytical dataset | Normalised tables carrying your business logic, in one place. | A single source of truth for reporting, analysis and the model. |
| Dashboards and reports | Executive, financial, acquisition, sales, operations, capacity and project views. | Leadership sees performance in time to do something about it. |
| KPI and ABV framework | Definitions, baselines, targets, owners and the action behind each one. | Connects what people do daily to the outcome you care about. |
| Bottom-up financial model | Driver modules, forecasts, scenarios, sensitivities, cash flow and financing logic. | Decisions get tested before people, money or time are committed. |
| Intrinsic valuation model | Present value of the cash and dividends the business can produce for you. | Measures what each decision does to your wealth, not just to revenue. |
| AI analytics portal | Plain-English questions, grounded answers, report generation, full audit log. | Serious analysis without needing SQL or a spreadsheet specialist. |
| Monthly decision support | Review, scenario work, priority setting, model updates and ad-hoc support. | Turns a project into an operating capability. |
Packages
Start where the gap is.
Pricing is monthly and depends on the complexity of your business, with a twelve-month minimum. You’ll have a real number after the first call — not a proposal three weeks later.
Clarity
See the business properly first. Every source connected, cleaned and centralised, with dashboards your team actually opens — and us in the room to interpret them.
- Business and data map
- Source connections and collection tools
- One central analytical dataset
- Executive, sales, operations and cash dashboards
- KPI and action-based-variable framework
- Your own secure analytics portal
Best when: You have data in five places and no single version of the truth.
Get a quoteMost chosen
Strategy & Advisory
The whole engagement. Everything in Clarity, plus the bottom-up model that ranks your decisions by what they are worth — and a monthly seat at your table.
- Everything in Clarity
- Bottom-up financial model built around your mechanics
- Sensitivity analysis that ranks your levers by value
- Intrinsic valuation tied to your decisions
- Monthly one-to-one advisory session
- Ten hours of included support each month
Best when: You are making decisions big enough that being wrong is expensive.
Get a quoteFinance Function
Everything above, with the accounting underneath it — bookkeeping through to balance sheet, run by us.
- Everything in Strategy & Advisory
- End-to-end bookkeeping and reconciliation
- Management accounts and reporting pack
- Lender and investor reporting
- Budget build and variance review
- Direct line for ad-hoc financial questions
Best when: You want the numbers handled, not just explained.
Get a quotePackages combine and adapt — if what you need sits between two of these, we build to that instead.
Our commitment
Live in 60 days, or you stop paying.
We cap the build at two months. If your data foundation, your dashboards, your model and your portal are not running by day 60, you pay nothing beyond month two and we finish the build at our own cost.
The only thing we ask in return is access and a couple of hours of your time in the first fortnight. We cannot build a map of your business without you in the room.
Free, 2 minutes
The Founder Wealth Scorecard
Ten questions across the five things that decide whether a business makes its owner wealthy. You get a score, your weakest link, and what it is most likely costing you. No call required.
Your score
0/100
Your weakest link
Want the full breakdown?
We’ll show your score in all five dimensions and what to fix first. Enter your email and it unlocks below.
Your answers and email go to andrew@fsadvisors.co. No list, no sequence, no sharing — we may follow up once.
Questions
The things founders ask first.
If yours isn’t here, ask it on the call — it’s a better use of thirty minutes than a pitch.
What am I actually buying?
An advisor, and a strategy you can check. Every month we sit down and work through the decisions in front of you — what to fix, what to fund, what to leave alone — and every recommendation is backed by arithmetic from your own numbers rather than by our confidence. The data foundation, the dashboards, the financial model and the AI analysis are how that advice gets made and kept true. They come with the engagement, but they are not the product.
How is this different from a business coach or consultant?
A coach tells you what worked at another company. A consultant hands you a framework and a benchmark. Neither has built a model of your business, so neither can show you the maths. We can tell you what a one percent improvement in any part of your business is worth to you, in money, and rank your options by it. Where we agree with a coach is that knowing the number is not the same as getting it — that is what the monthly conversation is for.
How is this different from a fractional CFO?
Most fractional CFOs work in whatever spreadsheets you already have, because building the data capability is a different profession. Andrew is a CFA and MBA who also does the data engineering, so you get the finance judgement and the infrastructure it depends on from one relationship instead of two hires — and the model is built from your real operating mechanics rather than a template.
How is this different from my accountant or bookkeeper?
Accounting records what already happened and makes it compliant. That is necessary and we can do it too — but it looks backward. We connect the operational activity that causes your financial results, then model forward, so you can test a decision before you commit money to it.
Do I have to use the software?
No. We do the analysis, build the dashboards and maintain the model inputs — that work is ours. You log in when you want to see where things stand, or to ask a broad question of your own data in plain English. If you would rather just get the answers in the monthly session and by email, that works too. Plenty of clients do.
What is a bottom-up model, and why does it matter?
A top-down forecast says revenue will grow thirty percent. A bottom-up model rebuilds that forecast out of the things that produce it — how many leads arrive, how many convert, what they pay, how often they return, what it costs to serve them, how much capacity you have. Because those are separate variables, we can improve one at a time and watch the effect reach profit, cash and the value of the company. That is what makes it possible to say which single improvement is worth the most to you, rather than guessing.
How long does it take?
The build is capped at 60 days. Phase one — understanding your goals and how the business really works — takes about two weeks. The data foundation, dashboards, model and portal are built through weeks three to eight. If it is not live by day 60, you do not pay past month two.
What do you need from me?
Access to your systems, a couple of hours in the first fortnight to map the business properly, and a decision-maker in the monthly session. After the build, most clients spend under two hours a month on this and get considerably more back.
My data is a mess. Is that a problem?
No — it is the normal starting point, and it is most of what we are hired to fix. Where data does not exist yet, we build the collection for it. Where it exists but disagrees with itself, we reconcile it and document which version is authoritative.
I am good with numbers. Do I still need this?
Financially literate founders usually get the most out of it, because the constraint was never your ability to read a P&L — it was that assembling the data took longer than the decision could wait, and that nobody had built the model that ranks your options. This removes both.
Is my data safe?
Your data stays in infrastructure controlled for your engagement, access is restricted to named people, and every question asked of it is logged. We will walk you through exactly how it is handled — and put it in writing — before anything is connected.
What does it cost?
Pricing is monthly and depends on the complexity of your business — the number of sources, the state of the data and which package you need. There is a twelve-month minimum, because the value compounds through the monthly cadence rather than arriving on delivery day. You will have a number after the first call.
Who is this not for?
Pre-revenue businesses with nothing to model yet, anyone looking for a one-off forecast to hand to a bank, and owners who want a report rather than a change in how decisions get made. We will tell you on the first call if that is you.
What we’re really for
The biggest business isn’t always the best outcome for the person who owns it.
Growth is not the goal. It is one route to the goal, and it is not always the right one. Raise equity and you may build something larger while owning less of it. Take on debt and you keep control but carry the risk. Fund it yourself and you grow more slowly, keep everything, and take money out along the way.
Those are three different lives. Most advice will push you toward the biggest company. We would rather show you, in numbers, which one leaves you better off — and then help you build it deliberately.
That is what FSA is for. Not bigger businesses. Wealthier founders — who can point at the arithmetic behind every decision that got them there.
Thirty minutes, no pitch. You leave with at least one thing worth doing either way.