Bellerophon Advisory is the finance function a growth-stage startup needs before it can justify a full-time CFO. Cash forecasts, budgets, raise prep and board packs — each one quoted as a fixed price before we start, each one with an end date.
| Wk | In | Out | Cash |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | 186 | 241 | 1,185 |
| 02 | 92 | 238 | 1,039 |
| 03 | 310 | 244 | 1,105 |
| 04 | 74 | 251 | 928 |
| 05 | 205 | 239 | 894 |
≈ 13 weeks of cash left. That’s the conversation we’d open with.
We’d rather answer them first. If one of these answers rules us out, good — that saves both of us an invoice.
Maybe not. If you’re pre-revenue with a handful of people and more than eighteen months of runway, you need clean books and a bookkeeper who closes on time. You need us when the money decisions start to have consequences you can’t undo — hiring ahead of revenue, a raise on the calendar, a board asking questions you answer with “roughly”.
Eventually you should, and we’ll tell you when. Before then, a full-time CFO costs a senior salary plus equity to do work that fills two days a month. We’re the bridge: the forecast and the board pack now, a clean handover file when you make the hire.
Every engagement is a fixed price agreed in writing before work begins — $3,850 for a 13-week forecast, up to $11,750 for full raise prep. There’s no hourly meter running in the background, which means you can call with a dumb question and it costs you nothing.
No. We work on top of your books, not inside them. If the books are behind, we’ll say so on the first call and point you to someone who catches up ledgers for a living. Building a forecast on a ledger that’s three months stale is how firms like ours bill for work that’s wrong.
Not much. The work happens in shared files and on video calls; board meetings are remote unless you’d rather we come in person. If you’re out east, the office on Founders Path has a table big enough to spread a board pack across.
Every engagement is broken into phases with a deliverable at the end of each. Stop after any phase and you pay for that phase only, and you keep everything built so far. Board reporting runs quarter to quarter — cancel at any quarter end.
Bank feeds, the accounting file, customer contracts with payment terms buried on page nine, the payroll export. Most of what we find in week one isn’t wrong — it’s undocumented. We write it down so the next person doesn’t have to rediscover it.
No black-box macro you’ll be afraid to touch once we’ve gone. Two working sessions where we argue about assumptions — churn, hiring dates, how long your biggest customer really takes to pay. Those arguments are the useful part; the spreadsheet just records who won.
If you keep us on for board reporting, the month settles into a rhythm: books closed by the 10th, a variance call by the 15th, and a pack that opens with cash in the bank and the week it runs out. Everything else is supporting detail.
Fixed fees, written scope, a finish date. Each one also lists what it won’t fix, because somebody should.
A direct-method, week-by-week forecast built from your bank data — not reverse-engineered from the P&L. You’ll see the week cash gets tight while there’s still time to do something about it.
Invoiced 50% to start, 50% on delivery. Full scope documents for each engagement live on the services page.
Six pages, in this order, every quarter. If a page has nothing worth saying, it says that in one line instead of filling the space.
You raised, you’re hiring, and the spreadsheet your co-founder built two years ago is now holding up the building.
Diligence starts the day you send the deck. Investors will ask for the model, the cohort data and the hiring plan; you want those to already exist, and agree with each other.
We keep the close, the forecast and the board pack moving while you hire — and write the job description from what the role actually turned out to be.
You need a good bookkeeper and a calendar reminder, not us. We’ll happily tell you who.
When cash sits in a warehouse for ninety days, the P&L lies to you politely. A weekly cash view doesn’t.
If the number is already decided and you need someone to sign under it, we’re the wrong hire. We’ll write down what we actually think.
He’s the one who got a bridle on Pegasus. A company growing faster than its finance function is the same animal — the job isn’t to slow it down, it’s to steer it. More about us
A sentence is enough. We reply within working hours with a time for the call, or an honest note that we’re not the right people.
Prefer the phone? (631) 324-3036 · or write to contact@bellerophonadvisory.com
| Mon–Thu | 10am–5pm |
| Fri | to 2pm |
