SaaS & software
Illustrative case study
From a 25-day close to an 8-day close before the Series A
A venture-backed software company with a slow close, an unreliable forecast and a raise nine months away. We rebuilt the close, the model and the board pack in one quarter.
The situation
Halyard Labs sold analytics software to logistics companies. Revenue was growing 60% a year. The books were kept by a part-time bookkeeper on a cash basis, the close took most of a month, and the CEO built the board deck herself from a spreadsheet that never quite tied to the ledger.
With a Series A planned within nine months, the board wanted accrual accounts, a defensible model and a monthly pack they could trust.
The challenge
Deferred revenue was not being recognised, so monthly revenue swung with invoicing rather than delivery. Two currencies were reconciled by hand. The forecast lived in the CEO's head, and the close waited on receipts that arrived whenever they arrived.
What we did
The result
The close came down to eight business days within the second month. The board received the same pack, in the same format, every month thereafter. When the raise began, the data room was ready in three weeks rather than three months, and investor questions were answered from the model rather than reconstructed.
We went from dreading month-end to getting a clean pack on the eighth. The first board meeting after Folistead Advisory came on board was the first one where I was not defending the numbers.
Maya Lindqvist,
Founder & CEO,
Halyard Labs
Client profile
Company
Halyard Labs
Industry
SaaS & software
Size
$4M ARR
Stage
Seed to Series A
Team
32 people
Structure
Single entity, two currencies
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