Launch HN: Abacum (YC W21) – Easy collaboration and reporting for finance teams
We're Jorge and Julio, cofounders of Abacum (https://www.abacum.io/). We're not sure how many fintech geeks like us are on HN but we're very excited to launch to you guys anyway!
Abacum makes it easier for Finance teams to access real-time data, collaborate and generate reports. Think of having all the operational and financial data modeled in one place, and of the Finance team easily sharing and collecting information for other teams to make faster, better decisions.
Scale ups have unique finance needs. First, they have spent the last years growing unnaturally fast, held together by a mixture of google sheets, csv files, a disconnected tech stack and a lot of copy paste. Second, growing 4x a year means that historical data is out of date within 3 months. Finally, with so many channels to stay connected, it's impossible to find where the Tech Lead shared that key assumption for the board forecast. Both Jorge and I have lived these experiences - we've spent too many long nights and days in number-crunching, without the proper time to analyze the data and to provide insights, becoming the key business partner we wanted. So yes, in the middle of the lockdown with 3 children each decided to leave everything to build the product we wish we had!
Abacum can now connect to any data source, update a business plan automatically and give you finance specific tools to help you do what you need to. Think performance and pivot tables, cohort and waterfall graphs, and ways to easily collaborate. Our engine provides the flexibility of excel while minimizing human errors, reducing fears of breaking "the model" and scaling up to and past IPO size.
We're big believers that collaboration, and not the business model, needs to be placed at the center of the product. Everything we built in Abacum is easily shareable and built to be easily understood by non-finance professionals. Ask (or remind) others in your company to collaborate, be it for updating forecasts or commenting on reporting decks, right where the needed context is. We've also set up different workflows for customers to easily gather the data bottom-up from different teams.
We are constantly looking to improve Abacum, so we'd love to hear any feedback, questions or wisdom you have to share with us! We'd love to show you (or anybody that you think may be interested) a 10' demo of our product - please let us know and we'll reach out. Thanks so much, HN!