Financial Services for Startups
Raftel Strategy provides outsourced CFO services, accounting, FP&A, and strategic advisory for startups from pre-revenue through growth stage. We support founders navigating fundraising, burn management, rapid hiring, and the transition from "figure it out as we go" to a finance function that investors and boards expect. Our clients range from pre-seed companies building their first financial model to Series B startups that have outgrown their bookkeeper but are not ready for a full-time CFO. We bring senior-level financial leadership and hands-on execution in one integrated model, giving founders structure, visibility, and confidence at every stage.
Why Startups Cannot Afford to Ignore Finance Until It Breaks
Most startups treat finance as an afterthought until something forces them not to. That trigger is usually a fundraise, a board meeting, or the moment a founder realizes they do not actually know how many months of runway they have left.
By then, the timing is terrible and expensive.
A founder preparing for a Series A who discovers their books have not been properly closed in four months is not in a strong negotiating position. A startup burning $120,000 a month that thinks it has 14 months of runway but actually has 9 (because the model did not account for the three hires planned for next quarter) is making decisions based on a number that does not exist. A company that raised $3M and spent the first six months without a budget is not operating with discipline. It is operating on luck.
These are not edge cases. They are the most common patterns we see.
Startups do not need a massive finance department. But they do need someone who can build a financial model that reflects reality, close the books on time every month, forecast cash accurately, and sit across from investors with numbers that hold up under scrutiny. That is what early-stage finance consulting provides, and most startups need it far earlier than they think.
How We Work With Startups
Raftel embeds directly with founders. We operate as your outsourced CFO and finance function, scaling our involvement to match your stage and what is actually in front of you. Some clients come to us pre-revenue with nothing but a pitch deck and a bank account. Others are post-Series A with a bookkeeper in place but no senior finance leadership connecting the numbers to strategy. We fit into either model.
Our focus is straightforward: give you the financial clarity and infrastructure to make better decisions faster.
Strategic finance and CFO leadership
We guide capital strategy, pricing, growth planning, and board communication. For startups, that means helping founders think through the financial implications of decisions they are already making, like hiring plans, pricing changes, and go-to-market investments, before the numbers show up in a cash flow problem three months later. We sit in board meetings, prepare the materials, and answer the questions your investors will ask.
Startup accounting with structured close processes
We build clean, disciplined monthly close processes so your financials are accurate, current, and ready for any audience. That means books closed within 10 business days of month-end, proper revenue recognition, clean expense categorization, and reconciled accounts. When an investor's diligence team opens your books, they should find nothing to reclassify and nothing to question.
Financial modeling for fundraising and scenario planning
We translate your growth strategy into a quantified financial model. Not a spreadsheet with a hockey stick. A bottoms-up model that connects hiring plans, sales capacity, pricing assumptions, and churn dynamics into a forecast that shows exactly what needs to happen to hit targets and what happens when assumptions change. This is the model you send to investors and the model you actually use to run the business.
Cash flow management and runway forecasting
We build cash forecasts around real operating assumptions so founders always know how much runway they actually have. Not the optimistic version. Not the version that assumes every hire is delayed by a month. The version that reflects current burn, planned spend, and realistic revenue timing. When the number changes, you know immediately and can adjust before it becomes a crisis.
Budgeting, KPI tracking, and board reporting
We build budgets tied to operational milestones, track the KPIs that matter for your stage and industry, and prepare board materials that communicate performance, progress, and forward planning clearly. Investors do not want a data dump. They want a financial narrative that shows you understand your business.
Supporting Startups Across the US and Israel
Many startups operate across borders from day one. R&D in Israel. A US parent entity. Investors in both countries. Distributed teams, global customers, and intercompany arrangements that need to be structured correctly from the start.
Raftel provides cross-border finance for startups with US and Israel entities. We work with Israeli startups expanding into the US market, US-based companies with Israeli development teams, and dual-entity structures that need coordinated accounting, reporting, and financial strategy from the beginning.
We align reporting across jurisdictions so founders operate from one set of numbers. We coordinate with local tax advisors and auditors in both countries. And we structure intercompany arrangements and transfer pricing so the choices made at formation do not create compliance problems or tax inefficiencies as the company scales.
For startups operating internationally, getting this right early is significantly cheaper and simpler than unwinding it later. We have seen companies spend months and tens of thousands of dollars correcting entity structures that could have been set up properly from the start.
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Proof in Practice
Raftel has supported startups from pre-seed through Series B and beyond, across fundraising, cross-border structuring, and rapid scaling. We have built the financial models that founders used to close rounds, the board reporting frameworks that earned investor confidence, and the accounting infrastructure that held up when diligence teams arrived. In one engagement, we took over accounting for a startup that had not recorded five months of expenses despite paying their accounting firm $2,250 a month. Within 90 days, we rebuilt the function from scratch, introduced a 10-business-day monthly close, cut DSO from 45 days to under 20, and accelerated over $100,000 in receivables. Our clients stay because the finance function we build becomes how they operate, not a quarterly cleanup exercise.
Frequently Asked Questions
Get Started
If you are building a startup and want financial clarity without building a full finance department too early, reach out. Tell us your stage, your next milestone, and the financial question you currently cannot answer with confidence. We will tell you what your finance function should look like to support it.