InScope nabs $14.5M to ease financial reporting pain

Even without an accounting background, anyone who has looked at a 10-K or 10-Q can tell you that preparing financial statements is hard, hard work.

While platforms like Workiva and Donnelley Financial Solutions aim to streamline financial reporting, longtime accountants Mary Antony (pictured right) and Kelsey Gootnick (center) grew tired of a number of manual challenges within these tools (co-founder and CTO Jared Tibshraeny is on the left).

The two met seven years ago at Flexport, where Gootnick served as the company’s manager and Antony served as an assistant manager. They stayed in touch even after Antony moved from Miro and Gootnick to Hopin and then Thrive Global.

No matter where they worked, Antony and Gootnick faced the same challenges.

“The way financial figures are, they’re just put together in a lot of spreadsheets, they’re converted into a lot of Word documents, they’re emailed between people,” Antony told TechCrunch.

So, in 2023, the two decided to launch InScopean AI-powered financial reporting platform that helps companies and accounting firms become more efficient in their financial planning. The startup just raised $14.5 million in Series A funding led by Norwest, with participation from Storm Ventures and existing backers Better Tomorrow Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

While InScope doesn’t just automatically generate financial statements and spreadsheets, it handles a lot of the busy work, from mathematical proofing to production. Just making sure that the dollar signs and commas are the same and correctly placed can save accountants up to 20% of their time, according to Antony, CEO of InScope.

In the past 12 months, InScope has grown its client base by 5x, attracting accounting firms such as CohnReznick, which is now public. Top 15 in the world.

Of course, it may be a while before accountants — a profession that Antony describes as risk-averse — are comfortable letting AI handle financial planning. However, that is the main purpose of InScope.

Norwest partner Sean Jacobsohn told TechCrunch that he invested in InScope after hearing from several customers that the startup was saving them a lot of time.

Jacobsohn believes InScope is unique because few startups have the expertise needed to reinvent financial reporting technology.

“It’s a very difficult place, and you have to be in the buyer’s shoes before,” he said.

Antony admits that accounting is not a type of startup. Fortunately, he and Gootnick developed their business acumen through years of working within the fast-paced cultures of other large startups.