InScope: AI Shaking Up Accounting 🚀💰
Tech
🎧
In 2023, Mary Antony and Kelsey Gootnick established InScope, an AI-driven platform for financial reporting. The startup secured $14.5 million in Series A funding from investors including Norwest, Storm Ventures, Better Tomorrow Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Prior to InScope, Antony and Gootnick collaborated at Flexport, where Gootnick held the role of controller and Antony served as assistant controller. Over the past twelve months, the platform’s customer base expanded fivefold, attracting firms like CohnReznick. Investors highlighted the startup’s success in automating financial statement preparation, a complex task. Sean Jacobsohn of Norwest noted the founders’ specialized knowledge as key to InScope’s differentiation. The company’s growth reflects a demand for innovative solutions within the financial reporting sector.
IN SCOPE: REVOLUTIONIZING FINANCIAL REPORTING
The financial reporting landscape has long been plagued by inefficiency and manual processes. Mary Antony and Kelsey Gootnick, recognizing this persistent challenge, founded InScope, an AI-powered platform designed to dramatically streamline the creation of financial statements. The company’s genesis stemmed from a shared frustration observed across multiple high-growth startups, including Flexport, Hopin, and Thrive Global, where Antony served as assistant controller and Gootnick as controller. This consistent experience revealed a common problem: financial statements were frequently cobbled together from disparate spreadsheets and Word documents, resulting in a cumbersome and time-consuming process. InScope’s mission is to eliminate this complexity by leveraging artificial intelligence to automate a significant portion of the financial statement preparation workflow.
THE IN SCOPE SOLUTION & FUNDING ROUND
InScope’s core functionality focuses on automating the laborious aspects of financial statement generation. While the platform isn't yet capable of fully automating the creation of income statements and balance sheets, it excels at handling the substantial manual tasks involved. These include verifying mathematical calculations, ensuring consistent formatting of financial data – specifically, the accurate placement of dollar signs and commas – and eliminating the need for repetitive data entry. Antony estimates that this automation can save accountants up to 20% of their time, a substantial improvement given the traditionally high workload within the profession. The company’s rapid growth, evidenced by a fivefold increase in its customer base over the past twelve months, has attracted prominent accounting firms like CohnReznick, which currently ranks among the top fifteen nationally. This impressive growth has culminated in a recent $14.5 million Series A funding round, led by Norwest, with participation from Storm Ventures and existing backers Better Tomorrow Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. This investment underscores the market’s confidence in InScope’s innovative approach.
FOUNDER EXPERTISE & MARKET VALIDATION
The success of InScope is largely attributed to the founders’ unique understanding of the target market. Mary Antony and Kelsey Gootnick possess firsthand experience operating within the demanding environments of fast-growing startups, providing them with an invaluable perspective on the pain points of accounting professionals. Norwest partner Sean Jacobsohn, a key investor in InScope, specifically cited this expertise as a crucial differentiator. He noted that few founders have the deep understanding of the financial reporting technology buyer’s needs that Antony and Gootnick bring to the table. Furthermore, numerous client testimonials have validated the platform’s effectiveness, with Jacobsohn reporting that multiple clients have expressed significant time savings. This market validation, combined with the founders’ specialized knowledge, positions InScope as a disruptive force within the financial reporting industry, poised to fundamentally change how financial statements are prepared.
This article is AI-synthesized from public sources and may not reflect original reporting.