See the whole financial picture
Connect accounting, cash, forecasting, hiring, and capital plans so leadership works from one coherent view.
About Startup Partners
Founder-friendly finance.
Investor-grade financials.
Startup Partners gives founders and emerging-growth companies the financial leadership, operating clarity, and hands-on support required to scale with confidence.
We combine fractional CFO leadership with FP&A, accounting, reporting, fundraising readiness, risk management, and finance transformation, building the capability of an integrated finance function without requiring a full in-house team.
Our story
Startup finance leadership for the in-between stage.
Companies often outgrow bookkeeping before they are ready to build a complete finance organization. That in-between stage is where decisions about cash, hiring, capital, reporting, and infrastructure become more consequential, and where disconnected advice creates friction.
Startup Partners closes that gap with senior financial judgment and the practical execution required to make it useful. The goal is not more finance process. It is a trusted financial foundation that helps leadership decide sooner, communicate clearly, and preserve options.
Michael Barry / Managing Director
Global finance experience, translated for startup reality.
Michael Barry leads Startup Partners and advises venture-backed and emerging-growth companies on finance strategy, operations, fundraising readiness, and scale. He began his career at PwC in 1999 and moved to Silicon Valley in 2015, bringing more than 25 years of experience to the decisions founders face when the business is changing faster than its finance infrastructure.
His experience spans PwC, Kranz, Grant Thornton, EisnerAmper, and Keating Consulting, connecting the rigor of global professional services with the speed and resource constraints of early-stage companies. He works across the full financial spine, from accounting and reporting to forecasting, capital strategy, controls, and the operating cadence that keeps those pieces connected.
Michael is also the author of The Intelligent Enterprise CFO: Building AI Advantage Through Finance Transformation, a practical framework for turning AI investment into governed, economically measurable operating capability.
How we go to market
Your mission is the product.
Ours is the financial system behind it.
Founders do not need a directory of disconnected providers. They need clear accountability from transaction to decision, and a finance capability that can evolve as the company grows.
Put decisions ahead of deliverables
Build reporting and analysis around the choices founders, boards, and investors actually need to make.
Add structure without adding drag
Introduce the right controls, ownership, and cadence for the company’s stage, then strengthen them as complexity grows.
One accountable finance partner.
Senior judgment when the stakes are high. Hands-on execution that makes the system work every week.
From Michael Barry
The Intelligent Enterprise CFO
Building AI Advantage Through Finance Transformation
A practical field manual for CFOs and operators who need to translate AI from scattered experimentation into an economically clear, governed enterprise capability.
Explore the bookMake finance useful now
Build the financial foundation
your next decision deserves.
Tell us what is changing in the business. We’ll help you identify the finance priorities that matter first.
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