🦄 What is a Papercorn?

Bookkeeping, Shark Tank, and Papercorns, OH MY!

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Greetings 👋. It's our February edition of No Half Sends, and we’ve all filed our 1099’s. Right? Whether you, or your accountant, did or did not file your 1099’s by January 31st, we’re glad you’re here.

To frame our update: we help growth companies elevate their financial data through tech-forward accounting and finance services.

A client recently said: “I talked to my previous accountant about what you all are doing and they had no idea what I was talking about. I told them about accrual accounting, due diligence, and data rooms. To be honest, it made me feel plugged in! There’s a huge difference between what you all are doing and our bookkeepers did.”

Let’s Dive In 👇.

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💥 TL;DR: Full Send

1. Bookkeepers, Accountants, or Advisors?! 🙀
2. What is a Fractional CFO? 🤷‍♀️
3. 14x as many Unicorns as 10 years ago 🦄
4. Shark Tank Colorado Update 🏔️
5. We’re still sending it in “busy season” ✌️

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☝️ AGH, We’re not a “Bookkeeper”

It’s always fun to reinvent yourself. Isn’t it? Most of the time that isn’t true. It’s painstaking, it’s tedious, and requires a whole new perspective/approach.

Don’t worry, we’re not entirely reinventing ourselves, BUT a recent job posting that we saw got our gears spinning…

^{Senior Accounting Client Manager: $55k - $75k DOE, 4 years of Experience Req’d.}

What?! How could this be?! How could our ‘competitors’ possibly keep a high standard of service or quality management with compensation this low for an accounting manager??

After a bit of digging and self-reflection, we realized that there is a HUGE difference between what most bookkeeping firms qualify as an accounting client manager versus the expectation that we have in our team in accounting managers.

Here’s a short preview - A bookkeeping firm accounting client manager is primarily a bookkeeper capable of reconciling bank statements, fixed assets, and preparing ‘financials’ (printing P&L from QBO), but that is also managing the client relationship. Our expectation of an accounting manager lies more in the connectivity of systems, application of technical accounting, and interpretation/implementation between accounting, finance, and company operations.

In short, an accounting manager is a high-caliber accountant capable of solving big problems whereas an accounting client manager is a skilled bookkeeper that also happens to manage the client relationship.

We’re working through our re-invention and messaging around being a team of high-caliber accounting experts and less around being bookkeepers. Check out our updates to our new services messaging here and send over any and all feedback!

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🤷‍♀️ WTF is a modern fractional CFO?

Deloitte characterizes today’s CFO into four unique roles (The Four Faces) - Steward, Operator, Strategist, and Catalyst.

I’d argue that for early-stage growth (<$10M Rev) companies, the roles of the Steward, Strategist, and Catalyst should fall on the founding team and not be handled by an in-house or a Fractional CFO.

Here’s why: The founding team must steward investor assets well and be able to clearly articulate the why behind their investments in team/product/etc. The founding team must clearly influence the future of the company through a continually evolving strategy. The founding team must be catalysts for big changes that are required to navigate the early stages.

It leads me to the question - is the traditional fractional CFO the right role at this early stage or are they just a barrier to scale by trying to own items that the founding team should be owning? It’s difficult to understand why paying $300+/hr for half of their time being spent on ‘accounting management’ to be worth it.

We tend to think of the modern fractional CFO as the leader of the financial data strategy and financial reporting deliverables. Equip founding teams with quality data to steward their assets well. Provide financial reporting that allows for actionable insights and constant iteration in strategy. Demonstrate consistency and clarity in numbers to allow leadership teams to be catalysts for their go-forward goals. So many more thoughts on this, but we’ll leave it here for now. Would love to hear your take!

Give us feedback on what’s working, what could use improvement, and how we can better serve our clients, community, and industry - howdy@fullsendfinance.com.

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🚀 Need to know: Startups

> Welcome to the Unicorn Club. Here’s the 10 year update. 10 years ago, Cowboy Ventures performed an analysis of the 39 unicorn startups that existed in 2013 (Original Analysis). A lot has changed in 10 years - 14x as many Unicorns, far fewer exits or IPOs, capital efficiency has drastically dropped, and 93% of the current Unicorns are “Papercorns” or privately valued Unicorns - paper money. Super interesting Unicorn insights by the Cowboy investors. (New Unicorn Analysis)

> Day Zero investors moving upstream to Seed and Series A+. After rapid US expansion over recent years, Antler VC - The World’s Day Zero Investor - raised $285M last summer to invest in later stage startups. We know that most of our Western fashion trends start in Asia and maybe we’ll see more investment trends coming from our friends from over the Pacific as well. (Moving from Day Zero to Series A+)

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🏗️ Colorado Startups: Our Backyard

> Good, Weird, and Ugly from Colorado on Shark Tank. Rose and Caroline from their startup Poplight appeared on Shark Tank in January two weeks ago - their product is awesome and their branding is on point. Believe it or not, a CO-based wearable hummingbird viewing face mask got a deal - here’s a bit of their experience.. Three years after appearing on Shark Tank, the longtime Denver startup M.C. Squares has filed for bankruptcy.

> Do you know any Quantum startups? If so, they likely already know or should know that Colorado may soon have a bill that would create a loan-guarantee program to help quantum startups get capital. Total grants up to $75M from the U.S. Economic Development Administration . (Loan Guarantees - A First for Colorado)

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💸 Fundraising Market

> 🙏 A letter from our beloved Foundry. Seth Levine posted on the Foundry website that their most recent fund, will be their last. For almost 20 years, Foundry has been a staple in our investment community and has always lived by the ethos of ‘Give First’. A huge thank you to the Foundry team across the last 20 years for what they’ve done for our community. (Here’s their announcement)

> Disrupting the hard labor industries is cool. Roofer.com, a roofing technology startup in Dallas, TX, has raised a $7.5 million seed round led by Mucker Capital. Roofr, another roofing technology startup, raised a $23.5 million round in Q4 2023. And that’s just roofing. We’ll see many more announcements in 2024 around technology for ‘boring businesses’.

Are you fundraising? Know someone who is? We plan to share opportunities for those in our network who are seeking capital, connections, or resources. Reach out to us at howdy@fullsendfinance.com to discuss being featured.

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Help share No Half Sends 🙏

Wouldn’t the accounting, finance, and startup world be a better place if more people had access to top-notch accounting and relatable humans? Take a minute to share our newsletter with your friends—They’ll thank you for having access to accountants with flair. Sub here.

👉 If you’d like to be featured or have a message that would be helpful for our community, please let us know:

• If you’d like to broadcast your current or upcoming fundraise
• If you’ve shipped a new product or launched in market
• If you’re hiring and want to spread the word

We want to amplify voices of the builders, backers, and servant leaders. Reach out!

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🏔️ Sending it in the Wild

> We’re so grateful for all of the inquiries and applicants for our recent job posting - we’ve had an offer accepted by a candidate which will be announced shortly! If you have an accounting or finance friend that should still be on our radar for future hiring - send them here!

> If you’re passionate about social impact, fundraising, and entrepreneurship - you need to check out our friend Chelsea Lamego is up to at FundMiner (particularly if your in the fund management space). She is definitely sending it and sharing her startup journey on LinkedIn. Give her a follow!

> In January, Full Send not only wrapped up year-end for dozens of clients, kicked off several new engagements, filed 1099’s, and hired a new team member, but also spent some time on the slopes with some folks in our network. Always be sending 🤘

Clickbait: Somebody needs to convince me not to buy a cabin on Lake Como in Italy for $75k, this is such a time suck.

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✌️ Roman @ Full Send

Why Full Send? We’re on a mission to elevate financial data through high quality accounting and finance services, building more knowledgeable and engaged team members, and engaging in our industry to move accounting and finance forward.

Send us your feedback at howdy@fullsendfinance.com and help us stay as sendy as humanly possible. We’re ready to listen.