finstory.ai

I handle all things growth. Marketing, Branding, Content, Product and Story. 

Let me tell you about 4 things CFOs say about turning numbers into stories:

1. I know the story. I just don’t have time to tell it.
2. We’re stuck building slides instead of driving insight.
3. We close the books, but don’t drive the conversation.
4. The board sees the report, but not the reasoning behind it.

And when the story gets lost, so does the influence.

So we built finstory ai — a financial storytelling tool to help CFOs explain 3 things:

1. What changed?
2. Why it matters?
3. What’s next?

And to our surprise, over 419 people signed up. 

You upload your spreadsheet.
finstory.ai handles the analysis, the narrative, and the visuals.

Numbers alone don’t build trust. Stories do.

And every CFO should have the tools to tell theirs.

This is the storytelling tool CFOs want.

And we want to spend our time helping CFOs turn spreadsheet chaos into narrative clarity in minutes.

Cofounder & Growth 

AI CFO Office

The fastest-growing CFO-focused newsletter on the internet. 
Averaging 5,100 subscribers per month.

Brand and Content Advisor 

Doublefin

Chief Marketing Officer

Born Capital

Marketing and Branding Advisor

Ali Brands

Building Brands and writing content for SaaS founders to attract customers 10x Faster.

I've written thousands of compelling and trustworthy content posts for tech founders, VCs, and SaaS companies. Hundreds of ghost-written content posts have gone viral on LinkedIn. The internet is loaded with content. So how will your brand & content stand out in the sea of sameness? That's where I jump in to help you stand out with my high-end branding and content strategies to accelerate your growth, reputation and revenue because I believe you're unique and you can help others.

Build and monetize your brand and turn your reputation into revenue. I've opened my calendar for a limited time, offering Free brand strategy call. Let's get started: https://calendly.com/alibilawal/20

Founder

Indie Worldwide

Member

Audience & Income

OnPlan

Branding and Growth Advisor

StarWind Inc.

Enabling customers to cut cost and increase performance while reducing hardware footprint through the power of StarWind Software Products. Developing and closing business generated by Partners with End Customers, Lead processing, forecasting and account/opportunity detail in Sales Force. Demonstrating and presenting products, working closely with Pre-sales engineers and marketing to generate revenue.

Sales Executive

Mail.Ru Group

Designed, developed, and produced advertising campaigns for target audiences by crafting effective messaging. Worked with developers, third-party vendors, and internal teams to establish and achieve company goals.

Project Manager at myTarget 

LinkedIn Branding for tech founders and CFOs to grow revenue and authority | Posts to help you build a brand that gets attention & clients...

👋🏼 Hey, I'm Ali.

I'm a brand advisor and writer helping SaaS founders of high-growth B2B startups build powerful brands through un-ignorable content to grow influence and attract customers 10x faster.

I use the latest branding and content marketing strategies to help FP&A & FinOps founders & CFOs grow and get well known. 

The internet is loaded with content. So how will your brand and content stand out in the sea of sameness? That's where I jump in to help you stand out with my high-end branding and content strategies to accelerate your growth, reputation, and revenue.

I've written thousands of pieces of compelling and trustworthy content for tech founders, VCs, and SaaS companies. Hundreds of my written posts have gone viral on LinkedIn.

⚡I have spent the last 3 years helping VCs, founders and tech companies bring value in the digital world through branding strategies, content writing, and social selling to skyrocket their growth.

I have helped:

→ GPs scale their online brand to generate investment opportunities.
→ B2B SaaS companies with brand messaging, positioning, and content writing to attract customers. 
→ Founders generate $30 million in revenue while growing their LinkedIn following with 50 million+ views.

I'm highly skilled at personal branding, ghostwriting, and creating brand & content strategies. I believe learning never stops, so I'm always optimizing. 


📚 I have a master's in marketing & management, and on a personal level, I am someone who:

‣ Motivates people.
‣ Deals with empathy.
‣ Loves to solve problems.
‣ Focuses on bringing value.
‣ Always happy to consult with and navigate people.
‣ Love to lead an intentional life to leave a positive legacy behind.

Ali
alibilawal.com 

📧 hello@alibilawal.com

Ali Bilawal

Howard Katzenberg

Glean Company

Founder & CEO

Better

As the CFO at Better, a leading digital mortgage company, I was responsible for steering the company's financial strategy during a period of significant growth and industry transformation. My key contributions included:

•  Financial Oversight & Strategy: Oversaw the financial operations, ensuring transparency and efficiency in all fiscal activities, aligning them with the company's mission to revolutionize the home financing market.
•  Growth Management: Guided Better through rapid scale-up efforts, enhancing the company's financial infrastructure to support expansion.  Company revenue increased 5x during my tenure, while unit economics improved significantly.
•  Fundraising: Led our Series C fundraise efforts, which resulted in $160M of capital raised.
•  Operational Excellence: Advanced the company's commitment to providing honest guidance and zero commissions, which required robust financial mechanisms and a customer-first approach to financial planning.
•  Team Leadership & Development: Fostered a culture of excellence within the finance department, mentoring a team of professionals dedicated to upholding the highest standards of financial integrity and innovation.

My role was pivotal in building a finance function that not only supported Better's growth but also championed the company's ethos of improving access to home financing through unparalleled service and transparency.

OnDeck

At OnDeck, I had the privilege of being one of the initial team members, joining the company in its nascent stage. Over a transformative decade, I contributed to scaling the firm into one of the leading online lenders in the U.S. for small businesses. My journey at OnDeck was marked by:

•  Strategic Financial Leadership: Spearheaded the company's financial operations, aligning fiscal management with strategic business objectives to drive growth. We scaled from $1M of annual revenue when I started to over $300M of annual revenue the year I left.
•  Capital Raising & IPO Execution: Played a critical role in both equity and debt fund raising efforts and successfully led OnDeck through its $230M IPO, establishing a solid foundation for the company's future growth.
•  Financial Planning & Analysis: Implemented robust financial planning and analysis frameworks that enhanced visibility into company spending and facilitated data-driven decision-making.
•  Team Building & Mentorship: Cultivated a high-performing finance team of 20+ accounting, FP&A, treasury, internal controls, and investor relations professionals, fostering an environment of continuous improvement and professional development.

During my tenure, I not only witnessed but also actively directed OnDeck's rapid growth trajectory, laying down a financial roadmap that supported the company's ambitious goals and led to significant shareholder value creation.

Swift Financial

Engaged to contribute entrepreneurial experience and help launch this startup bank targeting small businesses
•	Led product development of SwiftDepositSM, a banking solution for remotely depositing checks (via PCs). Defined product specs, supervised cross-functional team, and implemented all fulfillment and servicing work flows 
•	Collaborated with CEO in implementing Series B fundraising strategy. Created pitch book, developed valuation framework, and facilitated the closing process.  Raised $15M, 9 months after and at a 2.5x price over Series A
•	Proposed company’s organizational structure, was integral part of defining Swift’s values and operating principals, and established the company’s partnership strategy

Consultant

American Express

Drove AmEx’s small business growth strategy through the development and internal/external sell-in of new co-brand partnerships
•	Assessed new co-brand card opportunities, articulated the American Express partnership value story, and formulated deal terms with several Fortune 500 companies. Proposed deals projected to generate over 1M new cards
•	Created streamlined methodology for evaluating strategic partnerships and designed group’s standard financial model and pitch book used with prospective partners of OPEN Savings, a Cardmember savings program featuring exclusive discounts from industry leaders.  Helped negotiate new relationships with Staples, AT&T, Hertz, and FedEx
•	Led 10-member cross functional team to develop program constructs, project financial metrics, and determine marketing and operations strategies for card programs with several Fortune 500 companies

Manager, OPEN Business Development

Founding member of AmEx’s Venture Capital Portfolio Management Group. Promoted to Manager after 13 months
•	Worked closely with senior executives on strategic and operating plans, business development, and execution against financial plans. Analyses and recommendations were discussed at several Board of Director meetings
•	Monitored financial results and liquidity of private companies and recommended sell/hold/hedge strategies for public portfolio companies, resulting in more than $10M in gains
•	Coordinated due diligence activities, performed valuation analyses, structured transactions, and helped negotiate term sheets for follow-on investments

Manager, Venture Capital Investments

Before founding Glean.ai, I spent 10 years as CFO for two major fintechs (OnDeck and Better).  The finance teams I led were very analytical - we had real-time dashboards set up on every aspect of our business … except on our spending with vendors.   As a result, it was difficult to know if our vendor relationships were creating value and driving ROI.

That was a problem.  So, at least once a year, I'd gather my team to conduct a manual audit of our vendor costs.  This involved printing months worth of bills and then spending weeks -  analyzing them at the line-item level, ensuring the bills complied with our contracts, manually calculating time-series trends in spreadsheets, and then asking tons of questions to budget owners. 

It was a time-consuming and painful process, but the last time we did this in 2019, my team identified over $1.5 million of annual savings, or about 15% of our total vendor spend at the time. 

That money was silently walking out the door - in the form of products/services we didn’t need, missed terminations, poorly negotiated deals, duplicative vendors, etc..💸 Importantly, it was cash we didn’t have available to increase our marketing budget to acquire more customers, hire more software engineers to improve our product, or just take to the bottom line to improve margins. 

Accordingly, in early 2020, I felt compelled to leave my CFO career to build a company that could automate the audit process we conducted - by using AI/ML to conduct instant spend forensics on bills and proactively identify savings opportunities.  

Glean.ai’s raised $14 million to date from top tier fintech investors.  In 2022, not only has our customer count grown significantly, but we’ve enabled our customers to shave 13% off their annual vendor spend on average.    

But this is just the beginning!  Our models are retrained every day, leading to faster and more accurate identification of savings opportunities for our customers.

When I’m not working on Glean.ai, I spend time with my beautiful wife and 3 energetic boys in Westchester, New York. Also, you may find me rocking out at a Bruce Springsteen concert (or an E-Street cover band show)!   

I’d love to meet like-minded finance professionals and entrepreneurs here. Along the way I hope to impart lessons I’ve learned on developing good financial hygiene, building high-performing teams, and harnessing one's passion for creativity into entrepreneurship.

If this resonates with you, let’s please connect!

taplio

The Battle

Ali Bilawal

Howard Katzenberg

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?