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

Wouter Born

Specialized CFOTech Investor | Backing the Future of Finance with AI & Automation

At Born Capital, we invest in the next generation of CFOTech companies, helping finance teams move beyond spreadsheets to AI-driven automation, real-time insights, and strategic decision-making.

🔹 17 Portfolio Companies – We back founders solving critical pain points in FP&A, financial close, CFO analytics, and AI-powered automation. From AI-driven AP automation to autonomous forecasting, our investments are reshaping how finance teams operate.

🔹 More Than Just Capital – As a former entrepreneur with a successful exit, I know firsthand the challenges of scaling a CFOTech company. At Born Capital, we offer strategic guidance, deep industry expertise, and connections to top finance leaders to help our startups grow and win.

We believe the CFO office is being redefined, and the best companies in this space will be the ones that leverage AI, data, and automation to drive smarter, faster financial decisions.

Looking to build the next big CFOTech company? Let’s connect.

General Partner

AI-native platform that turns financial data into board-ready stories.

We help CFOs move from reporting to storytelling—automating variance analysis, narrative generation, and board decks in minutes.
Built for speed and clarity, powered by LLMs and real-world finance logic.

400+ on the waitlist.

The CFO Office

Every Thursday and Sunday I break down AI’s impact on finance, FP&A, and automation. As a speaker at high-profile CFO events, I help finance teams cut through the hype and take practical steps to leverage AI today.

Author

Aimplan

Aimplan is extending Power BI with planning, forecasting, and enhanced reporting to help organizations exceed their goals

Board Member

Dost

Dost is specializing in AI-driven automation of financial processes, particularly accounts payable. Their platform automates tasks such as invoice processing, data extraction, and reconciliation, reducing administrative costs by up to 80% and eliminating human errors.

Board Observer

FCCGroup

FCC Group is an international QuickBooks solution provider, offering comprehensive accounting and inventory management systems tailored for businesses operating across Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Their services include automated VAT, GST, electronic invoicing, and Intrastat reporting, all integrated within QuickBooks to ensure compliance with diverse regional regulations.

Hurree - The Segmentation Company 

Making Market Segmentation Better With One Platform

Investor & Advisor

insightsoftware

After the successful merger of CXO Software with insightsoftware, I took the challenge to head insightsoftware's M&A department, reporting directly to the CEO and working closely with private equity partner TA Associates.

Setting up a team for M&A frontend activities, such as deal sourcing, pipeline management, preparing executive briefings, valuating opportunities, due diligence, and deal closing.
Building internal M&A muscles, coaching the integration team, strengthening the weak spots in the organization.

We successfully acquired Jet Global. My roles were executive sponsor and integration owner, becoming the new CEO of 140 employees of Jet Global, while also managing the integration team of 40 insightsoftware leaders.

Senior Vice President Strategy & M&A

CXO Software

As CEO Americas, I grew CXO USA footprint and doubled our Recurring Revenues by setting up local sales and marketing, developping partnerships and maxamizing our existing customer relationships.

ACHIEVEMENTS:
▪︎Built a cross functional team from scratch, covering disciplines like sales, marketing, services & support
▪︎Successfully managed the merger of CXO Software with insightsoftware

CEO Americas

As co-founding partner I have driven the product vision behind CXO and led the R&D efforts. In this role I was constantly looking for innovation and closely involved in sales & marketing and retention & development of key-accounts.

ACHIEVEMENTS:
- Creation of the #1 CFO reporting solution, used by C-level executives of >150 Fortune 1000 companies
- CXO Cloud rollout
- Release of CXO Catalog, the first online marketplace for C-level dashboards

Co-founder & CTO/CPO

Partake Consulting

Sold Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solutions (e.g. Hyperion, Arcplan, SAP BPC) to the CFO office of large multinationals, such as Rabobank, Heineken, Akzo Nobel, and Ahold. Trusted advisor for C-level executives of many global enterprises. In my role as sales manager, in 2007 achieved a 125% target achievement

Sales Manager

EPM/CPM (e.g. Hyperion, Tagetik, SAP BPC) specialist. Roles included project manager, senior implementation consultant, pre-sales consultant and client manager.

EPM Consultant

GP at Born Capital | CFOTech Investor, Advisor & Entrepreneur. Follow me for posts about finance transformation, FP&A, startups and entrepreneurship.

I’ve spent the last 25 years at the intersection of finance and technology, helping CFOs move beyond spreadsheets to AI-driven, strategic leadership. 

My career has taken me from consulting for Fortune 500 finance teams to building, scaling, and investing in CFOTech companies that transform the way finance operates.

I co-founded CXO Software, a CFO-focused performance reporting platform that served clients like Johnson Controls, Honeywell, Experian, and Facebook. After an 11-year journey, CXO Software was successfully acquired by insightsoftware, a global CFOTech leader backed by TA Associates.

At insightsoftware, I led M&A strategy, guiding acquisitions and helping the world’s top CFO software firms scale. Now, as General Partner at Born Capital, I invest in the next generation of CFOTech startups, backing founders who are reshaping FP&A, financial close, and CFO automation.

I write CFOOffice.io, a fast-growing newsletter read by thousands of CFOs and finance leaders, where I break down AI’s impact on finance, FP&A, and automation. 

As a speaker at high-profile CFO events, I help finance teams cut through the hype and take practical steps to leverage AI today.

Beyond finance, I’m a competitive open-water swimmer, endurance athlete, and adventure-seeker. 

Let’s connect to discuss AI, finance, and where the CFO role is headed next.

Founding & Managing Partner

Specialized investor in CFOTech.
As an entrepreneur with a successful exit, I am passionate about helping founders to succeed. I have been in their shoes, and want to help them to thrive.

The real luxuries in finance:

clean data
quiet months
trusted forecasts
a team that listens
budgets that hold up
clarity across numbers
time to think, not chase
a close that runs smooth
models that tell the truth
systems that talk to each other
decisions made with confidence
meetings that move things forward.

What did I miss?

GP at Born Capital | cfooffice.io | CFOTech investor, advisor & founder of finstory.ai

I used a single prompt to build a finance app in 3 minutes. Gemini 3 just turned AI into a modern FP&A spreadsheet. CFOs can finally build usable finance apps:

First, here are 4 reasons why Gemini 3 is a breakthrough moment for CFOs:

1. Zero-shot accuracy. One prompt and it delivered the exact tool a CFO would expect. No rewrites, no fixing, no nudging.

2. It follows instructions like a seasoned analyst. Tight, precise, and aligned with every constraint you give it.

3. It built a full finance app that runs locally. CFOs can input real numbers, knowing that the data never leaves the browser. Nothing is sent to Gemini or Google, perfect for sensitive financials.

4. It’s the most polished output I’ve seen yet. Clean UI, interactive components, and fully functional logic. It feels like a working FP&A product, not a toy demo.

And here’s the wild part. 

You don’t need a paid plan.

This works on the free tier of Gemini with a basic Google login.

You can play with the growth assumptions, and the model dynamically updates, showing fresh insights the moment the metrics change.

Imagine what a CFO with a real backlog of finance problems can build.

Read on to see the single prompt you can use to build an app for CFOs in 3 minutes instead of 3 days: https://lnkd.in/dX7uW5Jm

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The Battle

Ali Bilawal

Wouter Born

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The Battle

Ali Bilawal

Wouter Born

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Wouter Born's LinkedIn Performance

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