GrowthLab Financial Services, Inc.

In 2013, I embarked on an exciting journey to build GrowthLab, a Finance-as-a-Service (FaaS) company dedicated to serving founders and management teams with comprehensive and full-service Financial Planning & Analysis, Monthly Accounting, Virtual CFO, HR-People Advisory, and Business Tax. At GrowthLab, we specialize in helping startups, emerging growth companies, and businesses in turnaround by providing leadership and execution in their financial management, accounting, operations, HR, and strategic planning functions.

Our tech-forward, recurring services are designed to inform and enhance management decision-making. We leverage our dedicated team to ensure you stay focused on today's opportunities rather than being burdened by yesterday's problems.

At GrowthLab, we believe in the power of proactive financial management and strategic planning to drive sustainable growth and success. Our mission is to empower entrepreneurs and innovators with the tools, insights, and support they need to navigate their financial journey and achieve their full potential. Let's make your non-core functions dynamic and fun as we drive growth and innovation together!

STRMS

Co-Founder

Brown University

Adjunct Lecturer

Textron Financial

Director, Asset Sales - Business and Portfolio Sales

Corporate Development

Textron

Investor Relations

Treasury - Foreign Exchange, Cash Management, Corporate Finance

GrowthLab CEO | FaaS Pioneer, Strategic Finance for the Entrepreneurial Journey

I am the CEO of GrowthLab, where I have dedicated myself to pioneering Finance-as-a-Service as a solution for startups, emerging growth companies, and SMBs, empowering them to achieve their full potential.

Our comprehensive services include Bookkeeping, Accounting, FP&A, Virtual CFO, HR-People Advisory Services, Virtual Tax Manager, and workflow automation through our innovative platform, STRMS.io. At GrowthLab, my team and I leverage cutting-edge technology, refined processes, and extensive financial and strategic expertise to support businesses in managing their finances, accounting, people operations, strategic planning, workflow automation, and process mapping. Our goal is to enable entrepreneurs, founders, and management teams to seize today's opportunities without being burdened by yesterday's problems.

Beyond the numbers, my journey has been enriched by the incredible people I've worked with and the lessons I've learned. From my early days in international sales to leading GrowthLab through various opportunities and challenges, I've seen firsthand the importance of resilience, adaptability, and a strong support network. My wife, Sue, has been a constant pillar of strength, and my shareholders and team members (past and present) have been a remarkable force in our company's evolution.

I am passionate about providing entrepreneurs and innovators with the financial and strategic tools and insights they need to thrive and grow. Whether through strategic financial planning, process optimization, or coaching, my mission is to empower the next generation of leaders to achieve extraordinary success.

At GrowthLab, our perfect customer persona includes visionary entrepreneurs, proactive founders, and forward-thinking management teams dedicated to scaling their businesses and value strategic financial insights. They are typically in the early to growth stages of their business lifecycle, seeking comprehensive financial support and innovative solutions to streamline their operations and drive sustainable growth.

In addition to my work at GrowthLab, I love to mentor and teach. I am an adjunct lecturer at Brown University, where I share my knowledge and experience with aspiring entrepreneurs and business leaders. Teaching and mentoring allow me to give back to the community and inspire the next generation of innovators.

Feel free to connect to explore how we can drive growth together.

🎂 Kicking off my 50s with gratitude🎉 and in a long time, I focused on me this year. I’m grateful for my family, friends, and the GrowthLab team who had my back every step.

Highlights from the year:

➡️45 ski days
➡️A long Caribbean weekend with ~20 of my closest people
➡️Celebrated Sue’s 50th 
➡️25th anniversary with a surprise party from our kids
➡️4 weeks in Portugal
➡️At GrowthLab: investing heavily in AI automation and shoring up the financials.
➡️Running again: 7-mile runs well under 10-minute miles
➡️VO₂ max up 10 points; resting heart rate down 15+ bpm
➡️Rucking 30+ lbs under 15-minute miles
➡️Capstone: hiked Mt. Washington this weekend in 7.5 hours

That’s the highlight reel. Here’s the story behind it—and the lessons I’m taking into my next decade.

Dan Gertrudes

GrowthLab CEO | FP&A, Accounting, & AI Automation for the Entrepreneurial Journey

In 2013, I thought about giving up more than once. I actually did at one point! I took a full-time job and was fired four weeks later. I flirted with 

Open article: Being Comfortable with Uncomfortable: My Decade of Entrepreneurship  by Dan Gertrudes • 4 min read

Being Comfortable with Uncomfortable: My Decade of Entrepreneurship

What a great event - Advisory Amplified! 

Shared learnings and relationships to help accounting firms elevate the advisory experience. 

It was Sue’s first accounting conference 😂 Let’s see if she go to another one. 

I enjoyed chatting with Ryan Embree about pricing and building EAs for advisory first firms. 

Ignition is our cashflow machine so what better way than a $100 bill blazer 😎

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What’s next? That’s how 49 began for me.

Turning 50 gave me the gift of reflection and gratitude. For family, friends, my GrowthLab Financial Services, Inc. team, and for the highs and lows that came with evolving as a person, a business owner, and a husband and father.

I stitched together some of my favorite memories... at the core, I focused on myself, my identity as an entrepreneur, and the space and margin in life I want (we all need) to move forward and live. I learned to manage my time with a minimalist and protective view. 

And it ends where it should: on the importance of mental and physical health in entrepreneurship.

And to that end, I've enjoyed engaging with others in my community, such as ⚡️Roman Villard, CPA, and sharing and exchanging results from our running, rucking, and hiking activities. Blake Oliver and Nicholas Pasquarosa have been inspirational in their physical transformation journey. And Terrell A Turner, CPA, with his long rucks (weighted vests/backpacks). 

My EOS "good news sharing" with the team has been about personal physical accomplishments this quarter, usually the extra half mile during our long runs on the weekend. 

Onward.

Tomorrow, I’ll be speaking with Ryan Embree from Ignition at the Advisory Amplified Tour stop in Boston, where we’ll be talking about one of the most important shifts happening in our industry: the power of selling outcomes, not tasks through value-based pricing!!

Most accounting firms still scope and price their work around deliverables like monthly accrual accounting, invoicing, bill pay, and month-end close... oh not to mention, hourly pricing. 😥 

But business owners (our customers) don’t buy tasks; they buy outcomes. And when you price based on outcomes, you’re selling transformation.

From Tasks to Outcomes: The CFO Suite - At GrowthLab, we’ve reimagined how financial services are delivered and priced. We don’t sell bookkeeping, we try to deliver clarity, confidence, and control.

Package 1:
Monthly clean financials and working capital management: Know your numbers and make informed decisions.

Package 2:
Everything in Package 1 plus expense management and 13 week cash flow visibility: Eliminate surprises and gain total visibility into your financial health.

Package 3:
Everything in Package 2 plus tactical and strategic financial oversight: Gain a financial partner who helps you plan, adapt, and grow.

Add-Ons That Complete the Picture - Business success isn’t just about the numbers. It’s about people, compliance, and peace of mind. And that’s why our CFO Suite can be extended with add-ons that strengthen the foundation of your business:

HR Compliance: Keep your business and people operations aligned with regulations.

HR Business Partner: Ensure your employees are engaged, supported, and thriving.

Virtual Tax Manager (Monthly or Quarterly): Your year-round tax advisor, because no one wants surprises at year-end.


These add-ons aren’t extras. They’re essential extensions of what modern finance leadership looks like.

As automation and AI handle more of the transactional work, the firms that thrive will be those that anchor their value to outcomes and measurable impact we create for our customers.

Back in Oct 2014, I bought the GrowthLab domain we still use today. Within a year, I was overwhelmed. 

My inboxes had become a chaotic blend of personal and business: contractors, firm sellers, employees, lawyers, CPAs, referral sources, and customers. I was neck-deep in deliverables and made one of the biggest mistakes in my entrepreneurial journey. 

I comingled my personal and business admin stuff to simplify my life.🥸

Like many first-time founders, I never started this business with an exit in mind. Looking back, that was probably my first biggest misstep. I saw GrowthLab as a cash flow business, not an intrinsic value business.

If I had led with the exit in mind, I would have been more intentional about how I paid myself, how I handled family loans, shareholder distributions, and even the structure and share classes of the company itself.

Fast forward to last Thursday evening. My youngest daughter, Emma Gertrudes, who is heading to college next year, sent me the parent section of her FAFSA form. She sent it to my Gmail account, rightfully so. 

When I tried to log in, I couldn’t find the email to save my life. Out of habit, I was logging in with my GrowthLab email as I do with EVERYTHING. That moment, I paused.

My family has always seen me as both a husband and a father, but also as a business owner. Somewhere along the way, I lost touch with those boundaries. My personal identity and business identity had slowly merged into one inbox, one phone, one existence.

At 50, I am beginning The Big Unwind. Last year, it started on a personal level. This year, it’s administrative.🤯

I have watched employees go through their own version of this: cleaning up old logins, separating systems, untangling digital lives. Now it’s my turn.

Succession planning is one of my EOS Rocks in Q3 2025. Through that process, I realized that if I didn’t show up one Monday, my world - the laptop, phone, access to everything, would be the single point of failure. That realization hit hard. It made me see that I need to start acting like an employee of my own company, with fewer exceptions. And that’s not easy.

The Big Unwind for me isn’t about spreadsheets or passwords. It’s about learning to separate me from what I have built. The husband and father from the CEO.

Starting a business is a huge risk. It’s built on execution, not long-term strategy. Most of us don’t think about exits when we start out. We are just trying to make it work and make a buck. There’s no resentment in this reflection, just realization. My actions and inactions that got me here won’t get me where I want to go next.

This is the year of my Big Unwind, not to untangle the past, but to create space for what's next starting today. 

GrowthLab Financial Services, Inc.

I'm not too late in sharing this for September. We had 2 team members of the month... yeah, I don't like toss-ups, so why not celebrate twice! 🎉 

For starters, we usually don't lean into Sr. Leadership Team members for these recognitions, but we did this month! 

Big shout-out to Stephen N. Cummings.  He's been there for me for over 5 years, and I still remember the first time I met with him to consider a role. It was my last dinner out before the COVID shutdowns. And he still started in May 2020 to expand (really start) our tax department... talk about rolling the dice back then.

And the second team member is Angela Tinker, one of our most intellectually curious and AI champions on the team. She has been working closely with the STRMS Team to build out AI automations and agents for the Accounting Team. She is coming in on a year and half with the team, having joined us during a transformative year in 2024. 

We celebrate our Passionate Problem-Solvers! Those who face challenges head-on, think creatively, and adapt with agility. Stephen and Angela exemplify this spirit with curiosity, resilience, and determination.

Thanks Team!
GrowthLab Financial Services, Inc.

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