Wouter Born

Born Capital

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

finstory.ai

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.

Founder

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.

CFOs, this changes everything: https://lnkd.in/eyirAge5 

Claude can now do advanced financial modeling in Excel. I built a real 13-week rolling cashflow model in Excel, with formulas, links, and logic. Claude gave me a working file with:

- Linked assumptions and validations.
- Weekly cash balances auto-calculated.
- A chart showing when you run out of money.
- Receivables, payables, payroll, and rent inputs.

All in under 5 minutes, from a single prompt.

I ran it myself.

Claude processed 3 CSVs. 

Built formulas. Flagged errors. And rolled cash week by week.

When I opened Excel, it just worked.

This is the first time AI feels ready for finance.

Sure, ChatGPT can answer questions.

But Claude can build financial systems.

Claude reads and writes Excel like an analyst. It leaves assumptions tabs, variance sheets, and cross-checks. It explains its logic. And you can audit every cell.

TAKEAWAY 

There will be two kinds of companies:

1. Those that use AI institutionally across forecasting, underwriting, and FP&A.

2. Those that lose their best people to the ones that do.

I want you in the first camp.

Claude is showing us the future.

Fast, traceable, transparent finance.

You want to spend less time explaining numbers and more time shaping the decisions behind them. 

And that’s the job you signed up for.

Finance finally feels exciting again.

The CFO is not a chief accounting officer anymore.

So if you act like one, the company suffers.

The old CFO worried primarily about accounting principles and compliance. The new CFO focuses on the business itself.

CFOs must:

- Provoke new thinking.
- Challenge the status quo.
- Guide the company toward growth.

The modern CFO must lead with 3 things:

1. Agility.
2. Confidence.
3. True strategic depth.

Don't be enslaved by the numbers. 

You must command them.

This is the future of finance.

AI handles the bad, repetitive work.

So you can focus on truly partnering with the business.

Go and sit down with the COO.

Go and sit down with the other departments.

Challenge what's going on... and be more prepared.

Stop the painful process of manually extracting and transforming data.

Join 26,000+ CFOs getting AI strategies and FP&A insights at cfooffice.io

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

Avishai Asaf

I tried ChatGPT Atlas for CFOs and asked the browser to apply a vendor master list to categorize transactions in quickbooks. The future of finance won't be the same.

The AI conversation just changed. Again.

This week, OpenAI dropped its Atlas browser.

And 99% of people are missing the point.

They’re sharing demos of the agent summarizing articles or booking a hotel. These are toys. For years, automation for finance has meant a terrible choice between two flawed models:

Brittle RPA: You pay a Big 4 firm $250k to build a bot that logs into your ERP. It’s a script that mimics mouse clicks. The second your IT team updates a single UI element, the bot shatters, and you’re back to paying for maintenance. It’s automation built on a house of cards.

Black-Box APIs: You pay for a complex integration between NetSuite, Coupa, and Stripe. It’s powerful, but it’s a black box. You have no idea what it’s really doing. When it fails, you don’t know why. You can’t see its work, you can’t fix it, and you’re 100% dependent on developers to maintain it.

Atlas Agent Mode is the start of a new paradigm. Glass-Box Automation.

It’s an AI agent that uses the exact same UI you use.

It sees what you see. It clicks what you click. It reads what you read.

This is a breakthrough for one reason. Trust.

You can finally watch the AI work, in real time, across all your tabs, and take back control at any second.

Stop seeing this as a summarization tool.

The leaders who see it as a UI-based workflow orchestrator will automate their entire department.

Today, I’m giving you a real reason to think about a real finance process, one that APIs and RPA have failed to solve cleanly.

Let’s dive in: https://lnkd.in/dfyTmsMT

26,000+ CFOs and finance leaders from the world’s biggest companies are reading this and I want to keep finance ahead of all the noise and give a clear picture of what’s happening and where the most ROI is.

The AI CFO Office crossed 27,000+ readers. And we are now a Substack Bestseller. CFOs and finance leaders from the world’s biggest companies are reading this and I want to keep finance ahead of all the noise and give a clear picture of what’s happening and where the most ROI is.

We are leading the AI finance conversation. And we are more than a newsletter. We are a private finance community that wants to be the builders of tomorrow. 

AI CFO Office is a deeper space, built for real CFOs, FP&A operators, and builders of finance who want to think, learn, and grow together.

Thank you all for your love and support.

Come hang out with us.

I built a 13-week rolling cashflow forecast with Claude + it updates the cashflow forecast daily: https://lnkd.in/duvRMwk2

The level of financial modeling Claude can do is mind-blowing. 

It can read & write excel natively. It builds 3-statement models, scenario toggles, and sensitivity tables and leaves a trail: assumptions tabs, cross-sheet checks, and error flags.

Everyone talks about automation, but let’s be honest…

Most of your planning still starts here:

Bank balances: Pulled from online banking portals or CSV exports, usually copied manually into Excel.

Accounts receivable: Exported from your ERP or accounting system (NetSuite, SAP, QuickBooks), showing open invoices and expected payment dates.

Accounts payable: Pulled from the same ERP/AP system. Due invoices, vendor payments, and aging data.

Payroll & recurring expenses: Taken from HRIS tools or past forecasts.

CapEx or financing items: Still entered manually by the CFO or controller.

This is the raw material every forecast or cash plan depends on.

And if these inputs aren’t structured or automated, no amount of AI can fix the mess that follows.

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