Making financial decisions is an everyday task that all business owners and C-Suite leaders must take on at a near constant pace—often without up-to-date information. But Anita Koimur thinks that is all poised to change.
Koimur is the COO and co-founder of LiveFlow, a VC-backed start up automating manual financial reporting, mainly month-end close. She discusses the journey to build a financial automation platform, and how making the right decisions regarding your money leads to better team management, a more cohesive work culture and easier prioritization of your customers’ needs.
Listen by clicking below. The Q&A, lightly trimmed and edited for clarity, follows.
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Welcome back to another great episode. I’ve been looking forward to this guest, so we’re going to jump right into it. I’m happy to welcome Anita Koimur, who is the COO and founder of LiveFlow. LiveFlow is a venture-backed startup that’s bringing automation and real-time connectivity to the world of financial reporting. Its platform is designed to streamline one of the most time-consuming parts of financial operations, the dreaded month-end close. It’s a tool that’s gaining traction among CFOs who want to modernize how their teams work. Anita, welcome to the Secrets of Rockstar CFOs.
Thank you so much for having me, Jack.
I’m glad to do it. You’re only the third non-CFO we’ve had as a guest. We met at an event. I was so impressed with the story and what you’re accomplishing that I think our members need to learn about this. How is my description of LiveFlow? I tend to oversimplify.
You’re hired. It’s brilliant. It’s awesome. First of all, I’m very honored to be here as a non-CFO guest. You’re building a phenomenal show. I was happy to hear you talk at the CFO Brew’s event here in New York, which was awesome. You spoke about the role of the CFO and how it’s changing. I felt moved and inspired. Thank you so much for having me here. I hope I can be an interesting guest for your audience.
I am certain you will be. Do you want to fill in the blanks a little bit about more of what the company does that I might have overlooked?
To put it simply, LiveFlow helps companies manage their finances with ease. We specialize in multi-entity financial consolidation and automating manual financial reporting, mainly month-end close. To be a little bit more technical, we plug into companies’ accounts and tech stack, such as QuickBooks Online or Xero, and then automatically pull this data into custom financial models in Excel, Google Sheets or our own proprietary dashboards. The whole point of this procedure is to have financial insights in real time so that finance leaders can make decisions faster without having the dreadful month-end close, where you get your results on the 15th of the next month.
That’s fantastic. I can see why you’ve achieved a very high level of success in a few years. Let’s return to that. Before we begin, I want to talk a little about your background. Where did you grow up?
People always say, “What’s going on with your accent?” It’s hard to pinpoint. Maybe those readers who are familiar can say it. I’m mixed. I was born in Sweden. My mom then came to Russia, where I was brought up in a small town. Eventually, when I turned 18, right on my birthday, I went to Moscow. That’s where I studied and later on moved to London, UK. I finally moved to the U.S. That’s a quick background story of myself.
I’m curious. You have an interesting global vision, having lived in at least three countries. Your accent is a little bit complex. I did have trouble placing it when we first met. How does that background shape your perspective on business, because things are more global than ever and only more so?
Growing up, I saw my mom being extremely passionate about what she was doing. She’s been running a small business still over 20 years. I saw her being busy all the time. These conversations at home about how to make things work, and then your strategy, which she would come up with, shaped my mind about wanting to own something and drive it end-to-end and being responsible for everything you do. That was something very inspirational and shaped my vision, first of all. That was the first thing that guided me.
The next big footprint is my first trip abroad, where I went to Europe, and had the chance to practice my English. It was horrible at that time. Still, a chance to communicate with someone abroad and try to express myself was very inspirational. Seeing the world was something that shaped me a lot. At all times, I tried to earn my first money and travel a lot, so that I could see a little bit more of the world.
The next iteration happened at university. I went to the most international university in Russia, which is called the People’s Friendship University of Russia. I met people from maybe over 50 countries or so. I tried to enrich my experience as much as possible, travel and learn more about other cultures and people. Eventually, during that time, I started to work. The company I worked for put me in charge of business development and building the brand-new vertical, which was a big honor. At that time, I was very young and probably knew nothing, but at least I tried.
They sent me to various locations, starting from London to New York and San Francisco. That exposure and the ability to express myself, be understood and do business together pulled me out to build an international career. The next step was my relocation to London. I worked for one of the greatest companies, in my opinion, Revolut, which is a massive fintech right now, at the time I started.
I was lucky to be part of the stage when it was shaped and molded. I got this experience that I wanted to all the entrepreneurs out there and to all the people within the company who had the chance to bring their ideas to life. Luckily, it was one of those where I was able to drive one of the products across multiple markets in Europe. I ended up meeting my co-founder, with whom we eventually started to apply for the company I run right now. The company got traction here in the U.S. because we have to widen the company market. That eventually brought me across the pond to New York.
What a fantastic story. When you look back at the places you’ve worked, what experiences were the greatest learning opportunities for you, be it a company, a particular project you worked on, or maybe even an individual you worked for?
Probably Revolut had the biggest impact on me. First of all, it is because of the level of ambition that I had never seen before. Just to give a little bit more context before I break it down, Revolut is now a global bank that has multiple products. They are heads and shoulders above many other traditional banks. The reason it works like this is that the founder of Revolut saw the problem across Europe with currency exchange. When you travel and cross borders across countries in Europe, you would pay quite a hefty fee for currency exchange rates. He wanted to change that so that when you travel across the borders, you pay at home without bothering at all. That worked.
That was the first core value proposition. On top of that, we started to build more products that would turn it into your everyday card, instead of in the UK, Barclays, Santander, NatWest and other banks. It was an uphill battle, but the passion and the willingness to reshape the banking industry were something that impressed me and changed me as a person. This mindset that everything is possible, that it is inevitable to acquire Revolut, was brilliant for me. That’s why it had the biggest impact out of all the workplaces.
When you look back, now, you’re one of the leaders of your current company. As a founder, it’s inevitable for the COO. What are some of the leadership lessons you took from your prior experiences that made you confident that you could launch the new business?
The first and most important skill that is paramount when you start a company or when you grab something from scratch is problem-solving. I think I had it in me, but I had all the chances to tap into it during my time at Revolut. I loved the freedom that I experienced, so I decided to co-found the company because it was so exciting to be the one on the ground, solve real-world problems and see the impact that I could drive. This is the first and foremost thing to think about when starting a company overall. It’s all about solving problems from day one until probably forever. It’s a different scale for sure, but it’s all about being passionate and energized by solving someone else’s problem and making them successful with your product. This is the first thing.
The second thing that becomes very obvious as soon as you step outside of problem-solving day in and day out is that finding the people who are equally passionate and who would drive the company to the next milestone and go in the same direction actually will help to define the direction. It’s impossible to build a successful company without the greatest people you are excited about on your day-to-day basis.
I want to chat specifically about LiveFlow for a little bit, if I may. Leaving a company that you loved to do your own thing is risky on every level, financially, emotionally and whatnot. What was the market opportunity that you saw, and CFOs need this, that motivated you to take the leap and found LiveFlow?
Experiencing the problem myself, seeing how difficult it is to juggle a myriad of spreadsheets and having the numbers out of date was something that moved me. The story that I’ve been hearing a lot, which is very repetitive, is that sometimes if you don’t keep your finances in order, you can go out of business soon.
I have a story when we were just starting. We started to give this initial expression of being known as the platform that helps you to bring financial visibility. We got someone on the 30th of December, the end of the year. The guy booked a demo with help on a call. He tells me, “I’m about to go out of business.” He owns a lodge somewhere in California. He almost cried, saying that he was not looking into his finances. He had an external accountant who didn’t help him put it in order. When he now looked many months after into these finances, he was out of any cash. He had to take a loan on very unfavorable terms.
He was desperately sitting on the 30th of December, trying to find something that would solve it for him right here, right now. That was very touching. That only made me closer to solving the problem. To put it simply, understanding the business owner, first of all, trying to help them to get this visibility at all times, so that they can make better business decisions, was the main driving factor for me to start this company.
I know you’ve raised an impressive amount of money to fund the company’s growth. What are you allowed to share about how much you’ve raised, who some of the investors are and how you selected them? I have a hunch you probably had your pick of investors to choose from.
It started back in the UK. To make it clear here, as I mentioned before, both my co-founder and I worked in London, UK, where we both met at Revolut. We were saying back in the day in London, but we got the initial traction in the U.S. How did that happen? We came up with the idea of LiveFlow. We thought that it would be a fantastic idea to learn from the best in the world. In our opinion, this is Y Combinator, which is an accelerator here in the U.S. that helps early-stage companies that are just kicking things off to understand what it means to build a massive company like Airbnb, Stripe, Gusto, Brex and others.
The first thing that we had in mind was that yes, we were traveling, and that was amazing, but we also wanted to understand the bigger picture once you break through and have a massive company. What are the steps? There’s no playbook that fits all, but we wanted to get this exposure to the open entrepreneurs. We were very lucky to be accepted to the program. We started the program back in January 2021 and were there for three months.
We got the initial investment from Y Combinator, then we had a seed round right after. Essentially, the way this works is you build for three months. You make progress. You talk to customers. You just need to build something that makes sense, then you present it during the demo day. You get feedback on your product and hopefully, the investment that you’re looking for. That was the year 2021 when I felt like money grew on trees.
That was a craze. That was a fantastic time to raise overall. We raised around a decent $3.5 million. We kept building, still in London. What we started to see as we gained more and more traction was that the majority of our customers came from the U.S., probably because of the Y Combinator’s name. We found ourselves sitting on the plane and flying all over the States to meet the customers in person and build something that mattered to them.
We realized that we spent more time in the U.S. than in London. We’ve made a decision to relocate in 2022. We started an office here in New York and started to hire the team on the ground as well. During that time, we raised yet another round because we grew so fast. We got Y Combinator’s arm, which was called YC Continuity, that invested in startups further after the seed round. We got funding from them.
Shortly after, we followed with Series A. That is our current stage. In total, we raised $21 million. Series A was led by a New York-based fund, which is called Valar Ventures. They are amazing people and amazing partners. They only invest in fintech, which is helpful because they have a perspective on things. They were one of the early investors in Xero. Having them alongside was helpful.
I noticed on your LinkedIn profile, under education, you put Y Combinator.
That’s why I’m saying that in those three months, they showed me so much and taught me so much about the world. It’s incredible.
Coming from you with all your global experiences, that’s an amazing endorsement. I know from my own experience and talking to my members, you’ve made some good headway so far. How has the market responded to the technology? Are you seeing a lot of traction or adoption by companies?
It’s very interesting how it started and where it’s going. The first thing that we saw, the first wave, were the small and medium businesses I was talking about. Those businesses brought us over to accounting firms. These are all sizes of accounting firms, from small and medium to major accounting firms, here in the U.S. These firms helped us to shape the product that would make sense. It started with a simple plug between QuickBooks Online and spreadsheets.
It would just find the data and make sure that whenever there is some customization, whether it’s a column inserted with contribution margin, a role that calculates gross profit margin or anything that matters, it would stay intact upon refresh. You can have the most up-to-date picture of your business whenever you open the spreadsheet or whenever the spreadsheet is shared with anyone else. That was helpful.
As we went, we got a lot of feedback that consolidation was a massive issue. On top of it, we have an international business, so we have to introduce ourselves. We have a U.S. topco and a UK subsidiary, which means that we need to consolidate and exchange currencies. It’s the problem that we are very familiar with, and we make sure that everything is up-to-date. Also, investors can tap into financials whenever they want to without asking us questions. They can drill down into details, understand what’s going on and so on.
We knew about the problem ourselves. We had a half-baked solution via spreadsheets, but we also saw that it wasn’t enough. The next iteration of that path was to introduce a fully automated consolidation product that would type the data from multiple subsidiaries into a standardized chart of accounts, do elimination, transaction level and account level, different percentage ownership, different dates for entities being acquired, and so on.
There’s a lot of detail out there that is important. We wanted to automate this end-to-end, knowing how painful that was. That was the big a-ha moment for us and our target market. That’s where we saw an influx of upper SMB, lower mid-market finances, where you have CFOs, controllers, head of finance and other finance people who solve the day-in and day-out. We even heard that there is a role as a consolidation person, which is very interesting because the process is so manual. It requires a standalone hire. We ended up pursuing this particular segment and building all of that specifically. That’s where we had the huge unlock. That’s where our product is centered right now.
It is interesting. I discovered that early in my career. There are people whose only role in the company is to do all of the consolidations. These must be massively complex companies to need somebody like that. Forgive me for the question I’m about to ask, but I’m legally required to ask you about AI to keep my license as a show host for CFOs.
Just like everyone nowadays.
You have to ask it, right?
Yes, you cannot ignore it.
You mentioned automation. I’m guessing it’s a big part of your product architecture?
Yes, of course. You cannot ignore the wave that is happening, which is super exciting. To begin with, we do use AI in-house for pretty much every job in one way or another. It’s very helpful. I strongly recommend everyone who is reading this episode to check AI out, not only the likes of ChatGPT or Perplexity, but maybe other AI tools for your role or industry specifically, or finance, in this case. Why? It is because it dramatically increases the speed of operations. It’s not always accurate. That’s one thing that you need to keep in mind.
If it does 80 percent or 90 percent of the job and you need to have someone to check the results, this is pretty good in comparison to not having it in place at all. Speaking about LiveFlow, specifically where our customers see the benefit of AI, first is this consolidation product, which I mentioned. It does automation based on how the accounts are structured and based on the initial type of accounts that the finance team set up. That’s one thing.
Another thing is a brand new product that is coming up. It’s called FinanceIQ. To add more color to it, FinanceIQ is a budgeting module that allows you to forecast as well and build your projections by department so that they can see what’s going on in real time without waiting for the CFO to prepare those financials. Make sure that there is access control in place, which is important. Also, what we are building is an AI module that would recommend people which other, for example, subscriptions you could consider if something is going out of whack very quickly. That’s another area where we are implementing AI. There are many other things and many other products coming up, but I will keep a little secret here for now.
That’s a perfectly reasonable thing. That’s great. I want to get back. You mentioned working at Revolut. It is a big company, has rapid growth, and has a little north of 20,000 employees, according to LinkedIn. Going to a company where there were the two of you, what was that transition like, almost as much on a personal level as it is on a professional level? It’s got to be a little bit different, right?
For sure. I joined when it was 300 people and left when we were 2,500. That was the stage. That’s all within two years. That was quite a scale. First, it feels like we have such a small team. We also have a third co-founder, so there are three of us. One beautiful thing about being a very small team of three is being the one in charge and not being dependent on anyone. I remember those days as romantic days. Whatever is needed, you just go to it, which is quite cool. The thing that I mentioned before is that it will scale. You need to hire phenomenal people to make sure this happens.
The jump from the big work that it turned into to three people was challenging to begin with. You’re on your own. You need to execute. No one knows about your company. You just need to knock on so many doors to hear back. It’s not always positive. You need to grind, build a lot of stamina and keep going because you truly believe that this makes sense. It turns into a very different story where you have some traction.
As I mentioned before, you need to bring the best people who share your vision of how this company will grow and also will drive it to the next milestone. It’s a very different task altogether, but exciting because we can scale the company so much more once we have the structure in place. We are maybe 50 people, incomparable to what it was when I left, but it feels like a big company compared to three people back in the day.
Everything feels different. I remember my first small company I joined. I was employee number 50. We probably peaked at around 300. To me, 300 felt like a huge company, but when I talked to the founders, they thought 50 when I joined was a huge company. Your mindset is completely different. Getting back to it, what were some of the lessons you’ve learned, and even some big surprises about launching your own business?
One thing that is very clear and goes ahead of everything else is putting the customer first and building for someone who cares. At the beginning, when you try to shape and mold the product, there’s not so much belief that this is going to work out. You need to partner with someone. We call them design partners, who believe that this is something that will change the way things are done, commit to it, and join you on this journey.
I’m talking about customers. Many times, what we did was we would ask, “How painful is financial reporting on your scale of one to 10?” People would be like, “Five.” Probably, we are not the right fit for you. We need to find someone who has like nine or 10 out of 10 pain. They’re screaming how inefficient it is and how much we feed into the current process. What about if we build this, iterate and prototype with them? Ideally, you want to get to the point where they will tell you, “This is a 10 out of 10 solution. That makes total sense. Take all of my money. Just build it.”
That is the main thing, not to be dreamy in a way, thinking that your solution will fit everyone. I’m talking about this particular experience that I’ve had. Many other companies can say something else. From my experience, you need to build for must-haves and not nice-to-haves, and to get to this level of clarity as soon as possible. When you just hear something like, “It’s a nice little product here,” when you talk money and say, “We actually would love to charge you. What do you think?” and people hesitate, it means that you’re building something not as helpful. You need to listen to those who have the real problem and can tell you that that is exactly what they need to get it solved.
Finding a passion for customers is one thing that makes or breaks a company. It’s my first thing. I cannot ignore this practice to find the best people you can. Maybe I can break it down a little bit more from a culture standpoint. One of the things that we did super early on was to define our culture. Why is it important? It is because a company goes through hard times and easier times. Once an easy walk, everyone joins you. It’s so exciting, and it’s so awesome. When you hit a roadblock, another one, and another one, it’s not for everyone.
For people to overcome this, they need to truly believe that this is something that makes sense, even when we hit these very complex problems. Defining the culture and scanning for culture fit is one of the most important things I learned for an early-stage company. I don’t think it’s possible to nail it fully, but defining your culture, putting it out there, at least on the website, bringing it to the interviews, vocalizing, talking through every single value, and figuring out what is important to another person, being super transparent and open, is paramount. These people will eventually become leaders. They will hire the next generation of people. Supposedly, they should be a reflection of the founding team and how the founding team sees the company’s future.
That’s a wise decision. You mentioned the customers a couple of times. A lot of the members of the CFO Leadership Council, who are your customers or have the profiles of your customers, are leading digital transformations of their own inside their companies. I’m wondering. What advice would you give a CFO and his or her team when it comes to evaluating and adopting financial technology, whether it’s yours or just in general?
What I’ve heard many times is that the decision-making process is slow. We need to go through procurement and so many things. It will take us several months. I saw leaders who make decisions fast, and they just try. Some people could try and iterate and be very successful. Those who drag probably are not as successful, but it’s hard for me to say something more precise than that. The alternative that I see to extending the lifespan of QuickBooks, especially for multi-entity businesses, is to go to ERPs.
Many people are scared of that. They say, “This will take another 12 months or 18 months. It’s a long process we’re preparing.” They’re going to be stuck in limbo. They’re not improving their current process. They’re not migrating just yet, or they’re preparing for this migration. It is not the best outcome for the company and themselves because they cannot make decisions as fast and move the company as fast.
Being decisive and setting up systems and processes, there might be this integration of migration coming up, but you still need to make decisions now. You may have one and a half years before this happens. Maybe it makes sense to introduce something that gives you the slightest so that all this time, you’ll hopefully make a ton of progress before this big thing is introduced.
That makes sense. I want to get back to you, a busy entrepreneur, as all entrepreneurs are, fast-growing company. Kudos to you. It can’t be all work and no play. I’m wondering how you maintain that all-important healthy work-life balance.
I don’t know what a work-life balance is, to begin with. Work is part of life, if I can put it this way, where I don’t separate it. If I do something, I have it running in the background anyway, because I’m thinking about problems to solve and the next big things that are going to show up. I don’t separate it. I have something outside of work. The hobby that I started here in New York is boxing. Before, I was a passionate runner.
Suddenly, running stopped working for me. That was a place for me to switch somehow and immerse myself. I like to be immersed. As much as I love running, it’s still not the way for me to think about something else. Boxing is the thing that I discovered here in New York. It’s very popular here. I tried it once and fell madly in love. I ended up having it regularly every week. I can barely survive without my workouts anymore.
That’s good for you. You and I have spoken about this in the past. Remind me. When you’re boxing, are you boxing just as an exercise form, or are you boxing against people?
No, I have a hard time fighting someone. I feel bad about it. I cannot hurt another person. I prefer the bag, or I prefer a training session, especially with someone more experienced than I am. If I accidentally hit someone, I’m like, “I’m so sorry. Are you fine?” It’s not the best tactic to stop and keep asking them. Right now, it is to get all of the energy out on the bag and exhaust myself because it’s such an intense workout.
The boxing workout has long been considered one of the most effective ways to get and keep in shape. Good for you for embracing that. I know you’ve lived in multiple places. Do you have any fun vacations that you’d like to talk about, exciting trips that you’re coming up with, or that you’ve already been on?
I keep referring to London. It’s one of the most favorite places. I came from another trip. I was there for an event with our investor. It fascinates me, to be honest, mainly because of the beauty of the city and the culture. I keep returning to London quite often as we have the team and an office there.
For my money, London is probably the greatest city in the world. Not that I’ve been to every city, but it’s the best one I’ve been to. Let me put it that way safely. You’ve been to London. You know where the furthest I’ve gone since 2023 is? New Hampshire.
I had no idea.
You’re going to London. I’m going to New Hampshire. For those who don’t know, I live in Massachusetts, so not exactly far. This has been great. I know you’ve got a lot going on. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me and to our readers. I often close this by asking for advice for the next generation of CFOs. Given that you’re not a CFO, I wanted to put a twist on it because more and more CFOs and my readers generally are considering an entrepreneurial track. What’s the advice you would give somebody who’s thinking about, “I have an idea for a business. I’d like to start it?” What advice can you share based on your experiences and your successes?
Get it done. It’s simple. Talk to the potential customers. Go and ask them. Back to my initial question, we have this problem. How important is it for you to get it solved? From one to 10, put a score on it. It’s important. If I solve it this way, ideally, there should be a prototype that can be built with, which is lovable. You can put things together quickly to see the willingness to pay for it.
If people tell you that it’s a nine or 10 out of 10 problems, and your prototype is a nine or 10 out of 10 solution for them, phenomenal. Go build it. These days, it’s incredibly easy. First of all, connect with someone. The networks are incredible. It’s easy to get feedback, which is the core thing when you start a company. Second, prototype very fast and get feedback from those people. It’s much easier than it used to be and probably will only become easier.
