Concourse is a new AI platform designed for automating financial tasks, co-founded by Matthieu Hafemeister, a former fintech investor at Andreessen Horowitz, and Ted Michaels, ex-head of finance at fintech company Jeeves. The idea for Concourse was born out of their obstruction with the slow and manual processes common in finance departments. Many groups rely heavily on spreadsheets and spend a significant portion of their time on repetitive tasks, like reviewing invoices. According to a Paylocity survey, 38% of finance teams spend over 25% of their time on such manual exertion.
Hafemeister observed that finance departments often scuffle to scale due to their reliance on outdated tools and workflows. “The status quo for finance is countless point solutions paved together, with Excel being the lowest common denominator,” he told TechCrunch. In fact, 82% of finance departments still use Excel for essential tasks like budgeting and predicting, limiting their ability to fully leverage automation.
To address these challenges, Hafemeister and Michaels created Concourse, a platform premeditated to automate financial workflows. Concourse connects with a business’s financial systems to allow teams to retrieve and analyze data, produce charts, and even asks questions like “What’s our non-GAAP revenue?” Instead of merely refining the speed of a task, Concourse automates entire processes independently, surfacing insights that help finance teams stay ahead of trends.
While finance automation isn’t new, Concourse stands out due to its aptitude to handle complex, multi-step operations. For example, it can extract data from NetSuite, download CSV files, and then transfer that data into Excel. “We leverage large language models alongside customary data analysis techniques to optimize performance,” Hafemeister explained.
AI in finance is rising rapidly, with 58% of finance teams now using some form of AI, according to a recent poll. Grand View Research projects that the AI fintech section, valued at $9.45 billion in 2020, will continue to grow at 16.5% annually. Despite this interest, Concourse must still prove its worth to prospective clients. A Gartner report shows that many companies skirmish to estimate the ROI of AI, and concerns about AI errors and data confidentiality remain high. In a U.K. poll, 40% of executives cited AI inaccuracies as a significant concern.
Hafemeister stressed Concourse’s focus on accuracy, explaining that the platform uses various techniques for fact-checking and validation to minimize errors. He also emphasized the company’s commitment to data privacy, ensuring that Concourse does not use client data to train AI models without explicit permission.
Currently in beta, Concourse has already fortified customers like Instabase and Shef, along with $4.7 million in funding from investors, including a16z, Y Combinator, CRV, and Box Group. The startup is engrossed on product development and expanding its six-person team, with an emphasis on hiring engineers to enhance the platform’s capabilities and data integration features.
“We’re prioritizing backend, machine learning, and AI engineering talent to enlarge our workflows and scale our go-to-market efforts,” Hafemeister said.
