From Zero to Scale: My Journey with FinQuery to Grow 300% in the Past Two Years

Founder Bio

Name: George Azih
Company: FinQuery is a lease-accounting management software.
Location: Atlanta, USA
Total amount raised: US$65M
Total Employees: 200-500

How I Found Product-Market Fit

In 2010, there were probably five people on the planet who understood lease accounting as deeply as I did. It was my obsession. But before it was my obsession, it was just my job.

In 2008, I was working at a Fortune 500 company in technical accounting, responsible for ensuring our compliance with the lease-accounting rules. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) started discussing changes that would make these rules more complex and, despite the existing rules being straightforward, our $8B company struggled to get it right.

This raised a crucial question: how could we comply with even more complex rules if we were failing with the current ones? In my efforts to guide our accountants, I thought we could buy an existing software to correct our errors. But after searching the market, I found that nothing existed. By March 2010, I was convinced of the need for a software solution.

For 18 months, I didn’t write a single line of code. I spent this time writing out all of the requirements for future developers, immersing myself in understanding every possible scenario and writing highly technical blogs to attract potential customers. It became my obsession.

In January 2012, my twin daughters were born. By September of the same year, I officially started LeaseQuery (now FinQuery). The journey from 2011 to 2014 was grueling; I balanced my day job with building the company, often working 120 hours a week. The toll on my health was so severe that I developed double vision.

If I couldn’t see, at least I could sell. I created my own advisory board with experts in legal, tax, sales, and accounting, whose guidance was invaluable. We bootstrapped FinQuery, focusing on customer-funded growth. By 2016, with the help of my new partner, Chris Ramsay, we secured a significant three-year contract paid in advance, giving us more runway to grow.

By 2018, we had eight-figure annual revenues and suddenly I had a lot more to lose than when I started. Around this time, Chris called me on the phone after walking his dog (it’s always on these walks that he gets the craziest ideas). Sure enough, he had a crazy idea — to rent a huge trailer with our name on it and park it in front of the FASB office for a marketing activation. My instinct was to protect what we had built.

But after thinking about it again, I realized we were playing it too safe — like the hare taking a nap after gaining such a huge lead on the tortoise. I didn’t want to risk losing all of the progress we made. We couldn’t afford to make the same mistake. We needed to stay aggressive and take risks to continue growing.

Our bootstrapping journey culminated in 2019. Seeking external funding was a very deliberate step. We thought carefully when selecting our partner, making sure it would lend itself to a good long-term relationship. We went with Goldman Sachs for our Series A round, raising $42M.

Over the next five years, we evolved from a single-product company to a comprehensive financial management platform with over 8,000 clients. In the last two years, we have grown our customer base by 300%. In April of this year, we secured a Series B round of $25M led by Periphas Capital and supported by Lavelle Capital.

Final Thoughts

Recognizing a problem and seeing a solution doesn’t automatically make you the ideal person to tackle it. However, in this case, I truly believe I was uniquely positioned to solve this particular issue. Transitioning from an accountant to a tech CEO might seem unlikely, given the typical path of an accountant, but for me, it was a necessary evolution driven by the complexities I faced in my career. I’m happy to know that through FinQuery, I can now help other accountants navigate the same management hurdles I once encountered firsthand.