How I work as a CFO
"I believe the next generation of finance leaders won't just use AI; they'll design how it's used, safely and accountably."
What I build for the CEOs I work with, so they can focus on what makes their business unique.
Selo is the AI platform I built and use as a CFO. It compresses months of finance work into weeks, without losing the judgment that makes the output trustworthy.
A working example of my method, shown on a demo company. Human-led: AI drafts, I review and sign off. Company data stays in a private, access-controlled space; Selo never plugs into a company's systems.
Illustrative: a demo company, not client data.
What is Selo?
The platform I built to run finance: AI does the heavy lifting, I do the judgment.
Where is it used?
It's how I work when I join a company as CFO: same method, same standard, from day one.
Can't we just use ChatGPT?
Same tools, different driver. AI amplifies whoever steers it; the value is the judgment that makes it trustworthy.
Is the data safe?
The upside of AI without putting AI inside the business. Nothing ever connects to company systems.
What keeps founders up at night
Drawn from twenty years beside founders and CEOs; the same worries come up in every company, whatever the sector.
Live runway, with an alert well before it crosses the safety line.
Spend vs. budget line by line, with overspend flagged every month, not at year-end.
Utilisation by team, so hiring follows real capacity, not gut feel.
DD readiness tracked continuously, so there are no months of scrambling before a raise.
Revenue, pipeline and retention in one view, and which levers move it most.
Run the scenario before signing: cash, margin and people, in minutes.
The centrepiece
The decisions that shape a company rarely wait for the month-end report. The CEO asks in plain language; Selo models the impact on the real numbers, and I explain what it means and what I recommend.
How it works
Then Selo runs month after month, keeping everything current as the company grows.
Priorities agreed with the CEO; a private Selo workspace opens.
CEO · 30 minThe team drops in what exists: decks, exports, contracts. Any format.
Team · uploadAI reads, reconciles and drafts; I set the logic and fill the gaps.
AI + CFOEvery figure checked and signed off; the CEO reviews it with me before anything is final.
CFO + CEODeliverables, scenarios and board room, all at one simple web address.
Then monthlyWhy not instantly? AI can draft an analysis in minutes. Making it right takes longer: gathering what's scattered, reconciling numbers that don't agree, spotting what's missing, my review, and the CEO's validation. Most of the 30 days is that rigour, and most of it is on me. The CEO's part is a short kick-off and a review session.
AI and human, clearly split
Anyone can ask a chatbot for a forecast. The hard part is knowing when it's wrong, what the board actually needs, and which five things out of a hundred matter.
What AI does
What I do as CFO
What the CEO does
My method
Built from twenty years of board cycles, audits, fundraises and acquisitions, and applied the same way in every company: every control traces back to a goal and a risk.
The company's goals for the next 12 to 24 months
The processes that deliver them
The risks that could stop them
Key controls on the risks that matter
Into how the team actually works
A yearly rhythm that keeps it alive
Foundation first. Who may decide and sign what, a short set of board-approved policies, one register for every document, and procedures where mistakes hurt most. Simple to start, ready to scale, and ready for due diligence.
The deliverables
Everything I put in order when I join a company, tailored to it and signed off before it reaches the CEO or the board.
Financial
Budget vs. actuals, cash flow, runway, spend and team utilisation.
Performance, financials and key decisions, published to the board room.
Governance
Cap table, org chart and the calendar that keeps the company compliant.
Where the company stands if due diligence starts tomorrow, and what to fix.
Customers and suppliers: terms, renewals and dependency risk.
Red flags across legal, financial and operational, rated by severity.
Decisions
Ask a question, see the impact on cash, margin and people. On demand.
Where the company stands, the biggest risks, the decisions to make, with a clear recommendation.
Findings turned into owners and deadlines: follow-through, not paperwork.
What's been received and what's missing, tracked over time.
Board & investor rooms
The board and investors read what they need, where it lives, and ask their questions before the meeting, not during it.
Links are protected with a one-time email code, expire automatically, and every view is logged.
Churn is up two quarters in a row. What's driving it?
Concentrated in small monthly accounts (€4–5k MRR/month); top accounts stable. Retention plan launches in May.
Awaiting CEO reviewIllustrative: a demo company, not client data.
Pre-reads, questions and answers, decisions and minutes: one place, before and after every meeting.
Quarterly updates on the same logic, and when a raise starts, it becomes the due-diligence room, already in order.
About me
CFO · builder of Selo
Twenty years as an Operational CFO, most of them in hyper-growth scale-ups, as the hybrid CFO/COO who builds the finance and operations backbone a company needs to scale.
Fundraises, due diligence, governance, and the operations behind them. Selo is that experience encoded into a platform: it is how he works in every company he joins as CFO, and he reviews and signs off the work himself.
FAQ
Not at the moment. Selo is how I work as a CFO, shared here as an example of what AI-native finance looks like in practice: the method, the deliverables and the safeguards. Happy to walk anyone through it.
They can use the same tools, but AI amplifies whoever is steering it. It gives fast, confident answers; the hard part is knowing when they're wrong, what the board needs, and what to prioritise. That's twenty years of board cycles, audits and fundraises, not a prompt. Selo is that judgment, built into the method and signed off by me.
No, and it never will. Selo doesn't plug into accounting, banking or internal tools, and never merges AI into the company's environment. Documents are shared into a private Selo workspace; the company's systems stay untouched, and nothing reaches back into them.
Yes, it's built for exactly that worry. Documents are held to the same standards as a virtual data room: a private, access-controlled space for one company alone. Confidentiality and GDPR obligations are in place before the first document, materials are encrypted, and data is never used to train AI. See Data privacy.
A leading enterprise AI model, used only inside a private workspace and configured so data is never used for training. Documents are stored encrypted on enterprise cloud infrastructure covered by a GDPR data processing agreement. Every sub-processor is covered by that agreement.
No. Board members and investors receive a secure link, confirm their email with a one-time code, and read the pre-reads in their browser. Links expire automatically and every view is logged.
Yes. CFO rigour (clean numbers, governance, board-ready reporting) transfers across sectors. The method draws on two decades across pharma, ed-tech, deep tech, SaaS, communications, consumer audio, fashion/retail and solar.
Data privacy
Companies trust their CFO with their most confidential material. Protecting it is built into how I work.
Human in the loop, always. I review and sign off every deliverable; Selo makes no autonomous decisions.
Confidentiality and GDPR obligations in place before the first document.
Data-room standards. A private space for one company alone, encrypted in transit and at rest, with multi-factor access.
Never connected to company systems. No AI is merged into the environment; nothing reaches back into internal tools.
Never used to train AI, never sold, never shared beyond the work itself.
Returned or securely deleted when the work ends.
Selo is built and operated by EDG AB, registered in Sweden and subject to the EU GDPR.
Click through every deliverable on a demo company, or drop me a line; I'm always happy to talk about how AI is changing the CFO role.
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