Vareto Raises $24M to Revolutionize Enterprise Financial Planning

Vareto Secures $24 Million to Revolutionize Financial Planning

Vareto, a company focused on enhancing financial planning and analysis for businesses, has officially emerged from stealth mode, announcing a total funding of $24 million.

A $20 million Series A round was spearheaded by GV (formerly Google Ventures) this year, building upon a $4.2 million seed financing led by Menlo Ventures in the summer of 2020. Menlo Ventures also participated in the latest funding round.

Impressive Investor Lineup

The investment round also included contributions from 40 angel investors, a group comprised of founders of successful tech companies and experienced chief financial officers.

Notable angels backing Vareto include Anne Raimondi, COO of Asana; Mark Hawkins, President and former CFO of Salesforce; Jason Child, CFO of Splunk; Dave Wehner, CFO of Facebook; Michael Linford, CFO of Affirm; Vineet Jain, CEO and co-founder of Egnyte; Manik Gupta, CVP at Microsoft; and Roy Hefer, VP of Finance at Hippo Insurance. This level of support signifies strong confidence in Vareto’s potential.

Developing the Future of FP&A

Based in Mountain View, California, Vareto is developing a new platform specifically designed for FP&A (financial planning & analysis) teams. The company’s stated goal is “building the future of financial planning.”

Beyond its impressive investor network, Vareto distinguishes itself through its experienced founding team. CEO Kat Orekhova previously served as Head of Product at Ironclad and held multiple positions at Facebook, including leading forecasting and analytics.

Founding Team Expertise

Orekhova established Facebook’s “first-ever” data science team within the FP&A department during her time at the social media giant. President Lalit Singh was formerly the COO of Udacity, successfully guiding the company to cash flow positivity.

Prior to Udacity, Singh spent several years at Hewlett-Packard Enterprises, leading the digital transformation of their $3 billion software business and serving as COO of their $2 billion Cloud business, as well as VP of operational performance.

A Platform for Proactive Financial Management

The founders joined forces in 2020 to create a platform enabling FP&A teams to seamlessly transition between planning and reporting cycles. Their vision is to empower these teams to be more forward-looking, shifting from reactive analysis to proactive future planning.

Vareto aims to deliver a strategic finance platform with the user-friendly experience of a consumer application. Orekhova’s core objective is simple: to help companies run better, achieved through an integrated planning and reporting tool designed to streamline the entire FP&A process.

Addressing Key FP&A Challenges

“Answering questions like ‘How are we doing as a business and how could we be doing even better?’ is currently a complex undertaking,” Orekhova stated.

FP&A teams, responsible for setting business targets, are the primary focus of Vareto’s platform. Orekhova highlighted a common issue: a hardware company requiring four weeks to compile a monthly business summary, resulting in a one-month delay in understanding business performance.

Data Silos and Complex Collaboration

She added that understanding business performance is particularly challenging in large enterprises with numerous acquired companies and diverse business lines. Gathering accurate insights requires consolidating data from multiple systems and coordinating with numerous stakeholders.

“Assembling a comprehensive view of your business is remarkably difficult today, and planning is even more challenging,” Orekhova explained. The average planning process for a large company takes five months, rendering the final plan outdated by the time it’s completed.

“This lag between understanding business performance and implementing operational improvements is the core problem Vareto addresses,” she told TechCrunch.

Real-Time Insights and Faster Decision-Making

The B2B SaaS startup positions itself as a central command center for finance and executive teams, providing real-time visibility into business performance and accelerating operational adjustments.

“If an opportunity is identified, resources can be allocated within days, rather than months,” Orekhova emphasized.

Personal Experiences Fueling Innovation

Singh recounted his experience at HP’s cloud business, where he received three conflicting answers regarding customer churn from different teams. This highlighted the need for a single source of truth.

Similarly, at Udacity, he struggled to obtain an accurate annual forecast due to fragmented systems and data. “At both companies, a solution like the one we’re building was lacking,” he said.

Customer Base and Investor Confidence

Vareto has not disclosed specific revenue figures, but confirmed its customer base includes companies in sales enablement, security, and property tech, such as Mindtickle and Landing.

Investors are optimistic about Vareto’s prospects. Naomi Pilosof Ionita, partner at Menlo Ventures, led the seed round, drawn to the authenticity of the founding team and Vareto’s ability to integrate financial metrics with operating metrics.

The Importance of Collaborative Forecasting

“Forecasting shouldn’t be isolated; it’s a collaborative effort involving executives across the business who own the relevant inputs,” Pilosof Ionita explained, drawing on her experience at Invoice2go.

She noted that many established solutions still rely on Excel files being exchanged via email, highlighting the need for a modern, collaborative platform with robust data interoperability.

Ease of Use and Strategic Investment

Tyson Clark, general partner at GV, praised the platform’s user-friendliness and the founding team’s combined experience. He was so impressed that he invested at the Series A stage, a departure from his usual focus on later-stage investments.

The market for tools that help companies make better decisions continues to attract significant investment. Recently, Sisu Data raised $62 million for its Real-Time Decision Intelligence Engine, which empowers analysts and leaders to understand not only what’s happening in their business, but also why, and what actions to take.