Medsender is a leading AI platform trusted by thousands of healthcare providers across all fifty states to reduce administrative burdens. Medsender’s platform leverages artificial intelligence to process and synchronize data from unstructured sources, such as fax, email, and phone, automating administrative workflows and patient communications.
The platform streamlines operations by automating complex tasks like processing referrals, scheduling, and managing patient requests, enabling healthcare providers to focus on delivering quality care.
Recently, Medsender closed a $5 million Series A round with Ballast Point Ventures.
Looking For A True FP&A Partner
When an early-stage company seeks fractional finance and accounting leadership services from a firm like Attivo, the ability of the firm to earn the trust of the company’s founders and leadership team every day is the key to a successful engagement.
Over the last 2.5 years, Attivo and Medsender have worked through a wide range of company milestones. From building foundational accounting systems to expanding Medsender’s financial reporting to working with Medsender’s leadership team through the company’s first successful institutional funding round, Attivo’s Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) Team has supported Medsender each step of the way.
“As a small, early-stage startup, we wanted to add fractional expertise in financial planning and modeling. It was important for us to get a sense of FP&A best practices for scaling a financial platform,’ reflects Medsender Co-CEO Salman Haque.
“We really enjoyed our initial conversation with Attivo. Their emphasis on communication and availability stood out. Over time, that relationship has grown, and we’ve utilized their services more and more. It feels like they’re an extension of our team.”
Better Financial Visibility and Reporting
From the beginning of Attivo’s engagement with Medsender, the focus was on preparing Medsender’s financial systems and reporting to grow, scale, and ultimately achieve the level of sophistication needed for an institutional fundraise. With that goal in mind, Attivo focused on refining reporting practices to improve visibility into Medsender’s financial performance.
Practically, this meant managing expenses and forecasting cash runway. “We didn’t have as detailed visibility into the operations of the business as we wanted before we engaged with Attivo,” shares Salman. “Having their team add that layer of detail was very helpful for us in operating the business.”
Maturing and Scaling Financial Systems
Before Medsender’s partnership with Attivo, the company used manual processes for bookkeeping work. The financial modeling process uncovered elements of the business that could be streamlined and automated, which led to Attivo taking on more responsibility for Medsender’s financial planning work.
“We moved Medsender away from their original manual transaction and finance processes to platforms that are more efficient, transparent, and scalable,” shares Scot Mollot, CFO and FP&A Team Lead. “The goal was to make financial information more digestible and actionable for Medsender’s leadership team as they prepared for their fundraise.”
Understanding Cash Runway
A detailed cash analysis provides crucial insight for founders to see where they are allocating resources and enables them to make needed strategic decisions on how they can optimize cash runway. For Medsender, this was an important exercise because it allowed their team to develop a deeper understanding of the flow of funds within their business.
“We put cash analysis in place early because we wanted Medsender’s leadership to see where they were spending money,” says Scot, “Helping founders understand cash spending and how that spending impacts runway is a critical early exercise with startups that want to scale. This set their team up for fundraising because it helped them determine the amount Medsender wanted to raise and why.”
Continually Identifying Opportunity
“We needed to make sure Medsender’s financials and reporting were accurate and consistent so their team could prepare for a fundraise,” shares Kari Cook, Senior Accounting Manager. “A key area of focus was revenue recognition. Before Attivo’s engagement, there was only cash basis revenue recognition. As a company grows, adherence to GAAP standards provides a more consistent story to investors. Investors expect this consistency in order to compare to SaaS metrics and other industry benchmarks.”
“As Medsender grew, we needed to ensure more formal processes were in place, specifically around vendor invoices and payroll processing,” Kari continued. “This relieved Medsender leadership from day-to-day financial and accounting tasks in order to focus on the growth of the business.”
Partnering Through Medsender’s First Institutional Fundraise
Given Attivo’s focus on working with venture-backed companies, understanding investor requirements through a fundraise is a core competency of our FP&A team and firm as a whole. When Medsener was ready to begin the fundraising process, Attivo was on hand to offer support and assistance. Building the financial reporting fundamentals first allowed the Attivo team to focus on strategic insights, which enabled the team to better understand the business and develop the financial model and analysis needed to support the fundraise.
“Attivo made the Medsender team’s life easier by providing greater visibility into all the financial levers of the business. Having that visibility has informed various decisions we’ve made as a management team,” Salman shares. “Attivo has been able to take on more and more as we’ve asked them to. They’ve helped us build a complex financial model. They’ve helped us prepare materials for fundraising–putting together reporting for our data room, and our first fundraise.”
“We’ve gotten feedback from our investors that our data room and books are really clean, which facilitated their ability to move quickly in the due diligence process. The timeline and speed of our responses to various investor requests has stood out.”
Strategic Partnership Beyond FP&A
“It’s been exciting to work with Medsender’s co-founders and see the strategic conversations that have come up after financial modeling was put in place and we had better data to pull from,” shares Scot. “As trust grows, the back-and-forth conversations become more about supporting the business as a whole, which is deeply rewarding.”
Salman agrees, “One thing I’ve appreciated working with Scot and Attivo is getting a strategic perspective alongside financial advice. It’s great to get a financial perspective, but without having the business sense to go with it, it’s not as useful. Having both is something we find very helpful.”
A Trusted FP&A Partner
“Attivo is a firm I can trust to do this work. Their expertise, communication, and reliability are valuable. Attivo’s willingness to hop on a late night or weekend Zoom is a testament to the fact that we feel like Attivo is a natural extension of the Medsender team,” reflects Salman.
“Attivo has helped Medsender achieve a level of organizational maturity in terms of metrics, reporting, and financial planning that was necessary for our company’s growth and first institutional fundraise. As a relatively young founding team, it’s helpful to be able to draw on their wealth of experience.”
Summary
The story of Attivo and Medsender is an example of Attivo’s FP&A playbook in action: provide immediate value by building finance and accounting infrastructure to scale, demonstrate expertise through deep insight and proactive communication, and grow the relationship to support the client in achieving their top-level goals.
