Building a Venture Scale FinTech SaaS Startup: Mike Whitmire, co-founder and CEO of FloQast (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How does the competitive landscape map out?

Mike Whitmire: Our main competitor historically has been the status quo around the month-end close. There’s been a traditional way of doing it — managing your team in an Excel checklist. Many people have a mindset of, “It’s always been done this way, so why change?”

A big part of what we’re doing is changing behavior and shifting minds by showing that there’s a better way, and highlighting the value proposition. If you look at our closed-loss reasons, most are due to prospects deciding to continue doing things the same way.

Once we introduce FloQast to an accountant and explain the pain points, they might go back to doing their job manually. But while doing that manual work, FloQast stays in the back of their mind. They start thinking, “It could’ve helped me with this or that.”

The trigger point often comes during the year-end close — the most complex, high-risk period, especially with an audit following. After going through that, many realize they wish they had FloQast.

Because of this cycle, March tends to be one of our best months. Companies close their books in January, audit in February, and by March, they’re ready to buy FloQast.

Sramana Mitra: Where does BlackLine sit in the competitive landscape?

Mike Whitmire: BlackLine is our main software competitor. We also compete with ERPs that offer basic checklist functionality. So, it becomes a classic conversation — do you want a best-in-breed solution like FloQast or basic built-in functionality within a larger platform?

BlackLine faces the same ERP competition. When comparing more directly, it’s really us versus BlackLine. For the first seven years of FloQast’s history, we competed head-to-head with them offering similar products.

As we expanded our platform into automation, reporting, compliance, and audit readiness, we started becoming a broader platform. We’ve invested heavily in product development. BlackLine, meanwhile, has stayed focused on close and reconciliations, mostly serving enterprise-level clients.

So yes, we compete most directly with BlackLine.

Sramana Mitra: I’ve known Therese for a long time. As you were talking, it became clear there’s significant competitive overlap.

Mike Whitmire: Yeah, and she has a great bootstrapping story. She’s super impressive. I mean no disrespect — I think very highly of her as a founder and entrepreneur.

Sramana Mitra: I think very highly of her too. So, we’re talking about your Series B — $25 million. That must have lasted you for a while, right?

Mike Whitmire: Yes, that lasted a good amount of time. Then we raised more venture funding. Once we started gaining revenue traction and the pain point was clearly understood, raising money became much easier.

Our Series C was led by Norwest Ventures, specifically by a partner named Sean Jacobson. I had known Sean a little bit from our Cornerstone days. He was a go-to-market executive doing more of the fun, front-facing work, while I was the accountant closing the books and handling the back office.

We crossed paths back then, and he later reached out to proactively lead our Series C round. At that point, we were growing fast, and I wanted to invest more in expanding the TAM. So we raised more money to hire software engineers, customer success people, salespeople — and also to begin exploring international expansion.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Building a Venture Scale FinTech SaaS Startup: Mike Whitmire, co-founder and CEO of FloQast
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