FieldNotes

Notes from the field.

Weekly notes on strategic finance for founder-led SaaS and AI companies: forecasting, pricing, board reporting, fundraising, and where AI actually earns its keep in a finance function.

What CFOs asked about AI at a roundtable last week

The agenda had seven topics. The Q&A had one. Four AI questions from a CFO roundtable, answered the way a finance leader would answer them: spend governance, ROI, build vs. buy, and org design.

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AI-era benchmarks: gross margin, gross dollar retention, and internal AI usage

What a good gross margin looks like for an AI company in 2026, where GDR medians actually sit, and how to measure internal AI usage in a way a board can trust.

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Where AI actually earns its keep in a finance function

Most AI-in-finance demos are toys. The durable wins are boring: variance commentary, board preparation drafts, and forecast refreshes. What to automate first, and the rules that keep it safe.

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Five lessons from scaling $4M to $50M ARR

What a decade of hypergrowth teaches from the finance seat: what a forecast is actually for, the most neglected lever in SaaS, and why retention problems reach finance last.

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