financial-operations
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When Mercury Stops Being Enough
Mercury is the clean financial cockpit many founders need on day one. NetSuite enters when the company behind that cockpit becomes too complicated to run from bank feeds and spreadsheets.
Everett Cook
Everett Cook is the co-founder and CEO of Rho, a New York-based financial operations platform that combines business banking, corporate cards, payments, and expense management for growing companies. Before founding Rho in 2018 with Alex Wheldon, Cook spent roughly a decade in global macro investing, leading research at multi-billion-dollar funds and working in the orbit of figures like Steve Cohen and Michael Bloomberg. Raised in a New York finance family, he blends the discipline of a trader with an entrepreneurial streak that started at age 14, and has raised more than $200 million to build banking software for real, operating businesses rather than consumers.
Ascend
Ascend is a San Francisco-based financial operations platform purpose-built for the insurance industry. It automates the money workflows brokers, agencies, wholesalers, MGAs and carriers deal with every day - billing and invoicing, premium collection and financing, cash application, commission reconciliation and carrier payables - so businesses close their books faster and cut manual accounting work. Founded in 2021 by Andrew Wynn and Praveen Chekuri, the company is trusted by more than 4,000 insurance businesses, including over half of the 50 largest brokers in the US, and in 2026 agreed to merge with premium finance firm Honor Capital to form what the companies describe as insurance's first fully vertically integrated, AI-powered financial operations platform.
Ramp
Ramp is a finance operations platform that combines corporate cards, expense management, bill pay, procurement, travel, treasury and accounting automation into one system. Built to save businesses time and money, it uses AI to cut manual finance work, enforce spend controls, and surface savings. Founded in 2019 by Harvard friends Eric Glyman, Karim Atiyeh and Gene Lee, Ramp serves 70,000+ organizations and reached a $44B valuation in June 2026.