startup-finance
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Ashley Schagrin Wants Accounting to Stop Working Around the Work
After KPMG, Dropbox, and nine years inside Pilot, the CPA-turned-operator has a clear thesis for AI accounting: automate the workaround, keep the judgment, and give people back the client conversation.
Jessica McKellar
Jessica McKellar is the CEO of Pilot.com, the largest accounting firm for startups in the US, which she co-founded in 2017 alongside longtime collaborators Waseem Daher and Jeff Arnold. A MIT computer science alumna, she previously co-founded Zulip (acquired by Dropbox) and served as Director of Engineering at Dropbox. Beyond building companies, she has been a transformative force in the Python open source community, growing Boston's Python user group to the world's largest, and teaching Python inside San Quentin State Prison. Pilot reached unicorn status in 2021 with a $1.2B valuation and over $222M raised from Sequoia, Index Ventures, and Bezos Expeditions.
Parmvir Basra
Parmvir Basra is a finance leader at Vapi, the developer-first voice AI platform backed by Peak XV, Bessemer, and Kleiner Perkins. With nearly a decade of FP&A and corporate finance experience spanning PagerDuty and BrightEdge, Basra joined Vapi in late 2025 as the company scaled through its $50M Series B and crossed 1 billion calls processed. He brings rigorous financial modeling and strategic business partnering to one of the fastest-growing AI infrastructure companies in Silicon Valley.
Swapnil Shinde
Swapnil Shinde is the CEO and Co-founder of Zeni, an AI-powered finance operations platform for startups headquartered in Palo Alto. A serial entrepreneur with three company launches and two successful exits - Dhingana (acquired by Rdio) and Mezi (acquired by American Express for ~$150M) - he co-founds every venture with his identical twin brother Snehal. At Zeni, Swapnil leads marketing, sales, and operations while Snehal owns product and tech. The company manages over $1 billion in startup finances monthly, has raised $49.5M in funding, and serves hundreds of venture-backed startups with real-time AI-driven bookkeeping, accounting, and CFO services.
Jordan Long
Jordan Long is the CMO and General Partner at ESO Fund, a San Mateo-based fintech firm that provides non-recourse funding to startup employees seeking to exercise stock options or unlock liquidity from private shares. A Bay Area native with a background in data analytics and mathematical economics from Wake Forest University, Jordan joined ESO Fund in 2018 and has built its marketing engine from the ground up, growing the fund through five vehicles and over $200 million in capital. He co-authors the firm's newsletter 'ESO's Monthly Start-Up' and serves as press contact, blending analytical rigor with editorial instinct in a niche that sits at the intersection of venture capital, tax planning, and employee financial wellness.
Peter Blackwood
Peter Blackwood is a Partner on the Capital Network team at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he leads the Consumer vertical and manages the firm's global investor, corporate strategic, and advisory relationships for consumer and gaming companies. A former investment banker with over 15 years in the technology sector - spanning SoundView Technology Group, Janney Montgomery Scott, and JMP Securities - Blackwood brings deep capital markets expertise to a16z portfolio companies navigating equity raises, debt financing, and strategic partnerships. He is co-author of a16z's widely-read '16 Commandments of Raising Equity in a Challenging Market' and joined the board of gaming platform Overwolf following a16z's $75M Series D investment. Off-hours, he chases trout on rivers.
Vanessa Kruze
Vanessa Kruze is the founder and CEO of Kruze Consulting, a San Francisco-based accounting and finance firm exclusively serving venture-capital-backed startups. A CPA and Deloitte Tax alum, she launched Kruze in 2012 after working as a startup controller and spotting a gap in the market for specialized, tech-forward financial services for founders. Today, the firm has served 800+ startups that have collectively raised over $15 billion in VC funding, earned seven consecutive Inc 5000 honors, and is known in Silicon Valley as the go-to accounting partner for early- and growth-stage companies.
James Chan
James Chan is the CFO of LDV Capital, a New York-based early-stage venture fund investing in visual technology and AI startups. With 20+ years spanning public accounting, Fortune 500 corporate finance, and CFO roles at hypergrowth startups and venture firms, he founded JMC Strategic Advisory in 2022 to serve as a fractional CFO across multiple funds simultaneously - including Bow Capital, BankTech Ventures, Breakout Ventures, Lineate, and First Spark Ventures - overseeing more than $1 billion in assets under management. He holds a BA from UCLA and an MS in Business Taxation from USC, and is known for eating ice cream with chopsticks.