How to Choose the Right Finance Stack for Your Startup

Building Your Finance Foundation

Choosing the right finance tools early on can save you hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars as your startup scales.

Stage 1: Pre-Seed (0-10 employees)

At this stage, keep it simple:

• Banking: Mercury or Brex for your primary business account
• Payments: Stripe if you are processing transactions
• Accounting: QuickBooks or Xero for basic bookkeeping

Stage 2: Seed (10-30 employees)

As you raise your seed round, complexity increases:

• Cap Table: Carta for equity management
• Expense Management: Brex or Ramp for corporate cards
• Payroll: Gusto or Rippling for team payments

Stage 3: Series A+ (30+ employees)

At this stage, you need enterprise-grade solutions:

• FP&A: Runway or Mosaic for financial planning
• AP/AR: Bill.com or Ramp for accounts payable
• Tax: Avalara for sales tax compliance

Key Considerations

When evaluating finance tools, consider:

1. Integration with your bank — seamless data flow is critical
2. Investor reporting — can you generate reports VCs expect?
3. Multi-entity support — important if you plan to expand internationally
4. Audit trail — clean records make fundraising easier

The startups that struggle most during due diligence are the ones that waited too long to set up proper financial tooling.

Bottom Line

Invest in your finance stack early. The cost of switching tools later is always higher than setting things up right from the start.