Fundraising · FP&A · Strategic finance · Data · Implementation
Disruptive Insights is an independent consulting practice working with companies from Seed through Series B — on the raise itself and the diligence around it, the FP&A and strategic finance underneath it, the systems that report it, and the introductions that shorten all of the above.
Services
Most engagements start with one of these and pull in a second. Scope is deliberately small at the start — a defined piece of work with a defined output, not an open retainer.
Running a raise as a real process: the narrative, the model investors will actually test, target lists and sequencing, and holding the timeline together once term sheets start moving. Working alongside investment banks and advisors, or standing in where there is no team to do it — building the data room, answering diligence requests, and reconciling the numbers before someone else finds the gap.
Connecting businesses that should already know each other — investors, suppliers, distributors, channel partners, buyers. Engaged on a finder's fee, agreed in writing before any introduction is made.
Budgets, forecasts and reporting a leadership team can run on. Cleaning up a model, standing up a monthly close-and-review rhythm, or fixing a forecast nobody trusts any more.
The decisions underneath the model. Pricing and unit economics, build-versus-buy, headcount sequencing, and the scenario work that tells you how much runway a decision actually costs.
Turning data a business already collects into something it can act on — customer and cohort analysis, churn and retention, forecast inputs, and reporting that does not need rebuilding by hand every month.
Selecting and standing up the finance stack. I have implemented FP&A platforms including Acctuate, Aleph and Drivetrain — scoping the evaluation, mapping the chart of accounts and drivers, and getting a finance team live on it rather than licensed and stuck.
Approach
Small practice, senior attention. You get the person you met, doing the work, for the length of the engagement.
Every engagement is defined by a deliverable and a date — a model, a data room, a decision memo, a system that is live. If a piece of work cannot be described that way, it is usually not ready to be started.
A fundraise is only as good as the model behind it, and the model is only as good as the system producing it. Working across all three means the story, the forecast and the reporting do not contradict each other in diligence.
Including when the answer is that you do not need me, or that you are not ready to raise. A short, honest scoping conversation is worth more than a long proposal for work that will not move anything.
Experience
Consulting and solutions engineering work across enterprise software, infrastructure, security and distribution. The engagements below were carried out independently and through prior roles.
Company names are listed to describe the industries and types of engagement involved. They do not imply endorsement, sponsorship or a current relationship, and all names remain the property of their respective owners.
About
Founder
Ram does the finance work a company needs before it can justify a finance team. Running the month-end close, keeping external bookkeepers on schedule and their output trustworthy, and building a strategic finance function from nothing — the model, the reporting rhythm, and the systems underneath both.
He began his career as an investment banking analyst at Guggenheim Partners and has since worked in strategic finance at venture-backed technology companies. The software side comes from the same place: he has implemented FP&A platforms including Acctuate, Aleph and Drivetrain, which means he has seen how a lot of finance teams actually plan, close and report — and where it tends to break.
He also has experience in food and beverage distribution and early-stage investing, which is where the fundraising and introductions work comes from. Ram studied economics and environmental science at the University of Michigan and splits his time between New Jersey and New York.
Ram Patel · Founder
Disruptive Insights LLC
Contact
A few sentences is plenty — what the business does, what is not working, and what you would want to be true in ninety days. I read everything and reply to the ones I can genuinely help with.