Fieldguide Raises $30M Series B, Launches AI Platform to Solve CPA Talent Shortage
SAN FRANCISCO, March 26, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Fieldguide, the leading AI platform for advisory and audit services, announced today a $30 million Series B funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, the venture firm behind vertical SaaS and AI companies, such as EvenUp, Procore, ServiceTitan and Shopify. Since its founding, Fieldguide’s mission has been to address the CPA and advisory industry’s talent shortage with AI solutions that enable practitioners of all levels to tackle manual tasks with speed and high quality in a secure, privacy-conscious manner.
“We are thrilled to partner with Bessemer Venture Partners as we embark on the next phase of our journey to transform the advisory and audit industry with purpose-built, AI-powered solutions,” said Jin Chang, Fieldguide CEO and Co-Founder. “This substantial investment will allow us to continue fulfilling our mission to revolutionize the way advisory and audit work is done, delivering a broader range of AI cloud solutions to firms of all sizes in order to bridge the widening talent gap.”
Since announcing its Series A round in March 2022, Fieldguide has experienced hypergrowth and become the AI platform of choice for all types of advisory and audit engagements. Nearly forty of the Top 100 CPA and consulting firms, including Wipfli, Mazars, and Aprio, report that Fieldguide saves up to 50% of hours on engagements, enabling them to grow their business with existing practitioners and increase margins, ultimately helping them overcome the industry-wide talent shortage.
“Fieldguide is addressing pain points for an industry that has been plagued by a lack of modern cloud-based software, talent shortages, and manual processes. Its AI platform automates and addresses inefficiencies of the audit process, enabling CPA firms to be more productive and focus on higher-value strategic work,” said Sameer Dholakia, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “Fieldguide is a shining example of how a vertical SaaS AI platform can reshape workflows and drive productivity gains, and we look forward to partnering closely with Fieldguide’s exceptional leadership team as they help this critical industry thrive in the next era.”
Participating investors in the Series B round include 8VC, and leading AI and SaaS company CEOs, further underscoring the industry’s confidence in Fieldguide’s potential and market leadership.
The Fieldguide Story
As a former EY practitioner, Fieldguide CEO and co-Founder, Jin Chang, experienced the pain of managing complex advisory and audit engagements first-hand. He was determined to build a solution that would eliminate the endless hours of tedious, manual work, increase efficiency, and enable practitioners to focus on advising clients. After combining forces with his co-founder and CTO, Chris Szymansky, Fieldguide was founded in 2020, and instantly transformed the advisory and audit profession.
“Using Fieldguide has expanded our opportunities to improve service to clients,” said Bob Cedergren, risk advisory services leader and partner at top 20 national advisory and accounting firm Wipfli LLP. “The tool has enabled us to streamline our workflow and allowed our engagement managers to be more advisory in their work.”
The Fieldguide Platform
Fieldguide’s AI platform is the industry’s first secure and private AI solution designed to significantly reduce the work and tedium associated with drafting and analyzing tests, requests, and document reviews, so that staff members can focus on more critical and higher margin work.
According to Mark Koziel, President and CEO of Allinial Global, a leading association for accounting and consulting professionals, “Given the talent pipeline challenges of the CPA profession, Fieldguide’s next-generation AI platform comes at a welcome time. With Fieldguide’s Series B funding, I look forward to watching their continued growth and transformation in providing the CPA profession with the right tools.”
The capital infusion from the Series B funding round will be strategically utilized for:
Product Development: Enhance Fieldguide’s AI capabilities, adding new features, such as fraud and forensic services, advanced practice management analytics, and support for additional regulatory compliance standards, such as CMMC.
Market Expansion: Expand market reach to include all types and sizes of advisory and audit firms, and to strengthen Fieldguide’s presence internationally.
Talent Acquisition: Attract top-tier talent across engineering, data science, and customer success to drive innovation and ensure exceptional service delivery.
About Fieldguide
Built by and for practitioners, Fieldguide is the leading AI platform for advisory and audit services, streamlining the entire engagement lifecycle for firms and their clients. Their AI-powered, cloud-based software helps firms take advantage of the increasing demand for advisory and audit services by addressing the challenges of scarce talent, remote collaboration, and more sophisticated clients.
Fieldguide provides end-to-end visibility across most advisory and audit engagements, including risk and cybersecurity, privacy, payment card compliance, regulatory compliance, SOC audits, HITRUST, and more. Top 100 and innovative firms like CBIZ, Wipfli, Mazars, and Aprio trust Fieldguide to increase revenue, boost client satisfaction, and improve profits.
Fieldguide has been recognized by AccountingToday and CPA Practice Advisor, receiving the AccountingToday Top New Products Award and the CPA Practice Advisor Technology Innovation Award in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Fieldguide CEO, Jin Chang, was also named one of CPA Practice Advisor’s 20 Under 40 Most Influential People in Accounting in 2022 and 2023. The company is backed by top investment firms, including Bessemer Venture Partners, 8VC, Y Combinator, and Floodgate.
About Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners helps entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to build and forge long-standing companies. With more than 145 IPOs and 300 portfolio companies in the enterprise, consumer and healthcare spaces, Bessemer supports founders and CEOs from their early days through every stage of growth. Bessemer’s global portfolio has included Pinterest, Shopify, Twilio, Yelp, LinkedIn, PagerDuty, DocuSign, Wix, Fiverr, and Toast and has $20 billion of assets under management. Bessemer has teams of investors and partners located in Tel Aviv, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, London, Hong Kong, Boston, and Bangalore. Born from innovations in steel more than a century ago, Bessemer’s storied history has afforded its partners the opportunity to celebrate and scrutinize its best investment decisions (see Memos) and also learn from its mistakes (see Anti-Portfolio).
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