About the practice · Southold, NY

come argue with our assumptions.

Bellerophon Advisory is a small fractional CFO practice working out of an office on Founders Path. We build the cash forecast, the budget and the board pack for startups that have outgrown a founder’s spreadsheet but haven’t yet earned a full-time CFO — and we expect you to push back on every number we put in them.

Book a call to push back or read what each engagement costs

A printed profit-and-loss page covered in red-pen question marks, with a brass pencil and leather notebook, in low window light — **fig. 06** — the red pen is for questions, not corrections. Most margins end up full of them.

What we are: Part-time finance leadership, quoted per engagement, from $2,950.
What we aren’t: Bookkeepers, auditors or tax preparers. We’ll point you to good ones.
Where: 260 Founders Path, Southold. Shared files and video calls everywhere else.

Debits and credits

every way we work costs you something. here’s the ledger.

Hiring a fractional CFO is a trade. These are the entries on both sides, written as plainly as we’d write them in your own books. If the left column bothers you more than the right one helps, we’re not your firm — and that’s fine.

Trade-offs of working with Bellerophon Advisory: what you give up, and what you get in return
Dr. · debitwhat you give up	Cr. · creditwhat you get for it
we’re part-time We aren’t in your office or your Slack all day. A question sent at 11pm gets answered the next working morning.	you skip a full-time salary No senior salary, no equity grant, no recruiter fee — for a role that, at your stage, is a few days of real work a month.
we won’t touch the bookkeeping If your books are behind, someone else has to catch them up before we can start. That can push our start date back.	nobody marks their own homework The person checking the numbers isn’t the person who typed them in. Boards and investors notice that difference.
we quote a fixed fee Fixed price means written scope. Ask for something outside it halfway through and you’ll get a second quote, not a quiet favour.	the invoice matches the letter What we quoted before we started is what you’re billed when we finish. If we misjudged the hours, that’s ours to eat.
we work remotely by default Most of our time with you is shared files and video. If you need someone physically at the next desk, we’re the wrong shape.	you don’t pay for our commute When a board meeting genuinely needs a body in the room, we’ll come — and tell you what the travel costs before we book it.
we write down what we think The board letter will sometimes say something you’d rather it didn’t. You see it first; we won’t sand it down to nothing.	the board believes the pack A pack that was straight with them when the news was bad gets trusted when the news is good. That outlasts one comfortable meeting.
we keep the client list short When we’re full, we say so and give you a real start date instead of squeezing you in and doing it badly.	we already know your file When you ring, whoever answers has been inside your model that week — not reading it for the first time while you wait.
Balance carried down a finance function sized to the company you are now — with a written handover for the day you hire the CFO who replaces us.

Why the practice exists

built for the awkward middle — after the seed round, before the finance hire

An open book of Greek myths on a printed cash forecast, an antique brass bridle buckle resting on the page — **fig. 07** — the bridle, more or less.

There’s a stretch in most startups where the money questions outgrow the people answering them. Revenue is real, headcount is climbing, a board meets every quarter — and the financial model is still the one a co-founder built over a weekend before the first raise. Nobody did anything wrong. The company just got bigger than its spreadsheet.

n. 1 — Usually somewhere between seed and Series B. Earlier if there’s inventory sitting in a warehouse.

Both of the usual fixes are bad at this stage. Hire a full-time CFO and you’re paying a senior executive to do a few days of real work a month. Leave it with the founders and the forecast drifts quietly until a board member asks something nobody can answer. Bellerophon exists to sit in that gap: the finance function you need now, quoted up front, with an end date.

n. 2 — The end date matters. An adviser with no end date has a quiet reason to stay necessary.

the job isn’t to slow the horse down. it’s to get a bridle on it.

That’s where the name comes from. Bellerophon is the one in the myth who bridled Pegasus — he didn’t clip the wings, he got hold of the animal so it could be ridden somewhere useful. A company growing faster than its finance is the same problem, and the bridle is unglamorous: a weekly cash view, a budget everyone has argued over, a board pack that opens with runway.

n. 3 — Later in the myth he flies too high and falls off. We bring this up in raise-prep meetings more often than you’d expect.

We work from Southold because the work doesn’t need Manhattan rent, and our clients shouldn’t be paying for it. The models live in your Google Sheets or Excel, the calls happen on video, and the office on Founders Path has a table big enough for a printed board pack when someone wants to drive out east.

n. 4 — Our overhead ends up as a line in your quote. We’d like that line to stay short.

Every engagement ends with a handover file: a written guide to every model we built, why each assumption is what it is, and which numbers to watch. When you do hire that full-time CFO, they should start working on day one, not spend a month reverse-engineering us.

n. 5 — The handover file is the part clients are least excited to pay for and most glad to have a year later.

Office hours, honestly used

a week on founders path

Mon–Thu 10am–5pm, Fri to 2pm. Here’s where those hours actually go, so you know when a call is easy to get and when we’re heads-down in somebody’s board pack.

monday

10am–5pm

roll-forwards

Every client’s cash forecast updated with last week’s actuals, before anyone has to ask what changed.

tuesday

10am–5pm

working sessions

The assumption arguments: churn, hiring dates, how long your biggest customer really takes to pay. Two hours each, on video.

wednesday

10am–5pm

pack drafting

Board letters and variance notes. The phone stays on, but expect a call back after four rather than right away.

thursday

10am–5pm

first calls

Diligence follow-ups in the morning. Afternoons kept clear for twenty-minute calls with companies we haven’t met yet.

friday

10am–2pm

loose ends

Short day. Invoices, filing, and a written note to each client: what moved this week, what we’re watching next.

Bars run 9am to 6pm. Friday is shorter on purpose.

A long oak table with a board pack and a burnt-orange chair, tall windows looking onto North Fork farmland

If you’d rather drive out

the table on founders path

Most clients never come out — the work doesn’t need it. But when a board pack has to be spread across a table and argued over on paper, this is where that happens.

Address

Bellerophon Advisory
260 Founders Path
Southold, NY 11971

Route me to Founders Path

Hours

Mon–Thu	10am–5pm
Fri	10am–2pm
Sat–Sun	closed

Arrange a visit

fig. 08 — Founders Path in the morning. The farmland outside is the only thing in the room we don’t forecast.

before you drive out

Tell us the day before, so the table’s clear and the pack is printed.
Bring the laptop with the model on it — we work in your file, not ours.
Fridays end at 2pm, so plan a morning if you’re coming then.
Lost on the way? Call (631) 324-3036.