N

fcfo, founder, fun guy

[N @nicofcfo]

Allow me to reintroduce myself.

I'm Nico. I was born and raised in Rochester, MN USA.

I've sat across the table on $3B+ in deals. I've helped acquire 12 ecommerce brands, architect a $500M merger, and present investment memos to Prudential's Chief Investment Officer when I was 24.

Now I help founders figure out their numbers before someone else does it for them. I'm a fractional CFO and M&A advisor. But that's the business card. Here's the actual story.

I grew up in a house where money was talked about in two languages. My family is from Argentina. My dad was a neurologist at Mayo Clinic. He came to the U.S. and transferred everything he knew across a border, built a career, built a life, made sure his kids had more options than he did. We lost him to cancer when I was 13. You learn a lot about what someone built for you once they're gone and you're standing in it alone. Finance wasn't some abstract career path for me. It was the thing that determined whether the family was okay or not okay. I watched that math play out in real time as a kid.

I went to the University of Minnesota. Carlson School of Management. Finance degree. Dean's List four times, which I mention not because it matters now but because it mattered a lot to my parents. Got into Harvard Business School's Summer Venture in Management Program the year before I graduated. That one mattered to me.

Graduated in 2017 and went straight to PGIM Private Capital, the private credit arm of Prudential. This is where I learned what real money looks like.

I was 24 years old presenting investment committee memos to Prudential's Chief Investment Officer. Deals ranging from $10M to $700M. A $6B convenience store chain. A $2B food distributor. A $500M life sciences and reagents business. A $750M HVAC supplier. Countless packaging and paper companies across the midwest from $50M to $5B. A €400M textile manufacturer LBO in Europe that we spent months on and then didn't fund because a pandemic showed up.

Three and a half years. 30+ closed transactions. $3B+ in investment committee authorizations as the primary analyst. I learned how institutional capital actually moves, how credit committees think, how to read a business from the numbers before you ever meet the founder.

But here's what I really learned at Prudential: I didn't want to be in a big institution forever. The deals were massive and the learning was incredible, but I was a small gear in a very large machine. I wanted to be closer to the action.

So in November 2020, in the middle of COVID, I left Prudential to join a startup called Heyday as their 7th employee.

Heyday was backed by General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, and The Raine Group. The idea was to acquire and operate ecommerce brands at scale. Think Procter & Gamble but built through M&A, not R&D. I was a founding member of their acquisition team.

I went from a $3B portfolio at a 150-year-old insurance company to a company with 7 people and a thesis.

Best decision I ever made.

Over the next four years, I originated and evaluated 300+ acquisition opportunities. I led 12 completed acquisitions. Air purifiers, skincare, stationery, oral care, mushroom supplements. Every deal between $5M and $50M. Each one was a founder who'd built something real and was ready to let go of it for their own reasons.

One deal I walked away from after diligence. A $12M water sports brand. The numbers looked fine until they didn't. That one taught me more than most of the ones I closed.

We scaled from 7 employees to 200+ and from zero to $200M+ in revenue, all through acquisitions. I got promoted twice along the way and survived three rounds of layoffs.

Then in 2024, I helped architect the $500M+ merger between Heyday and Branded Group to form Essor. I was part of the synergy work that made that deal happen. It closed in August 2024.

It was a career milestone. But I was ready for what came next.

The thing about working inside someone else's machine, even a startup, is that you're always building their vision. I'd spent seven years doing that. First Prudential's, then Heyday's. I was good at it. But the creative side of me, the side that paints and does BJJ and loves comedy (the spicier the better), that side was restless.

I took a brief detour into healthcare tech at another venture-backed startup, a telepsychiatry and therapy SaaS platform, leading strategic finance and M&A. Then corporate strategy shifted and the role dissolved.

That was the push I needed.

In 2025, I started my own fractional CFO and M&A advisory firm.

Take everything I'd learned sitting across the table on billions of dollars in deals and make it available to the founders who actually need it. The ecommerce operator doing $5M who's never seen a quality of earnings report. The SaaS founder who got a term sheet and doesn't know if it's good. The independent sponsor trying to close their first deal.

Within months, I was leading the full buy-side acquisition of a healthcare logistics platform, an eight-figure acquisition of a SaaS business. Capital structure modeling, capital raising, deal execution, post-closing integration.

Now I'm running finance and analytics there. Closing the books, building the dashboards, governing the KPIs. Building inside a business I helped acquire. That feels different than anything I've done before.

Something else that matters to me: I helped co-found Scholars of Finance, a 501(c)(3) that helps develop the next generation of finance leaders to steward capital for the greater good and lead with integrity and character. 50+ university chapters, 1,000+ students annually, millions of dollars of donations raised. The older I get, the more I understand why the mission matters.

So that's me. Argentine kid who fell in love with deals, spent a decade learning how capital actually works from the inside, and now helps founders with the most important financial decisions of their lives.

I do BJJ. I paint. I'm a Vikings fan, which has taught me more about resilience than any deal ever has. I consistently shoot under 100 at golf, which is good enough for me because I only play once or twice a year. I think I'm funnier than I probably am.

If you're a founder thinking about an exit, trying to get a better handle on how to run your business, need help implementing EOS, or just want someone who's been across the table on billions in deals to look at your numbers, come talk to me.

[N @nicofcfo]

@seanquinlan Facts. Quarterly is harder to see twice on the credit card statement in one scan

[N @nicofcfo]

@lifemaximised Fable

[N @nicofcfo]

@mr_shivalrous Sure! Maybe I can get the same level of thorough free dental advice that @socks_2_tight gets

[N @nicofcfo]

Hanging out in Madrid the next week if any builder, entrepreneur, or fellow fcfo wants to grab coffee or work near Recoleta!

[N @nicofcfo]

@JustinMihaly Tennis or padel

[N @nicofcfo]

@jasonugc system

[N @nicofcfo]

@vrexec Very true, the context switching + client deadlines ramp up period with new incremental asks are what make it so tricky to juggle at times.

Relationships and trust are still important part of client + business management.

[N @nicofcfo]

@whotfiszackk Hub

[N @nicofcfo]

@DarrelFrater DM

[N @nicofcfo]

@ant0ni0_r0mer0 claude

[N @nicofcfo]

@jonwu_ let's chat applied AI in education sometime

[N @nicofcfo]

@Prabhath2003 @Axioo_us interested, how can i learn more?

[N @nicofcfo]

@vitaliidodonov MRR

[N @nicofcfo]

@AdamGillman playbook

[N @nicofcfo]

@JoshuaThirteen @BowTiedBull Good stuff. Hopefully some good learnings to help you build the next venture too

[N @nicofcfo]

@gvtcontractor Work smarter, not harder?

[N @nicofcfo]

Founders don't google "sell-side quality of earnings report." They google
"buyer is asking for financials I don't have and I'm freaking out." If you sell
CFO services using CFO language, you're talking to other CFOs.

[N @nicofcfo]

@MichLieben Repo