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Fractional CFO & Financial Advisory

Strategic finance for founder-led and sponsor-backed companies.

Fractional CFO services and financial advisory for two kinds of businesses: owner-operated companies ready to install a real finance function, and sponsor-backed growth companies preparing for their next institutional milestone. Investor-grade rigor. Founder-grade speed.

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35+
Combined years of CFO and M&A advisory experience
$300M+
In transaction value led, advised, and closed
10×
Faster turnaround via AI-augmented delivery
100%
Fixed monthly retainers. No hourly surprises.
Who we serve

Two kinds of companies. One standard of rigor.

Porter & Piazza was built for two distinct client profiles. Each faces a different set of pressures — and each benefits from the same combination of senior operating judgment, institutional-grade discipline, and AI-augmented delivery.

Client profile 01

Founder-led businesses

Owner-operated companies between $2M and $20M in revenue — services, trades, manufacturing, distribution. Real businesses with real revenue, often run by the person who built them, and often without a finance function that matches the stage of the company.

  • First-time budgeting & forecasting processes
  • Margin visibility by product, service, or job
  • Operational turnarounds & path to profitability
  • Banking relationships, credit lines, & cash discipline
  • Preparing for eventual sale or succession
Client profile 02

Sponsor-backed growth companies

Private-equity- or venture-backed businesses between $5M and $50M in revenue. Real institutional expectations — board reporting, covenant compliance, capital events — and a finance function that needs to grow past the controller stage into true CFO-level work.

  • Board-grade reporting & investor materials
  • Three-statement forecasting & scenario modeling
  • Covenant monitoring & lender communication
  • Fundraise preparation & data room build-out
  • M&A advisory & transaction readiness
The challenge

You're past “figuring it out as we go.”

Whether you're a founder who built the business from nothing, or an operator accountable to a PE sponsor — there's a moment when the finance function you have stops matching the company you've become. Real answers take weeks. Real confidence is in short supply. You need a CFO's judgment. You don't need a CFO's salary.
  • 01
    Cash flow & profitability visibility
    Rolling forecasts, margin analysis, and the financial clarity to know which decisions help — and which quietly bleed cash.
  • 02
    Board & investor reporting
    Materials that stand up to institutional scrutiny. Narrative, metrics, and actionable insight — not just a month-end packet.
  • 03
    Capital & transaction readiness
    Fundraise preparation, M&A diligence, and exit-grade financial hygiene — whether you're raising, selling, or just planning ahead.
  • 04
    Strategic decision support
    Unit economics, pricing analysis, operational turnarounds, and capital allocation — delivered at the speed of your business.
Engagements

Three service tiers, one standard of work.

Flat monthly retainers. No hourly surprises. No minimum on questions asked. Select the tier that matches your stage, and move up as the business grows.

Tier 01

Foundation

$1,500 /month
Fixed monthly retainer
  • Monthly close review
  • Runway & cash dashboard
  • KPI reporting
  • Monthly strategy call
  • Email & Slack availability
Best for
Early-stage companies under $2M revenue with no in-house finance function.
Most common
Tier 02

Growth

$3,500 /month
Fixed monthly retainer
  • Everything in Foundation
  • Three-statement forecasting
  • Scenario & sensitivity modeling
  • Board deck preparation
  • Weekly strategy calls
  • Unit economics analysis
Best for
$2–15M revenue companies scaling up, preparing for a raise, or building a finance function.
Tier 03

Strategic

$6,500 /month
Fixed monthly retainer
  • Everything in Growth
  • Fundraise model & data room
  • M&A advisory & diligence support
  • Investor pitch support
  • Board meeting attendance
  • On-demand availability
Best for
Companies actively raising capital, preparing for exit, or navigating major transitions.
Our approach

A different kind of advisory firm.

We built Porter & Piazza around three principles — each one a response to what the traditional fractional CFO market gets wrong.

Principle 01
Operators, not ex-operators.

One of our founders is a sitting CFO at a growth-stage technology company. Your advisor is in the trenches today — same tools, same pressures, same market as you. Not a retired consultant coaching from the sidelines.

Principle 02
AI as leverage, not marketing.

We've built an AI-augmented delivery stack that compresses two-week modeling projects into two-day turnarounds. You pay a fixed monthly retainer with no hourly surprises — and we still deliver faster than firms charging three times the rate.

Principle 03
Partner, not vendor.

Flat monthly pricing means you stop rationing CFO help. Ask questions in Slack. Pull us into a board prep call. Send the messy data. That's what we're here for — and how real strategic partnership works.

Client work

Selected engagements.

Representative work across our current practice. Client details anonymized at their request; full references available under mutual NDA.

Engagement detail
Industry
Fencing & contracting
Revenue
$5M+
Structure
Owner-operator
Situation
Three consecutive years of net losses
Engagement
Fractional CFO retainer

Back to profitability after three years of losses.

A $5M+ fencing and contracting company came to us with a problem every owner-operator eventually faces: the business was generating real revenue, but the bottom line had been in the red for three consecutive years. Gross margins were unclear. Budgeting was reactive. The founder was making operating decisions without the financial visibility to know which ones were helping — and which ones were quietly bleeding cash.

We started by designing the company's first real budgeting and forecasting process — building cash flow visibility, assessing gross margins by job type, and turning the monthly close into a decision-making tool instead of a compliance exercise. With the financial picture finally clear, we worked alongside the founder to identify and drive out $600,000 in operating expenses — enough to return the business to profitability after three years of net losses.

$600K
in Opex reductions identified and executed
3 years
of net losses reversed to profitability
1 quarter
to stand up budgeting & forecasting

Client details anonymized at their request. Reference available under mutual NDA.

The firm

Two operators. One standard.

Porter & Piazza is a partnership between a career CFO and a technical founder — built on the belief that modern advisory work is a team sport between strategic finance and the technology that makes it move.

Partner · Finance
Nick Brignola

Nick is a career CFO with more than two decades of experience building and running finance functions for data-driven, technology-forward companies. He currently serves as Chief Financial Officer of a private-equity-backed technology company in the automotive and consumer finance industries.

Before his current role, Nick was CFO at two private-equity-backed healthcare technology companies, where in Q4 2024 he led a successful strategic sale of more than $150M — managing the transaction end-to-end from preparation through close. His earlier senior finance leadership includes R1 RCM, Solera Holdings, and Caris Life Sciences — a career spent in the operating seat across healthcare, automotive finance, insurance technology, and life sciences.

Nick holds a B.S. in Business Logistics from Penn State University and an MBA from Louisiana State University.

Partner · Strategy & Technology
Fred Ashu

Fred is a corporate strategy and M&A advisor with 15+ years of experience across U.S. and European markets, leading engagements in renewable energy, oil and gas, construction, SaaS, and biotechnology. He has led M&A due diligence on transactions exceeding $150M, designed multi-subsidiary budget frameworks, and driven enterprise finance transformation programs that measurably improved decision-making speed and EBITDA performance.

Fred is a recognized practitioner of AI-powered finance — integrating modern AI tooling with enterprise platforms including Power BI, SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics to accelerate due diligence, financial modeling, and strategic decision-making. It's this discipline that shapes the delivery infrastructure behind Porter & Piazza's engagement model.

Most recently, Fred served as Interim CFO at Envia Energy LLC, leading the company's structured asset disposal and capital-raise strategy during a critical transition. Prior engagements include senior finance and consulting roles at R1 RCM, Mammoth Energy Partners, Huntsman International, Halliburton Energy Services, and Univar Oil, Gas & Mining.

Fred holds dual MBAs from Tulane University and the University of Hull (UK), an LLM from Leiden University, and professional certifications from Stanford, Harvard Business School, and the Corporate Finance Institute. He is currently completing a Doctorate in Business Administration at Temple University.

We run Porter & Piazza the way modern advisory firms should run — tight team, heavy leverage, founder-grade accountability.

Schedule a consultation

Let's determine if we're the right fit.

Book a complimentary 30-minute consultation. We'll spend the time learning about your business — not pitching ours. You'll leave with at least one specific, actionable recommendation, whether you engage us or not.

Schedule the consultation →