Growing the first AI-native financial DaaS to a 7-figure ARR

Braden Dennis was obsessed with investing and found a hole in the market. So he built the first AI-native solution. Now, Fiscal.ai has a mid-seven-figure ARR.

Here's Braden on how he did it. 👇

From nuclear to fintech

I am an engineer who worked professionally in nuclear and hydropower. My aim was to invent the next big thing in technology that was good for the planet. It still is — when I get the chance.

But I became obsessed with markets, investing, and studying some of the great entrepreneurs of the past and present. I listened to and read everything they produced. Every shareholder letter, every interview, every book.

It felt like magic that, learning from these entrepreneurs and operators in real time, I could easily own a small piece of equity in their businesses easily on the public market without a huge sum of capital.

And along the way, I found a huge missing middle in the products for my research. Expensive and exclusive financial data terminals on one end of the spectrum. At the other, free, clunky, ad-filled, and unserious platforms. Nothing in the middle.

The financial statements of every public company are freely available! Why was aggregating and delivering a clean, professional experience for everyone so prohibitively difficult? So I started building the first AI-native financial data company from the ground up, to fix problems with the massive dataset aggregated manually with huge costs and latency.

Hundreds of thousands now trust Fiscal.ai, and over 50 enterprises now leverage our data in their products. We're making mid-seven figures and we expect to hit eight figures within six months.

Continuous improvement forever

The initial product relied heavily on third parties to pipe in everything needed for a useful MVP. We use React and Next for the frontend. The backend uses many LLMs, Python, and Cloudflare.

I found out that building data (DaaS) products takes a lot longer than software (SaaS) products. And we're doing both at the same time.

But we didn't wait long to launch and iterate. We didn't wait until it was perfect. It's never perfect. You chase continuous improvement forever.

We're constantly pivoting to solve problems. Trying to find a healthy balance between experiments and staying ahead of the market, but also staying grounded and focused on our core problems and customer feedback.

I am inspired by Japanese manufacturing companies like Toyota and their "Kaizen" framework, which means continuously improving, even in small chunks, all the time!

Product-led growth and direct sales

Try everything you believe will work for your product and triple down on what works.

We've always leaned into product-led growth, which works great for self-serve B2C. We haven't wasted any money on ads yet.

But we also do B2B, so we're increasingly doing direct sales.

Early on, people told us we couldn't do both. I partially agree, but you can if the product is the same for both categories. It is just a different sales motion, which is not a dealbreaker.

Just start

My advice is simple: Just start. And get a few customers who want you to help them solve their problems. Nothing else matters yet.

Trust your intuition. Being the CEO at the early stages is all about making decisions with incomplete information and relying on your gut.

And don't get too high or too low. Easier said than done.

What's next?

Strategically and for our products, we have big goals as a company. We're approaching eight figures in ARR and then we'll figure out how to double again.

Personally, I am not sure, which sounds a bit silly, but it's the truth.

You can follow along on Twitter. And check out Fiscal.ai!