Ascend is an AI-native finance consulting firm. Diagnosis, planning, valuation, interactive dashboards, and ongoing finance leadership for founders building in the US.
A 25-minute look at your numbers — no cost, no obligation.
A CFO at the table for the decisions that matter.
Modern tooling for sharper analysis and faster reporting, layered on your existing systems.
Practice with EN, PT, ES and the US-system depth — that intersection is the moat.
Two Brazilian finance leaders who built and ran finance inside global enterprises — now bringing that discipline to founder-led businesses.
Co-Founder
Finance executive with broad international experience, turning around underperforming businesses across global organizations.
Co-Founder
International finance professional with deep experience in analysis, planning, and cost & procurement across a global operation.
Growing revenue, shrinking profit — and no clear reason why.
Decisions made on the bank balance, not a forecast.
US prices set by instinct or home-country reference, rarely tested.
Debt terms half-understood until a lender asks the hard question.
These are exactly the gaps Ascend is built to close.
Every tier runs the same chain — audit, diagnostic, forecast, valuation — so the numbers always tie.
Where data is missing, we say so. Every assumption is labeled at the point of use.
Reports in English; summaries and live sessions in Portuguese or Spanish on request.
We plug into the system you already use as the strategic layer on top — nothing to rip out.
A few findings · no obligation.
Audit · diagnostic · action plan.
3-yr forecast + valuation.
Monthly cadence + on-demand.
Add-ons — process builds, AI, automation, investment decisions, lean processes — attach at any step.
A ~90-minute call to capture your business and its numbers in full.
Statements and supporting data via a secure folder.
We validate every input and flag what's missing or broken.
Only with clean data do we build the diagnostic and recommendations.
Why this matters: every recommendation rests on a validated audit. We never build on numbers we haven't checked.
Enter at the step that fits today — every tier runs on the same audited, validated numbers.
Tier 1 · Diagnose
"Where do we actually stand, and what do we fix first?"
Tier 2 · Plan & Value
"Where is this going — and what is it worth?"
Tier 3 · Fractional CFO
A base monthly retainer for the steady rhythm, plus on-demand hours for surges — board prep, financing, a deal.
Monthly close review & reporting · KPI dashboard upkeep · rolling 13-week cash forecast · 1 leadership meeting/month.
Monthly forecast vs. actuals · margin & pricing watch · lender/banker liaison · 2 meetings/month.
Board-style reporting · active decision support · weekly cadence · first call on your questions.
Build a reporting pack, close system, planning process, or pricing workflow — templates and training included.
Assess your finance and ops workflows, then deploy one or two safe, high-value AI use cases with guardrails.
Map manual work and automate data entry, reporting, approvals, or reconciliations using your existing tools.
Model a capex, financing, build-vs-buy, or M&A decision with sensitivity analysis and a clear recommendation.
Map a process, remove waste and bottlenecks, and instrument KPIs to lock in the margin gains.
See your numbers through cutting-edge, dynamic visuals — live KPIs you can explore, not static monthly reports.
Standalone or attached to any tier — each scoped to a fixed quote after a short discovery.
$0
no obligation$7.5k–$12.5k
one-time$12k–$25k
one-timefrom $3.5k
per monthfrom $8k
scopedIndicative. Tiers 1–2 priced by revenue band. Projects 50% on signing / 50% on delivery; retainer billed monthly in advance.
Margin turnaround · pricing · SaaS conversion · carve-out · diligence · annual planning · incentive design · finance dashboards.
Five plants in five countries stuck at 6.5% operating margin, with SKU-level price erosion.
A $1.3B global unit — five plants across five countries — stuck at 6.5% operating margin. SKU-level price erosion with no visibility into which products were leaking, drifting COGS, and tariff and inflation headwinds on the P&L.
Built a SKU-level Order Price Index to expose erosion and steer mix toward higher margin. Ran a four-lever cost program, and gated a $60M R&D portfolio on a lean cadence.
Margin expanded 200 bps (6.5%→8.5%) net of tariff and inflation headwinds, revenue grew to $1.25B from $1.15B, and orders grew 7% — with pricing governance and cost productivity becoming a standing operating rhythm.
A $250–300M LatAm services P&L — 25 legal entities, 6 reporting units, 10+ currencies — losing margin and share.
A $250–300M LatAm services P&L spanning 25 legal entities, 6 reporting units, and 10+ currencies — losing margin and share, with unreliable numbers and much of the contract book unprofitable.
Exited loss-making contracts, repriced renewals with annual inflation pass-through, and dollarized contracts in the most FX-exposed countries. Raised first-time-fix rates and rebuilt finance across five countries.
EBIT margin expanded 10 points (36%→46%) over four years with ~8% annual revenue growth and a 4-point reduction in past-due receivables — and data reliability was restored.
Contrast media sold to hospitals on a commodity footing — bought largely on price, with margins compressing.
A pharma business selling contrast media to hospitals on a commodity footing — bought largely on price, margins compressing, volumes unpredictable, with nothing binding hospitals beyond the current order.
Shifted from selling product to placing a financed injector installed base, tied to premium supply agreements with minimum annual volume commitments. Added SKU-level price corridors and country discount governance.
Six points of EBIT margin expansion over three years with double-digit annual revenue growth — launched in one market, proved out, then scaled to a second, converting a commodity line into a durable installed-base annuity.
A hardware-centric model with lumpy perpetual-license revenue and no recurring base.
A $400M healthcare software business on a hardware-centric model. Third-party hardware dragged the P&L, perpetual licensing produced lumpy revenue, and no commercial or accounting architecture existed for a capex-to-opex move.
Exited third-party hardware entirely and replaced perpetual licensing with subscription. Rebuilt the remaining three streams into a unified opex offering and reallocated $50M of R&D to fund the transition.
The integrated SaaS model went live with selected US customers, recurring revenue mix rose ~5 points, and the revenue accounting and system configuration became the foundation for continued subscription scale.
A ~$20M product line that had never been run standalone — no discrete P&L to value it on.
A prospective buyer approached to acquire a ~$20M product line never run as a standalone entity — no discrete P&L, with the true economics buried in shared cost pools.
Reconstructed three years of revenue, cost, and margin line by line with defensible allocation assumptions, built a five-year forecast with commercial, and translated both into a valuation range.
The first defensible standalone view of the line's profitability. The carve-out financials let leadership walk away from a below-value offer with confidence, and the methodology became reusable for later portfolio reviews.
The seller's growth model rested on aggressive commercial assumptions never independently tested.
A software acquisition target whose growth model rested on aggressive, untested commercial assumptions. Leadership needed to know whether the trajectory was achievable and the deal cleared return thresholds before committing capital.
Rebuilt and challenged the seller's P&L against realistic commercial capacity — pipeline, pricing, and attach rates line by line — then ran return-metric analysis on the revised base case.
A defensible valuation exposed a real gap versus the asking price. The company declined to close rather than overpay, capital was preserved and redeployed, and the approach set a repeatable diligence standard.
A growing $3M business with multiple revenue lines but no projections, quarterly targets, or a clear focus for the team.
A ~$3M growing business with multiple revenue lines and no structural clarity to sustain its expansion — no projections by line, no quarterly targets, and no defined view of where the team should concentrate effort.
Built the annual financial plan from the ground up — mapped and reorganized the revenue lines, projected revenue by line, set quarterly targets, and designed a prioritized action plan concentrating effort on the recurring-revenue service, identified as the largest growth lever.
30% year-over-year growth in total revenue, achieved within the first few months after implementation.
Multiple departments and a push to lift performance — but no bonus policy tying leadership and functions to objective targets.
A ~$3.6M growing company with multiple departments, aiming to raise operational performance and engagement — but with no clear bonus policy linking leadership and functions to objective targets.
Mapped each department's priorities, defined strategic KPIs by function, and structured measurable monthly targets — then designed a bonus plan tied directly to those metrics for both leadership and operational teams.
Tighter alignment between operations and strategy, measurable gains in productivity and focus, and a 50% increase in delivery against the defined key metrics.
Meaningful revenue but no real finance structure — weak visibility and an inefficient cost base made the business hard to control.
An active firm with meaningful revenue (~BRL 12M/year) but no robust finance structure or team to support the partners' strategic decisions — poor visibility and an inefficient cost structure made the business hard to control.
Took over the firm's full financial BPO — built a per-project margin analysis report, implemented per-project cost tracking, and developed an online dashboard surfacing the key P&L metrics for the partners' ongoing monitoring.
Reduced operating costs — including a leaner finance team — with far greater visibility and control over the numbers, and a solid financial foundation for strategic decision-making.
A 25-minute look at your numbers — no cost, no obligation.
Rodrigo Parra & Rodrigo Cota · Co-Founders