Matt McMichen | Margin® CFO and Bookkeeping

A brief intro for anyone new to following me: - I'm a CPA (I don't do taxes 😉) - After working in Big 4 (PwC), auditing public companies, I spent a decade doing corporate finance/accounting for high growth startups (most recently as an executive for a digital health unicorn) - I've helped companies IPO, acquire & integrate other businesses, and raise $100s of millions in equity and debt financing - I've built finance/accounting teams and processes from scratch, helping companies scale <$10 million in revenues to $100s of millions in revenue (helped 1 business go from $6M to >$400M) - I started Margin to provide high quality bookkeeping, fractional CFO, and fractional controller services to SMBs and startups (infusing everything we do with the best practices I learned throughout my career) - I mostly post about accounting & finance for small businesses with the goal of providing useful content to help SMB owners navigate their own finance/accounting

@gregisenberg "The worst part about business is people" tells you everything you need to know. Sad.

Andrew Wilkinson owns 40+ businesses. He just showed me how he's using OpenClaw, Claude Code and AI agents to run latest business, start new ones, and automate everything. Here's what I learned: 1. In December 2025, something clicked. He started waking up at 3AM with a smile, sitting in terminal with 10 Claude Code tabs open. He hasn't stopped since. He calls it chasing the dragon. 2.He built a full SaaS product called Deep Personality. A 40-minute personality test that generates a 100-page report written like Robert Greene. $20 000 in revenue. Zero employees. The entire business runs on AI agents. 3. He has agents for support, marketing, and dev. When a support ticket comes in, the agent either handles it or sends it to the dev agent. If it's critical, the agent fixes the bug and merges the PR before he wakes up. Then it emails the customer back. 4. His marketing agent is connected to PostHog, manages Meta and Reddit ads, creates ad creative, runs multivariate tests, and sets budgets. He's about to give it a $100 k/month ad budget and see what happens. 5. He forgot his laptop on a trip to Arizona. He ran his entire business from the back of Ubers using OpenClaw. Nobody picked up that every single email was written by AI. 6. His take on vibe coding: the worst part about business is people. Between your vision and execution are 100 people you have to convince. Vibe coding removes all of them. For the first time he can do every part of building a product himself. 7. He was trying to build OpenClaw before OpenClaw existed. Now he uses a tool called Harbor, which is basically a GUI for managing multiple agents. You can see all your agents, their status, knowledge bases, and databases in one place. 8. He built a custom AI for his relationship. He and his girlfriend took 15 psychological tests, put the results into ChatGPT, and asked it to analyze their relationship. It nailed every fight they've ever had. That became the product idea for Deep Personality. 9. His honest take: he spends 50% of his time debugging, 30% improving the setup, and 20% being productive. It's a treadmill. But the 20% that works is so powerful he can't stop. 10. His prediction: we're 3-6 months from being able to hand basic businesses off to AI to run entirely. And pretty soon Anthropic and OpenAI are going to launch AI CEOs. This is an inside look at how a serious operator @awilkinson is using AI agents in the real world. The good, the bad, the debugging, all of it. Most people don't show you this. Episode is live on @startupideaspod youtube.com/watch?v=65IAqR… watch

How efficient is AI really making me if I'm spending ALL of my time playing with every new thing that comes out EVERY DAY.

I couldn't be more excited to announce that Margin is joining forces with Washington Avenue Advisors. What started as nothing but a computer and a dream has grown into something I’m incredibly proud of. I’m looking forward to what we build together from here!

@MarginCFO I’m here and I’m ready

Planning my X comeback. Some incredibly exciting news to announce (coming soon). I'm sure the algo will bury this for my absence, so to the 10 who see it...stay tuned.

@Barta57 This is the energy I came here for.

@ShowMeYourCIM Thanks for the shoutout, @ShowMeYourCIM! It was a pleasure to work alongside you and Drew!

Couldn’t have gotten this done without @MarginCFO cleaning up the books!

We started working with this company in 2023 First went to market in May 2024 Pulled to do a sell side QOE in September Went back to market in June 2025 Closed today! I’m just incredibly proud of the work my partner Drew did to see this to the finish line. Incredible perseverance on his part when I thought we had no shot to get to closing. More details to follow when we make a real announcement!

@arpandata What does that even mean

@MarginCFO dmds

Posted on LI that I'd share a free 13-week cash forecast with SMB OWNERS who needed help getting started. Post blew up and so did my inbox. Only problem? It was all finance pros and other fractional CFOs asking for my template. Maybe I'm selling to the wrong audience.

@ghostscalez 100%

@MarginCFO One risky guess could leak thousands of $$$$$

There are only 2 kinds of SMB owners: (1) Those who know their numbers (2) Those who will soon know the number 0 It's harsh, but true. If you don't understand your margins, your cash flow, your NWC...you're guessing. And guessing is how good businesses run out of money.

(1) Financials customized to your business model and strategy (2) A simple 3-statement model to forecast scenarios (3) A disciplined routine of reviewing both regularly That’s it. No fluff. No overkill. Simplicity + consistency beats complexity every time.

Making finance useful to SMB owners isn’t complicated. They don’t need a CFO building dashboards with 50 KPIs. What they DO need is simple: • A clear view of how the business is performing • Guidance on what to do about it And you can get there with these 3 things:

@nicklom12 Let me know if that ever changes. Would love to test it out.

@MarginCFO Yes, accounting integrations are data sources for Archie (QBO, Xero, NetSuite, etc.). That said, the product is only accessible to companies with an active Arc Business account.

Today we’re launching Archie, the CFO agent built into Arc’s cash management platform. It’s available to Arc customers now to deliver real-time financial analysis and insights from your accounting, banking, and spend data.

Is the SMB crowd still active on here? Been off X for a while and trying to get back into the swing of it. Seems like a different place.

@nicklom12 Does it integrate with various GL (QBO for example) or does it only work for companies that have checking accounts with Arc?

👉 Access your CFO agent today: joinarc.com/archie

So if you’re relying solely on your month-end reports and wondering why they’re not helping you steer the business day to day—it’s not that they’re broken. It’s that they’re not built for that job. A good forecast or financial model 𝘪𝘴. My advice? Prioritize a forecast.

Nothing beats a rolling forecast/financial model and a 13-week cash forecast. I’m not exaggerating when I say I use both almost daily. They’ve informed every financial decision I’ve made at Margin. I’d be lost without them.

Here’s a Friday treat: a confession 𝘢𝘯𝘥 some advice. I spent most of my corporate finance career thinking the most valuable reports for a CEO came from the month-end financial package. I was wrong. Now that I run my own business, I see it clearly...