Aether Growth Partners

Built on both sides of the cap table.

Aether Growth Partners pairs a fractional CFO with the data and systems work most finance functions can't staff. Two partners, one engagement, embedded in your business from pre-Series A through PE.

Strategic finance M&A Data infrastructure Controllership
Book a 30-minute diagnostic See how we work
Engagements run 6–24 months, scoped to your stage.
A typical engagement 6–24 months
Weeks 1–2
Diagnostic and data audit
Systems mapModel reviewGap list
Weeks 3–8
Rebuild the foundations
Operating modelChart of accountsDashboards
Ongoing
Run the operating cadence
Monthly closeBoard packRolling forecast
Board-ready, every month
Fundraise, acquisition or exit — the numbers are already standing by
Buyside experience
10+ years
Capital deployed
$200M+
Consumer companies
30+
Engagement length
6–24 months
Select clients
Plant People Graza One Trick Pony WIP Sfoglini Happi

What actually changes when we're in the building

Most growth-stage consumer brands are run on an aggregate P&L, a lump-sum trade budget and inventory data from last quarter. None of that survives a board that asks a second question.

You walk into the board meeting ready

Every figure traces back to a source and every assumption is written down, so when the hard question comes you open the model instead of hedging.

Diligence stops being a fire drill

Fundraises and exits fall apart in data rooms, not in pitch meetings. We build the reporting layer months before anyone asks to see it.

You find out which dollars are working

Which SKU carries the margin, which retailer quietly costs you money, which promotion bought volume you were going to get anyway.

Four layers, and you only pay for the ones your stage needs

Strategic finance runs on every engagement. The other three scale up or down with you, and get re-scoped each time the business moves into a new phase.

Runs on every engagement

Strategic finance and FP&A

Led by Mike

Financial architecture, budgeting and forecasting, capital allocation, unit economics, fundraise and refinancing readiness, and the board reporting that holds all of it together. Every other layer plugs into this one.

From the working papers
Modular

Corporate development and M&A

Buy-and-build execution, target evaluation, commercial and financial diligence, structuring, and post-merger integration.

Led by Mike
From the working papers
Modular

Data and analytics infrastructure

Retail and POS analytics, trade spend modeling, customer and channel profitability. Dashboards handed over to your team.

Led by Davide
From the working papers
Modular

Accounting architecture

Chart of accounts design, ERP and inventory system selection, close process, and GAAP-compliant reporting.

Shared
From the working papers

Click any layer to open a working-paper excerpt. Exhibits are recreated and anonymized for illustration — no client data appears on this site.

Your stage drives the mix

We set the mix at the start of an engagement and revisit it at every stage transition.

Numbers, not nice quotes

Three engagements and what came out of them. Fundraise outcomes shown because they're the ones that get published — the same infrastructure runs the business between rounds.

3.4×
revenue multiple on the term sheet, against the prior round
Better-for-you snacking, DTC and retail

The gross margin they were pitching was wrong by fourteen points

Rebuilding the trade-spend model exposed real gross margin at 42%, not the 28% the founder had been carrying into investor meetings. The round was re-priced inside six weeks.

$7.2M
Series A closed, oversubscribed
Non-alcoholic beverage, national retail

Velocity told a different story once we stopped averaging

We reframed the velocity narrative around top-quintile doors rather than chain-wide averages. Two term sheets followed within three weeks.

11
warm intros to CPG-native funds inside thirty days
Prestige personal care

A target list built from live mandates, not a database pull

Every introduction went to a partner actively writing checks in the category, rather than to whoever happened to surface in a Crunchbase search.

Results described reflect specific client engagements and are not guarantees of future outcomes. Aether Growth Partners LLC is not a registered broker-dealer or investment adviser, and does not provide legal, tax or investment advice.

The two of us

Most fractional CFOs arrive alone and inherit whatever systems are already there. We arrive as a pair — one running the finance function, one building the infrastructure underneath it. We first built together at New Stand, so the division of labor isn’t a theory.

Mike Smith

Mike Smith

Founder and principal

Trained at Goldman and Soros, ran finance inside the brands, then invested in consumer through ZX and Delta Emerald. He knows what a board needs to see because he has been the one asking.

Institutional training Goldman Sachs·Soros Fund Management
Operating finance New Stand·Sfoglini Finance seats through Series A and B
Consumer investing ZX Ventures (AB InBev)·Delta Emerald Ventures $200M+ deployed across 30+ consumer companies
Davide Callegaro

Davide Callegaro

Partner, data and technology

Builds the analytics and systems layer the finance function runs on — trained on enterprise AI rollouts, applied to consumer retail data. It's why the trade-spend and channel economics hold up under questioning.

Enterprise AI & data ZS Associates Multi-market AI & analytics rollouts, healthcare and pharma
Consumer retail analytics New Stand (Brookfield) Data science — POS, assortment and channel economics
Quantitative foundation MIT Sloan MBA·ESADE MSc Data Science·University of Padua BSc Mathematics

In their words

“Mike came in to provide support & rigor to our financial reporting, ranging from understanding our trade promotion ROI, our eCommerce performance, reviewing investor models, our COGS and margin opportunities, and more. With experience at both start ups and in the investment landscape, Mike is an invaluable partner for early & growth stage businesses looking to level up.”
WIP
Head of Ops & Growth
WIP
“We were a small team that knew how to make and sell pasta and finance was not our strength. Mike put real structure around the numbers before our first outside capital, then managed the raise itself. Years later he ran our sale process, from assembling the data room to negotiating the working-capital adjustment at the end. Having the person who built the numbers sitting across from the buyer’s team changed the dynamic of the whole transaction.”
Sfoglini
Founder & CEO
Sfoglini

Check your own trade spend first

Enter your promo calendar and SKU list and the template separates cannibalization and halo from own-price lift. It's the same logic we build inside engagements, stripped down to a spreadsheet. Free, no call required, and it's usually where the margin surprise turns up.

One email with the template attached. We use your address to send it and to follow up once — nothing else.

Questions we get before the first call

How is this different from hiring a fractional CFO?
A fractional CFO builds the model. We build the model and the data infrastructure feeding it, because in consumer businesses the second one is usually the reason the first one is wrong. Most solo fractional CFOs inherit whatever POS, ERP and spreadsheet stack already exists and work around it. We rebuild it.
Do you replace our bookkeeper or accountant?
No. We design the chart of accounts, choose the systems, and set the close process and reporting framework. Transactional bookkeeping stays with your existing provider, or we route it to a partner firm we trust. We architect it, we don't keep your books.
What does an engagement cost, and how long does it run?
Engagements run six to twenty-four months on a fixed monthly fee, scoped by which layers are active rather than by hours. The diagnostic call is where we size it, and the number doesn't move once it's set.
We're raising in the next few months. Can you compress this?
Yes. Fundraise readiness runs inside strategic finance, and for brands on a deadline we run it as a focused six-to-eight week sprint: rebuild the model, reframe the narrative, stand up the data room, then introductions to funds actively writing checks in your category. It's the same work, compressed to the raise.
We're pre-revenue. Are we too early for this?
Probably, and we'd rather tell you that than take the engagement. This starts paying for itself once there's real channel complexity: several SKUs, retail alongside DTC, trade spend that needs allocating. Before that, a good bookkeeper and a simple model will serve you better.
What happens to the systems when the engagement ends?
They're yours. Dashboards, models and documentation are built so your team or your first full-time finance hire can maintain them. We're not trying to become permanently load-bearing.
Book a 30-minute diagnostic

Start with a 30-minute diagnostic

We'll walk through where your finance function is today, the next twelve months of capital and operating decisions, and which layers make sense. Nothing to prepare.

Book the call
Founder and principal
Mike Smithmike@aethergrowth.com
Partner, data and technology
Davide Callegarodavide@aethergrowth.com