Building finance functions that can answer lenders and buyers
Abhishek Choubey is Principal, Origination at TEOL Capital, which builds finance functions inside owner-led, mid-sized companies and supports the groups that back them. This conversation covers why the firm operates rather than advises, how referrals bring in work, and why a clear scope and reliable financial basics matter more than polished reports.
Build financial reporting for the people outside the business who need to rely on it, including lenders, boards and potential buyers. A fixed-date monthly close and a useful thirteen-week cash forecast can matter more than an impressive dashboard.
What’s the short story of how your business started, and what makes it genuinely different from the other options your customers have?
TEOL Capital came out of a pattern we kept seeing: established companies that had grown well past their finance function. Most had built an accounting function, not a finance function. The books closed, eventually, and the owner knew the cash position because they had checked the bank balance that morning. That works until a lender asks a question the numbers can’t answer, or a buyer opens diligence.
What makes us different is that we operate rather than advise. Consultants produce recommendations, fractional CFOs give part-time advice, and investment banks run a process. We put senior finance operators inside the business, own the outputs (the close calendar, the thirteen-week cash forecast, the board pack) and leave with the function running. Everything runs against seven published frameworks, so a client can read our method before they ever talk to us.
How did you win your first customers, and where does most of your new business come from today?
Our first client came through a referral: a manufacturing company with around $30 million in revenue whose finance function hadn’t kept pace with its growth. A lender was starting to ask questions the monthly numbers couldn’t answer. That is still how most of our work arrives: referrals from lenders, M&A advisors, sponsors and owners who have seen the work up close. Very little of it comes from cold outreach.
What’s one decision that changed the direction of your business, and one mistake that taught you the most?
One decision that shaped us was publishing our fees and our methodology. In a market where most firms keep both behind a sales call, putting them online means owners arrive already knowing how we work and what it costs, and the first conversation starts at a much more useful place.
The mistake that taught us the most was starting work before the scope was fully written down. The problem a company describes on the first call is often not the problem it actually has, and without a proper diagnostic up front, time goes into fixing the wrong thing. Now every engagement starts with a structured diagnostic and a written scope before anything else.
What has changed in your industry or in what your customers expect over the last couple of years, and how have you adapted?
Lenders, sponsors and buyers now expect more, earlier. Diligence used to be where problems surfaced; increasingly, buyers want a view of earnings quality before an LOI, and lenders want reporting they can read without someone walking them through it. Owners expect transparency too. We adapted by building to the outside reader from day one, and by putting free diagnostic tools online, like our Institutional Readiness Index, so an owner can see where they stand in about twenty minutes before speaking to anyone.
If you were advising someone starting out in your industry today, what would you tell them to do first, and what would you tell them to ignore?
Do first: build to the outside reader. Ask how your lender, your board or a future buyer will read your numbers, and work backward from that. A monthly close that lands on a fixed date and a thirteen-week cash forecast the business actually runs on will do more than any dashboard.
Ignore: the urge to look sophisticated. Slides and polished reports are a by-product. If the finance function doesn’t keep running after you leave, the deck didn’t matter.
Thank you to Abhishek Choubey and the team at TEOL Capital for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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