Most founders lose sleep over customers, competition, or cash. Alexander Wulff lost sleep over spreadsheets. That anxiety turned into a decade-long obsession, and eventually, into an AI CFO.

Alexander Wulff is the CEO and co-founder of ScaleUp Finance, and the builder behind NUM, an AI-powered CFO designed for startups and SMEs. Before fintech, he spent more than a decade building and exiting a deep-tech company, where he learned finance the hard way, by being forced to play CFO without really wanting the job. Today, he’s channeling that pain into a product that gives small teams access to real financial intelligence, without hiring a full finance department.

In Todays Episode We Discuss:

00:01 Introduction and Alexander Wulff’s background

02:05 From deep tech founder to fintech operator

04:12 Living the CFO problem as a founder

06:10 Early product market fit and rapid inbound demand

08:02 Viral distribution through financial reporting

10:01 Blending CFO services with software

12:30 Why finance tools must be 100% accurate

14:45 The shift from SaaS to agentic AI

17:20 Building NUM, an AI CFO

20:10 Orchestrating agents for financial accuracy

23:05 Ideal customer profile and SME focus

26:00 Finance complexity as companies scale

29:15 Democratizing CFO access with AI

32:10 Founder behavior and finance confidence

35:05 Lessons from scaling too fast

37:30 Long-term vision for AI in finance

Alexander also shares hard-earned lessons on scaling too fast, founder stress, and the mindset required to push through the moments when quitting feels rational.

We close where it all began. A founder staring at numbers late at night, wondering if they add up. Now, those same numbers talk back, clearly, calmly, and on time.

“Finance shouldn’t be the thing that keeps founders awake at night. That’s the problem we’re here to solve.”

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