Every engagement is partner-led and scoped to your board's priorities. Pull the levers you need this quarter; leave the rest for later. Nothing is offshored, nothing is junior.
Embedded financial leadership without full-time overhead. Think of it as executive bench strength, rented by the month.
From seed priced rounds to cross-over financings. Model, narrative, data room — all investor-grade on day one.
Buy-side and sell-side mandates, carve-outs, and 100-day plans. Partner-led, discreet, and outcome-accountable.
Close calendars, audit readiness, SOX-lite, and international entities — built to outlast a single fundraising cycle.
Revenue operations, unit economics, and pricing re-architecture. Numbers with narrative, not spreadsheets in a vacuum.
A quarterly rhythm investors respect: accurate numbers, a credible narrative, and a plan that survives the next surprise.
We work like a small private-banking desk: fewer clients, deeper relationships, and a preference for written clarity over billable hours.
A private conversation about capital structure, team, and the next 18 months.
Two weeks inside the numbers. Written findings, ranked by dollar impact.
A fixed scope, transparent fees, and a timeline that matches your board cycle.
Partner-led delivery with a named backup. Weekly check-ins, monthly written updates.
Hand-off to a full-time team when the business is ready. We design for our own obsolescence.
Traditional advisory forces a trade-off between quality, speed, and cost. Appleton is technology-native — partner judgment paired with AI-augmented tooling closes the gap, so clients get all three without compromise.
Partner-led judgment, AI-augmented review. Every deliverable reviewed by a senior operator.
AI-accelerated close, diligence, and reporting. Weeks of manual work compressed into days.
Senior expertise without full-time overhead. Fractional pricing for full-strength outcomes.
Drag across twelve months to see what an embedded engagement actually produces — week by week. Diagnose, build, board — and by year-end, hand the rhythm to AI agents that run alongside your team.
Describe your situation in a sentence. An intake assistant routes you to the right next step — a call, a diagnostic, or honest “not yet.” No capture form, no email gate.
Published rate logic; no hidden minimums. Unlock the calculator with your work email for a live estimate, then we'll refine it in a 30-minute fit call.
Our rate logic is published, not hidden — but we share the interactive calculator with prospective clients. Enter your work email to unlock a live estimate tailored to your stage, scope, and term.
Every engagement follows the same cadence. Same expectations on both sides, every time — however senior your company or however early the stage.
A private conversation. NDA on request.
Two-week review of books, cap, and plan.
Fixed scope, transparent fees, written plan.
Partner-led execution against the board cycle.
Transition to a full-time team when ready.
A partner will answer anything not covered here in the first fit call — usually in fewer words than below.
A fractional CFO is a senior finance leader engaged on a retainer rather than a full-time hire. At Appleton, every mandate is partner-led — the operator who sits at your board table is the same operator who builds your model. Nothing is offshored, nothing is junior.
Pre-revenue startups through growth-stage companies and public-company audit-readiness. Most engagements sit between $5M and $100M ARR, with selective work above and below that band.
Fees are published on the Engagement page and driven by your monthly expenses, the scope of the engagement, the model (pure retainer, retainer + variable, or project-based), and term length. Pre-seed through Series B+ retainers typically fall between $5K and $30K per month.
Yes, on request — before any material financial conversation. Appleton also does not name or use client references without written consent.
Yes. Capital formation is one of six core practices. We build the investor model and narrative, architect the data room, run the Q&A war room, and support term-sheet negotiation. Engagements are typically scoped by round.
AI-augmented tooling compresses the manual work — monthly close, diligence reviews, reporting — from weeks into days, while partner judgment remains at every decision point. Clients get senior expertise at fractional cost without the typical trade-off in speed.
We respond to every inbound within one business day, partner-signed. A first fit call is 30 minutes; if it is a fit, a diagnostic can start the following week.
When the finance function needs a team, not a partner — typically around multi-entity consolidations, cross-over or pre-IPO rounds, or when fractional time is spent mostly on execution rather than judgement. We will tell you when we see the signals and help run the search.
All inquiries are fielded by a partner. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so in the first call and introduce you to someone who is.
We'll ask about stage, capital structure, and the next two board meetings. You'll leave with an honest read on whether a fractional desk is the right shape of help.