(718) 833-0633 Mon–Fri 8:30am–6pm
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About Cledara · 435 Adams Ave · Staten Island, NY

not a finance department you rent by the month — a cfo for the four moments that decide your next year.

Cledara is a small fractional CFO practice working with startups from pre-seed to Series A. We do exactly four jobs — the forecast, the model, the board pack, the raise — and we’re built around one unfashionable idea: you should only pay for finance work in the weeks it’s actually happening.

Book the 30-minute call or read what you give up first
A plain desk by a window with a printed cash-flow forecast covered in pen arrows, one row highlighted in mint, against an emerald wall
The short version: we’d rather lose a retainer than bill you for a quiet month.
Where we sit
435 Adams Ave, Staten Island
What we sell
Four jobs, each at a fixed price
What we never ask for
Passwords that move money
What we never take
A percentage of your round

Why this exists

we started cledara because the retainer model kept billing founders for quiet months

Not a heroic founding story. Just a pattern we got tired of watching.

Hands drawing a looping pen arrow across a printed financial model, linking a highlighted cell to a margin note
Every assumption gets an arrow to the cell it changes. Investors ask; you point.

Most fractional CFO arrangements look the same: a monthly fee, a few hours a week, a shared Slack channel. That works for a company with a steady stream of finance work. Early startups don’t have one. They have long quiet stretches, then a month where everything lands at once — a board meeting, a hire that doubles payroll, an investor asking for the model by Friday.

On a retainer, you pay the same in both kinds of month. The quiet ones subsidise the busy one, and the busy one still feels understaffed, because a few hours a week was never sized for it.

so we stopped selling hours and started selling the four jobs that make up nearly all of early-stage finance.

Each one has a scope you can read in five minutes, a price you know before you sign, and an end date. When the job is finished, the files sit in your Drive and the invoices stop. If you need us next quarter, you book again. If you don’t, nobody chases you about a renewal.

It’s a worse business model for us in one obvious way: no recurring revenue. We think it’s the more honest one, and it keeps us sharp — every client has to decide, on their own, to come back.

Why Staten Island? Lower rent than an office across the bridge, which is part of how the prices on the services page stay where they are. Most clients never visit; a few come by Adams Ave for a whiteboard afternoon.

Both sides of the entry

what you get by hiring us — and what you give up

Every hire is a trade. Here’s ours, laid out the way an accountant would draw it on a whiteboard.

a/c — hiring cledara Posted for your review · no figures fudged

what you get

  1. A fixed price before any work starts.$2,150 to $14,750 depending on the job, written on the quote.
  2. Models that have been stress-tested before.The same structure has sat in front of investors and directors already.
  3. Plain Excel or Google Sheets.In your Drive, yours to keep. Nothing to subscribe to.
  4. A finance person in the board meeting.One who has read every number in the deck, because they built it.
  5. An end date you can put in the calendar.Two weeks for a forecast, 10–14 weeks for a raise.

what you give up

  1. Day-to-day availability.We answer Mon–Fri, 8:30am–6pm. Not Slack at 11pm.
  2. Bookkeeping, payroll and tax filing.We don’t do them. We’ll name people who do.
  3. Free mid-job scope creep.New asks get their own quote, shown before anyone starts.
  4. An exec in every Monday standup.We’re not running your ops or sitting in hiring loops.
  5. Someone who owns finance long-term.When you need that, we’ll help you write the job description.
Balance c/d

If you need finance help in bursts, we’re cheaper and sharper than a hire. If you need it every single day, hire a controller — and tell us, so we stop pitching.

Our in-house translation table

the words our industry loves, and what they actually mean in our invoices

  • strategic finance partnerWe build your model and explain it until you can defend it alone.
  • runway optimisationSpend less before the week the bank balance gets tight.
  • investor-ready narrativeSlide one agrees with the bank statement.
  • ongoing advisory relationshipA retainer. We don’t sell those.
  • holistic financial health checkWe read your ledger and tell you what’s wrong. The first call does this free.
Ask us something in plain English

If we slip into jargon on a call, stop us. It’s a fair request and we’ll rephrase.

Mon–Fri · 8:30am–6pm

how a week on adams ave actually runs

Partly so you know when to call. Partly because a calendar says more about a firm than a values page does.

  1. monday

    1. Bank pulls for every live forecast.

    2. Refreshed forecasts land in founders’ inboxes.

    3. Free first calls with new companies.

  2. tuesday

    Today

    1. Model building. Heads down, phone still on.

    2. More first calls.

    3. Assumption reviews — founders poke tab one.

  3. wednesday

    1. Model building, round two.

    2. Data-room upkeep for active raises.

    3. Drafting diligence answers with founders.

  4. thursday

    1. Board pack drafting and variance notes.

    2. Board meetings — on video, or in the room.

    3. Follow-up memos to directors.

  5. friday

    1. Handovers: walking you through what we built.

    2. No new kickoffs. Jobs start on Mondays.

    3. Scope quotes go out for next week.

It’s Tuesday — we’re heads-down in models, and the phone still gets answered.

Before you book anything

tick what’s true — we’ll say which job you need, or that you need none

It’s the same triage we run on the first call, minus the small talk. Nothing you tick is sent anywhere.

Which of these sound like you?