How Collectly Built Finance Operations in 90 Days That Unlocked 100%+ Revenue Growth
Tim took us from having no finance system at all to a team that builds with a plan, hires with confidence, and stays accountable to investors.
— Levon Brutyan, Co-Founder & CEO, Collectly
Challenge
A $25M Series A and No Discipline to Deploy It Prudently
Collectly grew from a niche revenue automation tool into a full revenue cycle management platform for major healthcare providers. By early 2023, that growth caught the attention of investors. The company closed a $25 million Series A led by Sapphire Ventures.
Collectly was already growing 2x YoY. With new capital in the bank, that pace could continue for years if invested well. The leadership wanted an experienced finance leader who knew how to deploy capital into growth and instill accountability, transparency, and trust in decisions.
Five months after the raise, Collectly brought in Tim Salikhov, CEO of Bridges. The mandate was direct: build the finance function and show us where to invest. The challenge was doing it for a company with growth ambitions like Collectly's, made more difficult by a usage-based billing model that's hard to forecast.
"Finance used to be the back office — the function that told us what already happened. Tim's approach showed me how it could help us make progress faster."
Solution
Turning a Post-Raise Balance Sheet Into a Growth Engine
In his first 90 days, Tim built a scalable finance function that gave Collectly a foundation to grow on. By day 90, finance operations, real-time reporting, and forecasting were live. Tim was already in the room with sales, marketing, and customer operations on growth decisions.
Finance Operations Built to Scale With the Business
Tim's approach was a scalable process first, then tools to streamline the workflows, then 10x automation to deliver maximum value to the stakeholders.
- Built billing workflows to track usage-based revenue and convert it into accurate, dispute-proof invoices
- Set up AP systems to manage 100-plus vendor relationships, bills, and employee spend
- Set up AR cadences to catch late payments against contract terms, follow up with customers, and engage customer success
- Designed payroll and commission system to support headcount growth
This gave Collectly finance infrastructure built for real-time reporting and forecasting, not just monthly bookkeeping. That foundation made the Series A deployable with confidence instead of caution.
A System for Deploying Capital With Confidence
With finance operations live, Tim built the forecasting infrastructure Collectly needed to put its $25 million to work.
- Built 12-month and 3-year long-range models to stress-test growth scenarios
- Modeled capital allocation between product and distribution under different growth paths
- Built dynamic headcount and financial plans tied to those models for investor reporting
Collectly could now see which scenarios grew revenue fastest without running out of cash. That confidence turned capital deployment from a guess into a tested decision in the first 90 days.
Financial Insight That Shaped Strategic Decisions
With a tested system for deploying capital, Tim moved from producing numbers to sitting in on the decisions they supported.
- Worked with sales leadership on org design and quota structure, detailed further in Collectly's sales commission case study
- Partnered with marketing to help stand up inbound and partnership channels alongside outbound
- Collaborated with customer operations to cut onboarding time and reduce support tickets
Finance stopped reporting on the business after the fact and started shaping where it went next. That shift gave leadership a model built to keep pace with a healthcare SaaS company adding headcount every quarter.
"Forecasting was the difference. We went from not knowing what next month looked like to investing millions, growing the team, and signing partnerships — because we finally knew where the business was headed."
Results
Scalable Finance Operations that Enable 100%+ Growth
90 days after Tim joined, Collectly had the finance infrastructure to deploy its Series A with confidence. That foundation became the base for 100%+ growth that followed the following year, while managing burn and maintaining a comfortable runway.
- 10 hours saved weekly — finance operations that once ate the founders' time now run on a trusted process.
- Real-time metrics and forecasting — leadership tracks revenue, cash, and growth scenarios as they happen, not after monthly close.
- $200K saved annually in G&A — finance built in-house replaced costs Collectly would have spent on outside support.
- Zero compliance headaches — sales tax, audits, employee benefits, and foreign subsidiary work all cleared without incident.
The infrastructure built in 90 days became the system Collectly used to grow 3x over the next two years.
"Tim didn't just build finance operations — he gave us the forecasting and judgment to deploy our Series A with confidence."