Pilot keeps your books clean. Bridges builds the finance infrastructure to close your next round.

Pilot is the right starting point for pre-seed and seed companies. At that stage, the finance problem is straightforward — accurate books at a fair price — and there is less complexity to manage. A team of CPAs closing the books monthly is sufficient, and Pilot does that well.

Bridges is purpose-built for a different kind of company. Bridges is operators first — every member of the team spent 10–20 years working inside vertical SaaS, B2B payments, and FinTech companies as VP Finance, Controllers, and FP&A leads. Bridges focuses on accurate financials not as an end in themselves, but because they inform the business decisions that help companies raise capital, grow, and prepare for exit.

Bridges is first and foremost a CFO advisory and strategic finance firm. Bridges exists so that companies can achieve a specific outcome — raising capital, scaling operations, navigating a transition, or pursuing an exit. Pilot exists for general monthly reporting.

Pilot markets CFO services as a core offering, but their fractional CFOs follow a standardized framework, and the majority have never actually worked inside a company. The Bridges team has 10–20 years each of operating experience inside B2B SaaS companies. That difference shows up in the quality of the advice — and in the outcomes.

Bridges also fixes broken systems at the source. The most common problem found when opening the hood on a new client is that billing architecture was built for cash accounting — Stripe payouts reconciled to the bank, with actual revenue left untracked. Bridges fixes that. Pilot reports what's there.

Pilot's CFO services provide budgeting, forecasting, and investor reporting support. For a seed-stage company, that's often sufficient. The limitation shows up once the board starts asking harder questions — about unit economics, runway scenarios, or whether the growth plan is coherent.

Pilot's CFO service follows a standardized framework built on top of a bookkeeping-first infrastructure. It's better at describing what happened last month than at shaping what should happen next.

For an average engagement, Pilot charges $6,000–$12,000/month for monthly fractional CFO and bookkeeping services, on a quarterly commitment. CFO services are priced separately on top of that. Pilot also typically charges an onboarding fee of $10,000–$20,000.

Bridges charges $10,000–$20,000/month on a fixed retainer covering strategic finance, FP&A, and bookkeeping under one roof — rescoped every quarter. No onboarding fee. Three-month initial commitment, then month-to-month.

Pilot is a VC-backed bookkeeping firm. Pilot raised over $220M and employs 300+ people — built to pursue growth. That growth imperative comes at a price to clients: rotating teams, high turnover, and a standardized product that is difficult to customize for complex revenue models.

Bridges is boutique by design. Concurrent engagements are kept between 8 and 12 because the goal is to optimize for outcome, not volume. Bridges only works with vertical SaaS, B2B payments, and FinTech companies between $3M and $30M ARR — and Tim Salikhov is the CFO on every single one of them.

Bridges. The team has supported $385M in fundraising across 31 companies, working directly with founders and boards to build the financial models, unit economics, and investor narratives that hold up under due diligence. Every member of the Bridges team spent 10–20 years as an operator before doing this work. They've been through the fundraising process from the inside.

Pilot can prepare financial statements and provides some fundraising guidance through webinars and office hours. Fundraising support is not a core competency the way it is at Bridges.

At Bridges, Tim Salikhov is the CFO on every engagement. He is supported by a team of controllers and financial analysts, but Tim is the main point of contact — on every call, in every Slack thread, from onboarding through transition. Clients work directly with Tim, not whoever was assigned after the contract was signed.

At Pilot, clients are assigned a bookkeeper team and a CFO team. Pilot employs 300+ people and turnover is high. Based on first-hand experience as a Pilot client, it's common to cycle through four different teams in 15 months — repeated onboarding, lost context, and a finance partner who doesn't know your business.

Pilot is the right choice when bookkeeping is the primary finance problem and burn is being watched carefully. Specifically:

• Pre-seed or seed, under $3M ARR
• Need accurate books at a predictable, accessible price
• Board isn't yet asking hard questions about unit economics or runway
• Not ready for a full strategic finance engagement

Bridges is not the right fit at that stage — Bridges rarely takes on clients below $3M ARR and does not do pure bookkeeping engagements. If that's where you are, Pilot is a good starting point.