For more than 30 years, David has worked as a commercial banker advising small and mid-sized businesses. Over that time, he has seen hundreds of software platforms, analytics tools, and financial systems promising to help companies run more efficiently. Most fail because small and mid-sized businesses do not have the time, budget, or staffing to maintain traditional analytics tools like Tableau, Power BI, or complex Excel models.
Across industries, geographies, and business models, one challenge has remained the same: Mid-sized companies are expected to operate with the sophistication of large enterprises, but with only a fraction of the resources. And nowhere is this pressure felt more deeply than inside finance and accounting teams.
When David was introduced to HeronAI what stood out was not another dashboard tool, but a platform built specifically for the companies he has spent his career serving.
“Heron is one of the more exciting companies I’ve seen in the last 15 years.” – David Reading
Across hundreds of conversations with founders, CFOs, and controllers, David consistently sees mid-sized companies trying to operate with financial systems that were never designed for their pace of business. These teams often run lean, with just one or two people responsible for everything from monthly close to forecasting. The volume of data they manage has grown dramatically, but the tools they rely on, such as spreadsheets, outdated reports, disconnected software, haven’t kept up.
As David put it, these companies “have limited resources in their finance and accounting teams,” yet are still expected to generate the level of financial visibility required to make fast, accurate decisions.
The result is a constant sense of pressure, falling behind, or trying to catch up with numbers that are already outdated.
He also highlighted that leaders inside these companies know what they want to see in their data, they can picture the insights intuitively, but extracting those insights from raw systems is the part that breaks down. David noted that he hears frustration daily that teams may have massive datasets, but transforming that information into something meaningful is “difficult to get from the large data world to actionable, insightful metrics.”
This gap slows decision-making, limits growth, delays opportunities, and leaves teams feeling reactive instead of confident and informed.
“Anything they can do to ease the burden on those teams… I saw Heron as a perfect tool for those companies.” - David Reading
What immediately struck him was how clearly HeronAI addressed a universal problem of mid-sized businesses with plenty of data, but little clarity.
While mid-sized companies represent a huge portion of the economy, they’re often overlooked by the major analytics software providers. Tools like Tableau, Power BI, and Looker are powerful but only if you have the time, talent, and technical sophistication to use them.
David sees this mismatch clearly:
"Companies in the $50 million to $500 million range simply aren’t getting the love, attention, or service they need from the pioneers in financial analysis and metrics. HeronAI is the first platform I’ve seen that is purpose-built for them."
In his view, HeronAI was one of the few tools he’d encountered that genuinely recognized that even highly capable founders are limited by the sheer amount of work.
HeronAI was designed to lighten the load and give leaders a way to make better decisions with real-time information. Instead of waiting for someone to rebuild an Excel model, the platform automates the flow of financial data from tools such as QuickBooks, Excel, and HubSpot, updating dashboards continuously without technical effort.
HeronAI bridges this gap by offering automated insights, instant dashboards, and real-time analysis without the need for technical expertise. And for companies that have been underserved for decades, this is nothing short of transformative.
David saw HeronAI as was one of the rare solutions with the potential to bring “significant benefits to a very large audience.”
From the beginning, David was also struck by the quality of the team behind HeronAI. After more than 15 years watching startups pitch, grow, and sometimes fail, he shared that HeronAI’s founders stand out as one of the strongest groups he has encountered.
He pointed specifically to the combination of technical expertise and operational experience, an unusual pairing that gives the platform both credibility and practicality.
He referenced the common advice in early-stage investing, “Back the jockey, not the horse,” and noted that HeronAI has both: a talented founding team and a deeply compelling product direction aimed at a large, underserved market.
“I would put Heron’s founder team in the top five of companies I’ve listened to and been involved with.” - David Reading
HeronAI doesn’t just automate dashboards; it enhances decision-making:
The exponential jump in clarity and speed is exactly what mid-sized companies need to scale—without ballooning their headcount or overworking their teams.
When discussing why a platform like HeronAI is needed now, David pointed to the accelerating pressure on finance and accounting teams.
From his vantage point as a banker, he’s watched financial and accounting teams work harder every year just to keep up with the basic flow of information. At a moment when companies are being pushed to make decisions with more speed and precision, the tools available to them haven’t evolved to support that demand.
Leadership wants answers faster, lenders want clearer visibility, and boards are pressing for more forward-looking insight. In many cases, those requests land on teams already operating at full capacity, leaving them with little room to take on new initiatives or refine their existing processes.
David found HeronAI compelling because instead of asking teams to stretch even further, it gives them a way to meet rising expectations without increasing their burden.
“[Companies] have these large databases of information, and pulling that into really insightful, actionable metrics would be a game-changer.”
He explained that the pressure isn’t just coming from inside the business; it’s shaped by the broader environment companies are operating in. Markets shift quickly, access to capital changes with little warning, and performance assumptions can become outdated in a matter of weeks. David saw HeronAI as arriving at precisely the point when leaders need to understand their financial position in real time as part of their day-to-day leadership rhythm.
David believes HeronAI can have significant industry-wide impact by shrinking the time companies spend on reporting while expanding the depth of insight those reports provide. Instead of spending hours each week assembling spreadsheets or updating dashboards, finance teams can reclaim that time for strategic planning and forward-looking analysis.
This shift, he noted, will allow businesses to improve productivity, reduce reporting errors, and make faster, more informed decisions. For mid-sized companies that often lack the resources of large enterprises, these improvements can be transformative.
“The time and effort will shrink dramatically, and the insight and perspective will increase exponentially.” - David Reading
When asked to describe HeronAI’s potential in a single word, David chose “game-changing.”
He acknowledged that the AI and analytics market is crowded, but after meeting the team, seeing the product direction, and understanding the problem it solves, he believes HeronAI is positioned to meaningfully reshape how mid-sized companies access and act on their data.
While he was clear that he cannot endorse HeronAI on behalf of any institution, he expressed that he would personally encourage small and mid-sized business leaders to explore what the platform can do for their financial reporting and decision-making processes.
Through automation, ease of use, and AI-driven insights, HeronAI is meeting a long-standing need in the SMB and mid-market space, changing how financial leaders access the information required to run their companies with accuracy and confidence.
Start working with HeronAI that can provide everything you need to transform data in decisions.