The Story of Clockwork: Building the Future of Financial Planning
Some of the best startup ideas come from living the problem. For Fady Hawatmeh, that problem emerged from countless hours building financial models in Excel, serving as the “token finance guy” for entrepreneurs who needed answers to crucial business questions.
In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Fady shared how his journey from finance executive to startup founder revealed a gap in the market that would eventually become Clockwork.
From Boeing to Bootstrap
Before Clockwork, Fady’s path wasn’t the typical Silicon Valley story. “I was born in Jordan, born in Aman Jordan, raised in St. Louis. And I’m a finance guy,” he explains. “Went and worked for Boeing in Fpna and strategy for the early half of my career, but I’ve been an entrepreneur since a kid.”
This entrepreneurial spirit, combined with his finance background, led him to start an outsourced CFO consulting firm. It was here that the seeds of Clockwork were planted. Entrepreneurs kept coming to him with similar questions: “Should we hire this person? Should we fire these people? Should we lay off? How much money should we raise? When should we raise the money?”
“I was living in Excel and I was building on all these models that answered, what if, what if?” Fady recalls. “And I was like, okay, there has to be a better way for this.”
The Search for a Solution
Rather than immediately jumping into building a product, Fady first tried to find existing solutions. “I tried every single tool in the market… I was a paying user for the majority of them,” he shares. The verdict? “You can tell they weren’t built by CFO.”
This realization led to a crucial insight: while he could help hundreds or thousands of companies through consulting, “as a software, I can affect millions, and I can change the way that people really go about running a business.”
Building the Right Product
The path from idea to product wasn’t straightforward. After spending six months building what users said they wanted – full automation – Fady discovered a disconnect between stated preferences and actual needs. Users who had asked for automation now wanted customization.
This experience shaped Clockwork’s development philosophy: “Trust your feedback, but also trust what you know and trust what you see and always push forward. Why are they giving you that piece of feedback?”
Staying Focused in a Hot Market
As the financial planning space heated up, Clockwork faced increasing competition from well-funded startups. Fady’s response? “F the noise,” he quotes from his advisor. “It is a daily challenge that every single morning I wake up and I have to be very present on that day and not thinking of all the other stuff that are trying to knock me off my game.”
This focus paid off. In their first full year in market, Clockwork achieved 5x revenue growth, built on a foundation of genuine problem-solving rather than aggressive sales tactics.
The Future of Financial Planning
Looking ahead, Fady’s vision extends far beyond financial modeling. “Clockwork is going to be the workday type platform for every company that makes less than $100 million in revenue,” he predicts. This means expanding beyond financial projections to include “your payroll, your HR, anything that a company needs.”
The ultimate goal? Creating a system where “if you’re not using Clockwork, you are missing out. Your company has an increased chance of failure if you’re not using Clockwork.”
For Fady, this isn’t just about building a successful company – it’s about transforming how businesses operate. “We’re not trying to add another acronym out there,” he explains. Instead, the mission is about “making Fpna not intimidating, making Fpna more accessible, making Fpna easy to understand.”
In a market where competitors chase quick exits, Clockwork is playing a longer game. As Fady puts it, “This is a company that I want to IPO and make an absolutely massive company.” For the entrepreneurs and finance teams struggling with financial planning today, that’s a future worth watching.