Mike Favazza
Mike spent forty-plus years as a CPA, firm partner, and outsourced CFO to hundreds of mid-market manufacturers, contractors, law firms, and medical practices. He co-founded Elevate after retiring from his own firm because the businesses he spent a career serving were being sold AI on assumptions that wouldn't survive a CFO's first quarter close.
- 1982
- CPA since
- 40+
- Years in mid-market finance
- 100s
- Businesses advised
- 21
- Years running his own CPA firm
What I do
Bring the CFO lens.
Translate Elevate's AI work into how a CPA and mid-market CFO actually evaluate a software investment: payback window, cash impact, audit trail, the controls an owner can defend. Forty years of asking those questions for hundreds of operating businesses before they cut a check on software. Same questions belong on the table for AI.
What I believe
Forty years of looking at P&Ls taught me one thing: businesses rarely fail from a lack of technology. They fail from technology that was built around the vendor's roadmap instead of how their work actually gets done. AI changes the tools available. It doesn't change the rule. If a system can't survive a quarter close, a slow month, and the owner's gut check, it doesn't matter how smart the model is.
An AI strategy without an ROI line is a write-off waiting to happen.