Mike Whitmire

Mike Whitmire is the Co-Founder and CEO of accounting transformation platform FloQast. From a background in accounting to a technology entrepreneur, Mike’s career journey models his deep understanding of both the industries’ challenges and opportunities.

Mike began his career at Ernst & Young – now EY – where he spent four years working in audit. He specialised in media and entertainment audits, gaining invaluable experience in financial statement preparation and regulatory compliance.

It's this audit background that would later prove essential in building FloQast’s approach to compliance and auditability, as the experience taught him the importance of documentation, standardisation and regulatory adherence.

Mike’s move from audit to private industry accounting came through Cornerstone OnDemand, a software-as-a-service company. 

“I was interested in learning more about software and seeing what that was all about,” he says. “I also wanted to participate in an IPO process from the accounting side of the house.”

At Cornerstone, Mike discovered his passion for the SaaS business model. The recurring revenue structure fascinated him, providing his first glimpse into how technology could transform business operations.

He adds: “I remember joining and helping with one of the early business model buildouts and just being like, ‘Wow, I love this business model. This is awesome’,”

The next three years for Mike at Cornerstone were years of explosive growth. When he joined, the accounting team comprised just five people who had never undergone a financial statement audit. By his departure, the company had gone public with full Securities and Exchange Commission reporting and approximately 60 accounting staff.

Mike Whitmire is the Co-Founder and CEO of accounting transformation platform FloQast. From a background in accounting to a technology entrepreneur, Mike’s career journey models his deep understanding of both the industries’ challenges and opportunities.

Mike began his career at Ernst & Young – now EY – where he spent four years working in audit. He specialised in media and entertainment audits, gaining invaluable experience in financial statement preparation and regulatory compliance.

It's this audit background that would later prove essential in building FloQast’s approach to compliance and auditability, as the experience taught him the importance of documentation, standardisation and regulatory adherence.

Mike’s move from audit to private industry accounting came through Cornerstone OnDemand, a software-as-a-service company. 

“I was interested in learning more about software and seeing what that was all about,” he says. “I also wanted to participate in an IPO process from the accounting side of the house.”

At Cornerstone, Mike discovered his passion for the SaaS business model. The recurring revenue structure fascinated him, providing his first glimpse into how technology could transform business operations.

He adds: “I remember joining and helping with one of the early business model buildouts and just being like, ‘Wow, I love this business model. This is awesome’,”

The next three years for Mike at Cornerstone were years of explosive growth. When he joined, the accounting team comprised just five people who had never undergone a financial statement audit. By his departure, the company had gone public with full Securities and Exchange Commission reporting and approximately 60 accounting staff.

The creation of FloQast

Mike left Cornerstone to found FloQast, which was established in 2013. Inspired by Cornerstone’s founders, the SaaS business model and the pain point he had personally experienced, the business has bloomed in the last 13 years to become a company of more than 800 employees with offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, London, Sydney and San Francisco. 

The platform has evolved from a month-end close management tool to a comprehensive accounting transformation platform.

“It’s been a really, really fun ride building up the company,” Mike reflects. “It’s awesome to solve this pain point that I had personally and help so many other accountants deal with it.”

It’s Mike’s background in accounting that fundamentally shapes his passion for FloQast. Without having done the work himself, Mike admits that he couldn’t maintain the same level of commitment, or resonate with FloQast’s partners and clients in the same way.

“If I had never done accounting, I can't imagine being nearly as passionate about FloQast as I am,” he says. “You have to live it to really appreciate it. Accounting isn’t about being good at math, it’s about being good about understanding rules or regulation and how a decision you’re making today is going to ultimately flow through to the financial statements and be presented to investors. It’s a lot more interesting than what we end up having to do on our day job when we get out because there hasn’t been a lot of great technology developed for actually doing the accounting.

“What gets me so excited about running FloQast is the opportunity to come in, help with the month end close, help teams collaborate better, give them some more free time to get through the month and then get through their audits really easily. That’s super energising and it’s been awesome to do that.”

His mission centres on addressing accounting’s talent shortage while ensuring accountants control their profession’s future in an AI-enabled world. 

FloQast’s philosophy of “by accountants for accountants” epitomises this commitment.

“That is hyper-important to me,” Mike urges. “Everything we’re building is in the spirit of ‘how is it going to be easy for accountants to use and manage and deploy and how do we make sure they're the ones owning accounting in the future with AI?’”

This mission extends beyond software development. FloQast launched the FloQast Certified Accountant programme, creating educational pathways that prepare accountants for technology-driven futures.

“This is a really big step towards us helping to execute on our mission of having accountants own the future of accounting with AI because we built the product that gives them the power. The technology is changing – as is the space – really rapidly and so education requirements are going to change. Rather than wait and sit back and wait for universities to take that challenge on, let's take that on internally at FloQast.

“If you're a controller or a CAO going to hire an accountant, I want the feeling to be ‘we need to go hire a FloQast-certified accountant’.”