Campfire

Sources#

• The ERP for the AI Revolution is here

Summary#

AI-native ERP (enterprise resource planning) platform for high-growth tech companies, founded by John Glasgow (YC S23). It automates accounting and financial reporting — taxes, investor reporting, revenue recognition — using a custom foundation model and a custom agent platform, positioned to pull customers off NetSuite. Trajectory: a Google-Sheets prototype → first paying customer <1 month into YC → $35M Series A (June 2025, with just 12 people) → Series B led by Accel and Ribbit Capital → 100+ employees, ARR more than doubling every quarter since Q4 2024. meetcampfire.com.

What it is and the market#

ERP = "all of the accounting and financial reporting for a company." Glasgow's market read: everybody has taxes and (in tech) investor-reporting requirements, so the market is wide and needs no education — "it's just a matter of which one you're on." The incumbent is NetSuite (decades old). The bet, per Glasgow's YC interview, was that the category was "so old and ancient and ready for something new" yet credible because of his finance background.

The wedge (see Narrow Wedge into a Legacy Market)#

Campfire deliberately did not try to be feature-complete. It targeted tech companies that had outgrown QuickBooks but use only a fraction of NetSuite, and solved a few specific things extremely well:

• Approval workflows — "doesn't sound sexy, but it's a key reason folks need it for audit; QuickBooks doesn't have it."
• Multi-entity accounting — subsidiaries; "in the AI-native world folks go multi-entity very quickly" (cites companies with global operations).

Within nine months it was moving customers off NetSuite by being the best for a narrow profile, not by matching breadth.

Why customers switch (the three reasons cited)#

1. Public-company readiness — audit, controls, approval workflows; "most tech companies aspire to be public, so if we solve the end state, that's why you buy an ERP." Referenceable in public markets.
2. Product velocity — "your velocity is so high we feel you'll scale with us"; customers include Replit and PostHog (Product Velocity as Moat).
3. Best AI — "maybe because we're the only one with our own foundation model and custom agent platform."

The narrative flip that made selling possible#

Buying the legacy incumbent used to be the "safe" choice. Once AI took off in finance (~end of 2024), being the incumbent meant not being AI-native — boards and execs began demanding AI-native, giving accountants "air cover" to buy an unknown new vendor. "What's safe is now actually the opposite answer." See The AI-Native Safe-Choice Inversion.

GTM and milestones#

• Founder-led sales to $1M ARR — Glasgow as the sole AE doing every demo (Founder-Led Sales Discipline).
• Wedge flip (~month 3): applied to YC as a full general-ledger ERP; briefly considered leading with a revenue-recognition/SaaS-reporting add-on, then flipped it — core ERP became the primary purchase, revenue an add-on (the RevRec cohort converted poorly to the core product).
• Pure sales, not PLG — chose the in-house accounting team over the bookkeeper/SMB community; "narrowly focus on when they bring accounting in-house."
• The $300M-revenue customer signed when Campfire had ~4 employees on a 2-year deal "longer than our runway" — "literally making a venture investment in you."
• YC's final-day advice Glasgow follows religiously: build in the Bay, build in person, get to Series A (5 days/week in-office, SF HQ + NY office).

Connections#

• John Glasgow — founder/CEO
• Narrow Wedge into a Legacy Market — the disruption strategy Campfire executed
• The AI-Native Safe-Choice Inversion — the macro tailwind that flipped "safe" in its favor
• Product Velocity as Moat — the differentiator customers cite most
• Founder-Led Sales Discipline — how it got to $1M ARR
• AI-Native Startup Lifecycle — a real-world instance of the Founder's Playbook's lean-AI-native arc (35M Series A at 12 people)
• Founder as Agent Orchestrator — Glasgow's "don't offload sales to an AE or an agent" is an explicit counterpoint
• Seven Powers Applied to AI — counter-positioning: incumbents can't easily become AI-native without cannibalizing
• Compounding Data Moat — custom foundation model + multi-entity financial data as a defensibility play

Open Questions#

• Campfire claims its AI edge comes from "our own foundation model." For an ERP, what does a custom foundation model actually buy over fine-tuning a frontier model — and is it durable as frontier models improve (cf. Harness Shrinkage as Models Improve)?
• "Never had anyone outgrow Campfire" — does that hold as customers reach true enterprise scale where NetSuite's breadth historically mattered?

Sources#

• The ERP for the AI Revolution is here — YC Root Access fireside with Andrew Tan