C Cotrugl 01 / 00
Pre-seed pitch

Cotrugl

The AI operating system for small business.

Confidential

The problem

Most small business runs on a back office it doesn't control.

Bookkeeping, payroll, IT, legal — the work that keeps SMB's running is outsourced. It usually gets done late, done poorly, or not at all.


The work AI will transform first is the work owners outsource. This means that the upgrade has to come through the vendor — and it won't.

Outsourced

Not theirs to fix

The work that runs the business sits outside it — owned by vendors, not owners.

Outdated

Run by firms just as small

Those vendors are SMBs too. None are rebuilding around AI.

Outpaced

So they fall behind

Big firms automate in-house and pull ahead. Everyone else stays at analogue speed.

Why now

The window just opened — on three fronts at once.

The work became automatable at the same moment the firms came up for sale and the incumbents ran out of answers. That overlap is the opening.

01
AI can finally do the work

Frontier models categorise, reconcile, detect exceptions and extract documents at near-human accuracy — with no bespoke ML per client. A research problem in 2023; an engineering problem in 2026.

02
The firms are coming up for sale

Bookkeeping-firm owners are ageing out with no succession. Established, recurring client books are acquirable now, at roughly 1× revenue.

03
The incumbents have no answer

The SaaS-era platforms — Xero, QuickBooks — are losing ground, with no credible AI-native strategy. The layer that runs the business is up for grabs.

Solution

The agentic Ledger is the foundation of the AI OS.

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  1. Ledger Bookkeeping & payroll

    The agent reconciles, categorises, and drafts BAS, each with a confidence score.

  2. Accounting Accounting & compliance

    Bank, payroll, and invoice feeds arrive continuously.

  3. Legal Legal & HR

    A registered agent reviews the exceptions and approves.

  4. IT IT Services

    Submitted with a full audit trail retained.

Market size

Placeholder — content to come.

Business Model

Buy the firm. Keep the brand. Run it on the ledger.

We acquire established bookkeeping firms with sticky client bases, then migrate their back office onto the Cotrugli agentic ledger. Clients keep the firm they trust; we replace the manual cost base underneath it.

01
Acquire

Profitable AU firms, recurring revenue, owner seeking exit or succession.

02
Transform

Migrate onto the agentic ledger: reconcile in minutes, BAS in seconds.

03
Compound

Margin expands per firm; each acquisition makes the system better.

Competition

Placeholder — content to come.

Traction

Placeholder — content to come.

Why us

A proven team with deep experience in this category.

Two founders who have built, scaled, sold, and operated in the exact cross section of AI, bookkeeping, and M&A. Cotrugli is the pattern they already know, done right.

Josh Foreman, co-founder of Cotrugli — smiling, wearing a white shirt.
Co-founder

Josh Foreman

Built and exited two businesses in this category — Consultive, Australia's largest external Xero training partner, and Pocket, a software-led Australian bookkeeping firm: the pre-AI version of the firms Cotrugli now acquires. Most recently scaled InDebted to ~$100m in revenue, across more than 7 markets.

About me "I am a technical product founder, passionate about building enduring businesses that compound value."

Pierre Bergamin, co-founder of Cotrugli — wearing a cap and glasses against a navy background.
Co-founder

Pierre Bergamin

15+ years of engineering leadership building and scaling agentic AI platforms in production across multiple sectors and markets. Earlier, senior engineering leadership at Assignar and Learnosity. Joined InDebted in 2022, supporting the business to scale from $7m to $100m ARR over 4 years.

About Me "Pierre's quote goes in this section".

The Ask

We're raising to build the Ledger and execute our first acqusition.

A small, focused pre-seed that buys a single decisive result: take a real Australian bookkeeping firm and roughly double its EBITDA margin on the agentic ledger — the proof that de-risks everything after it.

Firms acquired0 → 1
ARR, recurring$0.0m → $2.0m+
EBITDA margin20% → 40%
Acq. multiple1.0× → 10.0×

Placeholder figures (Today → Target · FY27): replace with the live model.

StagePre-seed · stealth InstrumentYC Post-money SAFE TargetDefault-alive · year one
$3M the raise
  • First acquisition$2.5M The first Xero bookkeeping firm — profitable, recurring, a sticky client base for the AI OS.
  • Platform build$0.5M The proprietary agentic Ledger that replaces Xero and the manual cost base — the platform we scale from.
  • Runway & teamFree cashflow Operations sustained by the firm's own cashflow — default-alive and profitable inside year one.