Full Bio

I’m Craig Hill, a finance operator turned founder with more than 30 years of experience across accounting, forecasting, CFO leadership, strategic planning, financial modeling, and decision support.

My primary startup today is Founder Cockpit, an AI-assisted operating system for early-stage founders. It is designed to help founders move from scattered ideas and assumptions into a more disciplined workflow for validation, positioning, outreach, market signals, and go-to-market execution. The goal is to help founders answer the questions that matter before they overbuild: who is this really for, what pain are we solving, what evidence do we have, who should we talk to next, and what should we stop, defer, or test?

Founder Cockpit comes directly from my own experience as a founder. I know how easy it is to get buried in prompts, notes, tools, landing pages, conversations, and half-formed GTM ideas without a clear operating system for turning activity into evidence. I’m building Founder Cockpit to give solo founders, first-time founders, advisors, and early-stage teams a practical way to stay focused on the work that improves market clarity and commercialization readiness.

Before Founder Cockpit, I founded SPENDiD, a predictive financial intelligence company focused on helping people and organizations make better financial decisions before stress or regret sets in. SPENDiD’s related applications include LifePreview, MyBudgetReport, and predictive APIs that use simple inputs, peer-comparative spending intelligence, local cost context, and scenario modeling to preview affordability, budget pressure, and financial tradeoffs without requiring bank connections.

Earlier in my career, I served in CFO and senior finance roles, including CFO of Southland Tube during a period of significant growth and eventual acquisition, and CFO of the Birmingham Business Alliance. My background includes forecasting, budgeting, cash flow management, internal controls, profitability analysis, strategic FP&A, compensation planning, reporting systems, and executive decision support.

The common thread across my career is decision quality. Whether I’m working on founder validation, financial intelligence, or strategic finance, I’m drawn to practical tools that help people understand reality earlier, make better tradeoffs, and act with more confidence.

I’m on Startups.com to connect with founders, advisors, GTM operators, product builders, startup communities, and potential partners who care about helping founders validate smarter, communicate more clearly, and move faster without wasting motion.

Founder Cockpit helps early-stage founders turn scattered startup activity into structured validation. Instead of guessing who to contact, what to say, or whether feedback means anything, founders use Founder Cockpit to define their offer, identify ideal customer profiles, discover relevant companies and decision-makers, generate careful outreach, and track real market signals.

The platform is built for founders who are still testing whether an idea deserves more time, money, and product development. It helps separate motion from evidence by organizing outreach, contact selection, connection tracking, and validation learning in one focused workflow.

Founder Cockpit is especially useful before a founder overbuilds, overpitches, or spends months chasing weak signals. The goal is simple: help founders move faster from idea to evidence, understand who actually cares, and make better go / refine / pause decisions with less wasted effort.