He's the Controller at Helios Robotics — a Series D industrial robotics company, 340 people, $50-200M ARR, targeting an S-1 filing in 18 months. His CFO just told him: "We need a SOX 404 program standing up. Now."
His options
Anton has been here before — at his last company, the answer was Big 4. $2M. Six to twelve weeks of engagement. Calendar Tetris with audit partners. Three months before any actual document existed.
This time, he's looking at the landscape.
A
Big 4 advisory engagement (Deloitte, PwC, EY, KPMG)
$1-5M · 6-12 weeks · "Heavyweight" — what most pre-IPO Controllers default to.
B
Vanta or similar
$30K-$100K/yr · Optimized for SOC2/ISO. SOX 404 readiness is a stretch fit — not their core wheelhouse.
C
Velocity BETA
$0 self-serve · 20 minutes · AI-native. Builds the same artifact format his Deloitte audit team expects.
Anton picks C.
Minute 1 — His company profile
He enters his company profile. The agent generates an initial risk assessment for his Series D hardware business in 12 seconds — calling out the obvious areas Deloitte will focus on, and citing every assumption it made.
velocity.app/setup/profile
Company
Helios Robotics
Auditor
Deloitte
Stage
Series D · 340 employees
S-1 target
Q1 2027
✨ INITIAL RISK ASSESSMENT
Based on Helios Robotics' profile, the top SOX 404 risk areas concentrate around revenue recognition complexity (hardware + multi-year SaaS contracts), inventory and cost-of-goods controls, and ITGCs for the engineering-led tech stack…
The agent drafts a 115-control universe in 90 seconds: 60 financial reporting, 40 ITGCs, 15 entity-level. Each one carries a suggested owner, a COSO mapping, a must/should priority. Anton edits four he has strong opinions about; the agent runs a coherence pass and flags two gaps he'd missed.
⚠ Coherence check (3 items): Possible overlap between FR-001 and FR-002. Missing SoD coverage for NetSuite vendor master. Frequency mismatch on FR-006.
Minutes 6-12 — His control narratives
The agent drafts 47 control narratives in parallel — one per must-have control. Each carries a process description, a frequency, an evidence type, a test approach the auditor will follow. The agent self-rates confidence on each. Anton jumps straight to the 8 low-confidence ones; the rest he scans and approves.
FR-003Inventory standard-cost variance review
medium confidence
Process: At quarter-end, the Controller pulls the standard-cost variance report from NetSuite. Variances >$50K or 5% trigger a written explanation from Operations…
Why medium confidence: Variance materiality threshold inferred from revenue band; should be set jointly with Deloitte.
Process drafted · Frequency: Monthly · Evidence: Signed allocation review form · Test approach: 25 contracts/quarter
+ 45 more narratives — 7 flagged for review
Minutes 13-16 — His walkthrough plan
The agent sequences six walkthroughs against his Q1 2027 S-1 target, tells him who needs to be in each meeting, what documentation to have ready, and when to schedule them. The plan is firm-flavored for Deloitte — and explicit about which specifics to validate with the engagement team rather than confabulate.
He forwards the PDF to his CFO that afternoon. The CFO forwards it to the audit committee. Nobody can tell it didn't come from Deloitte.
The thesis
The wizard isn't the product. The operating model is — a separate codebase, a small team, weekly releases, agent-led content. Velocity is Auditborb proving it can ship like this.
Changelog
velocity.app/changelog
This week
Coherence pass now surfaces SoD gaps
Step 2 review now flags missing segregation-of-duties coverage based on your industry profile.
Last week
Big-4-flavored walkthrough plans
Step 4 customizes framing to your selected auditor while keeping firm-specific procedural guidance bounded.
2 weeks ago
PDF export, v1
First version of the printable readiness report. Designed to look like a consulting deliverable, not a webapp export.
3 weeks ago
Parallel narrative drafting
Step 3 now fires 40+ narratives in parallel with self-rated confidence; low-confidence cards float to the top.
4 weeks ago
Velocity v0.1 — public beta
Five-step wizard live. Built in 8 days by one engineer using Claude Sonnet 4.5 + Next.js + Vercel AI SDK.
Every entry in that changelog is a real commit. The "1 engineer · 8 days" claim is verifiable.
Pre-IPO and standing up SOX?
Stop scheduling Big 4 kickoff meetings.