LinkedIn Top 30 Women in AI leader shares her journey from frustrated CFO to financial technology innovator
The breaking point came at 2 AM on a Tuesday, recalls Zhivka Nedyalkova, founder and CEO of FinTellect AI. She was hunched over her laptop, cross-referencing spreadsheets that should have been automatically synchronized, trying to understand why Q3 projections weren’t aligning with actual cash flow. As Chief Financial Officer of a rapidly scaling fintech company, she had access to sophisticated tools, real-time data streams, and a brilliant team. Yet there she was, manually piecing together financial insights that should have been instantly available.
“That moment crystallized a frustration I’d been carrying for years,” Zhivka reflects. “We were drowning in data but starving for intelligence. The irony wasn’t lost on me – in an industry obsessed with innovation, our most critical decisions were still being made with tools designed for a bygone era.”
The Uncomfortable Truth About Financial Leadership
Being recognized among LinkedIn’s Top 30 Women in AI opened doors to conversations with financial leaders across industries, she explains. What she discovered was both validating and alarming: her late-night spreadsheet wrestling matches weren’t unique. CFOs at Fortune 500 companies, startup founders, and financial consultants were all fighting the same battle against fragmented data and reactive decision-making.
“I spend more time collecting information than analyzing it,” one CFO told her during a conference in Sofia. “By the time I have a complete picture, the market has already moved.”
This resonated deeply with Zhivka’s experience. In her FinTech and cryptocurrency background, where market conditions shift hourly, traditional financial tools felt like trying to navigate Formula 1 racing with a horse and buggy. “The velocity of modern business demands intelligence that can keep pace,” she observes, “yet most financial technology remains anchored in historical reporting rather than forward-looking insight.”
The realization hit her: they weren’t just dealing with a technology problem – they were facing a fundamental mismatch between how businesses operate today and how financial decisions get made.
The Birth of an Idea
The seed for FinTellect AI was planted during those frustrating late-night sessions, but it germinated through Zhivka’s exposure to the broader AI community. Her involvement with LinkedIn’s AI network revealed how artificial intelligence was revolutionizing industries from healthcare to autonomous vehicles, yet strategic financial decision-making remained largely untouched by this transformation.
“The gap was glaring,” she says. “AI could diagnose diseases, predict weather patterns, and optimize supply chains, but CFOs were still asking ‘What’s our burn rate?’ and waiting days for accurate answers.”
She remembers the exact moment when the concept crystallized. During a video call with her development team – PhD candidates specializing in Large Language Models and Neural Networks – she posed a simple question: “What if we could ask our financial data questions the same way we ask a trusted advisor?”
“The silence that followed wasn’t uncertainty; it was recognition,” she recalls. “We all understood that this wasn’t just about building another financial tool. We were talking about reimagining how financial intelligence could work.”
Building Beyond the Obvious
Creating FinTellect AI meant resisting the temptation to follow established patterns in financial technology, she explains. Instead of focusing on data visualization or process automation – the usual suspects in fintech innovation – they decided to tackle the heart of the problem: the decision itself.
“Most financial tools show you what happened,” Zhivka often explains to potential partners. “We’re building something that helps you decide what happens next.”
This philosophical difference shaped every development decision. While competitors focused on making spreadsheets prettier or reports faster, her team concentrated on bridging the gap between raw financial information and strategic insight. The platform needed to understand context, not just crunch numbers.
Bulgaria’s emergence as a fintech hub provided the perfect environment for this ambitious undertaking. Sofia’s ranking as the world’s most cost-effective fintech city wasn’t just about economics – it reflected an ecosystem where innovation could flourish without constraints that might limit such experimental approaches elsewhere.
The Personal Stakes
Building FinTellect AI isn’t just professional for her; it’s deeply personal. “Every late night I spent wrestling with financial complexity, every strategic decision delayed by inadequate tools, every conversation with fellow financial leaders frustrated by the same limitations – these experiences fuel the urgency behind our mission,” she shares.
She’s sat in boardrooms where million-dollar decisions hinged on outdated projections. She’s watched talented teams second-guess themselves not because they lacked expertise, but because they lacked confidence in their data. She’s seen startups fail not from poor strategy, but from poor strategic information.
“These aren’t abstract problems to solve – they’re battles I’ve fought personally,” Zhivka emphasizes. “When we design features for FinTellect AI, I’m thinking about the CFO working late because their tools can’t provide clear answers. I’m designing for the consultant who knows their client needs better financial intelligence but lacks the resources to provide it.”
The Explainable Advantage
One lesson from her AI community involvement was the critical importance of transparency in business applications, she notes. Unlike consumer AI tools where users might accept “black box” recommendations, financial leaders need to understand the reasoning behind suggestions.
“Trust isn’t optional in financial decision-making – it’s fundamental,” the Fintellect`s AI founder explains. This insight shaped their commitment to explainable AI. Every recommendation, every forecast, every insight provided by the platform comes with clear reasoning.
As one early beta user put it to her: “I need to know not just what to do, but why it makes sense. If I can’t explain a financial decision to my board, I can’t make it with confidence.”
Looking Forward
The journey from frustrated CFO to AI entrepreneur hasn’t been linear, but it’s been purposeful, Zhivka reflects. Every challenge in building FinTellect AI connects back to those late-night moments of financial frustration that sparked this entire venture.
“We’re not just building a platform; we’re advocating for a fundamental shift in how financial leadership operates,” she says. The vision extends beyond solving current challenges to anticipating future business requirements as both AI capabilities and business complexity continue expanding.
For Zhivka Nedyalkova, success will be measured in eliminated late nights, confident strategic decisions, and financial leaders who can focus on strategy rather than data collection. “It’s about transforming the relationship between financial professionals and their most critical tool: information itself,” she concludes.
The story of FinTellect AI is ultimately about recognizing that innovation requires both vision and experience – understanding not just what’s technically possible, but what’s practically necessary. As they continue developing this platform, they’re guided by a simple principle that the founder holds dear: technology should enhance human capability, not complicate it.
