Global EMBA 2020 alumnus Andreas Hornfischer reflect on his personal health journey and what it taught him about leadership.

"I believe our product performs better than Manus in finance."

In March 2025, Manus.im was launched. Mengqi and Jack found Manu’s demo on Tesla stock valuation and financial analysis at once. With great expectations, they soon felt disappointed about the presentation.

"It’s still not user-friendly—we have to upload the data ourselves."

They firmly added, “We have a better solution.”

Their confidence originated from a casual moment at the end of 2023 when Mengqi stumbled across a post on social media:

"Why can’t ChatGPT do financial modelling yet?"

That question struck him like a bolt. He immediately thought of Jack’s extensive experience in financial modelling and asked Jack:" Do you think people would be willing to pay for AI-driven financial analysis and valuation modelling?"

Jack replied confidently, “If we make it, we will earn it.”

Thus, two founders—neither of whom came from a computer science background— believed in “solve the problem” and focused on pain points only. Armed with the tools acquired at CEIBS, they started their journey to create their vision of an AI-driven platform for fully automated financial analysis. The path ahead promised to be full of ups and downs but brimming with opportunities.

Founding Team of FiMo Copilot (CEIBS MBA Class of 2024)

01 Why Partner Together?

Jack: "We are both classmates from CEIBS and were actually group members in our first semester. If you want to know whether someone is reliable, just look at how they perform in group assignments. Mengqi is not only reliable but also incredibly proactive. So when he invited me to join him in starting a business, I didn't hesitate to jump on board. Later, he wrote all the backend and frontend code for the product from scratch by himself, which completely amazed me!"

Mengqi: "I completely agree. I brought Jack on board for the startup because of his experience in financial analysis, and he shares my product philosophy of being user-centric—working to create a product that genuinely addresses user pain points. Over the past year and more, we've faced project pressures together and pulled through countless late nights, getting to know each other's personalities and working styles inside out. Most importantly, we've established a strong level of trust, which is key to making our collaboration successful in the long run."

02 How FiMo Copilot Was Born

Extracting data from financial reports, building valuation models, and writing industry and financial analysis reports are part of the daily routine for most finance professionals. It's repetitive, time-consuming, and inefficient, yet there has always been a lack of truly effective and cost-efficient tools on the market. Recognising this pain point, Mengqi and Jack decided to take matters into their own hands and launched an AI financial analysis automation tool—FiMo Copilot. (WeChat ID: 飞猫助手)

"Since the users’ pain points are so apparent, and we have the capability to try, why not create something ourselves?" Mengqi recalled. Their first MVP (AI Valuation Modelling Assistant, capable of generating a valuation model in just 10 seconds) received an overwhelmingly positive market response upon its launch on Xiaohongshu. More and more users began to repurchase and renew subscriptions, with even overseas clients placing orders in US dollars. Jack added with a smile, “Users are more eager than we are, constantly urging us to update features, which drives us to keep pushing forward.”

Currently, FiMo Copilot is focused on the field of financial analysis, but their exploration goes far beyond that. Mengqi stated, “In the short term, we will continue to delve into financial analysis and refine it to perfection. If we find a suitable direction in the future, we’re also open to exploring new breakthroughs.” Jack added from a product perspective, “There are actually many Excel-related scenarios still ripe for exploration. DeepSeek and GPT have already excelled in text processing, and there are several AI tools for PPT, but Excel still lacks a truly effective AI product. If we accumulate enough experience in spreadsheet data processing, we can definitely expand into areas like marketing, operations, insurance, and real estate in the future, helping users to automatically extract, organise, and analyse data, ultimately outputting results in the templates they desire.”

From filling a market gap to becoming an industry leader, the journey of FiMo Copilot has only just begun. Mengqi and Jack are confident that FiMo Copilot has the potential for disruptive innovation. FiMo Copilot has been accepted into Nvidia Inception and AWS elite startup program.

Jack explaining the basics of accounting to his classmates in the Finance Investment Club

03 What Makes FiMo Copilot Different?

“‘FiMo Copilot’ is actually a play on words. It comes from the abbreviation for ‘Financial Modeling,’” Jack said with a smile. “Cats are both agile and techy, and coincidentally, there are many cats around the CEIBS campus. We even considered choosing one as our logo. However, we haven’t decided which one yet, so we hope the CEIBS students can give us some suggestions!” (Jack mentioned that he particularly likes the tabby cat downstairs by T3.)

Aside from its unique name, the features of FiMo Copilot are also continually evolving. “From March to early April, we will launch our most significant new features, including the ability to upload financial reports and extract data from them,” Mengqi explained. “Users simply need to upload their financial reports, whether annual or quarterly, and regardless of the exchange they come from. FiMo Copilot can automatically recognise and validate the financial data, generating valuation models and financial analysis reports. The entire process requires almost no human intervention, significantly saving on time costs.”

“Initially, we primarily focused on listed companies, but we are now expanding to include non-listed companies,” Jack added. “Financial institutions, especially private equity (PE) and corporate venture capital (CVC) firms, often need to analyse the financial reports of non-listed companies during due diligence and post-investment phases. The traditional method relies entirely on manual data entry, which is time-consuming and labour-intensive. FiMo Copilot can automatically handle this data and quickly generate financial analysis reports.”

Currently, their focus remains on refining the product to achieve full automation of the financial analysis process. They have already garnered significant interest from state-owned enterprise funds and large real estate funds, which plan to conduct concept validation in the coming months.

In terms of data security, they have also made early preparations. “Local deployment is crucial.This way, data won’t leak, and companies can feel more secure,” Jack explained. “As for compliance, before we engage with clients, we conduct a comprehensive review of the data to ensure it meets regulatory requirements. Particularly when it involves data crossing borders or confidential information, we always plan ahead.”

04 No Experience—How to Break Into AI?

Mengqi: "Actually, when I was applying for my MBA, I had already considered starting a business focused on digital transformation, but I wasn’t sure how to implement it at the time. The CEIBS MBA programme not only provided me with a solid foundation in business logic but also gave me the opportunity to identify reliable potential partners among my classmates. At the end of 2022, the emergence of ChatGPT made me keenly aware of the transformative potential of AI in the SaaS industry. At that time, the CEIBS Technical Club invited an expert in the GPT field to give a talk, and everyone asked him, ‘Will AGI appear in the short term?’ He answered without hesitation, ‘Yes.’ In that moment, I became even more determined to explore the AI space.”

Jack: "Unlike Mengqi, I had never considered entrepreneurship before starting my studies. I was actually drawn to the CEIBS MBA for its employment statistics, thinking about doubling my salary after graduation (laughs). However, my learning experience at CEIBS—especially in courses on innovation, international entrepreneurship, and leadership—sparked my interest in tech entrepreneurship. The rising popularity of GPT further convinced me that this could be a prime opportunity worth going ‘all-in’ for. Just as the CEIBS MBA motto says: Venture into a changing world. The world is changing, so why not give it a try?”

A group photo of Mengqi, Jack, and other Term 1 team members from their leadership class, where the team won first place in the challenge

When discussing how to carve a path in the competitive AI landscape as non-technical graduates, Jack remarked, “Our biggest advantage is that we are the users ourselves.” In the marketing class at CEIBS, he gained a profound understanding of the importance of user value. Many AI products are overly technology-driven and overlook the actual user experience. However, their team always places user needs at the forefront, which is a core reason they can retain repeat customers. Furthermore, the marketing strategies and market positioning tools provided by the CEIBS MBA programme enabled them to analyse the market more scientifically and accurately reach their target users.

From a technical perspective, Mengqi also shared his insights: “In the age of AI, the most important thing is the ability to learn.” Although they do not come from a technical background, AI coding tools have become powerful enough to assist in development. With tools like Cursor, over 80% of FiMo Copilot's code is now generated by AI. Continuous learning of new technologies is key to their ability to rapidly advance product implementation.

05 Pressure and Challenges

Jack candidly stated, “The biggest pressure we face is that we want to move faster.”

Despite having a clear product roadmap and validating their engineering capabilities and market potential with their MVP, they still face significant challenges in further expansion. Currently, FiMo Copilot has over 500 paying users, with a retention rate of 20% and an average transaction value ranging from 40 to 800 yuan. “Based on user payments and genuine feedback, we have initially achieved PMF (Product-Market Fit). The next step is expansion—we need more funding and engineers,” Jack explained.

06 The Future of AI in Finance

Mengqi: "When discussing the future trends of AI in the field of financial analysis, I believe AI agents will be an important direction. The recently popular Manus is a general AI agent, while we are focusing on a vertical field - financial analysis. FiMo Copilot automates most of the routine tasks of the financial analysis process, allowing financial analysts to spend more time exploring real alpha. Additionally, by using OCR graph we can extract data from various information sources, including uploaded research reports, Excel files, financial statements, and online news to build knowledge graphs with Graph RAG, which enables us to conduct real-time event analysis in finance."

Jack: "From a product perspective, I believe there are three major trends worth paying attention to in the future:

✅ Multi-Agent Architectures Become Mainstream: In the future, it won't be humans giving commands to AI. Instead, AI will collaborate with one another and automatically execute tasks. Financial analysis will shift from traditional linear thinking to a system where agents autonomously complete their work.

✅End-to-End Automation Accelerates: The proportion of manual intervention will continue to decline. As the capabilities of large models improve, tasks such as data processing, financial statement analysis, and report generation will become highly automated. The level of human involvement could drop from the current 30% to single digits.

These changes will completely reshape the working patterns of the financial industry. Analysts will no longer just be "Excel wizards," but rather experts in industry insights. Their core competencies will shift from data processing to understanding the market, uncovering information, and developing strategies. This transformation will not only impact career development but also profoundly change the way analysts work and live."

A group photo of Mengqi, Jack, and other Term 1 team members from their data class, where the team won first place in the challenge

07 How Can a CEIBS MBA Empower You?

The path of entrepreneurship is not easy, but at CEIBS MBA, they have never been alone in their battle.

The courses provided the initial inspiration. When FiMo Copilot was still just an idea, the courses at CEIBS taught them how to analyse the market, identify competitive advantages, and build a company. “From business models to competitive strategies, every class felt like piecing together a map for our entrepreneurial journey, guiding us step by step towards reality,” Jack remarked.

The professors have been their most steadfast supporters. Mengqi added, “ Professor Venkat Peddireddy,  who taught us accounting, not only provided product guidance but also allowed students to try out FiMo Copilot in class, helping us gather real user feedback. Professor Zhang Lingling from marketing fought for resources and offered advice during our entrepreneurial process, helping us avoid many detours along the way.”

Mengqi, Jack, and Professor Venkat  Peddireddy

The CEIBS Brand: Their Greatest Asset

Whether seeking investors or clients, every time they mention, “We are from CEIBS,” the level of trust from the other party significantly increases. The support from alumni has been beyond their expectations. Some are willing to provide resources, others are eager to try out the product, and some have even become direct customers. This sense of recognition has made Mengqi and Jack more resolute in their entrepreneurial journey and emboldened them to tackle the unknown.

From the CEIBS classroom to real-life entrepreneurial partners, Mengqi and Jack have put business theory into practice, seizing the golden opportunity presented by the rise of AI. Their entrepreneurial story is not just a technological exploration, it embodies the spirit of CEIBS.