The first Excel AI analyst built by and for Excel power users

Crunched is the Excel AI analyst for power users - in consulting, investment banking, and private equity. It error-checks workbooks end-to-end, builds models from scratch, and handles grunt work like extracting and linking data from IMs to template models - all within Excel so teams can review and iterate as usual. Agents struggle with tabular data - getting reliable, multi-step execution over thousands of interlinked formulas, sheets, and ranges is hard. Making Crunched good enough for people who live in Excel means knowing the pain points deeply. Michael and Philip has 10,000+ hours in Excel across consulting and finance. Markus and Lars bring deep expertise in scaling AI and enterprise solutions. We've had easy access to first customers and are already live with firms across six European countries - we now plan to expand into the US. With >1bn total Excel users, we focus on the top 2%, highest-value Excel users globally. We're solving one pain point at a time to create a product that doesn't just look good in a demo but actually works in production. Excel is here to stay, but the way experts model is fundamentally changing - with Crunched.

Active Founders

Philip Borge

Founder

Co-founder & CEO at Crunched. Previous consultant at McKinsey, with PE due diligence and strategy focus. Prior to that, CEO of Okkult Eyewear, an AI-powered optician concept, securing PMF and $1M in funding. MSc in Finance & Private Equity from the London School of Economics, graduating #1

Philip Borge

Founder

Co-founder & CEO at Crunched. Previous consultant at McKinsey, with PE due diligence and strategy focus. Prior to that, CEO of Okkult Eyewear, an AI-powered optician concept, securing PMF and $1M in funding. MSc in Finance & Private Equity from the London School of Economics, graduating #1

Lars Gjardar Musæus

Founder

Co-founder & CTO of Crunched. Senior full-stack and infrastructure engineer with deep experience building production systems - from cloud platforms and distributed backends to real-time control systems. Worked closely with customers to deliver tailor-made, end-to-end applications in forward-deployed engineering teams at Bekk, built cloud infrastructure at Schibsted and Sopra Steria, and developed autonomous maritime systems at Kongsberg Defence. Holds an MSc in Cybernetics & Robotics (NTNU).

Lars Gjardar Musæus

Founder

Co-founder & CTO of Crunched. Senior full-stack and infrastructure engineer with deep experience building production systems - from cloud platforms and distributed backends to real-time control systems. Worked closely with customers to deliver tailor-made, end-to-end applications in forward-deployed engineering teams at Bekk, built cloud infrastructure at Schibsted and Sopra Steria, and developed autonomous maritime systems at Kongsberg Defence. Holds an MSc in Cybernetics & Robotics (NTNU).

Michael Sakowski

Founder

Co-founder & COO at Crunched. Previous consultant and jr manager at McKinsey & Company. Core member of our Private Capital practice, focusing on commercial due diligence and PortCo strategy. Earlier also crunched out Excels in both investment banking and private equity. Masters in Banking & Finance from University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

Michael Sakowski

Founder

Co-founder & COO at Crunched. Previous consultant and jr manager at McKinsey & Company. Core member of our Private Capital practice, focusing on commercial due diligence and PortCo strategy. Earlier also crunched out Excels in both investment banking and private equity. Masters in Banking & Finance from University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

Markus Skagemo

Founder

Head of AI at Crunched! Background in Robotics and Control Systems from NTNU. Former Data Scientist at Oda, Norway’s first unicorn, and at BearingPoint, where I built and scaled AI solutions for clients in finance and luxury automotive. Recipient of BearingPoint’s Global Innovation Award.

Markus Skagemo

Founder

Head of AI at Crunched! Background in Robotics and Control Systems from NTNU. Former Data Scientist at Oda, Norway’s first unicorn, and at BearingPoint, where I built and scaled AI solutions for clients in finance and luxury automotive. Recipient of BearingPoint’s Global Innovation Award.

Company Launches

Crunched - The AI Excel Analyst ⚡

See original launch post

Hi YC 👋

We’re Philip, Michael, Lars and Markus - and we’re building Crunched

TL;DR

Crunched is the first AI Excel agent built by and for Excel power users, tailored for management consulting and finance workflows

We’ve spent 10,000+ hours in Excel ourselves, and are live with consulting, IB and PE firms across Europe and the US, 2x-ing their Excel modeling speed

Ask: We would love for you to introduce us to mgmt. consulting, investment banking or PE firms - contact us at philip@usecrunched.com

https://youtu.be/zBXue210_qo

Why we’re doing it

Michael and Philip have worked on countless deals at McKinsey and in other IB/PE roles, and it always starts and ends with an Excel model. It’s either the main deliverable itself, or the entire backbone of the slide deck.

No matter how skilled you are, manual Excel modeling is slow and super error-prone. On one of our last projects, a company’s 2030 revenue projection presented to the CEO was doubled because a colleague (promise it was a colleague), had linked the forecast to year 1 revenue growth for all years. That was a fun follow-up call afterwards.

Associates need specialized AI tools they can collaborate with directly in their workflows, to drive productivity and accuracy. The solution is not to replace Excel, but to augment it and solve one pain point at a time. That’s why we’re building Crunched.

What we’re doing

Crunched is an Excel-native AI analyst that can:

Error-check models: Check models for logical, formula and conceptual mistakes
Gather data: Run targeted web research and extract figures from PDFs (e.g., annual reports) and link it into templates
Build analyses: Build bespoke analyses from scratch, turning 1h tasks into 5-10min automated workflows

Users are already reporting that they’re >2x faster on specific tasks. We are on a mission to make it 10x across all modeling work.

Team

Michael and Philip have 10,000+ hours of Excel experience (often until 4am) from McKinsey. Lars and Markus have years of experience shipping and scaling award winning AI enterprise solutions, and are building Crunched with the cutting-edge security needed for clients to trust us with their highly confidential data.

Ask

We’re expanding in Europe and into the US and are looking for warm intros to mgmt. consulting, IB and PE firms. If you are or know any Excel power users we’d love your help.

Please reach out at philip@usecrunched.com or book a live demo on our website. All help is appreciated - thank you!

YC Photos