Mike Barnes. The reason Rhomu exists.
Mike spent twenty five years inside finance functions in Ireland and the UK, first as an FD, then as a group CFO, then fractionally across five scaling businesses at once. He founded Rhomu in 2020 because every one of those businesses needed the same thing and none of them could buy it.
In his words
"Every founder I met was choosing between a bookkeeper and a big four bill."
"I kept walking into the same room. A business doing real revenue, a founder who knew their market cold, and a finance function held together by one overworked accounts person and a spreadsheet nobody else could open."
"They could not justify a full time CFO, and the consultancies that could help them wanted a six figure engagement to produce a report. So they did nothing, and the problem compounded. Late numbers, no forecast, no leverage in a negotiation."
"Rhomu is the answer I wanted to be able to give them. A senior CFO in the business, a real finance operation behind that CFO, and technology doing the mechanical work so the senior time goes where it earns its keep. That is the whole idea. Everything else is delivery."
Mike still leads client engagements personally. He takes every first call that comes through the site.
How he thinks about finance
Four positions he will not move off.
These are the arguments Mike has had with boards for two decades. They are now how Rhomu operates.
Finance is a decision function.
If the numbers only tell you what already happened, you are paying for history. Mike builds finance functions that shape the next decision, not just record the last one.
Seniority is not a luxury.
The judgement calls in a scaling business happen once and cost a lot to get wrong. That work belongs with someone who has done it before.
Automate the mechanical.
Nobody should be billing a founder to key invoices. LUCA exists because Mike refused to keep charging for work a machine should do.
Say the hard thing early.
Runway, covenant risk, a deal that does not stack up. Founders get the honest read in the first meeting, not the fourth.
Track record
Twenty five years, mostly inside the businesses rather than advising them.
- 1999
Chartered in Dublin
Trained and qualified with Chartered Accountants Ireland, then five years in audit and transaction services across Irish mid-market businesses.
- 2006
First finance director role
FD of a food and beverage group scaling from €14m to €48m turnover, through two acquisitions and a full ERP migration.
- 2013
Group CFO, UK and Ireland
Group CFO of a manufacturing and distribution group across four sites in Ireland and the UK. Led refinancing, working capital reform and a cross-border VAT restructure.
- 2018
Fractional, by choice
Stepped into fractional CFO work with five scaling SMEs at once and saw the same gap in every one of them: senior finance leadership was affordable, a working finance function was not.
- 2020
Founded Rhomu
Set up Rhomu out of Kilcormac and Dublin to close that gap. One relationship covering leadership, operations and consulting.
- 2024
Built LUCA
Sponsored and shaped LUCA, Rhomu's AI platform for invoice processing and supplier management, to take the manual work out of every engagement.
Who he works best with
Mike takes on a small number of engagements himself.
Founder-led SMEs, €5m to €80m
Businesses past product-market fit and into the operational grind, where finance has not kept pace with growth.
Boards preparing for a raise or exit
Where the numbers need to survive diligence and the story needs to hold up under a QoE.
Cross-border Irish and UK groups
Multi-entity structures, VAT complexity, and consolidations that were never designed to be consolidated.
Talk to Mike directly