When Chris Hale co-founded Klear, a platform that helps manufacturers control, forecast, and access working capital, he thought he’d seen the full spectrum of financial challenges in the industry. Then he met a company doing $900 million in cross-border transactions — and still struggling to get a clear picture of its cash flow.
“We have companies that have a company on the platform that does $900 million in cross-border transactional volume, and they have this problem,” Hale said in a recent episode of the Manufacturing Happy Hour podcast. “I have a company on the platform that just raised hundreds of millions of dollars, and like, as success brings this problem and actually scales the problem. It’s like an exponential problem as you succeed.”
It’s honestly, Chris, it’s cash flow — like actual money is the biggest challenge. Because you have your model, you have your venture pitch deck, you have all these kinds of things, you have your contract even, and then you have like your GAAP accounting, and none of those things tell you like, how much money is where?
That lack of real-time, granular visibility into working capital — the cash that manufacturers need to run their day-to-day operations — is a hidden constraint on growth, Hale argues. And it persists even as companies scale and take on increasingly complex contracts with big customers like governments and Fortune 1000 firms.
The root of the problem, Hale suggests, is that the financial tools and models that manufacturers rely on to make strategic decisions — things like pitch decks, GAAP accounting, and even the contracts themselves — don’t reflect the actual flow of cash in and out of the business daily.
“That day-to-day and that day-to-day precision is really, really the challenge,” he explained. “I wouldn’t even say it’s a mistake, it’s like, sort of, you kind of have to know. But like, it’s so hard to know that people figure out how to deal without knowing.”
That’s where Klear comes in. The platform ingests data from a manufacturer’s existing systems and documentation, transforms it into a structured time series, and then provides embedded tools for things like AP scheduling and cash flow forecasting. The goal is to give manufacturers a “single source of truth” about their working capital, so they can make informed decisions and demonstrate their financial capability to lenders and investors.
But Hale is quick to note that Klear is more than just a software solution. The company also provides hands-on support to help manufacturers build the “muscle” of financial discipline and precision.
“Clear is really three things: it’s software, it’s embedded tools, and then it’s capitalization, and they all work together,” he said. “And so on the software side, we have to get them kind of onboarded and inputting data as a discipline. And just like any other software platform, it’s only as valuable as the data that goes into it.”
That kind of virtuous cycle is really how it all happens. And ultimately, like, without that discipline and without those muscles, you’re not going to get the money. It’s why you’re not getting the money, right? It’s like, the reason that the banks ask for three years of audited GAAP financials is because they’re not built to underwrite this data set.
For manufacturers, the payoff of that discipline can be transformative. By gaining clarity and control over their working capital, they can focus on what they do best — innovating, producing, and selling — while Klear handles the financial orchestration behind the scenes.
But the first step, Hale emphasizes, is recognizing the problem and committing to solving it.
“This muscle and this relay race and this, it becomes a capability that capital markets understand,” he said. “And through the software, we allow teams to demonstrate that capability over time as they grow.”
In other words, it’s time for manufacturers to stop running on “dead reckoning” when it comes to their cash — and start navigating by the numbers instead.
To learn more about how Klear is helping manufacturers master their working capital, visit klear.com. You can also hear Chris Hale’s full conversation with Manufacturing Happy Hour host Chris Luecke at manufacturinghappyhour.com.
