People planning

Doublefin

Why a former Google finance director rebuilt headcount planning

Warren Wang spent more than a decade in Google finance watching headcount plans splinter across HR, recruiting and finance. With engineer Tord Svensson he built one shared plan. Now Doublefin brings AI to HR.

Spotlight Images: Doublefin

Doublefin Orca’s workforce risk register, with risks marked within, at or outside the board’s appetite

10+HR applications Doublefin has built on OrcaCompany-reported, as of Sep 2026 · Source for 10+ HR applications Doublefin has built on Orca
23,000+subscribers, free and paid, to Warren Wang's newsletter for HR leadersCompany-reported, as of Oct 2026 · Source for 23,000+ subscribers, free and paid, to Warren Wang's newsletter for HR leaders
SOC 2Type II compliant platformCompany-reported, as of Sep 2026 · Source for SOC 2 Type II compliant platform

Founders: Warren Wang; Tord Svensson
HQ: San Jose, US
Founded: 2019
Sector: HR tech and FP&A
Website: Visit Doublefin

Born Capital is an investor in Doublefin.

The story

The planning gap

At Google, Warren Wang worked on marketing finance, and the hardest question he fielded was what all that spending returned. He spent more than a decade there as a finance director, with a worldwide team of roughly 40 analysts and managers and marketing budgets worth billions of dollars. From that seat he saw how loosely people planning was stitched together. HR worked in the HRIS, recruiters in the applicant tracking system, finance in the ERP, payroll and spreadsheets. The systems shared nothing. Engineering and sales were getting connected, automated tools; finance, Wang later wrote, was left with data envy. In 2019 he co-founded Doublefin to close the gap.

A co-founder in Stockholm

His co-founder, Tord Svensson, works from Stockholm. Svensson had run engineering teams at Schibsted Media Group and Volvo Cars and was a staff engineer at Spotify when he took the CTO job in June 2019. Laetro, a creative studio, came up with the Doublefin name and its brand; the dolphins stand for teams that move in sync. Doublefin launched publicly on November 30, 2021. Wang's pitch was blunt: people make up about 70 percent of a company's operating budget, yet they get planned over email, in Slack and on napkins.

Every opening approved

In March 2023 Wang pointed to a press report that a large tech employer had listed about three times as many open roles as it had approved. Doublefin is built to stop that. Managers plan roles and watch cost forecasts move, requests for new hires and backfills go through approvals, and every opening is matched to an approved position. It connects to Workday, Greenhouse, NetSuite, SAP and Coupa. Teams at MasterClass, Aviatrix, Xentral and moomoo have used it, and in June 2023 Tokyo startup ZooKeep said it had begun rolling it out in Japan.

Where AI works

In early 2026 Doublefin introduced Orca, which answers HR teams' questions about their own policies and about federal, state and local employment rules, with citations, and helps draft and review policies. By September Orca had grown into a base for governed HR software, and Doublefin has built more than ten HR applications on it. Orca can put a live workforce risk register into the board report and run an approval queue that records each justification. Every app inherits permissions, approvals and an audit log from Doublefin's SOC 2 Type II compliant backend, and access can be set down to one field for one person.

Speaking finance to HR

Wang now writes for the people who buy HR software. He launched The CHRO Office, a weekly newsletter on AI for HR leaders, in October 2025; by October 2026 it had more than 23,000 subscribers, free and paid combined. On SHRM's Honest HR podcast in January 2026, the host asked him how HR should pitch better culture to a CFO. He framed it as a business risk, tracked through signals such as regretted attrition in key roles and weighed against the cost of fixing it. Doublefin is now picking a handful of HR teams as Orca design partners, each bringing one real problem. Orca is where the company is heading next, on a platform it has run since 2021.

Visit doublefin.com

AI at Doublefin

Doublefin's AI lives in Orca, an assistant and app platform for HR teams. It brings AI speed to HR work while sensitive people data stays behind field-level permissions and an audit log.

Answers questions about a company’s own HR policies, citing its sources
Answers questions about employment regulations
Drafts and reviews HR policies

The founders

Warren Wang
Co-founder and CEO
Warren Wang has worked at Microsoft as well as Google. Outside work, he and his daughter train together for squash tournaments and travel to compete.
Tord Svensson
Co-founder and CTO
Tord Svensson earned a master's in computer science and education at Linköping University and lectured in its computer science department. He spent nearly a decade as a solutions architect at EMC before moving into engineering leadership.

Milestones

2019
Warren Wang and Tord Svensson start Doublefin; Svensson becomes CTO in June.
2021Nov
Doublefin launches publicly with budget and headcount tools for finance and business teams.
2023Jun
Tokyo HR tech startup ZooKeep announces it is rolling out Doublefin in Japan.
2025Oct
Wang launches The CHRO Office, a weekly newsletter on AI for HR leaders.
2026Mar
Doublefin introduces Orca, an AI assistant for HR policy and employment-law questions.
2026Sep
Orca design partner program opens; Doublefin reports more than ten HR apps built.