KPMG audit woes bleed into startup consultancy

KPMG audit woes bleed into startup consultancy

KPMG has rejected claims its High Growth Ventures team copied a boutique consultancy’s playbook to build a new startup growth service.

As KPMG Australia prepared to slash its workforce amid its ongoing whistleblower scandal, another dispute erupted in public, this time involving the firm’s High Growth Ventures practice and its efforts to win startup clients.

Last week, KPMG High Growth Ventures (HGV) announced the launch of its ‘GTM Sprint’ service in a LinkedIn post. It said the service would help startup founders plan for growth after finding that many struggled to identify the constraints on their businesses.

But soon afterwards, boutique consultancy Vollardian co-founder Arani Satgunaseelan accused KPMG of repackaging Vollardian’s “Commercial Sprint” playbook as its own after the consultancy had shared its approach with the HGV team months earlier.

Satgunaseelan said she would normally have ignored the similarities as imitation, but changed her mind because Vollardian advises fast-growing companies that could become valuable clients for a larger accounting firm.