They Left $300K Tech Jobs to Build AI for Accountants: TABot's Startup Story

Sometimes the life that you're living is the biggest blocker to the life that you want. I do think I only have kind of one shot in a case. This AI industry is going very fast. Completely break the process and use something else, a different tool to help us progress even faster. Nina's hourly rate is pretty expensive. So if this saved Nina a couple hours of research time, I'm sure it saved a like couple hundred case of complaints expenditure. It really shocked me cuz I didn't know it could hallucinate like that much. Hi everyone, welcome to Ambition Aligned. I'm your

host Devin Kums. I'm a CPA MBA who has helped negotiate multi-billion dollar deals as a financial expert. But today I am interviewing my friends Hartin and Nina who are the founders for TABOT. This is a really cool AI software that helps technical accountants just do their work so much faster, like 10 times to 100 times faster. I've tried it. I'm a huge advocate for it. And today we're going to see their journey. And we're going to ask them a bunch of questions about what it's like to do a startup in

the Bay Area from the ground up in this really exciting new space like AI technical accounting software. Even if you're not an accountant, I think you're going to get a ton out of this episode. So, please watch, please subscribe, and let's get to it. Great to see you all, Nina and Harton. It's really a pleasure. Thanks for being on Ambition Aligned. I'm so excited to share your journey with everyone on about how you have a startup now in the Bay Area. Not an easy thing to do, even though it's a bit cliche, right? But it's still not an easy thing to do. Um, and trying to revolutionize the accounting, especially

technical accounting area with your new company, TABOT. And so I'd love just to hear a little bit from both of you about your story, how you got here, and what you're trying to accomplish. And then we'll dive on in. Yeah, that sounds good. Maybe I'll start. Um I myself is a CPA. I'll be in technical accounting for about 10 years in total so far. And how I thought about starting TA bot is uh I'm actually a roommate with Harton and I've been doing this day and day and it never really

occurred to me that I could use the latest technology and apply it to accounting until I hear them talking about AI all the time. So what really triggered I think is a technology advancement in the tech uh in the AI space and it got me thinking like there's a lot of things in technical accounting that hasn't really changed much during the past 10 years. So it would be great that I can use that technology and apply to a traditional industry and see how it could be changed. So that's basically how I

triggered my interest in the first place is living through the pain point um you know having to live through it myself. It's kind of a no-brainer to start thinking about like how it could be streamlined and not just like, you know, process improvement or how do we roll forward something better, but it's more like completely break the process and use something else, a different tool to help us progress even faster. Well, maybe maybe I'll start before that too is it's not easy. I mean, it's exciting to go and break some processes and try

to build a tool to fix it all, right? Right. But it's a different thing to leave a cushy accounting job in the Bay Area and then take a risk to build a product that doesn't exist. Right. That's a very brave thing to do. And I'm curious on like how did that manifest? How did you both decide like yeah let's go in on this thing? You want to take this one first? Sure. Like say I guess for my end like uh both my parents they are entrepreneurial. So when I was small, I

always want to run a business myself and then um and I always like to build stuff. So like say from IKEA furniture to model to anything. So when I get to university, I noticed there's something called programming coding and we were programming C++ and all my classmate hates it so much and I love it. I love that we can actually build something to you know reduce a lots of the mundane work and that's why I switch my well actually after I graduate from integrated engineer I self-study programming myself and get myself from

like startup to ad to Google and then within Google like say I've always interested in the AI area I have been monitoring this AI industry for the past like five six years and then um I believe this is the time where AI is actually going to take a leap Previously I don't think the hardware itself or even the efficiency itself is enough to make it like more a broader scale of adoption but right now is the time and I truly believe like say there's a lots of area where AI can

improve the industry and I think in terms of accounting cuz Nina and I we're roommates and I kind of notice like say for accounting is a very interesting space to work on. There's a lots of very old-fashioned process that I can't imagine they still exist in, you know, 20 2025. So, I'm excited to use AI to actually help speed up to help leverage AI to improve this industry. Yeah, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say accounting is an exciting area before,

hearten, especially an engineer. So, it's it's really cool that you said that, but I completely agree. I I mean from my perspective, you know, being in technical accounting kind of at the highest of levels and top companies like Google, it is really archaic and we do need to make it better and it can be more like it is really interesting. It's like a to me it's always like it's a search for the truth like the accounting is like what is the actual substance of the underlying transaction and um we don't need to be like combing through thousands of pages pages of interpretive

guidance nowadays to find that answer. There's got to be better ways. And it's really cool that you two have taken that next step to make it easier for companies and more value ad and for professionals. And so walk through walk me through a little bit of what that journey's been like. So now you started you've decided to take the leap and start a company together. What what's that first few months look like? I can't take this like the first few months like say actually like all this begins with like say Nina were talking

to me. And I say, "Oh, like this process is so slow. Like, Harton, do you think there's a way that we can improve it?" I was like, "Okay, yeah, like I know there's like a AI um technology that can probably help improve it." And and you know, I I was like just trying out on one Wednesday afternoon for like two or three hours and I was like, you know, I build something like I completely scramble something up and then like show it to Nina. I said, "Hey, do you think this will help?" And Nina tried a few question. I was like, "Oh, that worked very well. It saved me like hours of research time." And you know from there

on I already know like how much market this could become to because I I mean Nina's hourly rate is pretty expensive. So if this saved Nina a couple hours of research time I'm sure it save a like couple hundredks of complaints expenditure. So like say then we kind of like try to iterate on this products and then we kind of like you know reaching out for customer beta users try to get more feedback and the journey is interesting because like say when we first built it it was providing a lots of values but then you know like the LM

model have been improving as well. So like at certain point our user start to see like oh like but chache is doing a lot better too right now like as your answer and chache answer is not that much difference and I was like okay yeah like we also need to catch up in this game like we need to keep improving our model and we just recently launched a new model where it actually do a lot better with a lot better grounding. So instead like say churchd where it can hallucinate an ASC guidance we actually make sure it actually quote from the

exact code from ASC so that people can have confidence in our answer and I think that's the most important things in accounting. Yeah. Well, I know that's excellent. And I'll say I know it firsthand like being on the front lines. So many people will say, "Oh, I use chatbt and it gave me this answer." And it will site some guidance that doesn't exist, right? Or and that could be really messed up when someone will say, "Well, how do how should we sample this transaction or how do we make sure that like this control exists?" They'll ask chat GPT and I'll say, "Oh, they'll someone will site this guidance." It's

not real. It it has it's wasn't trained for that purpose. Anyone who's watching this, don't use chat GPT for like legal work or accounting at work. It wasn't trained for that, right? Like you're not there's a reason we have professionals or if you do it, at least have a professional review it or use a special specially trained model like what you guys are proposing here, right? Is like fine-tune the general LLM in order to be trained against specific literature so that you it isn't going to hallucinate. And then then you guys tested I'm sure you've tested it and made sure that it's

actually accurate. We tested a bunch. Yeah, we kind of discovered it during especially for leis accounting a lot of times um I'll be like posting questions in there and when I'm reviewing it it's giving me guidance exactly to the point and I'm like this is like interesting because when I was writing memos I never saw this guidance before but it's it's basically describing everything I'm looking for and then I looked it up it's completely a fake I what the ID is there but the content is completely made up. It really shocked me cuz I didn't know

it could hallucinate like that much. So that kind of like delus back in and say like accuracy for us is number one differentiator like we need to be accurate and complete on our answers so that to give people confidence saying like if your guidance is right so all the analysis is based on that. So that is our groundwork is to make sure that AIC citations are absolutely correct. Yeah, that's I mean that's critical and I think people don't realize that enough especially in regulated industries. You

can't just be going rogue. You need to make sure that you're actually grounded in guidance. And so it's amazing that you're actually able to site it. I haven't had any software that personally that can do that yet. And so um I'm excited to play with it more uh as as it develops. And so who's using it? How many people are testing it? And what's the initial take like what are what are people saying? We have uh launched the MVP starting in February midFebruary and so far we have gathered feedback from about 30 beta users. We have met some of them in

person. We have talked to them via zoom calls. We collect a lot of feedbacks on like product roadmap and how they want to see improvement, what's important to them. So we've been pivoting quite a bit depending on what people are telling us. And then at the same time, we do have uh I do have a product in mind that I think will be, you know, like the the core of the product. So on top of that, we're adding features improvements all over the place. And um we do have a 25% organic referral rate as well. So somebody will be using it and CFO

controller and they really like it. They think it's going to save time for their team or someone they know. So they will refer us to the other person. And so we'll talk to them starting with emails and then demos and then um on board them all of that good stuff. So well I just got to say like as a you know I've done I've been in the business world for too long. I was an entrepreneur like owning a recording studio what over 15 years ago almost 20 years ago now. And you're doing everything right. Right. Like you're you have an MVP. You're running with a lean team. You and uh you know

you can't beat the traditional accounting engineer. Knock I will knock the finance engineer. like accountants are better than finance people hands down. So, um that especially generically finance people um and you're pivoting to what the customer wants, right? Like you're you're beta testing quickly and you're seeing hey what's most valuable for you here and then you're moving to like add that value which I think you can't that's how you start a amazing company. So like the world's your oyster here. What what are you like can you give me an example of a pivot that you

made? I think it'd be really interesting like you got something or a customer feedback from a few people and you said, "Oh crap, we got to change because it's not easy when you're pivoting and you're heading one direction and then you have to go another direction." It could be a bit emotional, right? Yeah. Haren, do you want to take this one? Uh, yes. I maybe just pick one of them because there's so many. That would be therapy. There's a lot of sleep sleepless nights. will be like have we been doing it wrong or like what if

people don't buy it things like that yeah I think one of the pivots that we have done is like say well I I shouldn't say pivots but more like exploration is that uh we understand AI products is still a new thing in the market and accountants are traditionally conservative and we definitely want to add like a human layer in between to say hey like all this answer we all reviewed by you know um professional CPA I should say use the or CP but professional technical accountants and you can rest

assured all this answers corrects. So we want to add this human layer in between just like a code piece of software and hand it to the company. So we pivot to say hey yeah let's do this but then we also like say having some trouble like finding the actual connection because like a lot of the firms they probably have their already existing consulting firm and if we were to add this human layer we present ourselves more like a consulting firm. So we kind of like definitely need some more strategic way to present ourselves so that like say um the firm is willing to try us over the

existing consulting um technical accountant firm. You want to add on anything on top of this you know? Yeah. So it's basically uh transitioning through after talking to a few people because uh there are some users asking are you going to help me through the audit with the memo that you generate right like they want to have that additional layer of assurance uh to make sure that because a lot of these CFOs controllers are not coming from a technical background so even if we

generate a memo for them they don't have um you know time or they don't have enough talent in house to actually review that to make sure it's accurate and audit ready. So some of them were asking us questions like are you able to handholding us through the finish line for this particular transaction. So that's what really got us thinking like maybe we should combine the two and at the human layer so that people are more comfortable talking to a human instead of talking to a software and you know don't know where to ask for help. So that's why we started pivoting towards

more it's called a software as a service industry. It's um not very common, but we did look it up. It it is a thing. And uh it's basically saying we're a consulting firm and we are utilizing this piece of technology to help cut the time. So maybe it took like 60 hours to do a memo. Now it's going to take three or four. And then on top of that, um that's how we're going to save cost for the companies because the hour is going to be cheaper and the total amount of time spent is going to be a lot less. U

so that's where we're going for right now. But like Harden said, it's a little hard to, you know, build up the network. So it's going to take a little time. So for the time being, we're still fine-tuning our model to make sure that we're improving dayto-day and make sure we're still maintaining these beta users with us as we're improving the software, as we're exploring the other side of the business. Yeah. One, it's a service as a software, not the other way around. So it's like think coming as like SAS for Yeah. No,

service as a software. Yeah, I remember we talking about that in our original coffee. It's really there's so many places that are doing this now and it's so valuable and I really think it's the next leg of the AI journey, right? Is yeah, it's great that we can use AI in chat GPT and there's some people who are using it way too much and it's like their new best friend and they're probably need some therapy around it, but then there's other people who have no clue about it, right? Like probably most of the population is still maybe just getting familiar with it. And so

let's say like less than 10% of the population is kind of even familiar with chat GPT. It doesn't mean that they know how to applicably use it for business cases. And so you need a unique skill set still of like a technical accounting plus a specialized customized fine-tune AI um software or I software is probably not the right word for it, but you get it. Like a fine-tuned model, right? And using that combination, you're able to deliver something that's better quality, more accurate at 10 times at 10 times um

faster, right? Like 10 10 times less hours, right? Which kind of is fascinating because then it flips the industry on its head because so many people right now focus on the billable hour. Even myself, I've been in it for forever and I can't it's hard for me to sell to CEOs that I've known personally and say like, "Hey, I can work 10 times or 20 times faster than the average accountant. Give me a retainer or um let me let me flip my camera. Give me a retainer or uh or let's figure out like a flat fee so I can knock out this

project." It's so hard to get over that culturally. And so, how are and from a budget perspective like you don't they don't have budget for software, they have budget for hours. And so, um It's like a problem with the industry as a whole. So, how how are you kind of bridging those problems in order to not get lost in the noise while you're making this better product and kind of improving the world through the process? You want to take this one? Sure. Uh, it's a very hard question. It's very hard to do that. We always constantly

get lost. There's like millions things to do in a startup like going to pitch nights or like say you know improving the products talking to users to like say you know setting up the LLC itself or like say you know there's just like so many things so uh it's very hard um I think one thing is like to myself I think customer is always the key we hold customer dear to our hearts and that's why like say regardless of what we always want to talk back to customer what actually brings the values and if we do really good on the customer. We

eventually will get the referral connection to even if we were to pivot to say hey you know on top of TA bots as a software itself we also offer this white glove handholding experience like if you actually ever need any extra hands on your team to make this work we can help you on that so I think that's the way we should go with so that you know to keep us from getting lost on all this many things so I guess the customer is your north star here like listen to the customer otherwise Yeah, there's

only so many hours of the day and there's an infinite amount of work to do and pitches to make and all of that. What What are you most excited about right now? I mean, you this has moved so fast for you what we grabbed coffee just a couple months ago and you already done 30 pitches and have beta users and a 25% referral rate, which is amazing and I commend my tip my hat off to you. So, what what's the next three months look like? What are you trying to accomplish and what are you excited about? You do you want to take this? Yeah. So um we are trying to launch our next

module which is called contract wizard in the near future. So right now we have instant insights which um the purpose is to give CFO's controller a really quick answer or anyone who wants to know like a one pager summary on a complicated scenario. So that's instant insights. Our second one we have launched so far is called memorizer and that one is to um you can summarize the contract or put in the scenario. It's going to give you a very well structured uh because I came from Dillet and EY background. So the memo is going to be looking a lot like

those templates because that's my training and um so yeah it's going to give you a very well structured memo with background summary question and answer format for different accounting issues and then conclusion and citation. So it's pretty well built for some of the users they really loving it right now. So the next module is to do contract wizard. So we're going to be able to for you the customer to upload a contract. We're going to analyze it into a term sheet and then apply either instant insights or memo writer on top

of that. So that's going to give almost like um a more end to end because technical cing a lot of times start with a contract or a term sheet on our table. That's why we start looking um and summarizing what are the key things I'm looking at and then go research in the guidance to see what's applicable in accounting law. So uh for me the that's where I spend most of the time is to read the contracts, understand it, and then at the same time to find that guidance. So this for me is going to

take um it's probably going to save like 60% of a technical account job. Um so they can you know pivot to something of more strategic value. So that is our next goal and we're hoping to launch um I'm not too sure for the engineering team how going to push that back to Harton but then on top of that we are um looking around to we have joined a pre-acelerator program as well just to you know find more connections meet more

people that way and we do have a uh VC investor who's coaching us right now so that's like everything kind of like come together but Um but at the core of it, it's a product I want to help people with their day-to-day work. So um sometimes it's a little also conflicting because it's something customer want something but for me I'm like oh but I don't want to go that route. But then me and Harton would discuss and we will always agree that um we should go where

the customer uh how the customer want this product to be. So that's how we're shaping it right now. Yeah. So it sounds like a lot of new product features. So it started with like instant insights of hey I don't know anything about accounting or I'm vaguely familiar and I want to understand what this does. It'll give you a quick insight which sounds hugely valuable for most finance or even just non- finance professionals. I could they could talk about that forever like how does that sales people could even help like if they're trying to understand what a term would do for their topline. Um, and then actually

writing memos of like big fork quality, which for people not watching, like people who aren't in the field, those could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, right, to draft. And now you're having you're having software, you're having your fine-tuned model just knock that out. And then the next piece is actually contract review, I guess, is what you're saying. So you're saying you could input a contract like upload a PDF and it would read out to you the accounting. Would it write an accounting memo for you around it or what does it do? Yeah, eventually. And it's going to

suggest journal entries, too. And eventually schedules and everything you need. Oh, wow. That's amazing. So, that's like direct competition with companies like Clarity. And there's a lot of like software around that contract review. Um, that's huge huge valuations like that could be a that's a multi- like multi-billion dollar market, right, that you're going after. Yeah. And totally agree. And my understanding is for clarity. I think a lot of times they will go through volumes of contracts and it's going to flag any non-standard terms for someone to

actually look at it and review it. So for us, we're we're kind of like want to tackle that piece. So we will flag it, but then we will also offer a solution for that piece. So we're going to give you suggestions how you handle that complicated piece of information or non-standard term. So it's more like in my opinion maybe it's a slightly more um focus on different things from clarity because clarity I think is more on the calculation and it's more like going through any contract they put in related

to 66 and potentially 842 at this point. Uh but we want to focus more on the net standard terms in those contracts. Yeah, that makes sense. And then it sounds like even maybe make recommendations on how you could change those to have more optimal outcome which could be really valuable to like sales people and CFOs, right? We'll give alternatives and recommendations. Wow. Yeah, that can be really powerful. Hart, it sound like you wanted to say something in there or did I miss that? Yeah, like say in just to add on

what Lina have mentioned like say we want to uh do more than just a chat GBD for technical accountants. We want to be the technical co-pilots for technical accountants. We want them to be able to use it seamlessly for the everyday task. So like say eventually we may also want to embed it into any ERP system they have or to make it just a lot seamless experience. Wow. Yeah. That's and it's just you two right now, right? And then you have some people on the outside doing some coaching. But you're keeping it lean. We do also have couple of the

um friends to uh help with the coding as well. That's great. It's great that you're keeping it lean and it's so ambitious and exciting. And so what does that what does it look like? When do you start? It sounds like maybe monetization is around the corner. Are you still focusing on beta? What is what does those next stages look like? Uh should I take it? Yeah. Yeah. So uh for the monetization, uh that is something we we are working on set up. I think like Dina and I were just so

excited to build a product, but we definitely need the money. So, we kind of still figuring out exactly how to do it. Um like it's all good. I've been to feel Yeah. Yeah. We've been through to a few like VC pitch night and there are some seems to be some investors interested but at the same time we started digging a little deeper maybe a little too late. I we noticed like a lot of people will u start to learn this founding process early on but we can just heads up down

heads down making this product. So when we looked up and we're like we've been bootstrapped all this time and luckily we do have some savings to support us so far. But the other thing is um we kind of calculated our runway for how long we could run with with just two of us. But at the same time, we have kind of like looked at different funding options and we kind of came to a conclusion that maybe we're not that in a rush to, you know, like to use that funding because

uh we still want to improve the product size. So there are some features we want to launch before we go to market before we scale up. So that's why we think the fun will come become really handy. when we got enough cash, we can, you know, like do marketing campaigns, all of that. But for right now, my my focus is more on the product side. But let me know what you think, Haron. Yeah, like definitely like um I think we are still trying to polish the products

and we are also in the process of figuring out what's the right pricing for our products cuz like given that we have you know betaish products but also we are launching a lot more powerful products soon. So like we we were trying very hard like say what's the reasonable price. Yeah. It's tough to figure out because you're doing the service as a software. Trying to figure out like what is how do you build that extra cost into the hourly rates and then overcoming that boundary of getting bud budget approvals and the PO processes and all of that can be quite burdensome. And so

um but it sounds like you're focusing mainly on the B2B channel. Are are you focusing on partnership opportunities as well from a channel perspective? Definitely open to it. Uh we we were just very heads down on building the products. So we haven't really explored. Okay. No, that's I mean it's first off that's great for your customers, right? Like it sounds like you can't beat people who are you're not too sales driven and you're mostly focused on the products and um you're not going to get the pressure from VCs to monetize too

early and you're not going to get you know VCs are all well and good but most of them are out there to get an early chunk from people who are desperate for cash. And I always tell everyone like business is like life and life is like business. you know, manage your lifestyle, manage your cash flow, and you're going to have a lot more freedom to make better decisions. And so, I'm like tap my another you guys are doing everything right, right? Like you don't don't jump into relationships unless there's something a value ad beyond money because money can always come right, but the expertise that you need

that that's more important. Um, but yeah, that's going to be interesting. It sounds like that's the next stage is get these products launched, but then how do you actually start building some cash flow so you can either bridge it or um or how do you you get VC funding to scale it? But you're still going to need that you're ultimately going to need that bridge to actually sell, right? Which which is that next right right eventually. But we don't we don't know if it's like in three month in half a year in a year. So we're luckily, like I

said, we have some savings, but one thing that was a little shocking to me is to see how much the healthcare in the marketplace is costing. So it's a lot more than I thought it would be. So for us, we have to like do our calculation. We have to bake that in uh as a part of the fixed cost that we have to Oh, the healthare of like not having health benefits, right? Yeah. Right. All of that. So we have to go to the marketplace and get ourselves. So that's like, you know, additional fixed costs for for X and it's a little

shocking. Yeah. USA very unfortunate. I've met people who are 60 and multi-millionaires and they still work jobs because they need the healthare. They're like, I can't afford I can't afford the health care even though I have $5 million in the bank. It's going to be like $10,000 a month for healthare and I can just fork this job, you know, get health benefits. It's a bummer. It's a real real shame for entrepreneurs specifically, but I mean it's it's extremely exciting what you're all trying to what you're not trying to what you are accomplishing. And so you should

all be really like proud of yourselves and I'm really impressed and I'm rooting for you and I'll you know everyone here on the channel I'll make sure there's a lot of accountants that watch this. Um where where can they find out more or how can they how are you taking on more beta testers or what's going on there? You want to go? Oh yeah, we're definitely taking Yeah, we're uh definitely taking more beta users. So you they can always visit to uh ww.tbot.info. They can also reach out uh to us on the email on this website. We

also looking for partnership like say uh to like design partners or like say partner to uh show this to more people, sales partner etc. So like say we definitely looking for a lot more people. Yeah. people who might be able to add value to your team. You're looking for people um yeah to come in but not necessarily employees at this point. It's more like how can you come in as a partner and help sell? Any anyone specifically come to mind like anyone that you're like role profile that you're looking for?

So we kind of noticed for our beta users they're usually like CFOs and controllers with employees about 50 to 500 kind of in size. So I guess like most of the pe that that's the target market we're looking at right now. It's more from say series B, sir C all the way through just a private company, but preIPO most of the time. So that's the I want to say uh that's a pool of people that would be like most interested in talking with and just see how our product helped them save a lot of times.

Um, and so yeah, a connection that fits out of that profile will be great, but at the same time, uh, like just feel free to come talk to us if you're interested in the product, honestly, cuz we want more people to try it cuz to help people save time. That's the first goal of mine and um, we want to see how we can go from there and gather feedback. Yeah. Well, I'll put your emails in the link. Go ahead. One thing to add, pardon, sorry. Yeah. One thing to add on top is like say we do see there's a lot more

need for technical accountants when they when companies are going through their first year audits. So if you're someone who deal with companies with first year audits or if you're going through first year audits that would be great person to reach out to like us we can help you with that. Yeah. Just off the top of my head, that's something like a lot of smaller firms potentially could be great because a lot of a lot of people going through first year audits don't want to hire the big four firms because it's really really expensive and then you have your mid-tier small tier firms like I really like principal consulting group those are great to work with them and

maybe figuring out a partner pricing of like hey you can use our software and and like if you can help implement like train someone on their software train them on your you know on your fine-tuned model um you guys can leverage each other's networks to go sell and then you don't have to worry about hiring a bunch of consultants to do your services as a software. So I I'm happy to make those connections, but I'll also anyone who's watching, you know, please reach out to you all. What's the best way to reach out to you all? Is it just the emails? I'll put them in the below or do you have a um your LinkedIns or are you

going to be launching a website soon? We do have a website like uh the table.info. So I think email is the great way to reach out to us. Yeah, email or like both are fine. Okay. And what else is going on? How are you balancing regular life outside of being entrepreneurs? Is is that even a thing? I never have a weekend since then. Yeah, it's hard to keep track. I don't have like Yeah, it's hard to keep track of time cuz before you have like at 6:00

or 7:00 I'll be like, "Okay, time to get off." But now it's that's when a lot of times that's when we start working again after dinner. We'll be to sit it back at the table and we will like crunch until like 2:00 a.m. in the morning until we have to go to sleep. That's what we will be like, "Okay, let's let's, you know, connect tomorrow morning." But, uh, but yeah, a lot of time has been spent on it. And we kind of noticed our friends circle start pivoting this way, too. Cuz before, uh, all of our friends were were like just hanging out at the weekend

almost like kill time kind of thing, like go watch a movie, go play some pickle ball. But now our friend circle has changed to a bunch of startup people. So it's like every day we talk about like new tech stack, talk about like potential new competitors coming to the market. So it's that's a change for us too. Well, it's good though. So that's what I wanted to check in is, you know, having a support network around you and build, you know, building your tribe up while you take these pivots is so important because that's the thing that holds so many people back when they're trying to enter a new stage of life or do something brave is you still

have your friends who are bugging you about and and and best meaning of like, oh, why why aren't you going to the bar or why aren't you joining us for movie night and you really need that new group of people that are doing what you're trying to go accomplish um to be around you and supporting you and it sounds like you've gotten that maybe in some of these accelerators or just naturally, which is awesome. Yeah, it's Yeah, I totally agree. In the Bay Area, it's easy to find friends like that. Yeah, it's kind of hard to find the opposite, right? I remember the first night I came here, I went to a bar and I think I found like three people who were

starting a business and like one recruiter and I'm like, does anyone do anything fun here? You know, like that's also my impression of the Bay Area from Vancouver. I was shocked like say everyone is like engineer PM. I went to LA and it's like everyone's an actress, an actor or like a musician and you come here and I'm like where does any is there any culture here? Do we have anything? Oh my gosh. Well, I mean it's it's I mean I'm really excited to watch your journey. I'm rooting for you and I hope you all know I'm here to support you

throughout throughout it and um so will my audience be and I would love to come have you on maybe periodically and just see an update on what's what's interesting you or what you're learning through the process. Um, I guess maybe I'll I'll close with one more question and then if you want to ask me anything, I'm happy to talk more too. Um, God, I know you're all busy. What What's been the like separately, what's what's been the biggest thing you've learned from this journey so far? That's a great question. I think for

myself um having a startup is always my dream but then like really meaning to it is one thing I I come to the realization to this like uh recently like cuz like Nina and I we both have a good well-paying job and we were thinking oh okay if this doesn't work out like say maybe we should set a timeline we should go back to our full-time job but recently I kind of like come to a realization like say this has been my dream since I was young I actually planned my whole career around like going to startup companies,

going to big four. I'm sorry, not big four. Same thing. Same thing, just different companies. Same thing. Same. But but like you know like going to different companies just to learn how they do the business, tech business. I even go to uh like I I even become a sales before just to learn the business side. So I come to a realization I have been dreaming about this and this has been always something I want to do and I I do think I only have kind of one shot in a case cuz I um I felt like this AI

industry is going very fast. If I didn't make it work then it might it I might pass the window. Uh maybe I have more than one shot but anyway but like I do see the future with what Nina and I'm building. I believe this industry have a lots of opportunity to improve the process. I can't find any better industry than this one that we're working on like given the expertise we have. So I come to a realization that like say yeah like if I'm still half ass not determined is hard to sell the product

too. So I think that's the greatest lesson that I learned like say I I kind of realize this is something I really want to make it happen. Well yeah let me jump in there and then I'll go to you Nina. I think that's that's cool and I see that change in you over the last couple of months just it seems like you're genuinely excited and you're like kind of it's amazing how many people I've met in my life where they kind of go into their career and they b back pocket that dream of like oh I have this bigger dream for my life where I want to add value and then they get in their

career and their lifestyle can take advant of hijack their career and I I heard a quote today of uh like sometimes the life that you're living is the biggest blocker to the life that you want, right? Like you're living out of congruence with your values to what you actually want, which is um and it takes a true act of bravery. Like it's really scary to make pivots away from a giant company where you're making lots of money like Google or Salesforce or any of these giant companies. It's really

scary for someone who went from being a college student to making all this money to then taking a risk on their dream. That's a really brave thing and I think it's awesome that you bring that up that you're realizing how valuable that is. Yeah. So tats off and that's why I love talking to people like yourselves and supporting. It's just like there's got to be more people like that. There's too many of us like corporate slaves who get addicted to the lattes and addicted to like the $5,000 a month rent and $20,000 cruises. Um and and I think what you're

saying here and I'm sorry I'm ranting here is you're realizing that chasing that dream was much more valuable than any of that. Totally agree. It makes me feel like I'm realizing my value in my actually making my dreams. That's amazing. Yeah. And I think everyone anyone watching this I hope takes that and like if you had a dream in your back pocket that you put aside for money should be a tool to accomplish your dreams and help others. It's not meant to be the end goal. Right? So that's huge heart. Thanks for sharing. Um Nina, that's a hard thing to

follow. What What did you learn? Makes me nervous. Sorry. Um yeah, I I don't know. Like for me, I think the biggest thing for me changing me is learning how to take risks. And cuz all my life I've been pretty much, you know, my college I was see I was accounting and then I found a job in big four. It's just like very routine like everyone in a similar position. We all went through

the same thing and you know the friend circle you hang out with everybody's doing the same thing. All my friends are kind of assistant controller director at different companies and when I told them I you know kind of left all of that behind and started doing a startup some of them were generally shocked and they're like why? Uh for me that was kind of like a question I was asking myself every night before I went to bed for the first month

after we decided to do TABOT. Um it's like what am I trying to get out of this for me is um I think learning to take that risk and live a life that's slightly different from what I had planned for myself because originally you know the 401k we all max it out. We all plan our retirement around 55 and 60. But now I see an opportunity to change that traction and that's a little bit exciting for me cuz all my life I've been following the rules like uh

especially technical accounting. I think my career also shaped who I am partly as well. But now it's almost like I feel young again. I feel like I'm back at a crossroad back in college deciding what I want to do. and now I have this opportunity to explore a different path and that makes me feel very energetic again. So um so I guess that's a different that's a that's one thing I learned from it is like trust the process and just take the risk and

anything that will happen will just follow. So we'll see. Well, I love that. I mean I think it's just as valuable as what Harton was saying is like so many of us chase that retirement. I see it all the time of like and that that carrot is something that's always moving, right? Like I've seen enough people like I think we all go to college and everyone's like, "Man, if I could just get a six-f figure job, I'll be set." And then you get a six-f figureure job and they're like, "Well, if I can make two or 300,000, well, if I could have a million in the bank, I'll be set." Then those millionaires are like

three million, then three million, five million, then five million, 10 million. And I I know Deca millionaires now and they're not happy. They're like their church takes it. At some point you got to realize maybe you're chasing the wrong thing, right? Like maybe that's not the thing that's gonna make you happy. Especially like we're 50, 40, 50, 60. You don't need 10 million bucks. Like I I I mean unless you're like drinking champagne like taking baths and champagne every night. Like I don't know what you're doing. But you like the sense of adventure and purpose is so

valuable and the sense of freedom to pursue that adventure is so much more important than um than chasing the money itself. And surprisingly, a lot of the times the money then kind of comes naturally after that as long as you have a skill. But you kind of have to go through that too. You can't just like be the 18-year-old who does a startup and has no skills because then like what are you you got to learn and go through those processes. So I'm with you 100%. I'm in the process of like leaving Google right now to go be pursue my dream of like being a strategic adviser and helping startups. So, congrats. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. And so, I'm with

you. It's terrifying, right? It's like why am I giving up a half a million dollar salary, you know, to go pursue a dream, but my family is supportive and it's something like I love talking to people like yourselves and um the other startups that I I have worked with. It's just so much more fun to help people go from zero to 10 million or like I'm working with one to go from like they're going from 20 million to 250. that's their goal and it's just like that's way more valuable and fun and educational than helping Google make another billion dollars, you know, like like it's just a

drop in the bucket. So, um I'm excited to watch all your journeys and I'm excited to share how my journey is going throughout that process, too. So, okay, great. Yeah, sincerely happy. Congratulations. That's a really great Yeah, we'll see. Yeah, we'll see if I'm kicking myself in a few years, but I'm I'm with you. It wasn't It wasn't easy. Um anything else? Any final remarks? anything that um you would like to uh like anything else that you're working on that you'd like to share with the group or you just head downs in product and want some beta users or partners to reach out to you.

Yeah, like just basically use people who are going through the first year audits cuz like we kind of realize like say for technical accountants is more like a aspirin like a essential aspirin than like daily vitamins and people going through the first year they need this aspirin and we had the aspirin for you. So yeah like say happy to have any connection that you know of the the listening on this channel but also yeah like say back to quitting Google and also like say chasing the tales like I

I'm totally on the same boat like say when I get the promotion I was like oh yeah it's I should have it I deserve it but like it's it's making me even happier when we reach out to one of our customers say how she loved the products and like how we're doing the amazing job like that makes me a lot like 10 times happier. that like I got thought got my promotion. Well, I think that shows you what we were made for as people. Like I was reading an interesting book recently about how like corporations and organizations are very complex things. They're not just like they're not just a

place where people work. They're machines. They're also like psychic prisons for people. They become like your cultural like and it's as this famous as this famous book used in a lot of NBA programs. But there's so many different interpretations of organizations and you actually get entrapped in in it and you start getting expectations to move up the ladder and organizations want that out of you, right? They want that out of you. So you stay in the organization and add it value and they get value by holding on to very high talent. But it's not necessarily the way humans were meant to

live, right? We weren't meant to live in security. We're meant to pursue brave goals and go on adventures and like so many of our ancestors traveled oceans to go like make their families better and or like traveled across deserts and horseback, you know, like they they went on these adventures and you guys are going on yours. So, I'm excited for everyone to follow along with it. Fully supportive of you rooting for you. Put all the links below and hopefully you get a lot of traction and um I'll I'll keep advocating for you on the sidelines. Thank you all for I appreciate you joining and we'll catch

up with you in a couple of months on how it's all going. All right. Sounds great. Sure. Thank you. Looking forward. Thank you. Appreciate it.