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Milton Friedman famously held up a pencil and said, “There is not a single person in the world who can make this.” The pencil, like almost everything around us, arises from the intricate and often invisible coordination of countless people.
This scale of coordination is only possible because of accounting. Accounting is the quiet engine that lets us measure, trust, and manage the complex web of economic activities. It is what enables companies to raise capital, governments to collect resources, and organizations to make decisions. If the market is intelligent, that is only because it learns from the data that accounting provides.
Without accounting, the economy as we know it simply wouldn’t exist.
Industrialization, globalization, the internet, tax codes, and regulations have caused an explosion of complexity in the economy. Accounting capacity has been stretched thin.
Meanwhile, firms are increasingly understaffed, as experienced accountants are retiring, and fewer young professionals are stepping in to replace them. We are literally outnumbered.
The Pentagon has failed its 7th audit in a row and companies’ internal controls are starting to break down.
Soon, AI will introduce non-biological economic participants and new types of economic activity. While this will create opportunities we couldn’t have imagined even 5 years ago, it will also layer additional complexity onto a cracking system. If accounting can’t evolve to handle this complexity, we risk stalling progress just as AI is beginning to transform the way we work and live.
Accountants don’t need more software; every accountant already has dozens of software tools. Accountants need tools that can understand accounting, learn specific client needs, work independently, and take real actions. Every accountant deserves a team that is an extension of them, that they can manage, and that can do work on their behalf.
Basis was built from day one to equip accountants with a team of AI agents that can take on varied accounting workflows. Basis onboards onto accounting engagements at the direction of an accountant and gets to work.
Our work has been guided by a few key principles:
Agents > chatbots: Basis agents do real work. We made a bet from day one on agents over chatbots, and have built the most capable accounting agents - that are doers, not just talkers.
Understanding + learning > memorization. Most software is built by teams that play a game of telephone from the business stakeholder to the PM to the engineer. This leads to software that is far too narrow and brittle.
Every accountant knows accounting isn’t one-size-fits-all. Each client has different practices, and each engagement has different requirements; software often breaks down.
Basis is built system-first to understand accounting, adapt its intelligence to the engagement it's working on, and easily pick up new workflows.
Colleague, not competitor: Basis sells exclusively to accountants; it does not work against them, in contrast to prevailing investment theses on building 'new' accounting firms or selling directly to businesses. Basis is tailored for use by expert accountants.
As one firm leader told us, “Basis is the most exciting new technology I’ve seen in my career.”
Basis agents take real work off of accountants’ plates, reporting back with results and freeing them up to focus on higher-level work.
We’ve deployed with a select group of top 100 accounting firms in the US and, when measured, have saved as much as 30% of total time.
Just as importantly, our customers love working with Basis, and accountants report being re-energized through busy seasons and excited about being at the frontier of the profession.
This has led us to increase revenue by 10x in recent months, and 25% of the total work done by Basis has been completed in the last 2 months alone.
AI has kicked off a new industrial revolution that will transform every sector of the economy. We believe accounting is among the most important and foundational - and might happen the fastest.
We better get it right.
Until now, Basis has been auditioning.
Now, Basis is doing real work, in the real economy.
Next, we’re scaling up: hundreds of agents behind every accountant, performing tasks, reporting back, and transforming how accounting gets done. The opportunity is huge, and the roadmap is ambitious.
We’re looking for a few very intense people who want to build at the frontier.
Updated 12/17/2024