Every investment, expansion and company survival hinges on knowing the numbers. Every company does accounting.
AI will be the biggest revolution to accounting since the invention of double-entry bookkeeping in 1494. When we moved from paper to computers at the end of the 20th century, the medium changed, but the work stayed the same. Accounting remained tedious, time-consuming, and always behind.
For the first time, AI has made automating accounting a tractable problem. As the cost of intelligence trends towards zero, we will be able to handle accounting’s unstructured data and complex language-based rules almost fully autonomously.
It’s hard to internalize how consequential this change will be. Accounting is the source of truth on what happens in every business. In the intelligence age, business owners with no financial expertise will be able to get access to all the latent knowledge hidden in their books, and they will get it instantaneously. Businesses will operate with a level of clarity, confidence, and speed that is almost unimaginable today.
Our mission is to bring AGI-powered financial decision-making to Europe’s 24 million SMEs, starting in Germany.
Tabular cannot be successful without the accountants who actually advise SMEs on their finances. From day one, we’ve tailored our product to the needs of accounting firms, contrary to the popular investment thesis of competing with accountants.
Accounting firms (aka ”tax offices”) are one of the most important institutions of the European economy. Their role goes far beyond bookkeeping. They are the trusted advisors to the SMEs who make up 50% of GDP, helping ensure fair taxation, navigate compliance, and make important financial decisions.
One may assume that accountants would hesitate to embrace AI, but the opposite is true.
Our users are highly educated and underleveraged. It takes 3 years to become an accountant and 10 to be a tax advisor. Imagine becoming an expert in Germany’s notorious tax law, wanting to actively support small companies who lack similar training, only to end end up spending most of your time doing draining, repetitive bookkeeping work.
There is also intense external pressure. Accounting firms are in the midst of perhaps the most acute white collar shortage in Germany. Half of accounting firms have positions that they cannot fill. Every week, our customers turn down potential clients because they have no capacity left.
Our goal is to supercharge accountants with AI, so that they can focus on advanced tasks, spend more time with customers, and support more clients. Ultimately, this will also greatly benefit the SMEs they service.
Already today, accountants use Tabular to complete SME books across the whole economy. We are handling Sequoia-backed startups, family-owned restaurants, and 30-person wood manufacturers. The time-savings we are generating are drastic. Recently, a partner of a 35-person accounting firm in Hannover told us:
“Completing the monthly books for (anonymous construction contractor) used to take me around 75 minutes, if I pushed it. With Tabular, it’s about 20 minutes. There are at least 70% time-savings.”
So far, Tabular has been auditioning, but now we are scaling up. We have more demand than we can serve and are rapidly rolling out our product across full accounting firms.
