Accounting companies are struggling to undertake high-tech options. That’s in response to a survey earlier this yr from Rightsworks, which discovered that, whereas 88% of companies imagine tech has had a constructive influence on their effectivity, 60% are affected by disconnected methods, inconsistent processes, and a scarcity of standardized workflows.
Startups like Aiwyn try to fulfill the demand. Founded in 2020, Charlotte, North Carolina-based Aiwyn sells software program designed to deal with the income cycle aspect of the CPA enterprise. Aiwyn’s platform automates and reconciles funds and invoices for each CPAs and their clients.
Aiwyn was co-founded by entrepreneurs Pat Morell and Justin Adams. While constructing his first startup, healthcare firm Digitize.AI (which Morell additionally helped co-found), Adams had a foul expertise with a CPA agency. The agency despatched him an bill two months after he’d bought Digitize.AI, and wished Adams to mail a verify to a P.O. field in Pennsylvania.
“[I]t type of left a foul style in my mouth from a buyer expertise perspective,” Adams wrote in a LinkedIn put up. “It precipitated me to dig in and ask: Why does a top-10 accounting agency have such a awful expertise? Why did they make it so tough to pay them? Why put a variety of friction in that within the course of?”
So, regardless of feeling “fairly burned out” after promoting Digitize.AI, as Adams described it, he referred to as up Morell, and the 2 began brainstorming what would grow to be Aiwyn.
Aiwyn has about 80 staffers right now, and notched $8 million in income in 2023, in response to Adams. The firm serves round 130 of the highest 500 accounting companies.
It’s a profitable place to be in.
According to Verified Market Research, the sector for accounting apply administration software program was price $1.29 billion in 2024 and will attain $2.36 billion by 2031. Ninety-three p.c of accountants imagine that accounting companies making extra use of tech usually tend to survive intervals of excessive inflation and rates of interest, per one ballot.
Aiwyn is growing what it describes as a “complete” accounting apply administration platform, in addition to a tax-focused software. To fund these efforts, the corporate not too long ago closed a $113 million funding spherical led by KKR and Bessemer Venture Partners.
The spherical introduced Aiwyn’s complete raised to $127 million.
“Aiwyn is dedicated to empowering CPA companies to raise their operations and shopper relationships,” Adams mentioned in a press release. “With this funding, we’re poised to redefine how companies handle their operations from the CRM to the overall ledger whereas setting a brand new benchmark for shopper experiences.”
