What's Next For Accounting? - Issue #72

Author

Jason Staats
March 02, 2023

This is an especially sweaty edition of the newsletter, apologies in advance:

  • Big AI developments yesterday from OpenAI - here's an explainer - including how I built ChatGPT into Excel

  • I've been harping on vector search + GPT being the most immediately useful AI application - here's a well-executed example that sits atop your Notion, making your existing data more accessible

  • ChatPDF is another example of vector search + GPT - feed it a PDF then discuss the PDF via GPT. I've been using the business use of home IRS publication as a test for a number of these, this initially is outperforming past tests by a mile. The responses are extremely accurate and look to be pulling exclusively from the PDF

  • IngestAI does the same across a large number of apps, from the O365 and Google suites, to Slack, Discord and a bunch more

  • ClickUp announced their waitlist for something similar

  • I'll keep stressing, as I did in my #1 AI prediction in December of last year, in an age where everyone has their own AI model, whoever has the most context wins. The decreased cost of embeddings paired with GPT is a new software paradigm that will define the next 24 months of product development

  • As I've been sharing in my community's content creation series, there's never been a better time for accountants to product content. Applications like this that make your videos & written content more helpful for internal & external users 10x the value of this content. What you're writing today is training the personal AI you'll have 12 mos from now

  • The video I made this week is probably the best of the last 6 mos - How I doubled my profitability

  • My pod this week was about automated data processing

  • Chronologies creates great-looking, shareable timelines - could be helpful for client communication

  • My app for turning smartphone document pics into tidy scanned PDFs got a some big updates this week, among them improved scanning performance

  • Chronicle is the visual presentation tool of your dreams, a huge upgrade from the automated tax return/financial statement slide generator I shared a few weeks ago. Sign up via my referral link to move me up in the waitlist, and I'll share my findings

  • Autobound raises $4M to simplify outreach, by culling data from LinkedIn & other sources about the individual, and using GPT to generate thoughtful, specific-to-them outreach messages

  • Trumpet's an interesting option for how you onboard clients

  • Finch rases a $40M series B - still the easiest way to get access to Gusto's API

  • Better message management if you're in a ton of Slack workspaces

  • New-age skinny jean wearing spreadsheet app Rows rolls out a new version with lots of upgrades - they recently shared a bunch of compelling ways to use AI in your sheets

  • A MS Teams bot for remembering birthdays, anniversaries, etc - plug your client data in & you'll look like a wizard

  • Smartpaste is a Chrome extension that lets you select an area of data on your screen, like taking a screenshot, and copies the data to your clipboard to paste into a spreadsheet. Believe it or not, this too is GPT

⚠️ A Note For Product-Runners

AI headlines are already impacting buying decisions. The narrative that AI will disrupt the ways we work will defer buying decisions unless you show a path to AI adoption. It's already happening and evident in buyer behavior, particularly in our space. With everything that's in flux, nobody wants to hitch their wagon to a legacy product if disruptive change is just around the corner.

Whether any of that comes to be or not, you need a communication strategy to address it. If you tell them it isn't applicable you run the risk of looking out of touch to many buyers. Between vector search, GPT, and speech-to-text there are a host of interesting applications. Even if that innovation doesn't come in the product itself, there are opportunities in engineering-as-marketing, in traditional marketing comms, and to better leverage existing thought leadership content.

I've met with 20+ companies in the space in the last 60 days, and have yet to come away from a meeting with a few compelling applications. I'm going to take 10 more meetings next week to jam on ideas with industry partners. Reply to this email if you'd like to chat, no strings attached.

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  1. Every day at midnight, search for invoices created within the last 24 hours

  2. Download a PDF of the invoice

  3. Email the PDF somewhere

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😍From The Community

My community Realize is a private space for people to swap ideas & collaborate. At $180/mo it’s also the way I finance everything else I do, pay a full-time creative director, and a part-time developer in an effort to make the accounting industry a slightly better place 💗 The community is currently about 280 members strong.