The creator of an infamous childrens’ experience from earlier this year said all the drama “had taken a toll on his mental health.”
Despite all the talk of doom and gloom about the economy, entrepreneurship is actually on the rise in the U.S.: In 2024, an average of 430,000 new business applications were submitted every month, marking a 50% rise from 2019.
But the number of accountants these new businesses will need to maintain their books, file taxes and do related accounting work is dipping. Nearly 75% of CPAs are expected to retire in a decade, and fewer graduates are choosing accounting because it simply doesn’t pay as much as fields like technology and finance.
Serial entrepreneur David Phillips sees an opportunity to fill this growing gap with his latest venture Fondo, which uses software, AI, and accounting experts to offer a bookkeeping platform aimed at startups and small- and medium-sized businesses.
Phillips founded Fondo in 2020 after selling his coding school startup, Hackbright, to Capella University in 2016. He’s also an angel investor, having invested in over 85 startups, including Rippling, Flexport and Liquid Death.
The four-year-old startup, which operates on a subscription-based model, has already secured approximately 1,200 customers, reached annual recurring revenue of $6 million, and is profitable, Phillips said. Its customers include Eleven Labs, Karat, PostHog, Campus and Limitless AI.
“To date, we have saved our customers over $75 million in Delaware Franchise Tax and helped them receive over $16 million back from the IRS in tax credits,” Phillips said.
To double down on its traction, the company recently raised an oversubscribed $7 million seed round led by Money Forward, a Tokyo-based fintech company, with participation from Y Combinator, Motley Fool Ventures, Next Coast Ventures, a16z Scout Fund, Index Ventures Scout Fund, and Twenty Two Ventures. The round values the company at $66 million.
Fondo is definitely not alone in identifying the opportunity here. A host of companies including Pilot, Digits, Finally and Bench provide accounting services to small and medium-sized businesses.
But Phillips feels Fondo differentiates itself by offering an “all-in-one solution” aimed at high-growth startups. “Traditionally, founders use separate services for each function, resulting in inefficiencies and a higher risk of errors,” he said. “Fondo combines these in one platform to simplify financial and tax operations for startups.”
The outfit will use the proceeds to invest in products and automation. It is also building an AI agent for its internal team and customers, who can use it to extract insights and analysis about their financial statements, accounts, cash flow and more, Phillips said.
Fondo currently has about 70 employees, and is hiring across product, engineering, accounting and other roles.
“We’re focused on building a robust product that evolves with the needs of startups. This includes expanding our analytics and reporting capabilities, adding integrations with other tools that founders use, and enhancing our tax-saving options. We’re also looking at ways to support startups as they scale internationally, navigating the complexities of global compliance,” Phillips said.
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As the Twitter-like social network Bluesky sees a significant surge in users this month, Meta’s own X competitor Threads has been rapidly building out its platform. On Friday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced that Threads will start testing AI-powered summaries of what people are discussing on the platform in the app’s “Trending now” section in the U.S.
The new addition sounds similar to X’s Stories feature, which uses Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok to summarize trending topics in the social network’s Explore section.
Threads is also going to test an expanded set of trending topics, the company noted. Plus, users will now be able to search within a specific date range and search for posts from an individual account.
In a post on Threads, Mosseri said the new additions are “long-overdue improvements to Search and Trending Now on Threads.”
Meta has been moving quickly to update Threads at a time when many X users are moving to Bluesky, which has now surpassed 20 million users. The platform has seen an increase in users following the U.S. presidential election as X gained more of a right-wing approach, especially after Musk used the social network to campaign for President-elect Donald Trump.
After complaints from users regarding Threads’ algorithm, the platform is now embracing feedback, as it rolled out changes this week to surface more content from people you follow in the app’s algorithmic feed.
Earlier this week, the social network rolled out custom feeds to allow Threads users to curate feeds around specific topics or certain user profiles. The tool allows Threads to compete with Bluesky’s own features that let users build their own algorithms, feeds, and lists.
It’s worth noting that Threads’ user base is still much larger than Bluesky’s as it has more than 275 million monthly active users. However, data from market intelligence firm Simiarweb shows that Bluesky is catching up with Threads when it comes to daily active users. The firm believes that if the social network is able to keep up its current growth rate, it could eventually catch up with Threads.
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You can opt out of facial recognition at airports, for now, but the TSA has indicated it wants to make the invasive technology a requirement.
Brave announced on Thursday that it’s introducing an AI chat mode for follow-up questions based on initial queries on Brave Search. Earlier this year, the company launched “Answer with AI” summaries that appear above search results after you submit a query to give you an easy-to-read answer in response to a question. Now the Answer with AI summaries will include a chat bar that lets you ask follow-up questions regarding your initial query.
The new feature gives users access to an experience that’s not available on Google, the largest search engine in the world. While Google does offer “AI Overviews,” which are similar to Brave’s “Answer with AI” summaries, the company does not offer a way for users to ask additional questions based on an initial query, as users instead have to complete an entirely new search when looking for more information.
If you go to Brave Search and type in “Christopher Nolan films,” you will get an AI-generated summary that gives you an overview of who Christopher Nolan is and a list of some of his notable films. Starting today, you will now see a chat bar under the AI-generated summary that reads, “Ask a follow-up question.”
You could then enter a follow-up query, such as, “Which actors appear most in his films?” The AI chatbot will then give you a list of actors that Nolan has frequently featured in his movies.
Once you ask a follow-up question, you will enter a chat experience that offers sources along the way with each new question to highlight where the chatbot is getting the information.
Brave says this new experience, which is powered by a combination of open and internal LLMs, eliminates the need for users to choose between chat-first or search-first tools. For instance, search engines are good at fetching images, links, and information, while AI chatbots are great for exploring topics through related questions based on context. Brave is now bringing these two types of tools together with its latest feature.
Brave notes that your conversations with Answer with AI remain safe and private, as Brave Search does not store your queries or profile you.
The company revealed that Brave Search serves more than 36 million queries per day and that its Answer with AI tool generates more than 11 million answers daily.
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