There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Isaac Heller: Hey everyone, this is Isaac. I'm CEO at Trulia. And today on AI, accounting, intelligence, we'll be talking with real people about real things related to AI and the impact on the accounting industry. Stay tuned.

Isaac Heller: Good to see everyone. Good to be talking to everyone. Welcome to Accounting Intelligence. Another great episode. I'm really excited about this [00:00:30] one today because we've got and wind in the house. Edwin, how are you doing?

Edwine Alphonse: I'm doing well. Isaac. Thank you for having me today.

Isaac Heller: Yeah. Awesome. Um, you know, Edwin, as I always say, you know, my hope with these podcasts is people walk away with even just one thing. Like one piece of wisdom from hearing your story and your personality. I have a feeling today they're going to walk away with at least three and hopefully more, Um, you [00:01:00] know, you and I, uh, we met in Boston. I remember one of these I controller dinners. You know, you've worked for some of the hottest companies in the world, circle, which is the hot IPO and ramp, which could be a future IPO and much more. But, um, yeah, I mean, it's it's just great to have you. And I thought maybe a good place to start for everyone would just be to introduce yourself and talk a little bit about the arc of your career. [00:01:30] And by the way, feel free to go back to your childhood if there's any fun stories.

Edwine Alphonse: Yeah. So thank you. So, Isaac, I just want to congratulate you first on making the top 40 list.

Isaac Heller: Thank you. Uh.

Edwine Alphonse: Congratulations on that. Um, and thank you again for having me. So, um, I've done a couple of podcasts in the past couple months, so people should be quite familiar with me. Or if they're not, they probably read the balance sheet, which [00:02:00] is my newsletter on LinkedIn. But for people that don't know me, I'm doing alphas. I've had a career in accounting for the past 20 years, so I'm a regular like corporate accountant with a background in auditing like Big Four are other firms. So I've worked at Ernst and Young, and I've also worked at PwC, and for the past ten years I've been, uh, helping, um, startups with, uh, building their financial and accounting processes and things. So I [00:02:30] grew up in AD, like I was born in Haiti, in the Caribbean. And, um, when I grew up, like I wanted to be a novelist. I wanted to be a writer. Somehow, somehow.

Isaac Heller: What kind of books? I have to ask. What kind of books did you write?

Edwine Alphonse: Novels. So I was the.

Isaac Heller: One.

Edwine Alphonse: I like. Like Daniel still. So I read so many, Daniel still. I was really, like, woman, like reader. I read so many of them, and I enjoyed it, so I [00:03:00] never envisioned myself as an accountant. In fact, when I studied in university. So I left right after high school to go to university in the US, and I was a mis student. That's when the internet was hot. Everybody was talking about it. I'm aging myself now. I'm old.

Isaac Heller: You and I both.

Edwine Alphonse: So some people were, like, excited about, uh, information systems. So I started, uh, wanting to have, uh, information systems degree. And [00:03:30] somehow when I moved from the US to Canada because, uh, in my first year, my parents moved to Canada, and I had to join them. I didn't transition well, like, I was really bad at coding, like Java C plus plus. That was it for me. So turn out I got a job in the accounting department at the university because I was doing the work study program and I fell in love with an account with accounting at that time. And [00:04:00] after my first couple months working with the accounting department at the university, I decided to switch my degree to accounting and I never looked back. It was the best decision for me because right after college, I got a job at Ernst and Young in Ottawa, and that was great because I was able to work with different type of clients, different industries, different teams. Um, started in Canada and worked in Ottawa, in Toronto, [00:04:30] and then at some point I was like, oh my God, it's too cold in Canada. So I moved to Grand Cayman and did my share of, um, uh, hedge funds audits, asset management audits, which was great. And while I was in Cayman, I met my husband there, and he's from Boston. And he was like, well, you want to get married, you need to move to Boston. So I moved to Boston with PwC and stayed with PwC for about three years. [00:05:00] So that's a total of ten years in Big Four. Uh, and um, I really, really liked audit, but when I got my first daughter, it was extremely challenging to travel as an auditor. And I was like, you know what I need? Just like one flight. And I wanted something fun. Like, I wanted to work for company. That's fun, that's exciting. And that's how I found circle. And that was in 2014.

Isaac Heller: Wow. I was just.

Edwine Alphonse: Ago. [00:05:30]

Isaac Heller: Just sorry to interrupt. So so circle. Now fast forward. We're recording this in the summer of 2005 2025 just IPO. Correct.

Edwine Alphonse: Yes.

Edwine Alphonse: Circle. Just ipo'd I think two weeks ago.

Isaac Heller: Wow. Which is so that that has been one of the most successful IPOs, uh, in recent memory, which is really exciting. So now let's let's rewind back to where you were. And it sounds like maybe the earlier days of billing accounting. Yeah.

Edwine Alphonse: So I joined Serco in 2014 [00:06:00] and Serco started in 2013. So when I joined them, they were extremely early. I was employee number 40. I was the first accountant.

Isaac Heller: Wow.

Edwine Alphonse: I was hired as an accounting manager, but there was nobody else on the accounting side. I was reporting to the VP of finance and she was an amazing lady, like, unmarried, strong. And she worked part time. She was like, you know what? Like we're only going to take a chance, uh, because you add that [00:06:30] accounting audit background and at that time, like, funny enough, whenever I get a job, it's because people need to get an audit done. So. So my first task was to get, uh, Serco financial statement audited and clean their books, which I did. So I ended up staying there for five years, built a team, built the processes, Cities created like international.

Isaac Heller: Wow.

Edwine Alphonse: Like. And it was exciting, like extremely exciting, but also extremely challenging. Especially [00:07:00] because at that time nobody knew how to, uh, do accounting for crypto or how to do compliance for crypto.

Isaac Heller: Like it's a wallet. It's a stablecoin wallet.

Edwine Alphonse: Well, well, Cirko started as a competitor to Coinbase. They started by like selling and trading different type of cryptos and allowing people to have these different cryptos in their wallets or invest in them. So we were doing accounting for like, uh, hour two of [00:07:30] these cryptos on the books, like as inventors and also doing accounting for crypto trading. And, uh, I remember the stories of the auditors, just like, how do you audit cryptos because you can't see them. So I had to learn like how to do hot wallet, cold wallet, like all the cryptography, all to sign the transactions and everything. So it was exciting. Exciting time. And to at the end like in 2018 I think like circle. Moved to Usdc [00:08:00] like the stablecoins which they currently have now. And I was the one also to help establish the accounting and auditing standards for stablecoins, like working with the auditors and figuring it out. So that was really exciting. Um, so after circle. So I left circle in 2019, I took a little break. I call that like job creation, job creation and work for like some smaller companies. Uh, one of them was in AI [00:08:30] manufacturing, which was great. Uh, the second one was in, uh, data. Uh, marketing data analytics for influencer marketing. Again, that was exciting because I could spend my whole day, well, a couple hours on Instagram, but that was like doing work. It was fun, like, uh. And I enjoyed it because I was able to work with different industries like learn SaaS at circle, or they were mostly focused on transaction [00:09:00] revenue and trading revenue and crypto accounting.

Edwine Alphonse: So, uh, working at tracker, for example, gave me that SaaS accounting, uh, 6 to 6 revenue experience. So while I was a tracker, I was just looking for, um, solution for my team because we had different subsidiaries at tracker and people used to travel a lot. And I was like, what can help with expense reporting? And I found ramp and, uh, funny [00:09:30] enough, they had a position called accountant. You know what? The best way to get a good demo is to, I don't know, apply for jobs or apply for the job. Uh, went to the process and met with, uh, Alex. Uh, he was the VP of signings at that time. Eric, Jeff and after Jeff gave me the demo of ramp, I was like, you know what? I want to work for this company. So I joined Ramp in 2021. Uh, [00:10:00] again, I was their first accountant, first controller, and built the team. So when I joined the I had the team of 70 people, seven zero. And I just left ramp like, uh, at the end of May. Uh, and when I left, they had a headcount of 1200 employees. Um, they went from when I started into, like, having nominal revenue to now getting close to 1 billion in revenue for 2025. So I can say it's a really good story. [00:10:30] Uh, I had a really good career in accounting so far. I love accounting. Like, I think like like an accountant. I live life as an accountant. Like my husband will tell me, like, stop auditing me all the time, but I just, like, enjoy accounting.

Isaac Heller: That's great. I love that. Uh, you know, stop auditing me. You know, I prefer advisory. Uh, or consulting, you know. No, no. No audits. Um, amazing. [00:11:00] You know, first of all, I have a lot of questions. You know, I'm. If I'm listening or watching right now, I'm thinking, oh, I need to watch where Edwin goes next, because, uh, those are those are two pretty amazing stories. Um, and they obviously had the good luck charm, uh, with you. But maybe I'll take it back a little bit to Haiti. Right. And it's interesting, we had we had a great episode. It was the third episode [00:11:30] of Accounting Intelligence called The Power of People. And it was with Larry Quinlan, who's the CIO, or he was the CIO of Deloitte. And he was from Saint Kitts. And, you know, he was Island. What's that?

Edwine Alphonse: That's a beautiful island in the Caribbean.

Isaac Heller: It's a beautiful island and I haven't been to Haiti, but I hear it's beautiful as well. And you know, he he describes his time coming from, you know, a the, you know, the island all the way to the big buildings [00:12:00] of New York or wherever he's in. I mean, do you think about, um, you know, growing up in Haiti and the difference between living in, you know, New York or Boston or wherever you are and wow, this is so much different. Or maybe there's a lot of similarities. Do you reflect back on that?

Edwine Alphonse: I do a lot, and especially because I have two young daughters now, and I try to assimilate or compare my experience compared to their experience. So when I grew up in Haiti. Haiti is a third world country, but I [00:12:30] was blessed. I grew up with a lot of privilege, like my parents or they still alive. They were well off. So I went to, uh, a really good, like, all girls Catholic school. My friends, we were all like, oh, good network. But at the same time, like, even if I was growing up with that much privilege, I could see like people suffering or people not having the same blessing or luck that I had. And growing up, I was able to enjoy [00:13:00] all of this. Like when I was in Haiti. It was a community. Like everyone is friends, like we know everyone. We go everywhere. It feels like home. We go to the beach, everyone.

Isaac Heller: You speak French.

Edwine Alphonse: I speak French.

Isaac Heller: I speak in your community. Do you speak French?

Edwine Alphonse: Yes.

Edwine Alphonse: Uh, we mostly speak Creole. Like French. Like French is more like, uh, at school or for businesses. Or when your parents are upset at you. Uh, [00:13:30] with with my friends. Like, we mostly speak Creole. So, uh, my life was great compared to what people would see or would think I had the best life in aliens. I'm sad that my daughters will not experience that lifestyle, and I'm sad that I'm not able to go back and give them that view or that exposure. But I had a great life in Haiti and it was a life of community. It was a life of enjoyment. It was a life of appreciation, [00:14:00] and it was a life of like, you know, like everybody looks like you and, you know, you can achieve, you know, you can be great at whatever you're doing, which is probably not the case here in the US, because in the US, I feel like more like I'm a minority, you know? But coming from Haiti like that gave me the confidence to know that I can do anything and I can achieve anything. And because of the way I was raised, like I don't take things for granted. I'm more [00:14:30] appreciative of the blessings. And I'm also, like more, um, aware of how I can help and support other people.

Isaac Heller: That's amazing. You know, I think it's, uh, it's a it's a lost. I don't want to call it an art, but it's it's something that I think deep down, we all, we all strive for, you know, is to is to feel a sense of purpose and mission and also to feel like we have, um, a backbone, like some [00:15:00] a place we come from, a place that makes us unique, a place that makes us special. Because when you work in accounting or audit, sometimes it's debits, credits, debits, credits, debits, credits, you know, quarter to quarter. Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. And when you have that backbone, you realize, you know, this work is just a part. This is one small part of me, you know, but but I am who I am from my background. And it's also interesting, um, you know, when you when you talk about your daughters, I [00:15:30] mean, some people would say, oh, well, you mentioned Haiti's a third world country. They would say, oh, well, the dream is to come to America or Europe or whatever it is. Well, now, you know, you're saying, well, I would like my daughters to experience what I experience because it's something about building your soul or your foundation or something like that. Is that fair to say?

Edwine Alphonse: Yeah, that's fair to say, because I had a great life and, uh, and my daughters would not experience that life. And they'll.

Isaac Heller: Have a great life, too, but a different.

Edwine Alphonse: One. Yeah, they'll [00:16:00] have a different life. But in 80, uh, just being able to communicate with other people, seeing the earth, seeing nature, having that trust and feeling that you, um, like, I know now they feel like home is home for them.

Isaac Heller: Which is Boston or Northeast Boston.

Edwine Alphonse: Like, they feel like Boston home. But it's it's a different feeling, like knowing that you can get you have access to food that you like, people that you're aware of, like [00:16:30] you own. So, um, like, I know for them it's like always here, but for me, like, the sense of being at home will always be like inhaling. Like having. Like my friends over. Like drinking the food that my grandmother used to make.

Isaac Heller: Oh, that's. That sounds good. Is it Creole food? What would you call it? Haitian?

Edwine Alphonse: Yeah. Some good Haitian food.

Isaac Heller: Oh, amazing.

Edwine Alphonse: Learning. Like listening to the rooster in the morning, waking you up. The smell [00:17:00] of coffee. Like the music. And just, like, having a really good life. Because life is really slow. It's not, like, as fast, like go, go, go. Work, work, work.

Isaac Heller: Yeah.

Edwine Alphonse: So people take the time to really, really live and enjoy life.

Isaac Heller: It's so funny. I, you know, I was in the the Caribbean once. It's not Haiti. It's a different place. But the the motto of the island was go slow. Yeah. And, you know, I, I come from a, I come from America, even [00:17:30] Texas. We're a little slower southern. But I was speed walking and and the guys just, like stopped. Stop. You need to go slow. Wow. We don't feel that when we're in Boston or New York. But it is. It is nice to, like, reflect on, um, your journey. And I'm happy that people are hearing a little bit of your story, because let's hope that the next generation has a lot of stories. Um, being in two completely different environments makes us stronger because [00:18:00] you have one perspective, learns from the other, and vice versa. You know, the way that that you talk about it. And Larry talked about this a little bit. You know, he felt like accounting was a path to a career, maybe from, you know, the place. Do you feel like accounting is still that type of profession where anyone from around the world, from whether it's Haiti or Vietnam or anywhere, can potentially get a career they dream of through accounting? [00:18:30] Or is it changed over the years?

Edwine Alphonse: No, I do think like accounting is like the common language of business. So no matter where you come from, this is a language you can learn. And this is a language you can excel at. Like for me, I think accounting is extremely intertwined with my immigration story because coming from Haiti, I didn't envision myself as an accountant. But accounting like, helped me like moved from Canada to Grand Cayman, [00:19:00] from Grand Cayman to the US. And I'm sure, like if I intend on going somewhere else, the fact that I have a CPA or have accounting background, it's going to make it easier for me to find opportunities for professional or career or work anywhere else, you know? So I do feel like a lot of people, they use accounting to immigrate, like I do have a lot of friends. Like when I was in Canada, some of my friends came from Jamaica and they [00:19:30] moved to Canada, to Toronto to work for, and Ernst and Young. They came down with their CPAs from Jamaica and work for for Namibia. I do have friends coming from China, from Vietnam and they all like even though they grew up in these countries, they successful accountants in the US. So and they've been able to bridge the gap and have successful careers like using accounting. So whenever I talk to a students like I'm part of NABA, which is the [00:20:00] National Association of Black Accountants, uh, and and rebuilding the the chapter in Boston. So I talk with all of these students at different universities and some of them come from Africa, Caribbean like or different countries or even the US. And I'm telling them with accounting there are so many opportunities and they just have to embrace them. And with these opportunities, they can go wherever they want or they can go as far as they want.

Isaac Heller: That's amazing. So a couple shout outs you mentioned just for anyone listening. [00:20:30] So you just mentioned, uh, Naba where you're a vice president, National Association of Black Accountants Boston chapter. And then earlier you said balance sheet. Is that your newsletter?

Edwine Alphonse: Yeah. So I have a I subscribe. Oh thank you. So that's my passion project. Uh, I just talk about life, uh, like at the intersection of accounting. Like I said, I like to see life through the lens of an accountant. So. And I like to teach people about, like, regular accounting concepts. [00:21:00] And I feel like to my stories, I'm able to do that.

Isaac Heller: Amazing. Okay. Um, so, so, uh, balance sheet. You got to sign up if you want to hear more stories. Okay. Um, you know, and when we've got some more to talk about with the AI and stuff, but I'm still I'm still into your unique, uh, prism into into accounting. Um, what what was it about? Uh, maybe. Maybe growing up or your your [00:21:30] journey that makes you unique as an accountant. Like I'm thinking, you know, if I'm sitting there like there's a lot of people that say, oh, well, accountants are black and white, you know, they're trained to know the rules and apply the rules. Even sometimes the personalities might be very, um, similar if you're from the outside. Obviously, I'm on the inside. There's a lot of, uh, good flavors. Um, but, like what? What about your unique personality did you bring to the accounting world? And maybe, like, what [00:22:00] type of accountant are you? You know what? What are your special powers and ninja powers based on your unique, uh, journey?

Edwine Alphonse: That's such a great question. So thank you for asking that. And I never really thought about it like that, but, uh, I want to say that I like I see accounting as, like, a financial story.

Isaac Heller: Like like that.

Edwine Alphonse: I wanted to be like a novelist, like I told you. And I get to tell these stories to the balance sheet, like my newsletter, But [00:22:30] I've started to see accounting as like history or like telling women. So financial women's novel, which is what we're doing as accountants. Like we are telling the stories of the company we're working for. Like for me, when I was working at circle, I was telling like, Circle Story, what I was doing, the financial statement every month to do audits. And that story was like [00:23:00] a story of how much money we made, how much money we invested. That's the PNL and what we have. That's the balance sheet. So accountants are like financial historian. They're like storytellers, and they have that language that is guiding investors, that is guiding like a the market that is guiding, like the IRS, that is guiding everything. And they own that language. So, so for me, I feel like the fact that I'm [00:23:30] like, I like to see myself as a writer, even though that that that like, I'm writing financial history out to my debits and credits and also to to my life story. Like, I know that I'm adaptable, I'm resilient. And that makes me more attracted to work, to, um, to work for startups. Like, I like working for startups because I always feel like I can come and be impactful. I can create [00:24:00] from scratch and help them narrate their stories. Like what? Like I'm always like, okay, how do you want to tell that story? My first question to founders or my CFO is like, how do you want to tell that story? And that's what guides me with like creating the first chart of accounts like mapping the the transactions and using the gap that you have, let's say like A666, it's not like stepping Stefan serves as the guide of how can we [00:24:30] tell that story?

Isaac Heller: That's amazing. Um, so. And and, you know, as I've, as we know, I, um, I truly am like, now that I'm a founder, I can I can vouch for how important not just good finances, but good accounting. I really appreciate it. And I can really vouch for storytelling. Right. By the way, Edwin, between you and me, we've got we've got history and romance covered. Because I was a history major. You know, [00:25:00] I.

Edwine Alphonse: Love.

Isaac Heller: I love history. In fact, one of, uh, history of accounting. Um, I'm from Texas, and I remember when I was a kid, I read the newspaper about Enron and, uh, and. Yeah, and I remembered that.

Edwine Alphonse: Year of university and I was like, oh, my God, that's when I was, like, into control sucks and everything.

Isaac Heller: Yeah. So that's a little history. And then before, um, I started trillion, um, one [00:25:30] of our investors and I were both reading the same following the same news story about Wirecard, which was in Germany. Um, and that was a major fraud, kind of like a payment, a PayPal of Germany. And now there's a book about it called Man Bin. Um, and, uh, and there's a Netflix thriller about an accounting Netflix thriller, Mad Men. I think I forgot the author. Maybe it's Dan Taylor with Financial Times, but, um, anyway, [00:26:00] those are those are some fun ones. So we've got we've got the history covered and the romance, uh, the romantic novels cover. We'll, we'll come back to that. But I want to I want to just emphasize what you said, because I remember when I was, uh, working, you know, before, truly. And I was working on finance teams, and there was always, like, a guy or a gal or two called strategic finance. Okay. You see, there's tons, I'm sure, [00:26:30] in ramp and circle strategic. And and I always thought like, why can't you have strategic accounting. Right. Why why can't you have strategic in front of a county.

Isaac Heller: Why is it always strategic finance. And so it's it's interesting that you talk about storytelling because I think that, um, accountants are either discouraged or maybe by nature, not much of a storyteller. They think the the book is already written and they just need to to choose the adventure or something like that. [00:27:00] But you talk about it as a story, and I think that that energy can really breathe a lot into the profession because it is the language of business, right? It is a cool idea to quantify an intangible asset. It's cool. How much is Apple's brand worth? How much is a a lease worth? You know, like rhetoric, rhetoric. It's crazy. Like 606I know people hate it. You mentioned a few times I love it because and I had to do it for a pre-IPO tech company, but I thought [00:27:30] it was interesting that they made us do standalone selling price. Right. That's interesting. You have to unbundle everything. You have to determine what the pricing value is for everything. So to all those strategic finance guys out there, we need a whole strategic accounting, you know, Army for the for the for the next generation. Yeah.

Edwine Alphonse: This is something that is really annoying to me. I feel like I was overtaken, uh, the reigns of I don't [00:28:00] know of, of accounting and finance and somehow people are giving, uh, the supremacy to finance over accounting. Yeah, but what people seem to forget is without accounting, there wouldn't be finance sometimes. And if you don't have good foundational accounting or good strategic accounting, you cannot have strategic findings.

Isaac Heller: Right? Well, I you know, I go back to, first of all, [00:28:30] the accountants are the ones who are getting a CPA and doing a CPE credit. So let's be real. I mean, there's a value in specialization and ongoing training versus, oh, I worked at an investment firm or oh, I, I like excel like that strategic finance or whatever it is. But I will I will say that accountants can get held back at times by GAAP and by, um, just controls, audits, [00:29:00] all that stuff. And they have to do that first, right. And so, you know, I we'll talk about this another on another episode. But like I always think that the um, the software stack is built wrong. It's it accounting should actually be done first and then and then that data should feed the finance. Instead it splits, right? Accounting goes off of their process, which is backwards looking. Erp based and finance gets [00:29:30] to come in and use the HR data and use the CRM data a lot easier because they don't have consequences if it's wrong. But anyway, um, I think that will be the next step is to is to, you know, automate more in accounting so that the accountants can be the strategic accountant, you know. Um, so anyway, very nice. Okay. Your startup CPA, is that yours?

Edwine Alphonse: Yeah. So your startup CPA is, um, my little venture [00:30:00] I created.

Isaac Heller: Ooh.

Edwine Alphonse: Uh, it's not, um, my, um, 24 seven professional career.

Isaac Heller: It's a.

Edwine Alphonse: Job.

Isaac Heller: Side hustle.

Edwine Alphonse: It's more like my side also, because I realize a lot of people needed help and support.

Isaac Heller: Okay.

Edwine Alphonse: It's either a founder's wanting to understand what accounting is, when they should start thinking about building a team. The difference between a controller and accounting manager or bookkeeper. [00:30:30] So I've been advising a lot of founders in the past couple of years, telling them, okay, this is where accounting is important. This is what you should have QuickBooks. This is when you should move out of QuickBooks. This is what you should be hiring. Maybe you should hire like a more somebody technical expertise rather than someone with operational expertise. So so we've just sort of superior I want to coach advice, which I've been doing before at the same time as well. I've worked with a [00:31:00] lot of founders like you building for accountants and finance professionals. So these people are engineers, the product managers. They've never closed the bookstore. They don't know about credit. So I've been advising them, coaching them and going to the different accounting processes with them so they can build better for accountants and they can.

Isaac Heller: Build amazing.

Edwine Alphonse: Like me. And then, uh, third, uh, my third, like, audience is like people like going to startups world like [00:31:30] accountants, accounting managers, controllers. This is their first startup jobs. They overwhelmed. They don't know what to do. They don't know where to start. They don't know what tools and processes to use. So I'm, uh, available to offer them like services, coaching and just have them think holistically about how to build, like a good strategic accounting function.

Isaac Heller: Amazing. Okay, good. So that's so it's your startup CPA. And if you're if you're thinking of joining a startup [00:32:00] or you're a founder like me and needs help, um, you got your startup CPA. That's amazing.

Edwine Alphonse: And that's a funny story. That's a funny story there. And I was.

Isaac Heller: Let's hear it.

Edwine Alphonse: So my brother is an IP lawyer.

Isaac Heller: Okay.

Edwine Alphonse: And then he wanted to give a gift to me. And he Any trademark your startup CPA. It was like, since you like working for startup in your CPA. Uh, I'm going to give you the gift of a trademark for your startup CPA. So I had no choice.

Isaac Heller: That's [00:32:30] a great gift.

Edwine Alphonse: So I had no choice than to be like, okay, so I guess, like I have the trademark and the name, maybe I can have a website and just, like, formalize it. You know.

Isaac Heller: That's a really that's a really nice gift. I think we got to watch out for you and your brother. You could create a whole, you know, services firm one day, you know, one stop shop for for legal and accounting. That's awesome. So you mentioned okay, so on one hand, you help founders understand what accounting [00:33:00] means. You know, listen, you know, Edwin, we we know debits and credits. We just don't know which column to put it in okay. So so we you know, we need a little bit of help there. Um, and and by the way, uh, it is it is a whole nother story of how how funny it is to talk about accounting with a founder because you're like, uh, ah, you know, like you don't even think about burn until until some point, [00:33:30] right? And burns. Not even an accounting metric, right? No it's not. But, um. Yeah, we we, uh, eventually, you know, you get to a certain point where six, six. Really? Yeah.

Edwine Alphonse: I just talked to them like, they're like, they're like bookings and revenue. I'm like, listen, booking is not revenue. So. So it's all interesting.

Isaac Heller: Talking is not revenue. That's the that's the t shirt. You'll you'll the way it'll work is you'll you'll wear that at the founders, you know, whatever it is. And they'll they'll deny you. They'll ignore [00:34:00] you because they say that's not good for my business. It's not good for my fundraising bookings, any revenue. And then they are about to raise, you know, series B, maybe series C and you get a call, hey, you're wearing that shirt. Can you explain the difference between that's just how the startups work. You know, we.

Edwine Alphonse: We we.

Isaac Heller: Yeah, we follow we follow the latest. But listen, I'm in I'm in rev rec mode. You know, I truly am. We're series B plus we're working with all the top, you know audit firms [00:34:30] and controllers. And so there's there's no choice. So we're getting there. Okay. But that's one aspect of your startup CPA. The other one that was interesting is you talked about coaching and helping accountants who are coming to their first startup. What's okay two part question. What's the number one hardest thing that you see, like the number one complaint or the top complaint that you hear. That's number one. And then number two maybe it's the same. [00:35:00] Maybe it's different. What advice do you find yourself always giving these you know, accountants and startups. So first what's the biggest, you know challenge you see. And then second what's the common advice you always give them?

Edwine Alphonse: So the biggest challenge is like. And that's been recent, uh, this accountants don't feel appreciated. Most of them, they usually come from Big Four or they usually come from some audit firms. And this is their first, uh, startup job. So [00:35:30] they have no idea what they're doing, and they just think like, oh, I need to only, like, issue financial statements because the books. And I have to remind them, this is just like a portion of the job. Like the biggest job is to build processes, is to build controls, is to build teams operational accounting. And if you don't build your operations, like when I say operations, like all the processes, like paying the bills, paying people equity, compensation, like payroll, like all those your payroll process work like [00:36:00] how do you work with different partners, different teams, or do you teach them controls or do you document these processes? Like if you don't do this investment early, you're not going to be able to have good financial reporting. So so that's something like I feel like a lot of accountants do forget, especially when they're working at startups. They they don't know that they have to be the one building and finding solutions. They just think, oh, my job is just to like [00:36:30] do debit credit journal entries do like the PNL, the balance sheet, and that's it.

Edwine Alphonse: No, the job is way more than that. The job is just like understanding what the company needs and creating, like the framework for the company to operate financially and say, like there is a need for a new product. So now you have to be thinking about like, okay, what accounting guidance to you is, are we going to invoice people? Are we going to collect? And apart [00:37:00] from that, like what bank account we're going to use if it's something if it's SaaS, like do we need to have like a sales tax registration. Who's going to do that. What integration do you need to like? I don't know, something like Avalara or any work. What type of reports do you need? So I feel like accountants, they just see the financial reporting side or the audit side sometimes, and they forget at the startup it's way more than that. It's not only technical accounting, it's also operational [00:37:30] accounting. It's also compliance. It's mostly a lot of the time building relationship across the board and building these processes and documenting them from the get go. So so that's the first thing that I feel like they don't know. And the second question like I'm trying to remember what was it again the second part.

Isaac Heller: Yeah. Just that the. Well that's what they don't know. And then maybe advice that you find yourself giving a lot. Maybe it's the same thing.

Edwine Alphonse: Yeah. So my advice is just [00:38:00] like build relationship start from the ground. The first step start someday zero like understand the Standard processes. And if there are no processes, build them like build like build like an advocate for accounting, like, uh. Uh, funny enough, I feel like accountants. They tend to be introverted. They like to be behind the scene. They don't like to, um, like, create problems, but they see everything. [00:38:30] Like, we know how much everyone get paid. We know how much every vendors get paid. We know, like, everything. So with that knowledge, they should be more powerful. And that power comes from like creating partnership. It comes from like helping people solve their problems and being more like forward looking and helping the company make better decisions. Like one example is like if you [00:39:00] notice, there's like you're paying the bills, you notice they're paying for the same type of solutions. Like you notice the companies paying for Microsoft Azure and AWS. Maybe you could be going back to your IT infrastructure team and tell them why you're paying for both. Like a way to minimize these expenses. Like if you notice there's a new, um, product coming up. Like think about collection. Think about billing. Think about like sales tax. If the company is thinking about, like having a new piece [00:39:30] of software, like. Oh, and like, how can the engineers in be structured like, optimally to increase the R&D tax credit?

Isaac Heller: Like that's a good one. Yeah. You could do R&D. You can do R&D cap better if you and then you're forced to learn. You know what. What are you guys doing in this product. You know.

Edwine Alphonse: Exactly exactly. So that that's why I feel like accountants, they're ignoring the power that they have because they have access to so much knowledge, they don't know where to start sometimes, and [00:40:00] they've never been coached for that. And that that I'm not going to say like they're not doing it. It's just like you don't know when you're in the Big Four. They never told you how to do operations. I came for not even knowing how to do a journal entry. I didn't know how to set up a payroll process or to set up an international entity. I had to learn. So. So accountants should open their mind and just like, just take like a deep dive and get it done. Like, all of this is amazing. [00:40:30] But they have to learn and just do it.

Isaac Heller: I love it, I love it. You like you use the word I like, which is a window. You know, it's like a it's like a window into the business. Um, I, you know, two things. Like you said, it's a language of the business. So basically, you own, you own the most. It's literally called g a p like generally accepted accounting principles. Like there is an actual language that you learn. And then second, [00:41:00] it's a window. Um, I want to talk a little bit about I next. And I know it's a can of worms and and a moving target. But before I do like reflecting on I, um, I thought more and more lately that I has a very unique place in the accounting industry. And, and the reason is, I know we're all talking about it, and I'm sure it's been said before, but when you think about, [00:41:30] like the AI and engineering, you know, engineers are using coding, uh, helpers for, for AI, but that's like so specific to just coding, you know, and marketing teams are using AI for their materials and their content. But that's so specific if even even legal legal is using AI, but that's for their contracts, you know, or whatever it is, accounting, you know, and when like if [00:42:00] I'm the if I'm the CEO and you're my controller VP. Whatever. Legal only touches contracts. Marketing touches their stuff. Engineering. You can touch anything. I am the I blindly trust the accountant, the CFO, the controller to have access to all the data. That's the trust that's been built over the years. And I think I think people forget that.

Isaac Heller: So if you do adopt automation and I as an accountant, [00:42:30] there's more likelihood to strengthen the position as an operational person. That's different than marketing and engineering and legal and sales and stuff like that. So at the same time, it's probably one of the slower areas to to adopt AI for, for various reasons. But I just I always think about that a lot like I was I was thinking a lot about internal audit the past few months because, you know, we had truly and we have this external [00:43:00] audit automation and it can do like really good matching and financial statement reviews and stuff. And um, there's really good values for the corporations and, but there's nobody who's assigned with that task. You know, the, the big four and the audit firms, they use our tools, but they do sampling. So they're sampling. And if they sample, they're just doing a checklist. It's not necessarily showing you value or or unique insights, but because of AI you [00:43:30] can take all of the ledger data and all of like invoices and find shadow payments or Maverick payments or, or just. And so I think a lot about internal audit because I'm just sitting there saying like screaming, like, who's going to take these superpowers across the organization and deploy them? And it's accounting and it's internal audit, and they have access to all the data. So I've been I've been thinking a lot about that. What is your latest position or vision on AI and [00:44:00] kind of the opportunity for the the controllership.

Edwine Alphonse: Well, I think it's a good question, because I feel like accountants tends to be extremely, um, conservative in the tools and the methodology that they're using to do their work. And I think like one of the, um, gap, um, what do you call that quality? Like whatever they call it is consistency because you want to see every period the same like period over period. So we tend [00:44:30] to be conservative because we apply the rules of consistency to everything. But with AI this is an opportunity for accountants to be even better. And when you're talking about AI like it's allowing you to do, uh, wolves create wolves and make sure these rules are followed constantly. You know, like, even like when you're doing categorizations of expenses or categorization of transactions. So I give you the ability [00:45:00] to apply your rules consistently without any manual intervention. That's one. The second thing two. With AI, you can do a lot of analysis. One thing that accountants I feel like we're not really good at is analytics. And like being able to read trends, being able to like, figure out outliers just to look into the data. I feel like this is something that we were not taught in school. Um, [00:45:30] maybe now teaching that to the kids, but having so much data and being able to come to it and find outliers and find trend and advise the executive team advice to business. That's a tool like that's a superpower that accountants need to develop. And the last thing I like with, um, AI is the ability to um, uh, also like, um, create. And innovate. [00:46:00]

Isaac Heller: I love that. And when you're the you're the creator, the innovator, the storyteller extraordinaire, extraordinaire.

Edwine Alphonse: Yeah, because of accounting. Like we can do scenario analysis. With AI and accounting you can look at complex accounting issues like equity is a complex accounting IP. Complex accounting leases complex accounting. And usually these complex accounting like they write [00:46:30] like I don't know like PwC or like they have this big manual about them. Yeah. You don't need to write to them like once you can use AI to create templates. You can use AI to like go to it, create tables and have all your transaction like completed in that template. So I like AI and I've been using it a lot. Like I use it in my newsletter, like some of my newsletter, like I use it to edit like [00:47:00] English is not my first thing.

Isaac Heller: I do, right? How much do you write versus how much do you edit? You don't have to share if.

Edwine Alphonse: I write a lot. So I will do the first draft. And usually I use GPT to help me with like editing it to grammar, but and then I add another edit of myself on top of it. But you can use like AI to write your accounting pole. You can use AI to do your memos like 6 or 6 like to, to uh, uh, six [00:47:30] guidance for your contracts. And you can get full 6 or 6 memos like, like deferred revenue, like waterfalls and all of this. Like there are so much work that accountants used to do. And I would call that silly work that we don't have to do anymore. And I can do the work for you.

Isaac Heller: And that's awesome.

Edwine Alphonse: And that's giving accountants the opportunity to level up like rather than just being in the data. You can just like use AI and then do the what's next? Like what if, what [00:48:00] more. And I think that's the skills that the new generation of accountants. That's something we'll have to learn and be good at.

Isaac Heller: Yeah. Amazing.

Edwine Alphonse: I'd like something that's extremely important to me is reporting. Mhm. Because, uh, as a company is growing, the needs for reporting grows as well. And I feel like with AI, like reporting is so much easier. It's so much more efficient. It's so much [00:48:30] better if you use AI. Like for me I believe like reporting should be fully automated and accountants don't should be looking at is like exceptional report like you have reports you have reconciliation. All of this can be automated. So the only thing like a human accountant should be looking at is exceptional report. And at some point maybe I can get to the exceptionally level and everything can be fully automated, and all we do is just [00:49:00] be in the judgment and the mindset and working with this AI agent to figure out accounts.

Isaac Heller: That's awesome. Yeah, it's funny because I, I remember I remember when we met, it was at a Boston dinner and we were talking about AI. It was probably a year and a half ago, maybe more. And, um, this was a period where I was talking a lot about AI, but I felt like one of those comedians that, like, told a bad joke or maybe was trying out new material [00:49:30] and nobody was laughing. Um, and I sat next to you in the dinner, and we talked and you understood it. And, um, it's interesting because you worked at Circle and Ramp, which are these high growth, very successful companies, and it seems like there's some sort of correlation between being tech forward and innovative and, and being connected to these high growth companies. Maybe on one hand you contribute the innovation and on the other hand, the innovation of the company [00:50:00] helps inspire you.

Edwine Alphonse: You know, like the innovation, like you kind of forced to do it because you have no choice. And the good thing like, and I'm just going to use an example, I had access to a team of engineers and product managers, like at my disposition.

Isaac Heller: Oh, wow.

Edwine Alphonse: So that was a blessing because I feel that a lot of people is working at the companies. They don't have that access. So that kind of forced me to think about it. And the funny thing at ramp. So whenever I would request a headcount, I'd say I need I'm like, I need a new senior accountant. [00:50:30] The question is what? Like, what is this accountant going to do? And is it something that can be automated or is something that I can do? So I had to think about it before having my headcount requisition being approved.

Isaac Heller: That's amazing. And that's that's a forward thinking company right there. Well, I gotta say it has been so great talking with you today. I feel like the romance novel of your career is only in the first few chapters, right? [00:51:00] Maybe the third or the fourth chapter. And there's there's many more to come. So, um, just before we sign off, any parting words or last thoughts you wanted to share?

Edwine Alphonse: Yeah. Well, first, thank you for having me. Uh, I think you, like you said, like, I would not say this is like my woman's novel. I think it's.

Isaac Heller: A.

Edwine Alphonse: Romance novel. I, I've used accounting to, uh, go on my career, travel and establish myself as a professional, as an executive. [00:51:30] And I feel like people would be foolish to ignore the power of accounting and to forget that accounting is like the language of business. And my hope is with AI, accountants can be more strategic. They can be seen as builders, they can be seen as forward thinking. And this is something that I want to encourage. And this is something I'm working for and I'm working with that. Like to like your startup CPA. I'm working through that through my work with NABA, [00:52:00] helping them build the pipeline and getting more people, more young people interested into accounting. So I really like I want to say thank you for your podcast because your podcast is giving like people like different views of accounting as well.

Isaac Heller: Amazing.

Edwine Alphonse: So thank you for that as well.

Isaac Heller: Well thank you. And we loved having you. And we've got a great following here. A lot of downloads. Don't forget to get your CPE credit. Um, if you've been following along uh, you can find Edwin online on [00:52:30] LinkedIn. You could subscribe to the balance sheet. You could see her at, you know, involved in NABA and of course, your startup CPA and, uh, whatever's next. So we're going to keep an eye out. Edwin, thank you so much for your time today.

Edwine Alphonse: Thank you.