Pilot
Pilot does your books. You do your business.
Start new thread
Hiten Shah

Pilot - Bookkeeping for startups, powered by humans and software

by
•

Pilot is a bookkeeping company that focuses on startups—with a twist. Their bookkeepers are assisted by software that automates the most error-prone pieces, so the books are always incredibly accurate. Kind of like having a cyborg army working for you, only way less scary.

Add a comment

Replies

Best
Zane Salim
Terrific service and team. We've been users since the beginning and love it. Makes bookkeeping a delight!
Ankur Goyal

Pilot is a no-brainer for startups. The founders are extremely empathetic to the fact that you want to spend as little time as possible managing your books. Their staff is extremely on-top of things, smart, resourceful, responsive, etc.

For example, I asked them to accelerate some work in advance of a board meeting, and one of the founders followed up directly on the thread to make sure it would happen. And BTW, immediately after the board meeting the investors asked what bookkeeping service I use so they could recommend it to the rest of their portfolio.

Keep up the good work!

Pros:

Thorough, responsive, zero hassle, overdeliver on service

Cons:

None yet

borski
I'm really excited to try this out - the team is stellar, between Waseem, Jeff, and Jess, the product potentially solves a real problem, and I'm excited to augment our workflow with Pilot. <3
Steven Rueter
I was thinking about this yesterday, such a great idea!
Kai Armstrong
What are you defining as a "startup". In @greg_x_willis questions (which was my first thought too) you mentioned "(vs. aiming to solve it for, e.g. the bakery or yoga studio)". So are you defining "startup" as primarily tech based, recurring revenue model business vs. transactional product/service type business?
Waseem Daher
Maker
@phikai Today, the reason I say we focus on startups is twofold: 1) We've built deep integrations with the systems that most tech startups are using — things like Stripe, Gusto, Expensify, Abacus, bill.com, SVB, and a bunch of others. 2) We have a lot of in-house expertise about how to properly do the bookkeeping for, e.g. a B2B SaaS company, or a company that sells stuff in the App Store. So when we say "focus on startups," I really mean "focusing on companies that have a shape that's kind of like a tech startup". The exact business model (recurring vs transactional, product vs service) doesn't actually matter to us — but there are benefits for both you and us if we can take advantage of either #1, #2, or both. Some nontraditional examples in our customer base: a few are nonprofits, and one is a makerspace that buys and sells physical objects. Neither of those are "startups" in the sense of a fast-growing tech company that plans on IPOing someday, but their shape is one that allows us to serve them well. Finally, there's the "what we do today" and "what we do eventually" — as the company grows, I would love to be doing the bookkeeping for the bakery or the yoga studio as well, but for the time being, we're staying laser-focused on these "startup-shaped" companies. (But if you have a bakery or yoga studio, I'd still love to talk to you today so we can figure out how to help out down the road!)
Kai Armstrong
@waseem Thanks for the reply! I don't exactly have a bakery or yoga studio, but my wife does have a small business selling on Etsy. I'm not sure if it'd be a valuable market for you to serve or not, because while she makes a reasonable amount of money annually... looking at your pricing, there's no way it could justify an additional expense like that. Either way... feel free to reach out and we can certainly chat about what could be valuable to her or people like her.
Waseem Daher
Maker
@phikai Awesome, yep, I'd definitely love to chat with you/her — sounds super-useful. I'll shoot you an email.
Brett Hellman
Congrats Waseem on the announcement. You're solving a huge pain point.
William Woodhead
This looks great. Bookkeeping can be the last thing a startup founder wants to deal with so any gains in this area can be amazing!
Noam “N.G.” Gordon
Oh man this is very much needed, it’s so hard to find a book keeper, thanks for trying to save us!
Kumar Thangudu
How is this differentiated from a Plaid integration companies like: Indinero Bench.co SwayFinance ? Also, the difficult part about outsourcing bookkeeping is that you don't know if the web service properly functions until 2 years out. Rough market space, I wish you the best of luck.
Waseem Daher
Maker
@datarade Hi Kumar — my answer re: bench is here: https://www.producthunt.com/post... Regarding inDinero the answer is somewhat similar: while they are focused on tech startups, they do your books in a proprietary system that isn't easy to migrate away from, and they don't do accrual basis by default. (I'd also encourage you to talk to some current inDinero customers first if you're seriously considering inDinero, because I've heard a number of horror stories about the experience.) Regarding Sway: my understanding is that Sway is just a software package. Pilot has humans in the loop, and that's important: when I have questions or when something goes wrong, I'd rather just pick up the phone or email my account manager who knows me and knows my business well, as opposed to having to do a bunch of Googling to make sure that I'm doing the right thing.
Brady Harrison
Wow. This could be a huge help to so many. Having been a part of 3 startups, organizing financials and your books can get lost if you don't stay ahead of it.
First
Previous
123
Next
Last