Are You Ableist?
25 Nov, 2024
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Becoming one of the co-founders of a revolutionary AI company was never something I anticipated in my career journey, especially as a woman in the male-dominated tech space.
Through years of working in a very male-dominated industry as a financial specialist, I ran an accounting company for venture-backed tech start-ups. I would come into the meetings and the expectations not only to excel were there, but I was also expected to be knowledgeable about the company, specific use cases, and industry standards. I would read up on the news daily to feel in the know. Small talk was no longer about the weather; it was about geopolitics and the global economy.
My career didn’t follow a linear path, and when I started conceptualising the idea for JustPaid, I used my passion to propel me, and connected with like-minded individuals, my co-founders, Daniel Kivatinos (founder of DrChrono, with a top 1% YC exit), and Vinay Pinnaka (who was a lead architect behind the $4 billion payment network), to bring our ideas to life. Thus, JustPaid, the tech and AI company built from a need to help small businesses stay in control of their finances, was born.
JustPaid helps handle companies' payments, with AI-powered automation, benchmarking, contract tracking, opportunity alerts, and more — all in one platform. The brand was founded in part based on my own frustrations when running my own accounting firm. I was the founder and CEO of AG Accounting, Inc. which focused on back-office support for venture backed high growth tech startups. Initially, I was working only with California-based companies and then grew to the global market. At AG Accounting, I worked with companies such as Segment, TaskRabbit, DrChrono, and over 700 other businesses.
Through my experience with start-ups at different growth stages, I noticed an issue with a lack of workflows, especially around revenue and revenue management. JustPaid bridges the gap between the process from when the Sales contract is signed and the issuance of the invoice. The handoff between Sales teams to Finance teams is inefficient and broken. With AI, JustPaid provides a solution whereby the technology is able to read and understand the contract, create an invoice, book revenue, report earnings, and complete the revenue management cycle with collections.
Recently, our team launched JustPaid’s AI financial co-pilot GPT App which links businesses’ accounting software and financial institutions, as well as contract details, with the OpenAI-AI technology securely through Plaid. This gives users the ability to ask any and all financial-related questions with 24/7 responses powered by AI. A gamechanger for small businesses who cannot afford to hire teams of accountants, the JustPaid AI GPT App brings together financial information from different sources all into one place so that everything is aggregated in an easy-to-understand format. Companies then save money by continuous AI auditing, receiving insights, real-time contract reviews, and reducing payment errors.
The Wall Street Journal reported on July 11, 2023, that with the growing shortage of accountants, we are past the time when a company can plug the needs by hiring another person to the finance/accounting department. Software is the only solution to support ever-growing needs, and as I look to the future, I see JustPaid's continued growth fitting squarely in line with these needs. JustPaid is growing into a complete Revenue and Financial information management platform, with an in-depth understanding of each user, and performs actions by communicating with the financial data in natural language. To be on the front lines of this growth, alongside my incredible team, is proof that there is space for everyone in the tech/AI space, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds.
Download your free copy of the latest Financial Technologist magazine here.
