Q so great. Now, over to our conversation with Pilot co-founders Waseem Dahir and Jessica McKellar. So for nearly every technology startup, finance and accounting is not one of the things that matter and that you should do in-house. So this is not a new idea. Startups have been outsourcing their finance and accounting for decades. What changed that enabled you to actually build Pilot as a technology company around this?
A So I think there are really two trends that enable Pilot to exist now, sort of at this unique moment in time. The first is really the rise of fintech, the rise of SaaS, the rise of the cloud, and this back office stuff. Meaning, even 10 years ago, if you look at the landscape, Stripe didn't really exist, Expensify didn't really exist, Gusto didn't exist, your bank statement was literally a thing that arrived In an envelope at your home or your office. So the fact there are these best of breed electronic systems that you can use to help you run your back office, and that they all have APIs, is what enables a key portion of what we do, which is the ability to programmatically ingest and transform data from a variety of data sources. The second thing, though, I think is really a shift in the consumer's behavior. Which is that again, you know, even 10 years ago, probably what the business owner wanted to do was to go downtown with a shoebox of receipts to visit their accountant in person and, you know, talk to them in a office with a lot of mahogany or whatever. And actually what the business owner wants now is the convenience of it being done electronically, of being done well, of being able to take care of this stuff, you know, at Saturday at 11 p.m. in their pajamas.
AI assessment note: “there are really two trends that enable Pilot to exist now”