Cos "Kaz" Nicolaescu
Co-Founder and CEO, Accrual. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineerinvestor@getCos ↗LinkedIn ↗cosn.io ↗
Cosmin "Cos" Nicolaescu is the co-founder and CEO of Accrual, an AI-native workflow and tax platform for accounting firms that raised $75 million in funding. He is best known for previously serving as Chief Technology Officer at fintech unicorn Brex and leading core engineering at Stripe.
1shows
1appearances
19statements
2resolved
2supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
Everything Cos "Kaz" Nicolaescu said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Nicolaescu expects AI token costs to rise due to energy constraints
“At the end of the day, tokens represent capacity and we're very constrained on capacity. We don't have enough energy. We don't have enough data centers and the demand is, is exponential. And so if I think about it from that angle, I think actually token costs …”
Nicolaescu: Masking AI errors during enterprise pilots guarantees post-sale disappointment
“I've heard of pilots where you get something and they have AI, but then they have humans that go and correct things that AI got wrong, and then they give you the final thing. And it's like, well, that's not really the AI part. You should be upfront about that …”
Nicolaescu: Top software engineers are now 100x engineers with AI
“Like there used to be the Tenex engineer before. Now I think those Tenex engineers are a hundred X engineers.”
Accrual operates without management, 1-on-1s, or scheduled meetings
“So we don't have management at this company. I think it's technically everybody reports to meet, but we don't do one-on-ones. We don't have scheduled meetings.”
Nicolaescu says AI breaks standard interviews, requiring multi-day work trials
“We do work trials, for example, where we spend like several days with people, typically like a couple of days with every hire that we haven't worked with to work together through real problems. Part of it is I don't know how to interview in the day of AI, beca…”
Nicolaescu predicts AI companies will spend more on tokens than humans
“If you project out maybe a year or two from now, do you think you're going to spend more on humans or tokens? And I don't think the answer is obviously humans. I think there's actually a good chance you spend more on tokens than you spend on humans.”
Nicolaescu: Accrual Founders Take Lower Salaries Than Employees
“Sid and I make less because I think it's only fair for founders to be in that situation, but everybody else makes the same amount of money”
Nicolaescu: Software engineers should avoid job hopping every 1 to 2 years
“Unless you're the founder of a company, you shouldn't be at the same place forever. I very much encourage people not to
Jump ship every one to two years, not just because it looks bad, but because to actually see, especially as a software engineer, to see the …”
Nicolaescu: Top-down CEO enterprise sales fail at accounting firms
“So the thing that you normally hear with enterprise sales is Find the CEO. They give you buy-in and then you can make decisions. That doesn't really work well because the managing partner or the CEO at an accounting firm is not going to be close enough to the …”
Nicolaescu: Remote work is awful for new grads and hampers learning
“It's awful to be a new grad and to work in a remote company. I think you just don't learn as much.”
Nicolaescu: Accrual rotates engineers across the codebase every few months
“We move people around every few months. Like if you're an engineer, you're not like I'm an engineer on the client portal. Maybe you work on a client portal for one or two sprints or like a few weeks, maybe a couple months, and then you're going to move on some…”
Nicolaescu: Early-Stage Startup Equity Value Is Effectively Zero Today
“The other thing I tell people is the value of your equity today is zero. It doesn't matter what our valuation is. Either we go to zero or we grow significantly more. What the value is today doesn't really matter. So I don't do the math in terms of what the dol…”
Nicolaescu: Founders who are not often right probably should not be founders
“Good leaders often are right. I think there's something very, very, very meaningful there. Like you have to be right. And if you're not, then you probably shouldn't be a founder.”
Nicolaescu: Multi-player workflow software has far higher switching costs than single-player AI
“I think the single use scenario, like a single player scenario where I'm doing some work with some tools is very different when I'm working as part of a collection of people throughout the workflow and all of us use the same tool. And I think the latter is way…”
Nicolaescu: Enterprise pilots should prioritize sample variety over volume
“When you go through a lot of returns, like if you run like a handful of returns or certain complexity or certain shape, you're not going to learn much more from running like dozens of those. Like you'll get the signal pretty quickly if they're good or not, but…”
Nicolaescu: Top US accounting firms used 3 to 8 tools per workflow
“Before accrual, the best accounting firms in this country and the most innovative ones would have anywhere from three to four tools to six to seven to eight tools. That's kind of the range.”
Accrual Signed H&R Block and Armanino as First Two Customers
“Our first two customers were H&R Block and Armanino.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Cos's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 PRODUCT MARKET FITLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Accrual | 1 | 19 | 100% 2/2 | full record on A Product Market Fit Show → |