Price Iebesi, 24, already has one way out. He is selling his cryptocurrency billing company, Utopia Labs, to Coinbase for an undisclosed amount.
Some founders don't just have one company. Yebesi on Monday announced the launch of Open Ledger, a new company that will integrate automated accounting software into products that businesses and small businesses already use. He has already raised $3 million in a round led by Kindred Ventures and Blank Ventures.
Yebesi said he came up with Open Ledger while still serving as chief product officer at Utopia Labs. He said he noticed that the companies he worked with were still using outdated accounting software.
“When we built our invoicing product with Utopia, our customers saved 70-80% of their time on accounting. That experience led us to recognize the need for a more scalable, built-in accounting solution. ,” Iebesi told TechCrunch. “Open Ledger is our answer to that challenge: a modular, AI-powered accounting tool that resides where our customers already work.”
After the company exited, he served as an Entrepreneurial Resident at Washington University in St. Louis. He worked with small businesses and realized that other founders had the same problems with accounting software. He teamed up with Ashtyn Bell, who at the time worked in AI research at a venture capital firm and previously led product at Candy Digital, to launch Open Ledger.
Yebesi said the company offers accounting functionality in the form of embeddable components, APIs, and ledger databases that enable AI-powered classification, reconciliation, and financial reporting. “Open Ledger aggregates and reconciles all of a company's data sources, enabling AI to perform accounting functions with complete financial context.”
The space already has legacy players like QuickBooks and other startups like Layer and Teal. “What's special about our approach is that we've reimagined the data layer of financial transactions,” Iebesi said.
He said he and his team spent seven months developing an AI workflow used specifically to allow data transactional databases to interact with LLM without exposing consumer data to the underlying model. “This allows us to minimize context limitations, latency and security issues,” he said.
Yebesi called the funding process smooth, noting that Open Ledger met lead investor Kindred because the company had invested in the pre-seed round of Yebesi's previous company, Utopia. . Other investors include Adventure Fund, Brex's Jonathan Chang, SteadyMD CEO Guy Friedman, and Zach Abrams, who just sold his company Bridge to Stripe for $1 billion.
Open Ledger has already signed several contracts, but Mr Iebesi declined to reveal who they had signed. He said the company works with SaaS companies, fintechs and banks, which also work with small and medium-sized businesses. The company is still in beta, but plans to fully release it by the end of this month. The company will use the new capital to hire, seeking product, engineering and business development talent.
“We put a lot of effort into hiring great people, training good models for financial operations in-house, and investing heavily in early compliance,” Iebesi said. Ta.
Next, the company says it wants to support at least 1 million end users by the end of this year. “Keep a lean team,” he said. “And we help thousands of small businesses spend more time with customers and spend less time closing.”
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the spelling of Ashtyn Bell's previous work experience, Open Ledger, and to add Blank Ventures as an investor.