A startup from ex-Revolut employees uses AI to automate accounts — but hopes to keep accountants in jobs | TechCrunch

Successful startups can give rise to “startup mafias” — groups of former founders who go on to create other startups. But at least as often, new startups can be founded by employees. In the case of LiveFlow, that’s exactly what happened — and it has now raised $13.5 million.

A few years ago, Anita Koimur led the Rewards Product for fintech unicorn Revolut, while Lasse Kalkar was its country manager for the Nordic region. 

After meeting, they kept in touch, and later, as co-founders, came up with the idea of LiveFlow, taking it through the Y Combinator accelerator, and later raising a seed round in 2021. 

LiveFlow allows companies to sync real-time data from their accounting services, banks, and payment platforms into their custom reports, thereby automating workflows, consolidating company accounts, and allowing more company-wide collaboration. You might think that sounds easy, but even in this day and age, it’s still a world where accountants are having to transfer data between systems, often manually. 

But as enterprise platforms gradually eat into the workflows of accountants, many are choosing to leave the industry, especially now as AI begins to strip away jobs for humans. And the evidence is mounting. 

More than 300,000 U.S. accountants and auditors left their jobs between 2019 and 2021, and the number of accountants in the U.S. has fallen 15.9% since 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, younger accountants aged 25 to 34 and mid-career professionals aged 45 to 54 are leaving the profession.

LiveFlow hopes not to hasten that flow, but to stem it. CEO Kalkar told TechCrunch that: “Our plan is to utilize AI to make accounting firms more efficient, but we think the accountant will still be there.” 

So why is that?

“Basically,” said Kalkar, “small businesses hire an accountant to feel safe. They want to know that someone has their back. We can’t replace that entirely with technology.”

That said, Kalkar was coy about what actual kind’ve AI the company plans to use: “It’s still in the roadmap, and it will still be rolled out over the next year or so… We are not disclosing which AI we are using right now, sorry.” 

Whatever they are doing, it seems to be working. 

The startup has now raised a $13.5 million Series A funding round led by Valar Ventures. The VC firm was co-founded by Peter Thiel, and was the the first venture fund to invest in Xero and, later, TransferWise. 

Joined by former Web Summit engineering lead Evan O’Brien, Koimur and  Kalkar now plan to expand in the U.S., based out of New York.

And the company now counts accounting firms like BDO and KLR, as well as brands Wendy’s and Crumbl Cookies as customers. 

Its newest product, LiveFlow Next, is designed to help accounting do more advisory work.

In a statement Valar’s founding partner James Fitzgerald commented: “LiveFlow helps save countless hours per month while also eliminating human error.”

Although LiveFlow does have competitors, none appear to be venture-backed right now. Fathom, out of Australia, does something similar, although it appears not to have raised VC funding, while Reach Reporting in the U.S. is in a similar position, according to Crunchbase.