Startup Founded by Ex-Revolut Employees Uses AI to Automate Accounts, But Hopes to Keep Accountants in Jobs

Often, successful startups can spawn “startup mafias”—groups of former founders who go on to create more startups. But at least as often, new startups can be founded by employees. LiveFlow has done exactly that—and has raised $13.5 million.

A few years ago, Anita Koimur was heading up the loyalty products department at fintech leader Revolut, while Lasse Kalkar was the country manager for the Nordic region.

After meeting, they kept in touch and later, as co-founders, came up with the idea for LiveFlow, running it through Y Combinator and then raising a Seed round in 2021.

LiveFlow enables businesses to sync real-time data from their accounting services, banks, and payment platforms to their custom reports, automating workflows, consolidating business accounts, and enabling greater collaboration across the business. You might think that sounds easy, but even today, it’s a world where accountants have to transfer data between systems, often manually.

But as enterprise platforms gradually entrench themselves into accountants’ workflows, many are choosing to leave the industry, especially now that artificial intelligence is starting to take jobs away from humans. And the evidence is growing.

More than 300,000 American accountants and auditors left their jobs between 2019 and 2021, with the number of accountants in the U.S. falling 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 accelerate this flow, but to stop it. CEO Kalkar told TechCrunch that, “Our plan is to use AI to make accounting firms more efficient, but we think the accountant will still be there.”

Why is this happening?

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

Still, Kalkar wouldn’t reveal what kind of AI the company plans to use: “It’s still in the pipeline and will be implemented in the next year or more… Unfortunately, we don’t disclose what AI we’re currently using.”

Whatever they’re doing, it seems to be working.

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

Koimur and Kalkar, joined by former Web Summit engineering chief Evans O’Brien, are now planning to expand into the US market, with headquarters in New York.

The company’s current clients include accounting firms such as BDO and KLR, as well as Wendy’s and Crumbl Cookies brands.

The company’s newest product, LiveFlow Next, is designed to free up accounting to do more consulting work.

In a statement, Valar founder James Fitzgerald said, “LiveFlow helps save countless hours per month while eliminating human error.”

While LiveFlow has competitors, none of them appear to be currently backed by venture capital. Fathom of Australia is doing something similar, although it doesn’t appear to have secured VC funding, while Reach Reporting in the US is in a similar situation, according to Cruchbase.