I wanted a personal-finance tool for people who didn't want to be accountants: something you could set up in ten minutes and spend less than five minutes a week on. Mint is now that tool.
Journalists ask me all the time, 'Akshay, do you believe in the numbers game?' My standard response: 'I can't count, that's why I have producers and accountants who calculate for me. As long as I have them in my life, I don't need to worry about numbers!'
Rapid development in areas like machine-to-machine communications and the Internet of Things, coupled with the proliferation of big data, means higher-skilled professions, such as lawyers, journalists and accountants, are changing too. Some of their tasks are being replaced.
I've always hated the way Hollywood has portrayed accountants. They're always little nerd balls, wimpy, afraid of everything. Growing up with accountants, I don't see them that way.
My dad's side of the family was very poor while growing up, but my dadi raised three kids, got my dad through medical school, sent my uncle to America where he wanted to work and helped my aunt become an accountant, because that's what she wanted to do.
I'm not proud of this at all, but I'm someone who has relied on business managers and accountants and career managers to run the whole bureaucratic side of my life for the last 16 years, so anything, from filing tax returns to paying credit card statements, is something that I feel rather fortunate to have been out of the loop on.
If you could make something one percent smarter than a human, your artificial attorney or accountant would be better than all the attorneys or accountants out there. You would be the richest person in the world. People are chasing that.
We are proposing that there is value in a totally new product category and a totally new set of questions. Just like the Apple II proposed, 'Would you reasonably want a computer in your home if you weren't an accountant or professional?' That is the question Glass is asking, and I hope in the end that is how it will be judged.
I just wanted to be a businessman, and to me, the best way to understand business was to be an accountant.
Never call an accountant a credit to his profession; a good accountant is a debit to his profession.
