030 Sons of CPAs... Powered by Relay (feat. Yoseph West)

Episode #30

Yoseph West | CEO and Co-Founder of Relay Financial

Toronto, CA

***shout out to our sponsor TaxBandits***

4 Some cool things about Toronto besides it’s a hub for accounting tech

5 how did you get into the accounting space?

7 learning how critical the back office function of a business truly is

9 what’s the biggest thing you learned when growing your first startup to 70,000 users and selling to Wave?

10 lessons on bonds and friendships and leaving Wave on the path to working for HubDoc

12 the cloud ghost town of 2014… and early HubDoc days

***shout out to Deborah***

15 some light RPA talk… but not really

17 being at HubDoc right before their acquisition by Xero

***shout out to the Jamie Shulman and Jamie McDonald aka the Jamies***

19 the Genesis of… Relay Financial, let’s be the bank

***shout out to Evernote and Notion***

20 the challenges of small business banking and how the big banks really struggle with software

24 starting with the customer, and controlling the banking process from top to bottom

25 on the need for a FinTech banking charter

***shout out to Stripe, Square, and Evolve Bank and Trust***

26 what problems does Relay solve? 

28 Accountants love that Relay has partner portals, a direct reliable bank feed, and sending across rich transition data

***shout out to QBO, Xero, Plaid, Yodlee***

29 that all sounds great, but how do I sell that to my clients? We need to focus the conversation on solving the clients pain points, not on switching banks

31 fun fact: most small businesses have 2.63 banking relationships

***shout out to Nikole Mackenzie aka Niks***

***shout out to our sponsor Relay Financial***

37 SMB lending relationships with banks

40 whose the Rick and whose the Morty on this podcast?

41 accounting firms aren’t spending enough time on security in their playbook…

***shout out to Rewind and Practice Protect***

43 where do you see Relay going in the next 5 years?

44 in what space would a Relay acquisition make sense?

***shout out to Sasan Goodarzi***

46 what are some of the team culture ideas that you’ve learned along the way that you want to implement at Relay?

***shout out to the Relay Team***

47 some lessons to learn from the HubDoc days and values to share were empathy, integrity, transparency, and just having a fun culture

48 as a CEO what are you doing to make sure that culture is embodied by your team at Relay?

51 the future of work is a Hybrid model and flexibility

55 it’s the snacks and little things that people really love about an office

56 going from 3 employees at Relay to 50 to 100 by end of next year!