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Founder/Former CEO Ian Crosby's post about the Bench closure: https://x.com/ianwcrosby/status/1872724231999381790
I advise caution in believing his statements to be true, particularly about Bench’s board and investors. The truth will live in their financial statements, which no doubt will be revealed in bankruptcy proceedings in the coming months.
> We know this news is abrupt and may cause disruption, so we’re committed to helping Bench customers navigate through the transition. No, you're not. The minimum for commitment is a longer notice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do account execs get a heads up about a shutdown? If not, maybe there wasn't a good reason to mention the account exec by name here.
Which is part of why I didn't put the name in. The essence was that the company might have signed contracts that they knew they wouldn't fulfill. Of course, salespeople should have professional reputations (e.g., for honesty, or for dishonesty). But don't let them be a scapegoat for the more likely real culprit or bigger fish.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do account execs get a heads up about a shutdown? If not, maybe there wasn't a good reason to mention the account exec by name here.
Which is part of why I didn't put the name in. The essence was that the company might have signed contracts that they knew they wouldn't fulfill. Of course, salespeople should have professional reputations (e.g., for honesty, or for dishonesty). But don't let them be a scapegoat for the more likely real culprit or bigger fish.
Shocking, but not terribly surprising from a business perspective... From everyone I know who's worked there, the operation was just a thinly veiled wrapper around human accountants. The plan for profitability was that they'd eventually automate the human part away, but eventually never came. My condolences to the employees who now have a stressful new year.
> The plan for profitability was that they'd eventually automate the human part away, but eventually never came. Every. Damn. Time. I've fought and lost this battle at so many companies with directors and executives who were genuinely completely delusional about how much of a human process could be automated. It's always the tasks that are easy and don't take up much time. If you end up solving one of the genuinely h…
Check out story of scalefactor.
I havent been at Bench for over 6 years but it’s always been a business on the verge of failure. The main issue was just the schizophrenic strategy that was being employed. On one hand you have a software company with useful tools and services to automate bookeeping. On the other you had a division of bookeepers that would do a lot of the manual / refinement work. These tasks are at odds with one another. If you auto…
If there's an opportunity to open-source this code so people who can't simply migrate to one option after considering many, self-hosting might be an option at least in the interim.
In particular, charging on expenses or on transaction volume isn't aligned with value generated. Instead, bookkeepers should charge on "anomalous transactions identified and corrected"
https://www.ledgerup.ai/ (a YC co) has a bookkeeping agent integrated with quickbooks. I've migrated to them after trying Fondo (also a YC co) and a local SMB bookkeeper in the past.
There's so many YC backed bookkeepers - Pilot, Afternoon, Fondo, LedgerUp
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I advise caution in believing his statements to be true, particularly about Bench’s board and investors. The truth will live in their financial statements, which no doubt will be revealed in bankruptcy proceedings in the coming months.
Ian Crosby here. If you don't believe me, believe the CEO of Shopify who was an investor and partner: https://x.com/tobi/status/1872753436116332994