Paro is an AI-powered marketplace that delivers finance and accounting solutions to businesses through a combination of expert fractional talent, data-driven tools, and guiding insights. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Paro CEO Anita Samojednik to learn more about the company.
Anita Samojednik’s Background
What is Anita Samojednik’s background? Samojednik said:
“I am CEO of Paro, a role I’ve been in since 2021 after serving as the company’s Chief Operating Officer. Before joining Paro, I had more than 20 years of executive leadership experience with stints at Groupon, Ladders, and Vonage, where I ran multinational two-sided marketplaces and e-commerce enterprises while leveraging cutting-edge machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques.”
“I also serve as a member of the advisory board at the Columbia Business School, Deming Center.”
Formation Of Paro
How did the idea for the company come together? Samojednik shared:
“Paro was co-founded by our current Chief Strategy Officer, Michael Burdick, and former VP of Finance, Dan Wywrot, in 2015. Dan and Michael spent years working for Big Four accounting firms. They found corporate America too rigid for how they wanted to work and the projects they wanted to work on.”
“They decided to found Paro to empower finance and accounting professionals to develop fulfilling, self-directed, and sustainable careers. Michael and Dan created an alternative employment model for the future of work and, in doing so, disrupted the $150B antiquated accounting industry by accelerating the rise of the freelance economy. Through technology, Paro brings work directly to the highest quality finance and accounting professionals, creating opportunities for people to work when they want and where they want.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Samojednik explained:
“Paro is a platform that uses AI to connect businesses with finance and accounting experts. By combining talented professionals, smart tools, and valuable insights, we offer flexible solutions to tackle key business challenges and help companies grow.”
“For our experts, our platform helps them grow business with existing clients and find new ones that support their career growth and aspirations. Our AI-powered suite of tools helps experts optimize their earnings and business outcomes.”
“For businesses, we offer accounting, bookkeeping, and financial planning & analysis solutions, along with a range of strategic advisory services to help build a roadmap for growth.”
“For accounting firms, we provide pinpoint solutions that deliver niche and complex client advisory services, drive productivity and efficiency, and ease seasonal rushes to meet tax and audit demand, prevent quality degradation, and reduce turnover.”
“Paro also offers AI strategy consulting that provides predictive analytics and data-backed recommendations to optimize firms’ growth investments. Our AI solutions offer firms greater clarity and confidence to allocate budgets and teams to initiatives that yield the greatest returns.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Samojednik and the team faced in building the company? Samojednik acknowledged:
“Hundreds of thousands of accountants and auditors have quit or left the industry in the past few years, and there are fewer new CPA candidates entering the sector. Accounting firms face severe capacity challenges due to a shrinking pipeline, and without qualified talent, growth is nearly impossible. One way to solve that challenge is with alternative staffing methods that are flexible and dynamic. More generally, more business professionals want work-life balance. Paro conducted a survey of knowledge workers in 2022 and found work-life balance was more important than compensation. Finance and accounting professionals are looking to escape the traditional 9-to-5 but still want to thrive in their professional lives. Paro focuses on significantly evolving the freelance experience so experts, from CPAs to CFOs, can pursue meaningful work on their own terms and still optimize their earnings and business outcomes.”
Evolution Of Paro’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Samojednik noted:
“Since our launch, we’ve expanded our suite of workflow automation tools and continue to scale the ability to empower entrepreneurial finance professionals with the key resources they need to build their own businesses on the Paro platform. Paro’s technology has undergone significant evolution, transforming into a comprehensive AI-driven platform for profitable growth. This includes:
— AI-Powered Matching – We’ve developed advanced proprietary AI algorithms trained by thousands of business inputs that precisely match businesses with top finance professionals 20 times faster than traditional recruiting processes to help solve organizational demands and gain a competitive advantage. Our matching algorithm now achieves a 95% first-time client-supply matching success rate.
— Predictive Analytics – We’ve introduced an array of AI-powered tools that provide predictive insights, including an Impact Engine that analyzes data to reveal key performance drivers and a Growth Simulator that models different scenarios to predict outcomes. Our AI-powered forecasting achieves 97% accuracy with dynamic updates.
— Talent Optimization – We’ve expanded our platform to empower finance professionals and optimize talent allocation. The Talent Optimizer helps identify responsive and available experts, reducing the time to win contracts by 20%.
— Supply Shaping – This solution calibrates supply levels to meet demand, achieving 100% supply-demand parity during peak times and 25% supply acquisition cost savings.
These technological advancements have improved our service delivery while also driving our own growth. By operationalizing AI into our business, we’ve achieved remarkable results, with our revenues doubling within a year of implementation and tripling in the two years since.
Our ongoing commitment to AI innovation ensures that both Paro and our clients can navigate growth with precision, allocate resources effectively, and drive sustainable, profitable expansion in today’s dynamic business environment.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Samojednik cited:
“Paro has raised several rounds of funding since 2015, most recently in 2023 – when raising capital was incredibly challenging – with $25 million in Series C funding. The funding is helping us bring our platform to more clients, including enterprises, who are looking to solve urgent business needs with the highest quality finance talent.”
“We joined the BDO Alliance Vendor Marketing Program in 2022 to provide finance and accounting staff augmentation and other essential services to clients and independent members of the BDO Alliance USA, a nationwide association of independently owned local and regional accounting, consulting and service firms. This quickly put us in front of thousands of independently owned local and regional accounting, consulting, and service firms – organizations that desperately need talent with specific skill sets. This partnership has been incredibly beneficial, helping us secure several new clients since joining.”
“In 2023, Paro was named to Chicago Inno’s 2023 Fire Awards, which recognizes the 50 innovators, change makers, and disruptors driving innovation in Chicago’s tech scene. We were recognized for our accomplishments in helping businesses grow through our AI-powered platform, matching freelancers with the best-fit opportunities for their skills.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Samojednik about the company’s customer success stories, she highlighted:
“We love shining a spotlight on our customers and the success they experience.”
“For instance, we’ve worked with identification network company Keyo over the years to provide fractional accounting services and, more recently, to retain a Paro expert as a fractional CFO. These fractional resources free up bandwidth and resources for development. The fractional CFO played an instrumental role in establishing financial processes and documentation at Keyo while also helping develop pricing models and forecasts for Keyo’s current and future products. Keyo successfully raised a round of funding from investors through the work of the fractional CFO, who also pivoted the company’s focus to the additional sectors and built out the financial models to support those moves.”
“We also worked with the state-owned regional bank, Territorial Bank of American Samoa (TBAS) to help them overcome limited talent supply. TBAS faced significant challenges in recruiting and retaining financial and banking talent after experiencing rapid growth and doubling its size following COVID-19. TBAS President and CEO Owen Peery consulted with Paro to bring on a handpicked bookkeeping team, who immediately supported day-to-day operations, historical cleanup, general ledger reconciliations, and accounts payable – all of which were lagging since the bank’s surge in transaction activity. Additionally, when the bank’s CFO resigned, a Paro fractional CFO stepped in. His expertise, relationships, and strategic investment plan have been instrumental in positioning TBAS for sustainable growth and profitability. Paro’s partnership brought TBAS its first unqualified audit and first profitable year in FY22. That success continued into FY23, and the bank anticipates it will surpass that success again in FY24.”
“Finally, we worked with the independent accounting firm Smith, Sullivan & Brown (SSB) when it saw an onslaught of new business requests as well as increased complexity and workload on its current nonprofit accounts. SSB worked with Paro to augment their staff at multiple levels. Staff-level talent expanded capacity while senior-level accounting experts were able to take on complex audits and assist with and support SSB’s internal oversight of staff and consultants. The results were immediate. Familiar with the nonprofit audit needs required, the qualified experts gave SSB the breathing room they needed as they continued to refine their portfolio to say yes to more profitable clients.”
Funding
When asking Samojednik about the company’s funding details, she revealed:
“In June 2023, we raised $25 million in Series C funding to further develop our platform supporting freelance experts and continue expansion with enterprise clients. To date, we’ve raised $67 million. While we don’t disclose revenue information, we are seeing increased traction within the space as professionals and companies alike further embrace remote work and adopt flexible working models.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Samojednik assessed:
“If your business spends money on external finance and accounting services, you’ll benefit from partnering with us due to the large and fragmented market of accounting firms, professionals, and businesses. Our market spends over $100 billion a year on finance and accounting.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Samojednik affirmed:
“First, we focus only on finance and accounting professionals, so we know this space better than anyone. The finance world is changing so much. Finance teams are strapped, but leadership demands that they be more strategic. How can they do that without talented people?”
“Paro’s platform provides on-demand access to top-tier finance professionals when businesses need to fill crucial vacancies or solve pressing challenges. Our proprietary AI matching finds businesses the perfect talent fit across 60+ industries and 250+ skill sets. But we go beyond short-term fixes. With Paro, these organizations gain a strategic partner that deeply understands their business and helps them navigate the road ahead.”
“Paro further differentiates itself from competitors through our comprehensive, tailored Technology for CPA Firms offering. This unique service combines deep industry expertise with cutting-edge technological solutions, providing a holistic approach to modernizing and optimizing CPA firm operations.”
“This offering stands out in many ways. We begin with a thorough assessment of the firm’s current state, using our proprietary assessment tools and process taxonomy specifically designed for CPA firms. This allows us to gain a deep understanding of each firm’s specific business and technological challenges. We then offer customized architecture recommendations rather than simply suggesting off-the-shelf solutions. Our approach allows us to design bespoke technology architecture tailored to each firm’s specific requirements, complete with implementation roadmaps.”
“We offer ongoing support and guidance through fractional tech strategy services and detailed implementation plans, positioning ourselves as a long-term strategic technology partner rather than a one-time service provider. Our technology architecture approach allows for flexible, scalable solutions that can grow with the firm’s needs over time. Additionally, we advise CPA firms on how to use AI in their firms, and we implement AI solutions for them.”
“By offering this comprehensive, end-to-end technology solution specifically designed for CPA firms, Paro distinguishes itself as a specialized partner capable of driving significant digital transformation and operational efficiency in the accounting industry.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Samojednik concluded:
“Paro’s vision has always been about empowering professionals to pursue meaningful work on their own terms and providing a platform that enables people to make that choice freely and securely.”
“Over the last few years, more companies across all industries have embraced remote work. To us, this means more companies will embrace Paro’s modern talent model. COVID-19 has shown the world that many professionals can work from anywhere and still be successful. Companies continue to have a hard time getting talent back in the office despite return-to-work policies. Given that pushback, there is more potential than ever for workers and companies to embrace flexible working models.”
“Paro’s long-term goal is to become the go-to resource for finance and accounting solutions and for businesses of all sizes. Given the continued traction we have seen within our business, the ongoing embrace of remote work, and the increasing need for flexible business solutions, the time is right to double down on our efforts to push our unique offering to more enterprises and the value we bring to businesses and experts.”
link