Circler.io Founder Story
Growing up in a small village surrounded by mountains in South Korea, I now understand how hard it was for my father, as a small business owner, to provide for the family. Most of his customers were not willing to pay for what he needed to charge in order for his business to be profitable. When his customers asked for discounts, he was the type of person who would offer help without the calculation of profit. The more he conducted business, the more financially difficult it became for our family. He is an expert in what he does—that is, the architecture of small houses—but not in recordkeeping and accounting. I learned that my parents, running a small construction company, did not know the cost of each sale! Hence when people come and ask for discount, they sell it without knowing how much loss they incur because that transaction would be helpful in immediate cash flow.
Being a business owner myself, I understand how challenging it is to be on top of recordkeeping. You really need to be organized; otherwise, your invoices and receipts just keep stacking up. Then you find yourself at the tax season, spending hours and hours trying to find that receipt that could be tax-deductible.
Drawing from my early professional experiences — from auditing to corporate accounting — I've learned the importance of precise financial management and the significant impact informed accounting has on sustaining and growing a business.
Our goal is to make a solution that would act as a personal bookkeeper using AI technologies. Our picture that we are trying to draw is that in a same way you interact with your human bookkeeper, whether that could mean CPA you are working with or in house bookkeeper, you can interact with AI bookkeeper. This means, you can send and upload invoices and receipts that you need to keep track of, our solution will handle bookkeeping and you can review and ask for revision as needed, just like how you would review your bookkeeper’s work. This could mean saving costs that CPA firms are charging your business or many hours you are putting if you are doing DIY bookkeeping.
