Podcasts about Expensify

#95.In this episode of The meez Podcast, Josh Sharkey sits down with Ben Pryor, a former restaurant operator turned tech leader at Fourtop, to explore the real-world impact of AI in the hospitality industry—and why it should empower teams, not replace them.With more than 30 years of experience running restaurants like Noodles & Co., Brinker, and Dewey's, Ben brings a sharp operator-first perspective to restaurant innovation. He unpacks his concept of “augmented intuition”—a rebrand of AI that's rooted in support and empowerment rather than substitution—and shares how technology can be used to enhance human decision-making across teams. From simple tools like Expensify to AI-powered note-taking apps, he breaks down the systems that have helped streamline his own day-to-day work.Josh and Ben also dig into the intersection of technology and hospitality, talking through why investing in people and processes is still critical, the role of friction in the guest experience, and the operational challenges restaurants face when integrating new tech. They explore the importance of service in shaping memorable dining experiences, what scalable leadership really looks like, and how restaurant teams can take ownership of their internal systems and data.This conversation is a must-listen for anyone thinking critically about the future of hospitality—whether you're navigating AI tools, building smoother workflows, or trying to create a seamless experience for both staff and guests.Links and resources

In this episode, we're diving into a topic that sparked a massive response on LinkedIn - KPIs for Executive Assistants. If you've ever struggled to explain your value, felt stuck in performance reviews, or wondered how to track the impact of your work, this is the episode for you.We explain KPIs, why they matter in our role, and how you can start measuring your impact in simple, practical ways without adding to your workload. We also discuss how to use this data in one-to-ones, performance reviews, interviews, and even casual conversations with your Executive (yes, without feeling like you're bragging!).And a huge thank you to our sponsor, Vimcal EA, for supporting this episode. Their brand-new Executive Calendar Audit feature is a game-changer for Assistants looking to save time and prove their value. Make sure to check out the free upcoming webinar!Links and Resources MentionedFree KPI Template for Executive Assistants → theeacampus.com/podcast/ep58Vimcal EA – Executive Calendar Audit Tool → https://vimcal.com/eaVimcal EA Webinar – Hosted by CTO Michael Zhao → Next session: April 18th, 2025 – Register here: https://lu.ma/ro0ylk6k

Making Tax Digital is back on everyone's radar as we chat to Tony from FreeAgent and hear some of the highlights from John's chats at FAB, with Tom Herbert, Jenesys, FYI. Love it or loathe it - MTD is coming. Outside of the fascinating world of MTD, we have the usual updates in App News, including Indi's analysis on embedded finance.   00:00 Coming Up… 01:00  Intro   App News ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 04:01 Adfin lands $8m 07:36  Allica launches buy to let mortgages 12:21 Allica rebrand 13:58 Gocardless partners with Pipe 18:12 FreeAgent integrate with Mimo 18:56  Translucent launches prepayments and deferred revenue 22:04 CAS360 launches in the UK 23:29 iplicit (once again) fastest growing firm 26:04  Expensify opens travel management tool   30:25 MTD - Not Going Away (FreeAgent) 40:08 Absolutely FABulous 01:00:59 Like and subscribe!

The big focus this week was Pitch Black Food, an event that sold out in less than a workday and created a new paradigm — Can I say "paradigm" on here? — for Portland culinary events. But there's a bunch of other news, as well. From  @OregonUASAccelerator  companies to a new  @Expensify  offering, there's plenty of other stuff to cover. Let's get into it…PORTLAND STARTUP LINKS- Black History Month 2025 recap https://siliconflorist.com/2025/02/28/black-history-month-2025-recap-28-amazing-black-led-consumer-product-companies/- BHM Startup Founders: Where are they now…? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOS9vfvPblc- WHM Startup Founders: Where are they now…? https://www.meetup.com/pie-portland-startup-community/events/306123862/- Oregon UAS Accelerator new cohort https://siliconflorist.com/2025/02/25/oregon-uas-accelerator-announces-next-cohort-of-startups/- $100K Oregon UAS Competition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjsvcKlMFFo- Startup Cafe @ The Hub https://www.eventbrite.com/e/startup-cafe-the-hub-tickets-1256030564229PORTLAND OREGON STARTUP NEWS00:00 Portland startup news intro01:20 Pitch Black Food03:30 More Pitch Black news next week04:30 Continuing the Black History Month tradition 08:25 Women's History Month: Where are they now…?10:48 Oregon UAS Accelerator cohort12:45 Startup Cafe @ The Hub14:22 Trivial knowledge for the week15:07 New feature for ExpensifyFIND ME ON THE INTERNET AT…- https://patreon.com/turoczy- https://linkedin.com/in/turoczy- https://bsky.app/profile/turoczy.bsky.social- https://siliconflorist.substack.com/ABOUT SILICON FLORIST ----------For nearly two decades, Rick Turoczy has published Silicon Florist, a blog, newsletter, and podcast that covers entrepreneurs, founders, startups, entrepreneurship, tech, news, and events in the Portland, Oregon, startup community. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a startup or tech enthusiast, or simply intrigued by Portland's startup culture, Silicon Florist is your go-to source for the latest news, events, jobs, and opportunities in Portland Oregon's flourishing tech and startup scene. Join us in exploring the innovative world of startups in Portland, where creativity and collaboration meet.ABOUT RICK TUROCZY ----------Rick Turoczy has been working in, on, and around the Portland, Oregon, startup community for nearly 30 years. He has been recognized as one of the “OG”s of startup ecosystem building by the Kauffman Foundation. And he has been humbled by any number of opportunities to speak on stages from SXSW to INBOUND and from Kobe, Japan, to Muscat, Oman, including an opportunity to share his views on community building on the TEDxPortland stage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj98mr_wUA0). All because of a blog. Weird.https://siliconflorist.com#pdx #portland #oregon #startup #entrepreneur

Guest: Matt MacInnis, COO of RipplingOne of the most important things a non-founder can do, says Rippling COO Matt MacInnis, is to learn how to operate in the context of the company they're joining. His CEO, Parker Conrad, “spikes” in certain skill areas, and the rest of the executive team needs to maximize his ability to thrive while “taking care of the rest of it.” Matt likened the work to being a hobbyist airplane pilot, who can't get a license without knowing all the minute details about their plane's engine and aerodynamics. “You can't be a good pilot if you don't understand the engine, because if something goes wrong, you want to be able to troubleshoot it,” he says. “An executive coming in to fly your airplane better learn the engine.”Chapters:(01:08) - Telling Rippling's story (04:27) - Founding & failing at Inkling (09:30) - Different types of hard (13:55) - Discipline and stamina (15:22) - Meeting with Steve Jobs (19:20) - Definitely, give up! (22:29) - Product-market fit (27:15) - Founders and culture (33:24) - Executive instincts (36:06) - Talent Signal and AI (40:06) - 150 former founders (44:08) - Zero to one projects (48:06) - The failure of Silicon Valley Bank (55:25) - Routines and discipline (59:37) - Disagreeing with Parker (01:02:25) - Who Rippling is hiring (01:03:37) - What “grit” means to Matt Mentioned in this episode: Parker Conrad, London Breed, Apple, Sequoia Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Tenaya Capital, digital textbooks on iPad, Oricom, Netscape, Peter Cho, Eddy Cue, John Couch, iBooks, Slack, Airbnb, Paul Graham, Brian Chesky, “founder mode,” Larry Ellison, Ivan Zhao and Notion, Intel and ARM, Salesforce, United Airlines, LLMs, GitHub, DocuCharm, Peter Thiel, Mamoon Hamid, Expensify, Navan, Costco, Comcast, HBO's Silicon Valley, Jensen Huang and NVIDIA, and Taylor Swift.Links:Connect with MattLinkedInTwitterConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

In this episode of 'The Wisdom Of' Show, host Simon Bowen engages in an insightful conversation with Anuradha Muralidharan, COO at Expensify. From joining the company in 2015 without a defined role to driving major innovations, she shares her unique perspective on leadership, innovation, and navigating rapid technological change in the modern business landscape.Ready to unlock your leadership potential and drive real change? Join Simon's exclusive masterclass on The Models Method. Learn how to articulate your unique value and create scalable impact: https://thesimonbowen.com/masterclassEpisode Breakdown:00:00 Introduction and journey to Expensify 05:13 Essential leadership qualities in tech 10:46 Managing high-performing generalist teams 18:58 The true nature of innovation 25:44 Building the Expensify marketplace 33:44 Ethical challenges in leadership 38:35 Navigating AI and technological change 45:13 Rapid-fire questions and closing thoughtsAbout Anuradha MuralidharanAnu joined Expensify in 2015 and is the principal strategist for fraud prevention, audits, bank relations, and all other operational efforts at Expensify. Prior to becoming COO, she was the driving force behind the creation of the Expensify Card, where she combined her vast knowledge of the world's financial networks with her deep technical background to guide development. Before leading Expensify's operations, Anu held Vice President positions at Citibank and Marqeta, various engineering roles at Oracle, and received her MBA from Cornell. Anu is an avid traveler and devoted to her kettlebells. She lives in Oakland with her husband and their dog, Vito.About Simon BowenSimon has spent over two decades working with some of the most influential leaders across many complex industries and circumstances. His very clear finding is quite simply that thinking is valued less than doing in almost every situation in our modern world. However, Simon has conversely observed that the power and success of any business, project or organization will be in direct proportion to the level and quality of thinking of the people and the quality of the idea or ideas on which it is built. As such, Simon is leading the renaissance of thinking.A sought-after speaker, facilitator and advisor to global leaders, Simon has demonstrated the efficacy of his line method for over 20 years with Fortune 500 companies, heads of Government, the military and private sector in strategic planning, the incubation of innovation, crisis management, and moments of conflict.Connect with AnuradhaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anuradhamuralidharan/ Connect with SimonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonbowen-mm/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialsimonbowen/Website: https://thesimonbowen.com/Get Simon Bowen's Personal Newsletter for Leaders, Thinkers, and Entrepreneurs!

I'm not a financial advisor; Superpowers for Good should not be considered investment advice. Seek counsel before making investment decisions.Watch the show on television by downloading the e360tv channel app to your Roku, AppleTV or AmazonFireTV. You can also see it on YouTube.When you purchase an item, launch a campaign or create an investment account after clicking a link here, we may earn a fee. Engage to support our work.Devin: What is your superpower?Liza: I think that passion of building something that helps people has always been my superpower.In today's episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Liza Rodewald, the Co-Founder and CEO of Instant Teams, a company making a powerful impact by helping military spouses thrive professionally despite the frequent relocations that come with military life. Liza shared how her own experience as a military spouse drove her to create a solution for others facing the same challenges.Military spouses often find themselves moving every few years, making it difficult to build a traditional career. Liza understood this struggle firsthand and turned it into a business opportunity that connects military spouses with remote jobs in customer experience roles. “If I was climbing a traditional corporate ladder, I would constantly be starting over,” Liza explained. "I have a high skill set... I have a lot that I can give and contribute."Instant Teams allows military spouses to take their jobs with them when they move, offering stability in their careers. Liza's company builds entire customer experience teams for brands, providing a highly skilled workforce to companies while giving military spouses the continuity they need.The venture has grown significantly since its inception in 2016, with over 500 employees and 68,000 military spouses on their platform. Liza's innovative approach has not only solved a major problem for military families but also created a scalable business model.Her advice for entrepreneurs, especially women, is simple yet powerful: “Sizing the market upfront and telling the story along with it... made a huge difference in my personal success and being able to raise money.”Liza's work is an inspiring example of how identifying a problem close to home can lead to a meaningful, impactful business.tl;dr:Guest Introduction: Liza Rodewald, founder of Instant Teams, was featured. The company connects military spouses with customer experience jobs, helping them maintain their careers despite frequent relocations due to military life.Challenges and Achievements: Liza discussed the challenge of raising venture capital as a woman, noting that less than 2% goes to women-led companies. Despite this, she successfully raised funds and grew her company while being a military spouse.Instant Teams' Mission: Instant Teams is dedicated to building remote customer experience teams for companies, using the skills of military spouses who can work remotely and maintain continuity despite relocations.Business Model: Instant Teams works with middle-market and enterprise companies like Aflac and Expensify, offering both a marketplace and fully outsourced services. They have grown to over 500 employees and serve 68,000 military spouses.Superpower and Advice: Liza emphasized her superpower of solving problems by seeing the bigger picture. She advises women entrepreneurs to focus on building relationships, providing transparency to investors, and leveraging networks for long-term success.How to Develop Problem-Solving with Passion As a SuperpowerLiza Rodewald's superpower is her ability to step back, see the big picture, and solve complex problems. With a background in engineering, she approaches challenges by analyzing issues and finding solutions that not only address the immediate need but create lasting impact. Her deep passion for helping others fuels her drive to solve meaningful problems, particularly those affecting the military spouse community.Liza shared a moving example of how her superpower played out in real life. She opened a co-working space in Southern Pines, designed to connect military spouses with job opportunities. One day, a military spouse came in, overwhelmed and struggling with a rigid job that wasn't compatible with her lifestyle. Liza and her team were able to match her with a more flexible position that aligned with her needs. The connection transformed the woman's life, providing a sense of balance and fulfillment. This personal interaction exemplified Liza's ability to identify problems and create meaningful, life-changing solutions.Tips for Developing This Superpower:* Step Back for Perspective: Take a moment to step back from challenges and view the bigger picture. Analyze how different elements connect and where opportunities for problem-solving lie.* Lead with Passion: Fuel your efforts with genuine passion for helping others. When you care deeply about the outcome, you'll find creative and effective ways to overcome obstacles.* Build Networks: Establish and nurture relationships with people who can help you solve problems. Keep these connections warm, as they may provide unexpected opportunities for collaboration or support.* Stay Realistic: While passion drives your efforts, temper it with practicality. Make tough decisions when necessary to maintain a sustainable business model while keeping your mission intact.By following Liza Rodewald's example and advice, you can make problem-solving with passion a skill. With practice and effort, you could make it a superpower that enables you to do more good in the world.Remember, however, that research into success suggests that building on your own superpowers is more important than creating new ones or overcoming weaknesses. You do you!Guest ProfileLiza Rodewald (she/her):Co-Founder/CEO, Instant TeamsAbout Instant Teams: Instant Teams leads the way as a CX talent marketplace committed to the financial well-being of military families while providing companies instant access to remarkable talent.Website: instantteams.comX/Twitter Handle: @Instant_TeamsCompany Facebook Page: fb.com/instantteamsBiographical Information: Liza is a 4x entrepreneur and software engineer. She is currently the CEO and Founder of Instant Teams and Twelve Million Plus. She has scaled the company to over 500 employees, raised more than $16M in venture capital and landed at #13 on the Inc. 5000 list for Human Resources across the nation.She is in the top 3% of graduates from the Founder Institute, alumni of the Blue Startups Accelerator named one of the Top 25 SheEO, and a published Forbes author. She is also a member of YPO and NationSwell and serves as a mentor for female founders.Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/lizarodewaldInstagram Handle: @ceo_lizaMax-Impact MembersThe following Max-Impact Members provide valuable financial support to keep us operating:Carol Fineagan, Nicholas and Company | Lory Moore, Lory Moore Law | Marcia Brinton, High Desert Gear | Ralf Mandt, Next Pitch | Sheryle Gilihan, CauseLabs | Add Your Name HereUpcoming SuperCrowd Event CalendarIf a location is not noted, the events below are virtual.* Impact Cherub Club Meeting hosted by The Super Crowd, Inc., a public benefit corporation, on September 17, 2024, at 1:00 PM Eastern. Each month, the Club meets to review new offerings for investment consideration and to conduct due diligence on previously screened deals. To join the Impact Cherub Club, become an Impact Member of the SuperCrowd.* SuperCrowdHour, September 18, 2024, at 1:00 PM Eastern. Each month, we host a value-laden webinar for aspiring impact investors or social entrepreneurs. At September's webinar, Devin Thorpe will provide an in-depth answer to the question, “Can I Beat the Stock Market with Impact Crowdfund Investments?” Free to attend.* Superpowers for Good Live Pitch, September 25, 2024. The application window is open now. Apply today! The Live Pitch will stream simultaneously to the e360tv network, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube and Superpowers for Good. We hope for an audience of thousands! Don't miss this opportunity to pitch your regulated investment crowdfunding campaign to the SuperCrowd!* Recently, we created an AI GPT to help you learn more about The Super Crowd, Inc., a public benefit corporation, and our upcoming events. Click here to try it.Community Event Calendar* Successful Funding with Karl Dakin, Tuesdays at 10:00 AM ET - Click on Events* Main Street Skowhegan and NC3 Entrepreneur Finance Workshop Series, September 17 - November 19, 2023.* Crowdfunding Professional Association, Summit in DC, October 22-23* Asheville Neighborhood Economics, November 12-13.If you would like to submit an event for us to share with the 8,000+ members of the SuperCrowd, click here.We use AI to help us write compelling recaps of each episode. Get full access to Superpowers for Good at www.superpowers4good.com/subscribe

Send us a Text Message.In this episode of Small Business Survival Conversations, co-hosts Anna Steinfest and Michael Troyer dive into the crucial aspects of effective financial management for small businesses. Learn how to create and stick to a budget, manage cash flow to avoid shortfalls, and utilize financial software for streamlined accounting processes. We also explore the importance of understanding financial statements and offer actionable tips for reducing costs and increasing profitability. Tune in to discover the best practices and tools that can help your business thrive.Key Takeaways:Creating and Sticking to a Budget: Discover the importance of budgeting and explore tools like QuickBooks and Mint to help you manage expenses efficiently.Managing Cash Flow: Learn strategies for maintaining positive cash flow with examples and tools such as Float and Pulse.Utilizing Financial Software: Understand how software like Xero and FreshBooks can simplify accounting and provide valuable financial insights.Understanding Financial Statements: Grasp the significance of financial statements and see how tools like Wave and Bench can aid in financial analysis.Tips for Reducing Costs and Increasing Profitability: Implement cost-saving measures and boost profitability using tools like Expensify and ProfitCents.Join us for actionable insights that will empower you to manage your business finances effectively, ensuring stability and fostering growth. Don't miss out on this vital episode for small business owners looking to master financial management!

In the latest solo episode of the Happy Hustle Podcast, I dive into 24 AI tools that you can integrate into your business to streamline operations, enhance customer service, and boost productivity. Whether you're a small startup or a booming enterprise, these tools are game-changers. Here's a sneak peek of what you'll discover:Task Automation: Streamline your operations with tools like Zapier and IFTTT.Scheduling: Say goodbye to endless back-and-forth emails with Calendly and Acuity Scheduling.Inventory Management: Keep track of your stock effortlessly with TradeGecko and Fishbowl Inventory.Financial Management: Simplify your bookkeeping with QuickBooks and Expensify.Customer Service: Enhance your customer interactions with Drift, Intercom, and Zendesk.Market Research: Get ahead of trends with Crimson Hexagon and TalkWalker.And that's just the beginning! Listen to the full episode now and discover how all these AI tools can help you save time, reduce costs, and scale your business faster than ever before. Plus, I've included some awesome pro tips to ensure you make the most out of each tool.Connect with Cary!https://www.instagram.com/cary__jack/https://www.facebook.com/SirCaryJackhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/cary-jack-kendzior/https://twitter.com/thehappyhustlehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFDNsD59tLxv2JfEuSsNMOQ/featured Get a free copy of his new book, The Happy Hustle, 10 Alignments to Avoid Burnout & Achieve Blissful Balance (https://www.thehappyhustlebook.com/)Sign up for The Journey: 10 Days To Become a Happy Hustler Online Course (http://www.thehappyhustle.com/Journey)Apply to the Montana Mastermind Epic Camping Adventure (https://caryjack.com/montana)“It's time to Happy Hustle, a blissfully balanced life you love, full of passion, purpose, and positive impact!”Episode sponsor BIOptimizers Magnesium BreakthroughThis stuff is a game-changer! Magnesium Breakthrough packs all 7 forms of magnesium, designed to support stress management, promote muscle relaxation, regulate the nervous system, control stress hormones, boost brain function, increase energy, and enhance sleep.I take 2 capsules before bedtime, and it's been a game-changer for me. The best part is, BIOptimizers offer a risk-free.

Send us a Text Message.Linking the Travel Industry is a business travel podcast where we review the top travel industry stories that are posted on LinkedIn by LinkedIn members.  We curate the top posts and discuss with them with travel industry veterans in a live session with audience members.  You can join the live recording session by visiting BusinessTravel360.comYour Hosts are Riaan van Schoor, Ann Cederhall and Aash Shravah.Stories covered on this session include - a GBTA | Global Business Travel Association survey reveals most of us still like working in business travel.Travellers to UK airports experienced chaos following a collapse of the border force IT system. Susan Enners reminds us of the importance of a proper duty of care solution during such events. Steve Endacott wonders if easyJet and Jet2.com and Jet2holidays are going to copy from Ryanair's OTA playbook soon. Expensify teams up with Spotnana. ... and Spotnana also announced a launch in Mexico.Avis Budget Group reports a $113m loss in Q1 of this year.Amadeus posted strong results of revenue per booking increasing by 9.5% on a 2.8% growth in air bookings....whilst Eric Léopold asks a range of interesting questions about the latest Sabre Corporation results.Bonus Extra Stories!You can subscribe to this podcast by searching 'BusinessTravel360' on Google Podcast, Apple Podcast, iHeart, Pandora, Spotify, Alexa or your favorite podcast player.This podcast was created, edited and distributed by BusinessTravel360.  Be sure to sign up for regular updates at BusinessTravel360.com - Enjoy!Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.Welcome to What's Up in Business Travel for Week 19 of 2024.  This is a weekly podcast from BusinessTravel360,  where we update you on what's up this week in the world of business travel.  This podcast is great for those who need to know what's happening all in under 15 minutes.Topics covered during this podcast -Senate passes FAA reauthorization billDelta & Southwest lead J.D. Power Airline StudySpaceX's Starlink projects revenue of $6.6BBrightline West breaks groundUS OTAS cross $100B in revenueIAG posts solid Q1 resultsHyatt's Q1 'Extraordinarily Encouraging'JetBlue & Etihad launch partnershipEtihad launches 5 interline partnershipsITG Business Travel joins Focus Travel PartnershipJetBlue expands MintSpirit Airlines  to launch higher-end productsIndiGo adds flights to ThailandExpensify launches a new travel platformHQ adds Amex virtual card capabilitiesDelta revamps AppTune in every Monday morning to get your weekly update.  We hope you will make this a regular part of your week and listen in while you on the move or sitting back and sipping your coffee.You can subscribe to this podcast by searching 'BusinessTravel360' on Google Podcast, Apple Podcast, iHeart, Pandora, Spotify, Alexa or your favorite podcast player.This podcast was created, edited and distributed by BusinessTravel360.  Be sure to sign up for regular updates at BusinessTravel360.com - Enjoy!Support the Show.

Seize ownership of your life, prioritize what truly matters to you, and bravely embark on the journey that may initially seem daunting—because it's that very first step that paves the way to a more gratifying existence. In this compelling episode, Sofie de Vreese, Head of Strategy and Partnerships for APAC at Expensify, unveils her odyssey of self-discovery, challenging ingrained beliefs to forge a path of authenticity. The pivotal questions you pose to yourself serve as a gateway to unveiling your genuine self. Sofie's insightful approach guides you in dismantling barriers and amplifying your self-listening. Tune in to this episode, join Sofie, and chart your course toward authenticity. Let's shatter limiting beliefs and wholeheartedly embrace our true selves. We are honored that Expensify sponsored this episode. Expensify is a payment super-app that helps individuals and businesses simplify the way they manage money. More than 12 million people use Expensify's free features, which include corporate cards, expense tracking, next-day reimbursement, invoicing, bill pay, global reimbursement, and travel booking, all in one app. To learn more about how Expensify can help save you time to focus on what really matters, check out use.expensify.com/spend-management. We are honored that FloQast sponsored this episode. FloQast is a provider of close management software created by accountants for accountants to help them close faster. Learn more here: https://floqast.comLove the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! http://amyvetter.com/breakingbeliefspodcast

On this episode, Joe speaks with Dave Kersting, CEO of Capovario. Dave drew an incredible response from the audience at Scaling New Heights by delivering a knockout presentation based on his personal life experiences and how those experiences have helped shape his business sense. Community is at the core of both Dave's conversation with Joe and his business, Capovario.  Thank you to our show sponsor: Expensify — the expense management app that does it all, for every business Learn more about the show and our sponsors at Woodard.com/podcast

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent brings on David Barrett, founder of Expensify, to talk about creating a “remote-first” company (3:15), the lounge (6:45), the return-to-office movement (14:15), going public and then getting its shares smashed (17:15), why venture capital is a scam (23:30), why he likes public market investors (30:25), keeping people happy when shares lose 95% of their value (33:35), and the artificial intelligence boom (35:25). PLUS: The link to our previous episode with Delian Asparouhov, founder of Varda, whose space-factory startup just had its first craft land safely back to earth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode Joe is joined by one of the most esteemed minds in the world of physics, Dr. Michio Kaku. He will be joining us on stage this year at Scaling New Heights! Dr. Kaku has written several books including The Physics of the Impossible. He has appeared on the History Channel television show, The Universe. His most recent works include information about Artificial Intelligence, quantum computing, robotics in business, and the impact these changing technologies have on culture. Most recently, he wrote the book Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything  Thank you to our show sponsor: Expensify — the expense management app that does it all, for every business Learn more about the show and our sponsors at Woodard.com/podcast

What is it that sets you apart from competitors? That is, what is the secret sauce that your firm brings to the world? There are several ways to differentiate your practice from the rest of the competition so in this episode Joe and Heather dive into how you stand out. If you don't currently stand out, how should you? Ultimately, this requires you to answer the question, "What is your vision, mission, and purpose?" (Hint: Being the low cost leader is not the answer.) Thank you to our show sponsor: Expensify — the expense management app that does it all, for every business Learn more about the show and our sponsors at Woodard.com/podcast

Is you price the right price and what are the hidden costs that cause you to be less profitable than you should be? This episode is based on the strategic pricing workshop offered by Woodard. We've seen people go through the workshop and find $50,000 to $75,000 in underpricing (or more!). The people who come to this workshop have no idea how grossly underpriced their services can be. Overcome the fear factor and learn from Joe and Heather about how to take action. Thank you to our show sponsor: Expensify — the expense management app that does it all, for every business Learn more about the show and our sponsors at Woodard.com/podcast

On this episode, Heather and Joe talk about the psychodynamics of client relationships, otherwise known as taking the power back in client relationships. There is a pyschological power struggle in any relationship and it takes on a unique angle when it comes to Client Accounting Services. This isn't about a power trip or ego struggle. This is all about balance. Thank you to our show sponsor: Expensify — the expense management app that does it all, for every business Learn more about the show and our sponsors at Woodard.com/podcast

Enjoy this video podcast on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Many of us today have been conditioned to believe that happiness will come after achieving a version of success based on money and titles that have been spoon-fed to us our entire lives. Anu Muralidharan, COO and Board Member of Expensify, reached a low point six years into chasing this version of fulfillment. Gripped by crippling depression, she knew she had to find a new definition of success.  In an attempt to escape her circumstances, Anu immigrated to the United States to attend business school, accumulating $120,000 worth of debt in the process. Before she landed a job at Citibank, Anu cold-called hundreds, if not thousands of companies. As Anu describes it, she was always chasing after the next big thing, never stopping to ask herself if she was happy. Anu realized it was up to her to change her trajectory and began to follow her heart in an experiment that would lead her on the career path she is currently on. Throughout her career, Anu has faced self-doubt, a critical inner voice, and imposter syndrome, which has led her to offer keynote speeches on how high-achieving women can conquer all of these. Mentoring up-and-coming women entrepreneurs now brings her joy. Thanks for listening!  Don't forget to order Rebecca's new book, Fearless: The New Rules for Unlocking Creativity, Courage, and Success. Follow Superwomen on Instagram. Guest Website: expensify.com Social Media: linkedin.com/in/anuradhamuralidharan Big Ideas: Following an insatiable hunger to do something bigger than yourself The importance of networking and putting yourself out there to gain confidence Removing the shame associated with hard-selling yourself The importance of working hard without caring how much you will be compensated to create a career launch pad Staying on the hamster wheel of always looking for the next big thing Defining success for yourself and deconditioning yourself from societal definitions Learning to follow your heart and not listen to the voice in your head Doing work that you are proud of and impressing yourself Three key principles to kill self-doubt, tame your inner critic, and overcome imposter syndrome --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/superwomen/support

On this episode, Heather speaks with Michelle Mitchell of Mitchell Consulting. Michelle seeks to create financial freedom for women entrepreneurs by bridging the gap in their knowledge to create confident CEOs. Heather and Michelle talk about gender parity and women in accounting — both what we have been doing and what we should be doing to push the needle. Thank you to our show sponsor: Expensify — the expense management app that does it all, for every business Learn more about the show and our sponsors at Woodard.com/podcast  

On this episode, Heather speaks with Ingrid Edstrom. She's known as the Priestess of Profits and co-founder of the Accounting Alchemy network. As the Priestess of Profits, she offers consulting services for Tours & Activities businesses, speaks publicly, and provides leading-edge accountant education services, resources and consulting to businesses in need. Thank you to our show sponsor: Expensify — the expense management app that does it all, for every business Learn more about the show and our sponsors at Woodard.com/podcast

With Justin Colt, Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of The Collected Works; Gabi Horowitz, Head of Marketing & Brand at Expensify; and Shawn Borton, Head of Design at Expensify. The original post for the project can be found at https://bit.ly/bnpodcast075

Expensify, Inc., Q3 2023 Earnings Call, Nov 07, 2023

On this episode, Heather speaks with Sharrin Fuller of Glass Wallet Ventures. Sharrin shares her experience as the CEO of Glass Wallet Ventures and a Managing Partner in two thriving accounting firms. She's an exit expert and runs a program that helps you go from Scaleable to Saleable. Thank you to our show sponsor: Expensify — the expense management app that does it all, for every business Learn more about the show and our sponsors at Woodard.com/podcast  

This week on ‘Speaking to Influence,' Dr. Laura is joined by COO of Expensify, Anu Muralidharan, where Anu shares how she was able to build momentum in her company by having everyone identify their own unique value, and how it mattered in getting the company to their goal. In this episode you will learn: How a COO is like a Swiss Army knife The importance of acknowledging and addressing self-doubt and inner critics, and how Anu sharing her own experience helped a coworker overcome her own fears and take on a challenging task. About how Anu delivered a company all-hands presentation, aiming to bring transparency and inspiration to her team to work towards core growth by breaking down the problems despite her fear of overwhelming with details and creating an atmosphere of anxiety. Anu's criteria for identifying exciting candidates during interviews, emphasizing the importance of curiosity, ambition, and the ability to collaborate creatively.   24 Hour Challenge: Reflect on how you want to feel when you achieve success, and to consider if your current goals align with those feelings. What really would make you happy?   Mentioned in the Episode:  “Remember the Name” – Fort Minor “Grit: The Power of Passion & Perseverance” – Angela Lee Duckworth   About Anu: Anu Muralidharan, a first-generation immigrant, arrived in the US burdened with $120,000 in debt. Today she is the COO and a board member at Expensify (NASDAQ: EXFY). Despite her success, Anu battled self-doubt throughout her journey. The promotion to VP, a title she ardently pursued, led her to a profound low marked by crippling depression. This pivotal moment forced her to redefine success and develop three guiding principles to navigate uncertainty. Now, armed with those principles, Anu empowers young women to embrace their strengths, silence their inner critic, and seek self-approval—a quest that unites and liberates humanity.   You can connect with Anu in the following ways: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anuradhamuralidharan/ Web: www.expensify.com   You can connect with Dr. Laura Sicola in the following ways: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drlaurasicola LinkedIn Business Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vocal-impact-productions/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/VocalImpactProductions Facebook: Vocal Impact Productions Twitter: @LauraSicola Instagram: @VocalImpactProductions Website: https://vocalimpactproductions.com/ Laura's Online Course: virtualinfluence.today   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Blake and David examine the downfall of FTX and founder Sam Bankman-Fried and look at some controversies around Deloitte auditors backdating audit paperwork in Canada, receiving only a minor fine. They also marvel at Donald Trump's attempt to blame accountants for alleged financial statement fraud in his organization. All this, and other news including NASBA's CEO's upcoming retirement, IRS budget cut updates, and generational differences around public accounting work environments. Sponsors LiveFlow - http://accountingpodcast.promo/liveflowRelay - https://cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/relay Keeper - https://cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/keeper#IgnitionPrecon Party at QuickBooks Connect - Sunday, November 12,  7:00pmRSVP here: https://ignitionapp.info/precon-earmarkChapters (00:39) - Blake is back from Maryland where he gave a talk on AI and accounting (04:16) - CPA Journal uses bad AI to draw conclusions on AI's future in accounting (10:32) - Guinness Stout might not exist without taxes (13:44) - Jeff Bezos is moving to Miami (17:23) - Over 2/3 of Ohio CPAs are 50 or older (22:58) - Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty (24:30) - WeWork files for bankruptcy (30:28) - Trump trial updates: Donald Trump takes the stand (41:19) - CPA Ontario fines Deloitte (47:34) - IRS budget cut again (53:08) - NASBA CEO Ken Bishop plans to retire (54:36) - BDO and other firms becoming ESOPs (56:27) - Expensify closes their longue in SF (01:00:29) - We're going to QuickBooks Connect (01:01:17) - Blakes shares Instagram clip of street CPA interview (01:03:11) - Wrap up and how to earn free CPE for listening to this podcast  Show NotesHouse passes Israel aid tied to IRS cuts, triggering Biden clash | Accounting Todayhttps://www.accountingtoday.com/articles/house-passes-israel-aid-tied-to-irs-cuts-triggering-biden-clash New York accounting firm Grassi announces ESOP | Accounting Todayhttps://www.accountingtoday.com/news/new-york-accounting-firm-grassi-announces-esop Trump's Sons Cast the Blame for Fraud on Their Company's Accountantshttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/nyregion/eric-trump-donald-jr-fraud-trial.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare NASBA CEO Ken Bishop plans to retire | Accounting Todayhttps://www.accountingtoday.com/news/nasba-ceo-ken-bishop-plans-to-retire IG reel: Good salary BUT don't become a CPAhttps://www.instagram.com/reel/CzCgptfpjmv/ Can Artificial Intelligence Become an Accounting Expert? - The CPA Journalhttps://www.cpajournal.com/2023/10/24/can-artificial-intelligence-become-an-accounting-expert-2/Deloitte Auditors Got Caught Changing Their Computer Clocks to Backdate Workpapershttps://www.goingconcern.com/deloitte-auditors-got-caught-changing-their-computer-clocks-to-backdate-workpapers/ Ohio floats plan to recruit more CPAs      https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/ohio-floats-plan-to-recruit-more-cpas WeWork, once valued at $47 billion, files for bankruptcy https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/07/wework-files-for-bankruptcy.html Here's how much WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann made before the company's bankruptcyhttps://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/07/heres-how-much-wework-founder-adam-neumann-got-before-bankruptcy.html Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty on all seven criminal fraud countshttps://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/02/sam-bankman-fried-found-guilty-on-all-seven-criminal-fraud-counts.html Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is leaving Seattle for Miami    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/03/amazon-founder-jeff-bezos-is-leaving-seattle-for-miami.html Ohio Society of CPAs Develops Action Plan Aimed at Talent Shortagehttps://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/2023/11/06/ohio-society-of-cpas-develops-action-plan-aimed-at-talent-shortage/97271/ Billions still lost through bad accounting, says auditor general       https://mg.co.za/business/2023-11-03-billions-still-lost-through-bad-accounting-says-auditor-general/ Eric Trump testified over and over again he had nothing to do with his dad's accounting. Then he was shown his own emails   https://fortune.com/2023/11/03/eric-trump-testifies-fraud-trial-never-worked-donald-financial-statements-emails-testimony-involvement/ Former FTX CEO found guilty of fraud      https://www.bankingdive.com/news/former-ftx-ceo-sam-bankman-fried-found-guilty-7-counts-fraud-conspiracy/698555/ House Passes Israel Aid Bill Tied to IRS Cutshttps://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/2023/11/02/house-passes-israel-aid-bill-tied-to-irs-cuts/97224/ Jeff Bezos: Leaving Seattle and Embracing Miamihttps://www.smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2023/11/jeff-bezos-leaving-seattle-and-embracing-miami.html/ Billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos moves to Florida, where his parents live-and capital gains are not taxed        https://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-amazon-founder-jeff-bezos-125828852.html Need CPE?Get CPE for listening to podcasts with Earmark: https://earmarkcpe.comSubscribe to the Earmark Podcast: https://podcast.earmarkcpe.comGet in TouchThanks for listening and the great reviews! We appreciate you! Follow and tweet @BlakeTOliver and @DavidLeary. Find us on Facebook and Instagram. If you like what you hear, please do us a favor and write a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Call us and leave a voicemail; maybe we'll play it on the show. DIAL (202) 695-1040.SponsorshipsAre you interested in sponsoring the Cloud Accounting Podcast? For details, read the prospectus.Need Accounting Conference Info? Check out our new website - accountingconferences.comLimited edition shirts, stickers, and other necessitiesTeePublic Store: http://cloudacctpod.link/merchSubscribe Apple Podcasts: http://cloudacctpod.link/ApplePodcasts YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAccountingPodcast Spotify: http://cloudacctpod.link/Spotify Podchaser: http://cloudacctpod.link/podchaser Stitcher: http://cloudacctpod.link/Stitcher Overcast: http://cloudacctpod.link/Overcast Classifieds Forwardly - https://www.forwardly.com/FutureFirm - https://www.futurefirmaccelerate.com/capClassifiedsWant to get the word out about your newsletter, webinar, party, Facebook group, podcast, e-book, job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created? Let the listeners of The Accounting Podcast know by running a classified ad. Go here to create your classified ad: https://cloudacctpod.link/RunClassifiedAdTranscriptsThe full transcript for this episode is available by clicking on the Transcript tab at the top of this page

So much winning Portland, Oregon, startup news this week. Bend Venture Conference. Pitch Latino. Latino Founder. Sixty AI. Fridie Outdoors. Federal tech hub grants. Buzzcutt. Sober October. Win win win win. Winning startups. Winning founders. All kinds of startup wins. Bend Venture Conference 2023 winners https://siliconflorist.com/2023/10/24/winner-winner-bend-venture-conference-sorry-that-doesnt-rhyme/ Pitch Latino 2023 winners https://siliconflorist.com/2023/10/25/the-icing-on-the-cake-barro-mexican-bakery-wins-pitch-latino-2023/ Sixty AI wins on Product Hunt https://siliconflorist.com/2023/10/24/portland-ai-startup-sixty-launches-on-product-hunt/ Not winning: VC funding for Black founders is ABYSMAL https://siliconflorist.com/2023/10/23/abysmal-vc-investment-in-black-founded-companies-continues/ Fridie Outdoors wins a spot in Black entrepreneur program https://siliconflorist.com/2023/10/25/fridie-outdoors-among-companies-selected-for-black-united-fund-of-oregon-emerging-entrepreneur-program/ Oregon State University and Portland State University win federal Tech Hub grants https://siliconflorist.com/2023/10/23/federal-government-reveals-oregon-tech-hubs-in-mass-timber-and-microfluidics-with-plans-for-smart-energy/ Buzzcutt is winning Sober October https://siliconflorist.com/2023/10/25/a-pub-crawl-with-a-twist-no-alcohol/ Expensify is now B2B and B2C https://siliconflorist.com/2023/10/26/expensify-makes-it-personal/ Flex Axion AI wins my attention https://siliconflorist.com/2023/10/24/ai-enabled-portfolio-management-flex-axion/ Who won the 4K4Community race? https://siliconflorist.com/2023/10/26/4k4community-raises-12500-4-err-for-poic-rosemary-anderson-high-school/ Please introduce yourself to the Portland startup community https://siliconflorist.com/2023/10/25/hello-portland-startup-community-im-rick-turoczy/

On this episode, Joe and Heather talk about failure. It's something we all experience in our lives, usually multiple times. The way you approach failure sets you up for success! This is a FUN, EXCITING topic and we shouldn't fear failure because doing so holds us back from achieving incredible success. Thank you to our show sponsors: Expensify — the expense management app that does it all, for every business Fyle — easy expense management via text messaging Learn more about the show and our sponsors at Woodard.com/podcast

On this episode, Joe speaks with Bob Lewis, one of the top 100 most influential individuals in the industry as recognized by Accounting Today. Bob is a mergers and acquisitons expert. He has a tremendous reputation with the top 200 accounting firms and what he is finding is that the top 500 firms are now buying the smaller, non-credentialed firms. What is driving this trend and what is the impact on your business? Listen to find out! Thank you to our show sponsors: Expensify — the expense management app that does it all, for every business Fyle — easy expense management via text messaging Learn more about the show and our sponsors at Woodard.com/podcast

Computer programmers may have the best ideas in their minds, but they are worthless if they cannot communicate them clearly to other people. David Barrett, CEO of Expensify, joins Amy Vetter to share how to cross the imagination gap by being an excellent communicator both verbally and on paper. He looks back on falling in love with computer programming at the age of six and the story behind the genesis of Expensify. David also discusses the secret of his career success, detailing how to stay positive despite the negativities he faced along the way, the importance of humility in leadership, and the power of framing success regardless of other people's expectations.We are honored that Expensify sponsored this episode. Expensify is a payment super-app that helps individuals and businesses simplify the way they manage money. More than 12 million people use Expensify's free features, which include corporate cards, expense tracking, next-day reimbursement, invoicing, bill pay, global reimbursement, and travel booking, all in one app.To learn more about how Expensify can help save you time to focus on what really matters, check out use.expensify.com/spend-management.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! http://amyvetter.com/breakingbeliefspodcast

In the dynamic landscape of SaaS startups, pursuing rapid customer growth while achieving and maintaining profitability is an art that requires flexible strategies and, more importantly, employees that are eager for the challenge. In this episode, Expensify COO Anu Muralidharan will share how Expensify became profitable on its way to securing millions of users in less than 15 years. You'll hear real-world examples and walk away with specific tactics they can immediately deploy at their own companies, including:  a.) when, where, and why to outsource b.) a new, more bullish approach to testing and launching products with confidence  c.) how to leverage automation to reduce expenses while simultaneously supporting growth.

On this episode, Heather and Joe talk about the future of Client Accounting and Advisory Services. The future of CAS (CAAS) will be a series of fusions: The general ledger and workflow solutions fusion The client communications and workflow fusion The fusion between humans and bots The fusion between credentialed and non-credentialed professionals The fusion between real and virtual worlds The fusion between accounting and advisory (for real this time) Thank you to our show sponsors: Expensify — the expense management app that does it all, for every business Fyle — easy expense management via text messaging Learn more about the show and our sponsors at Woodard.com/podcast

On this episode, Heather and Joe talk about things that help accountants with various things, otherwise known as process improvement strategies or process optimization. We all have process but the question is, "How do we manage process?" Thank you to our show sponsors: Expensify — the expense management app that does it all, for every business Fyle — easy expense management via text messaging Learn more about the show and our sponsors at Woodard.com/podcast

There will always be new things to learn in life and new chances to level up yourself. In order to grab that next opportunity, you have to regularly practice, hone your craft, and improve yourself. In this episode, Amy Vetter interviews Zach Greenwald from Expensify. Together, they discuss how training to be a pro hockey player when he was younger has helped him try new things and put himself out there as an adult. Zach shares how he found a big break as a DJ, doing constant trial and error to improve his mixes. He also explains how to find comfort outside your comfort zone, the benefits of courageously showcasing yourself, and facing rejection with an open mind. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! http://amyvetter.com/breakingbeliefspodcast

Running an eCommerce business? In this episode, I'm diving into the tech stack behind financial management for businesses, highlighting the game-changing tools that make life easier for seven- and eight-figure brand owners. I also delve into the strengths and weaknesses of accounting software like Xero and talk about how Expensify has been a game-changer for expense reporting. Listen in as I share my journey from traditional banking to embracing Mercury, financial software that has dramatically improved how I manage my eCommerce finances. You'll learn my credit card strategies for categorizing recurring and one-time expenses, the importance of managing cash reserves, and the specific financial statements you need to be watching in your business. You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: bit.ly/3YUDrzW Interested in our Private Community for 7-Figure Store Owners?  Learn more here.   Want to hear about new episodes and eCommerce news round-ups?  Subscribe via email.

Expensify, Inc., Q2 2023 Earnings Call, Aug 08, 2023

Brought to you by Ezra—The leading full-body cancer screening company | Coda—Meet the evolution of docs | Attio—The powerful, flexible CRM for fast-growing startups—Geoff Charles is VP of Product at Ramp—the fastest-growing SaaS startup of all time, Fast Company's #1 Most Innovative Company in North America, and a company I believe we should all study for how they operate, execute, and hire. At Ramp, Geoff has led the product team from the early days, including the development and release of 60+ products and features in the past year alone. He has been building financial services for over a decade, and his interview in Lenny's Newsletter quickly became one of the most widely read newsletter issues of all time. In today's podcast, we will discuss:• How velocity is at the heart of Ramp's culture and success• How writing can unlock clarity, creativity, and rapid problem-solving• How to empower your product team through context sharing• How to practically approach problems from first principles• How Ramp approaches hiring in a unique way• Suggestions for breaking into the world of product managementListen now on Apple, Spotify, Google, Overcast, and YouTube.Find the transcript for this episode and all past episodes at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/episodes/. Today's transcript will be live by 8 a.m. PT.Where to find Geoff Charles:• Twitter: https://twitter.com/geoffintech• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffrey-charles/Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Geoff's background(04:49) An overview of Ramp(06:20) The importance of velocity at Ramp(08:50) Single-threaded goals and how to keep teams away from distractions(13:20) Setting lofty goals(15:17) How Ramp empowers teams(17:37) How Geoff's management style has evolved at Ramp(19:55) The product design process at Ramp(21:19) Ramp's system for sharing feedback(23:07) How Ramp handles bug fixes (24:15) Advice for PMs who want to move faster(29:29) Why velocity and impact can help protect against burnout(32:33) Planning vs. doing(37:54) Ramp's strategy documents (40:55) Finding your unique positioning(42:46) OKRs(44:53) The importance of first-principle thinking(48:53) How to use writing to think through problems (51:46) How Geoff carves out time for deep work(54:05) How Geoff manages tasks and stays organized(57:15) Why other roles share the PM load at Ramp(1:00:30) PM responsibilities at Ramp(1:01:46) Identifying A+ talent(1:06:02) The skills Ramp looks for when hiring(1:07:33) Advice for people wanting to break into product management (1:10:37) Lightning roundReferenced:• How Ramp builds product: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-ramp-builds-product• Bill: https://www.bill.com/• Expensify: https://www.expensify.com/• Concur: https://www.concur.com/• Coupa: https://www.coupa.com/• Nicole Forsgren on Lenny's Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-to-measure-and-improve-developer-productivity-nicole-forsgren-microsoft-research-github-goo/• Sheryl Sandberg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheryl-sandberg-5126652/• Getting Things Done: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0143126563• When Breath Becomes Air: https://www.amazon.com/When-Breath-Becomes-Paul-Kalanithi/dp/081298840X• The Bear on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/the-bear-05eb6a8e-90ed-4947-8c0b-e6536cbddd5f• Whoop: https://www.whoop.com/Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Unexpected connections exist all around us; we just have to be open to them. One such connection that many listeners may find surprising is the link between music and accounting. Our guest today, Scott Scarano, has always had a passion for both these disciplines. He describes accounting as the language of business and music as the language of life. Scott is the owner of a thriving accounting firm, a podcaster, and the custodian of Accounting High, an online resource that is helping to modernize the accounting profession and make it more accessible for everyone. While many people view accountants as lacking creativity, Scott, aka The Rapping CPA, is here to insist otherwise. In today's conversation with Scott, we delve into One CPA's Journey: The Nexus of Creativity and Entrepreneurship. Our discussion includes the nature of creativity, how repetition helps us grow, and what it means to be open to recognizing new and unexpected connections. Scott talks with us about how his grandfather inspired him to pursue accounting, what it was like to build his CPA firm, and how he made the transition from being an operator in his business to a high-level visionary. We also contemplate the nature of failure before hearing the story of how Scott started writing highly detailed and entertaining rap parodies. Scott closes off today's episode with a rendition of his riveting Superapp rap, which is based on Eminem's Superman (and written for Expensify), and shares the response he got from Expensify CEO David Barrett when he had him as a guest on his podcast. Key Points From This Episode:A story from Scott illustrating the power of being open to connection.Scott's lifelong dream of being an actor, rapper, entertainer, and accountant.The connection between performance, music, and accounting.Scott's history selling drugs and what it taught him about business.An overview of Scott's career as an accountant and how he grew his CPA firm.How to go from being an operator to a high-level visionary in your business.Scott's reflections on starting a podcast and what he's learned from it.The Dunning-Kruger effect and the experience of repetition, change, and growth over time.What Scott has learned about creativity and his own desire to form new connections.Why every failure is an opportunity to learn, even if it's painful.How Scott realized his dream of becoming a rapper.What Scott learned from writing rap parody songs.The story of how Scott wrote an Eminem rap parody for Expensify.Scott's parody version of Eminem's Superman, Superapp!Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:Scott Scarano on LinkedInScott Scarano on TwitterAccounting HighAccounting High on YouTubeAccounting High PodcastThe Dunning-Kruger effectThe Creative Act: A Way of BeingFreshBooksExpensifyExpensiConDavid Barrett on LinkedInConnection BuildersAlex Drost LinkedIn

The belief systems passed down from generation to generation can become a critical factor in your success. Today, Anuradha Muralidharan, Chief Operating Officer of Expensify, shares that belief system about women and how she works around it to drive them to succeed. Her instincts weren't going where she wanted to be, so Anu introduced the Constanza Experiment, where she assesses her choices and experiments in making uncomfortable changes which led her to success. No matter how drawn you are to your instincts, if it does not lead you to success, learn to turn around and take the opposite path. Learn more from Anuradha's success formula today! We are honored that Expensify sponsored this episode. Expensify is a payment super-app that helps individuals and businesses simplify the way they manage money. More than 12 million people use Expensify's free features, which include corporate cards, expense tracking, next-day reimbursement, invoicing, bill pay, global reimbursement, and travel booking, all in one app. To learn more about how Expensify can help save you time to focus on what really matters, check out use.expensify.com/spend-management. https://pod-feeds.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/To7fZqoXt.vtt Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! http://amyvetter.com/breakingbeliefspodcast

Season 4 Episode 86 FACULTY: Dave Olsen CLASS:#VarsityTips TITLE: People Experience Pt 1 (PX1) Course Curriculum: Creating a High Performance Virtuous Loop In this podcast episode, Scott interviews Dave Olsen from Nimble for the first episode of the People Experience Varsity Tips series. This episode offers valuable insights into Dave's business journey, the offshore model, the significance of team and culture, and the key elements that contribute to a successful people experience within an organization. Dave introduces the topics he will cover in the interview. Dave's personal journey in building his business and the lessons he learned along the way. The offshore model and how it can be a game-changer for businesses. Shifting perspective to view workflow as a business and the transformative impact it had on Dave. The realization that building a business can lead to the life one desires. The importance of prioritizing the team over customers and building strong partnerships. The formation of a partnership with a CAS (Client Accounting Services) firm. Statistical insights into Dave's company, Nimble. The purpose of the course and the milestones set to achieve success. The significance of tracking outcomes and measuring progress. Defining leadership and the role it plays in creating a vision for the future. Having faith in oneself and embracing principles from books like "Think Like a Monk" The importance of designing company culture and aligning it with employees. The role of tools and training in supporting employees' growth and success. Defining performance and how it contributes to employee satisfaction and motivation. Employee compensation and the opportunities provided for learning and personal development. A preview of the upcoming episodes in the People Experience series. Shout Outs: Brandon Craig, Clay Christensen, Nimble, Expensify, Jay Shetty --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/accountinghigh/message

Season 4 Episode 84 FACULTY: Joe Woodard CLASS: #GuidePosts TITLE: Let Your Vision Guide Your Mission on Purpose  In this podcast episode, Scott interviews Joe Woodard of Scaling New Heights, CEO of Woodard. The episode covers valuable insights into the accounting industry's evolution, the significance of industry events, the importance of differentiation and branding, and Joe Woodard's experiences and perspectives throughout his career. Joe shares his personal story of how he entered the accounting field. The early days of cloud technology and Joe's experience in starting a consulting practice. Origin stories and development of QuickBooks Connect and Scaling New Heights conferences. Joe's role as a certified professional for Intuit and his contributions to the industry. The purpose and significance of Scaling New Heights as an event for accounting professionals. The dynamics and competition between Xero and Intuit in the accounting software market. Comparing the approaches of AICPA Engage and Scaling New Heights. Reflection on the relevance and necessity of the CPA license in the modern accounting landscape. The importance of differentiation in building a successful accounting practice. Defining and aligning purpose and vision to drive growth and success. The role of personal branding and using one's name as a business identity. Parting wisdom from Joe, emphasizing the importance of not wasting time with non-ideal clients or situations. Shout Outs: Dave Barrett, Expensify, Doug Slater, Scaling New Heights, SleeterCon, QuickBooks Connect, Intuit, Xero, Rod Drury, AccountX, Engage, Simon Sinek, Jack Sergeant --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/accountinghigh/message

Bruce Porter joins us to talk about his journey in the Portland hospitality industry toward his new position heading up ChefStable's new Midtown Beer Garden, a sophisticated good cart pod outside Expensify's new headquarters.   Bruce managed some of Portland's iconic properties, from Oba to Ringside Hospitality Group prior to establishing his own consulting business.  As the pandemic hit, Bruce ran into some very challenging health issues. We discuss how he managed his emotions and optimism throughout the long  ordeal.   The Midtown Beer Garden is slated to open in late July, 2024.   Right at the Fork is supported by: Zupan's Markets: www.Zupans.com RingSide Steakhouse: www.RingSideSteakhouse.com Portland Food Adventures: www.PortlandFoodAdventures.com

David is a lifelong programmer who founded Expensify in 2008 and built it into the most popular "pre-accounting" platform on the planet. Hear David's vision for the New Expensify, in which every payment is a conversation.Meet Our Guest:David Barrett, CEO of Expensifyhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmbarrett/Learn more about Expensifyhttp://expensify.comNeed CPE? Subscribe to the Earmark Accounting Podcast: https://podcast.earmarkcpe.comGet CPE for listening to podcasts with Earmark CPE: https://earmarkcpeGet in TouchThanks for listening and for the great reviews! We appreciate you! Follow and tweet @BlakeTOliver and @DavidLeary. Find us on Facebook and, if you like what you hear, please do us a favor and write a review on iTunes, or Podchaser. Interested in sponsoring the Cloud Accounting Podcast? For details, read the prospectus, and NOW, you can see our smiling faces on Instagram! You can now call us and leave a voicemail, maybe we'll play it on the show. DIAL (202) 695-1040Need Accounting Conference Info? Check out our new website - accountingconferences.comLimited edition shirts, stickers, and other necessitiesTeePublic Store: http://cloudacctpod.link/merchSubscribe Apple Podcasts: http://cloudacctpod.link/ApplePodcasts Podchaser: http://cloudacctpod.link/podchaser Spotify: http://cloudacctpod.link/Spotify Stitcher: http://cloudacctpod.link/Stitcher Overcast: http://cloudacctpod.link/Overcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CloudAccountingPodcast Want to get the word out about your newsletter, webinar, party, Facebook group, podcast, e-book, job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created? Why not let the listeners of The Cloud Accounting Podcast know by running a classified ad? Hit the link below to get more info.Go here to create your classified ad: https://cloudacctpod.link/RunClassifiedAd The full transcript for this episode is available by clicking on the Transcript tab at the top of this page

We're back from ExpensiCon in Italy with thoughts on Expensify's future and the future of spend management; a report from Kristen Keats at Accounting Today's Firm Growth Forum conference; ChatGPT coming soon to a Wendy's drive-thru near you!Chapters (00:25) - Every Payment Is A Conversation (00:50) - Blake and David are back from Italy (04:40) - Let's talk about ExpensiCon (09:48) - The original Expensify and ExpensiCon (12:15) - The new Expensify they're building (17:51) - Expensify is adding great tech support (23:18) - The future of Expensify (28:17) - How much do we think this event cost and playing the long game (37:48) - Some general observations on Italy (44:10) - Kristen Keats checks in from Accounting Today's conference (51:40) - Let's hear some listener reviews of CAP (52:22) - Is AI encouraging or discouraging for accountants and jobs? (56:51) - Wendy's Fresh AI (59:19) - ChatGPT 4 passes CPA exam (01:00:42) - Wrap up and where to reach us Need CPE? Subscribe to the Earmark Accounting Podcast: https://podcast.earmarkcpe.comGet CPE for listening to podcasts with Earmark CPE: https://earmarkcpeShow NotesExpensify Launches Transactional Chat for Accountants - Business Wirehttps://stocks.apple.com/ATL9AZYOSSKO_4jLMtB30pA Wendy's to Launch AI-Powered Drive-Thru Service             https://smallbiztrends.com/2023/05/ai-drive-thru-wendys-google-cloud.html What if AI could rebuild the middle class? : Planet Money : NPRhttps://www.npr.org/sections/money/2023/05/09/1174933574/what-if-ai-could-rebuild-the-middle-classGet in TouchThanks for listening and for the great reviews! We appreciate you! Follow and tweet @BlakeTOliver and @DavidLeary. Find us on Facebook and, if you like what you hear, please do us a favor and write a review on iTunes, or Podchaser. Interested in sponsoring the Cloud Accounting Podcast? For details, read the prospectus, and NOW, you can see our smiling faces on Instagram! You can now call us and leave a voicemail, maybe we'll play it on the show. DIAL (202) 695-1040Need Accounting Conference Info? Check out our new website - accountingconferences.comLimited edition shirts, stickers, and other necessitiesTeePublic Store: http://cloudacctpod.link/merchSubscribe Apple Podcasts: http://cloudacctpod.link/ApplePodcasts Podchaser: http://cloudacctpod.link/podchaser Spotify: http://cloudacctpod.link/Spotify Stitcher: http://cloudacctpod.link/Stitcher Overcast: http://cloudacctpod.link/Overcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CloudAccountingPodcast Want to get the word out about your newsletter, webinar, party, Facebook group, podcast, e-book, job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created? Why not let the listeners of The Cloud Accounting Podcast know by running a classified ad? Hit the link below to get more info.Go here to create your classified ad: https://cloudacctpod.link/RunClassifiedAd The full transcript for this episode is available by clicking on the Transcript tab at the top of this page

Matt Rissell of TSheets dead in apparent murder-suicide; a review of the AI features you can use right now in Client Hub, Canopy, Karbon, Financial Cents and... Sturppy?; This week's guest: Giles Pearson, CEO of AccountestsSponsorsOnPay - https://cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/onpayRelay - https://cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/relayTech Guru - https://cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/techguruChapters (00:00) - Have your AI contact my AI (00:21) - Introduction and thoughts on the horrible news of Matt Rissell
 (06:18) - Some of the history of TSheets
 (12:36) - Practical application of Chat GPT and AI
 (20:10) - Giles was a partner at PwC
 (25:46) - Blake check on the live chat discussion (00:50) - David has used ChatGPT to create and organize his calendar appointments
 (30:43) - Let's look at Client Hub using their AI integration to help create tasks
 (35:09) - Lets see how Canopy can help you draft emails
 (37:51) - What Karbon has done with email
 (44:48) - Is Giles using AI for anything?
 (45:42) - Financial Sense integrates with ChatGPT
 (47:52) - Expensify's genius AI blog post
 (49:40) - Sturppy's AI virtual CFO (00:30) - Wrap up and where to reach everyone
 (57:07) - Congressional letter written about AI to create tax scams
 (58:56) - Where to learn more about Accountest and follow Giles Need CPE? Subscribe to the Earmark Accounting Podcast: https://podcast.earmarkcpe.comGet CPE for listening to podcasts with Earmark CPE: https://earmarkcpeShow NotesKarbon AI | Karbon         https://karbonhq.com/feature/ai/ Founder of TSheets Dies in Self-Inflicted Shootinghttps://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/2023/05/04/founder-of-tsheets-dies-in-self-inflicted-shooting/79360/ Senators want IRS to stop AI-generated tax scamshttps://www.accountingtoday.com/news/senators-want-irs-to-stop-chatgpt-generated-ai-tax-scams “What is the Best Expense Management App?” according to ChatGPT?https://blog.expensify.com/2023/05/02/what-is-the-best-expense-management-app-according-to-chatgpt/ TSheets founder Rissell dead after what police call attempted murder/suicide in Eagle homehttps://boisedev.com/news/2023/05/04/matt-rissell-dead/Get in TouchThanks for listening and for the great reviews! We appreciate you! Follow and tweet @BlakeTOliver and @DavidLeary. Find us on Facebook and, if you like what you hear, please do us a favor and write a review on iTunes, or Podchaser. Interested in sponsoring the Cloud Accounting Podcast? For details, read the prospectus, and NOW, you can see our smiling faces on Instagram! You can now call us and leave a voicemail, maybe we'll play it on the show. DIAL (202) 695-1040Need Accounting Conference Info? Check out our new website - accountingconferences.comLimited edition shirts, stickers, and other necessitiesTeePublic Store: http://cloudacctpod.link/merchSubscribe Apple Podcasts: http://cloudacctpod.link/ApplePodcasts Podchaser: http://cloudacctpod.link/podchaser Spotify: http://cloudacctpod.link/Spotify Stitcher: http://cloudacctpod.link/Stitcher Overcast: http://cloudacctpod.link/Overcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CloudAccountingPodcast ClassifiedsClient Hub - https://clienthub.app/Future Firm Accelerate - https://futurefirmaccelerate.com/capUncat - https://www.uncat.com/Nett Tracker - https://www.nett-tracker.com/FinDaily - https://findaily.io/Want to get the word out about your newsletter, webinar, party, Facebook group, podcast, e-book, job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created? Why not let the listeners of The Cloud Accounting Podcast know by running a classified ad? Hit the link below to get more info.Go here to create your classified ad: https://cloudacctpod.link/RunClassifiedAd The full transcript for this episode is available by clicking on the Transcript tab at the top of this page

Season 4 Episode 61 | In this episode of Accounting High, host Scott interviews Ms Smiles aka Alex Miles, a social media marketer and former employee of T-Sheets. Alex talks about her journey from high school pranks to her passion for social media marketing, and how she used her skills to connect with others and brighten their days. She also shares insights into the power of community, the importance of being authentic on social media, and the value of in-person meetups. Alex's infectious energy and positive attitude make this episode a must-listen for anyone looking to find their own passion and connect with others in the accounting industry. Interview: Alex shares the story behind her "Smiles" moniker She talks about the power of community building and the role social media plays in it Alex discusses her time at T-Sheets, including her involvement in the ABC Tournament and the T-Sheets raffle She also talks about meeting David Barrett and connecting with the Intuit community Alex shares her philosophy on social media, which includes being authentic and not judging others She also discusses her passion for comedy and making people laugh Finally, Alex talks about the importance of in-person meetups and getting help from and giving help to others Closing: Alex performs a rap Alex wraps us up by discussing the power of community and the importance of being yourself on social media. Shoutouts: FreshBooks, Hubdoc, Xero, MailChimp, QuickBooks, TSheets, Expensify, David Barrett, TurboTax, John Garrett, Misty Megia, Twyla Verhelst, CPA, Laura L. Lynn Ed D, MBA, MS, CFE, EA, Sherrell T. Martin, Slack, Ron Baker, Jason Staats, CPA, Terrell A Turner, CPA, Nikole Mackenzie, --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/accountinghigh/message

Tomasz Tunguz is the Founder and General Partner @ Theory Ventures, just announced last week, Theory is a $230M fund that invests $1-25m in early-stage companies that leverage technology discontinuities into go-to-market advantages. Prior to founding Theory, Tom spent 14 years at Redpoint as a General Partner where he made investments in the likes of Looker, Expensify, Monte Carlo, Dune Analytics, and Kustomer to name a few. Tom also writes one of the best blogs and newsletters in the business which can be found here. In Today's Episode with Tomasz Tunguz We Discuss: Founding a Firm: The Start of Theory: Why did Tom decide to leave Redpoint after 14 years to found Theory? What are 1-2 of his biggest lessons from Redpoint that he has taken with him to his building of Theory? What does Tom know now that he wishes he had known when he started investing? 2. From 150 LP Meetings to Closing $230M: Raising a Fund I How would Tom describe the fundraising process? How many meetings with LPs did he have? How many did he know previously? What documents did he share with LPs? Did he have a dataroom? How did he use it? How did Tom create a sense of urgency to compel LPs to come into the fund? How does Tom feel about the debate between one close and multiple closes? What was the #1 reason LPs said no to investing? What worked and Tom would do again for the next raise? What did not work and he would change for the next raise? 3. Where Will Value Accrue in the Next Decade of AI: Startup vs Incumbent: Will incumbents embrace AI before startups are able to acquire distribution? Infrastructure vs Application Layer: Where will the majority of value accrue in the next decade; infrastructure or application layer? Bundled or Unbundled: Will bundled services be the dominant consumer and enterprise choice or will unbundled specialized solutions win? 4. AI and The World Around It: How does Tom believe AI could save the US economy? Why does Tom believe Google are the losers in the AI race? Which incumbents have responded best to AI? Why does Tom believe we will be in a worse macro place at the end of the year than we are now?

Season 4 Episode 44 | Recorded January 23, 2023 Accounting High is supported by our Booster Club Members Thank you AppStream! Powered by the GrowthLab Music Video for Simple Tasks! In this episode of Accounting High, Scott chats with Jeff Rudner, co-founder and COO of Proseer. Jeff shares his journey into cloud accounting, his experience with fractional CFO services, and the birth of Proseer. They talk about consolidating and partnering, and conversion to a  C-corp. Other things covered are tech stack, pricing and services, and the importance of team structure. Join in as Jeff shares his insights on tech adoption and the future of accounting, and Scott treats us with a rap to wrap up the conversation. Don't miss out on this informative and entertaining episode! Getting started Getting into cloud accounting Left the startup and getting into fractional CFO services Consolidating, partnering, and the birth of Proseer Origin of the name Proseer Numbers at the merge Types of clients Tech Stack Pricing and service Getting another partner/investor Converting to a C-corp Structure and Firm hard numbers The team Equity Xero and Quickbooks Tech adoption Mac and PC Inputs, outputs, notifications Rap Wrapping up All the Shoutouts: Jason M. Blumer, CPA, QuickBooks, Sage, Ron Baker, Bill, Laurence Bernstein, CPA, Expensify, Ramp, David Barrett, Patrick Osborn, UltraTax, Karbon, AppStream, Dext, Ignition, Dialpad --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/accountinghigh/message

Episode SummaryChris Farris, Cloud Security Nerd at Turbot, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss the latest events in cloud security, which leads to an interesting analysis from Chris on how legal departments obscure valuable information that could lead to fewer security failures in the name of protecting company liability, and what the future of accountability for security failures looks like. Chris and Corey also discuss the newest dangers in cloud security and billing practices, and Chris describes his upcoming cloud security conference, fwd:cloudsec. About ChrisChris Farris has been in the IT field since 1994 primarily focused on Linux, networking, and security. For the last 8 years, he has focused on public-cloud and public-cloud security. He has built and evolved multiple cloud security programs for major media companies, focusing on enabling the broader security team's objectives of secure design, incident response and vulnerability management. He has developed cloud security standards and baselines to provide risk-based guidance to development and operations teams. As a practitioner, he's architected and implemented multiple serverless and traditional cloud applications focused on deployment, security, operations, and financial modeling.Chris now does cloud security research for Turbot and evangelizes for the open source tool Steampipe. He is one of the organizers of the fwd:cloudsec conference (https://fwdcloudsec.org) and has given multiple presentations at AWS conferences and BSides events.When not building things with AWS's building blocks, he enjoys building Legos with his kid and figuring out what interesting part of the globe to travel to next. He opines on security and technology on Mastodon, Twitter and his website https://www.chrisfarris.comLinks Referenced: Turbot: https://turbot.com/ fwd:cloudsec: https://fwdcloudsec.org/ Mastodon: https://infosec.exchange/@jcfarris Personal website: https://chrisfarris.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn and we are here today to learn exciting things, steal exciting secrets, and make big trouble for Moose and Squirrel. Maybe that's the podcast; maybe that's the KGB, we're not entirely sure. But I am joined once again by Chris Farris, cloud security nerd at Turbot, which I will insist on pronouncing as ‘Turbo.' Chris, thanks for coming back.Chris: Thanks for having me.Corey: So, it's been a little while and it's been an uneventful time in cloud security with nothing particularly noteworthy happening, not a whole lot of things to point out, and honestly, we're just sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel for news… is what I wish I could say, but it isn't true. Instead, it's, “Oh, let's see what disastrous tire fire we have encountered this week.” What's top of mind for you as we record this?Chris: I think the most interesting one I thought was, you know, going back and seeing the guilty plea from Nickolas Sharp, who formerly was an employee at Ubiquiti and apparently had, like, complete access to everything there and then ran amok with it.Corey: Mm-hm.Chris: The details that were buried at the time in the indictment, but came out in the press releases were he was leveraging root keys, he was leveraging lifecycle policies to suppress the CloudTrail logs. And then of course, you know, just doing dumb things like exfiltrating all of this data from his home IP address, or exfiltrating it from his home through a VPN, which have accidentally dropped and then exposed his home IP address. Oops.Corey: There's so much to dive into there because I am not in any way shape or form, saying that what he did was good, or I endorse any of those things. And yeah, I think he belongs in prison for what he did; let's be very clear on this. But I personally did not have a business relationship with him. I am, however, Ubiquiti's customer. And after—whether it was an insider threat or whether it was someone external breaching them, Krebs On Security wound up doing a whole write-up on this and was single-sourcing some stuff from the person who it turned out, did this.And they made a lot of hay about this. They sued him at one point via some terrible law firm that's entire brand is suing media companies. And yeah, just wonderful, wonderful optics there and brilliant plan. But I don't care about the sourcing. I don't care about the exact accuracy of the reporting because what I'm seeing here is that what is not disputed is this person, who whether they were an employee or not was beside the point, deleted all of the audit logs and then as a customer of Ubiquiti, I received an email saying, “We have no indication or evidence that any customer data was misappropriated.” Yeah, you just turn off your logs and yeah, you could say that always and forever and save money on logging costs. [unintelligible 00:03:28] best practice just dropped, I guess. Clowns.Chris: So, yeah. And there's definitely, like, compliance and standards and everything else that say you turn on your logs and you protect your logs, and service control policies should have been able to detect that. If they had a security operations center, you know, the fact that somebody was using root keys should have been setting off red flags and causing escalations to occur. And that wasn't happening.Corey: My business partner and I have access to our AWS org, and when I was setting this stuff up for what we do here, at a very small company, neither of us can log in with root credentials without alarms going off that alert the other. Not that I don't trust the man; let's be very clear here. We both own the company.Chris: In business together. Yes.Corey: Ri—exactly. It is, in many ways, like a marriage in that one of us can absolutely ruin the other without a whole lot of effort. But there's still the idea of separation of duties, visibility into what's going on, and we don't use root API keys. Let me further point out that we are not pushing anything that requires you to send data to us. We're not providing a service that is software powered to people, much less one that is built around security. So, how is it that I have a better security posture than Ubiquiti?Chris: You understand AWS and in-depth cloud better. You know, it really comes down to how do you, as an AWS customer, understand all of the moving parts, all of the security tooling, all of the different ways that something can happen. And Amazon will say, “Well, it's in the documentation,” but you know, they have, what, 357 services? Are you reading the security pages of all of those? So, user education, I agree, you should have, and I have on all of my accounts, if anything pops up, if any IAM change happens, I'm getting text messages. Which is great if my account got compromised, but is really annoying when I'm actually making a change and my phone is blowing up.Corey: Yeah. It's worth pointing out as well that yes, Ubiquiti is publicly traded—that is understood and accepted—however, 93% of it is owned by their CEO-founder god-king. So, it is effectively one person's personal fiefdom. And I tend to take a very dim view as a direct result. When you're in cloud and you have suffered a breach, you have severely screwed something up somewhere. These breaches are never, “Someone stole a whole bunch of drives out of an AWS data center.” You have misconfigured something somewhere. And lashing out at people who reported on it is just a bad look.Chris: Definitely. Only error—now, of course, part of the problem here is that our legal system encourages people to not come forward and say, “I screwed up. Here's how I screwed up. Everybody come learn from my mistakes.” The legal professions are also there to manage risk for the company and they're like, “Don't say anything. Don't say anything. Don't even tell the government. Don't say anything.”Whereas we all need to learn from these errors. Which is why I think every time I do see a breach or I do see an indictment, I start diving into it to learn more. I did a blog post on some of the things that happened with Drizly and GitHub, and you know, I think the most interesting thing that came out of Drizly case was the ex-CEO of Drizly, who was CEO at the time of the breach, now has following him, for the rest of his life, an FTC order that says he must implement a security program wherever he goes and works. You know, I don't know what happens when he becomes a Starbucks barista or whatever, but that is on him. That is not on the company; that is on him.And I do think that, you know, we will start seeing more and more chief executive officers, chief security or information security officers becoming accountable to—or for the breaches and being personally accountable or professionally accountable for it. I think we kind of need it, even though, you know, there's only so much a CISO can do.Corey: One of the things that I did when I started consulting independently on AWS bills back in 2016 was, while I was looking at customer environments, I also would do a quick check for a few security baseline things. And I stopped doing it because I kept encountering a bunch of things that needed attention and it completely derailed the entire stated purpose of the engagement. And, frankly, I don't want to be running a security consultancy. There's a reason I focus on AWS bills. And people think I'm kidding, but I swear to you I'm not, when I say that the reason is in part because no one has a middle-of-the-night billing emergency. It is strictly a business-hours problem. Whereas with security, wake up.In fact, the one time I have been woken up in the middle of the night by a customer phone call, they were freaking out because it was a security incident and their bill had just pegged through the stratosphere. It's, “Cool. Fix the security problem first, then we'll worry about the bill during business hours. Bye.” And then I stopped leaving my phone off of Do Not Disturb at night.Chris: Your AWS bill is one of your indicators of compromise. Keep an eye on it.Corey: Oh, absolutely. We've had multiple engagements discover security issues on that. “So, what are these instances in Australia doing?” “We don't have anything there.” “I believe you're being sincere when you say this.”Chris: Yes.Corey: However.Chris: “Last month, you're at $1,000 and this month, you're at $50,000. And oh, by the way, it's the ninth, so you might want to go look at that.”Corey: Here's the problem that you start seeing in large-scale companies though. You or I wind up posting our IAM credentials on GitHub somewhere in public—and I do this from time to time, intentionally with absolutely no permissions attached to a thing—and I started look at the timeline of, “Okay 3, 2, 1, go,” with the push and now I start counting. What happens? At what time does the quarantine policy apply? When do I get an email alert? When do people start trying to exploit it? From where are they trying to exploit it?It's a really interesting thing to look into, just from the position of how this stuff all fits together and works. And that's great, but there's a whole ‘nother piece to it where if you or I were to do such a thing and actually give it admin credentials, okay, my, I don't know, what, $50, $100 a month account that I use for a lot of my test stuff now starts getting charged enormous piles of money that winds up looking like a mortgage in San Francisco, I'm going to notice that. But if you have a company that spending, I don't know, between ten and $20 million a month, do you have any idea how much Bitcoin you've got to be mining in that account to even make a slight dent in the overall trajectory of those accounts?Chris: In the overall bill, a lot. And in a particularly mismanaged account, my experience is you will notice it if you're monitoring billing anomalies on a per-account basis. I think it's important to note, you talked about that quarantine policy. If you look at what actually Amazon drops a deny on, it's effectively start EC2 instances and change IAM policies. It doesn't prevent anybody from listing all your buckets and exfiltrating all your data. It doesn't prevent anybody from firing up Lambdas and other less commonly used resources. Don't assume oh, Amazon dropped the quarantine policy. I'm safe.Corey: I was talking to somebody who spends $4 a month on S3 and they wound up suddenly getting $60 grand a day and Lambda charges, because max out the Lambda concurrency in every region and set it to mine crypto for 15 minutes apiece, yeah, you'll spend $60,000 a day to get, what $500 in crypto. But it's super economical as long as it's in someone else's account. And then Amazon hits them with a straight face on these things, where, “Please pay the bill.” Which is horrifying when there's several orders of magnitude difference between your normal bill and what happens post-breach. But what I did my whole post on “17 Ways to Run Containers on AWS,” followed by “17 More Ways to Run Containers on AWS,” and [unintelligible 00:12:00] about three services away from having a third one ready to go on that, the point is not, “Too many ways to run containers,” because yes, that is true and it's also amusing to me—less so to the containers team at AWS which does not have a sense of humor or sense of self-awareness of which they have been alerted—and fine, but every time you're running a container, it is a way to turn it into a crypto mining operation, in some way shape or form, which means there are almost 40-some-odd services now that can reasonably be used to spin up cryptocurrency mining. And that is the best-case breach scenario in a bunch of ways. It costs a bunch of money and things to clean up, but ‘we lost customer data.' That can destroy companies.Chris: Here's the worst part. Crypto mining is no longer profitable even when I've got stolen API keys because bitcoin's in the toilet. So, now they are going after different things. Actually, the most recent one is they look to see if your account is out of the SCS sandbox and if so, they go back to the tried-and-true way of doing internet scams, which is email spam.Corey: For me, having worked in operations for a very long time, I've been in situations where I worked at Expensify and had access to customer data there. I have worked in other finance companies—I worked at Blackrock. Where I work now, I have access to customer billing data. And let me be serious here for a second, I take all of these things seriously, but I also in all of those roles slept pretty well at night. The one that kept me up was a brief stint I did as the Director of Tech Ops at Grindr over ten years ago because unlike the stuff where I'm spending the rest of my career and my time now, it's not just money anymore.Whereas today, if I get popped, someone can get access to what a bunch of companies are paying AWS. It's scandalous, and I will be sued into oblivion and my company will not exist anymore and I will have a cloud hanging over my head forever. So, I have to be serious about it—Chris: But nobody will die.Corey: Nobody dies. Whereas, “Oh, this person is on Grindr and they're not out publicly,” or they live in a jurisdiction where that is punishable by imprisonment or death, you have blood on your hands, on some level, and I have never wanted that kind of responsibility.Chris: Yeah. It's reasonably scary. I've always been happy to say that, you know, the worst thing that I had to do was keep the Russians off CNN and my friends from downloading Rick and Morty.Corey: Exactly. It's, “Oh, heavens, you're winding up costing some giant conglomerate somewhere theoretical money on streaming subscriptions.” It's not material to the state of the world. And part of it, too, is—what's always informed my approach to things is, I'm not a data hoarder in the way that it seems our entire industry is. For the Last Week in AWS newsletter, the data that I collect and track is pretty freaking small.It's, “You want to sign up for the lastweekinaws.com newsletter. Great, I need your email address.” I don't need your name, I don't need the company you work at. You want to give me a tagged email address? Fine. You want to give me some special address that goes through some anonymizing thing? Terrific. I need to know where I'm sending the newsletter. And then I run a query on that for metrics sometimes, which is this really sophisticated database query called a count. How many subscribers do I have at any given point because that matters to our sponsors. But can we get—you give us any demographic? No, I cannot. I can't. I have people who [unintelligible 00:15:43] follow up surveys sometimes and that's it.Chris: And you're able to make money doing that. You don't have to collect, okay, you know, Chris's zip code is this and Bob's zip code is that and Frank's zip code is the other thing.Corey: Exactly.Chris: Or job titles, or you know, our mother's maiden name or anything else like that.Corey: I talk about what's going on in the world of AWS, so it sort of seems to me that if you're reading this stuff every week, either because of the humor or in spite of the humor, you probably are in a position where services and goods tied to that ecosystem would be well-received by you or one of the other 32,000 people who happen to be reading the newsletter or listening to the podcast or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's an old-timey business model. It's okay, I want to wind up selling, I don't know, expensive wristwatches. Well, maybe I'll advertise in a magazine that caters to people who have an interest in wristwatches, or caters to a demographic that traditionally buys those wristwatches. And okay, we'll run an ad campaign and see if it works.Chris: It's been traditional advertising, not the micro-targeting stuff. And you know, television was the same way back in the broadcast era, you know? You watched a particular show, people of that demographic who watched that particular show had certain advertisers they wanted.Corey: That part of the challenge I've seen too, from sponsors of this show, for example, is they know it works, but they're trying to figure out how to do any form of attribution on this. And my answer—which sounds self-serving, but it's true—is, there's no effective way to do it because every time you try, like, “Enter this coupon code,” yeah, I assure you, some of these things wind up costing millions of dollars to deploy at large companies at scale and they provide value for doing it. No one's going to punch in a coupon code to get 10% off or something like that. Procurement is going to negotiate custom contracts and it's going to be brought up maybe by someone who heard the podcast ad. Maybe it just sits in the back of their mind until they hear something and it just winds of contributing to a growing awareness of these things.You're never going to do attribution that works on things like that. People try sometimes to, “Oh, you'll get $25 in credit,” or, “We'll give you a free t-shirt if you fill out the form.” Yeah, but now you're biasing for people who find that a material motivator. When I'm debating what security suite I'm going to roll out at my enterprise I don't want a free t-shirt for that. In fact, if I get a free t-shirt and I wear that shirt from the vendor around the office while I'm trying to champion bringing that thing in, I look a little compromised.Chris: Yeah. Yeah, I am—[laugh] I got no response to that [laugh].Corey: No, no. I hear you. One thing I do want to talk about is the last time we spoke, you mentioned you were involved in getting fwd:cloudsec—a conference—off the ground. Like all good cloud security conferences, it's named after an email subject line.It is co-located with re:Inforce this year in Anaheim, California. Somewhat ominously enough, I used to live a block-and-a-half away from the venue. But I don't anymore and in fact, because nobody checks the global event list when they schedule these things, I will be on the other side of the world officiating a wedding the same day. So, yet again, I will not be at re:Inforce.Chris: That is a shame because I think you would have made an excellent person to contribute to our call for papers and attend. So yes, fwd:cloudsec is deliberately actually named after a subject line because all of the other Amazon conferences seem to be that way. And we didn't want to be going backwards and thinking, you know, past tense. We were looking forward to our conference. Yeah, so we're effectively a vendor-neutral cloud security conference. We liked the idea of being able to take the talks that Amazon PR would never allow on stage at re:Inforce and run with it.Corey: I would question that. I do want to call that out because I gave a talk at re:Invent one year about a vulnerability I found and reported, with the help of two other people, Scott Piper and Brandon Sherman, to the AWS security team. And we were able to talk about that on stage with Zack Glick, who at the time, was one of basically God's own prototypes, working over in the AWS environment next to Dan [Erson 00:19:56]. Now, Dan remains the salt of the earth, and if he ever leaves basically just short the entire US economy. It's easier. He is amazing. I digress. The point being is that they were very open about talking about an awful lot of stuff that I would never have expected that they would be okay with.Chris: And last year at re:Inforce, they had an excellent, excellent chalk talk—but it was a chalk talk, not recorded—on how ransomware attacks operate. And they actually, like, revealed some internal, very anonymized patterns of how attacks are working. So, they're starting to realize what we've been saying in the cloud security community for a while, which is, we need more legitimate threat intelligence. On the other hand, they don't want to call it threat intelligence because the word threat is threatening, and therefore, you know, we're going to just call it, you know, patterns or whatever. And our conference is, again, also multi-cloud, a concept that until recently, AWS, you know, didn't really want to acknowledge that there were other clouds and that people would use both of them [crosstalk 00:21:01]—Corey: Multi-cloud security is a nightmare. It's just awful.Chris: Yeah, I don't like multi-cloud, but I've come to realize that it is a thing. That you will either start at a company that says, “We're AWS and we're uni-cloud,” and then next thing, you know, either some rogue developer out there has gone and spun up an Azure subscription or your acquire somebody who's in GCP, or heaven forbid, you have to go into some, you know, tinhorn dictator's jurisdiction and they require you to be on-prem or leverage Oracle Cloud or something. And suddenly, congratulations, you're now multi-cloud. So yes, our goal is really to be the things that aren't necessarily onstage or aren't all just, “It's great.” Even your talk was how great the incident response and vulnerability remediation process was.Corey: How great my experience with it was at the time, to be clear. Because I also have gotten to a point where I am very aware that, in many cases when dealing with AWS, my reputation precedes me. So, when I wind up tweeting about a problem or opening a support case, I do not accept as a given that my experience is what everyone is going to experience. But a lot of the things they did made a lot of sense and I was frankly, impressed that they were willing to just talk about anything that they did internally. Because previously that had not been a thing that they did in open forums like that.Chris: But you go back to the Glue incident where somebody found a bug and they literally went and went to every single CloudTrail event going back to the dawn of the service to validate that, okay, the, only two times we ever saw this happen were between the two researcher's accounts who disclosed it. And so, kudos to them for that level of forward communication to their customers because yeah, I think we still haven't heard anything out of Azure for last year's—or a year-and-a-half ago's Wiz findings.Corey: Well, they did do a broad blog post about this that they put out, which I thought, “Okay, that was great. More of this please.” Because until they start talking about security issues and culture and the remediation thereof, I don't give a shit what they have to say about almost anything else because it all comes back to security. The only things I use Azure for, which admittedly has some great stuff; their computer vision API? Brilliant—but the things I use them for are things that I start from a premise of security is not important to that service.The thing I use it for on the soon-to-be-pivoted to Mastodon Twitter thread client that I built, it writes alt-text for images that are about to be put out publicly. Yeah, there's no security issue from that perspective. I am very hard-pressed to imagine a scenario in which that were not true.Chris: I can come up with a couple, but you know—Corey: It feels really contrived. And honestly, that's the thing that concerns me, too: the fact that I finally read, somewhat recently, an AWS white paper talking about—was it a white paper or was it blog post? I forget the exact media that it took. But it was about how they are seeing ransomware attacks on S3, which was huge because before that, I assumed it was something that was being made up by vendors to sell me something.Chris: So, that was the chalk talk.Corey: Yes.Chris: They finally got the chalk talk from re:Inforce, they gave it again at re:Invent because it was so well received and now they have it as a blog post out there, so that, you know, it's not just for people who show up in the room, they can hear it; it's actually now documented out there. And so, kudos to the Amazon security team for really getting that sort of threat intelligence out there to the community.Corey: Now, it's in writing, and that's something that I can cite as opposed to, “Well, I was at re:Invent and I heard—” Yeah, we saw the drink tab. We know what you might have thought you heard or saw at re:Invent. Give us something we can take to the board.Chris: There were a lot of us on that bar tab, so it's not all you.Corey: Exactly. And it was my pleasure to do it, to be clear. But getting back to fwd:cloudsec, I'm going to do you a favor. Whether it's an actual favor or the word favor belongs in quotes, the way that I submit CFPs, or conference talks, is optimized because I don't want to build a talk that is never going to get picked up. Why bother to go through all the work until I have to give it somewhere?So, I start with a catchy title and then three to five sentences. And if people accept it, great, then I get to build the talk. This is a forcing function in some ways because if you get a little delayed, they will not move the conference for you. I've checked. But the title of a talk that I think someone should submit for fwd:cloudsec is, “I Am Smarter Than You, so Cloud Security is Easy.”And the format and the conceit of the talk is present it with sort of a stand-it-up-to-take-it-down level of approach where you are over-confident in the fact that you are smarter than everyone else and best practices don't apply to you and so much of this stuff is just security theater designed as a revenue extraction mechanism as opposed to something you should actually be doing. And talk about why none of these things matter because you use good security and you know, it's good because you came up with it and there's no way that you could come up with something that you couldn't break because you're smart. It says so right in the title and you're on stage and you have a microphone. They don't. Turn that into something. I feel like there's a great way to turn that in a bunch of different directions. I'd love to see someone give that talk.Chris: I think Nickolas Sharp thought that too.Corey: [laugh]. Exactly. In fact, that will be a great way to bring it back around at the end. And it's like, “And that's why I'm better at security than you are. If you have any questions beyond this, you can reach me at whatever correctional institute I go in on Thursday.” Exactly. There's ways to make it fun and engaging. Because from my perspective, talks have to be entertaining or people don't pay attention.Chris: They're either entertaining, or they're so new and advanced. We're definitely an advanced cloud security practice thing. They were 500 levels. Not to brag or anything, but you know, you want the two to 300-level stuff, you can go CCJ up the street. We're hitting and going above and beyond what a lot of the [unintelligible 00:27:18]—Corey: I am not as advanced on that path as you are; I want to be very clear on this. You speak, I listen. You're one of those people when it comes to security. Because again, no one's life is hanging in the balance with respect to what I do. I am confident in our security posture here, but nothing's perfect. Everything is exploitable, on some level.It's also not my core area of focus. It is yours. And if you are not better than I am at this, then I have done something sort of strange, or so of you, in the same way that it is a near certainty—but not absolute—that I am better at optimizing AWS bills than you are. Specialists exist for a reason and to discount that expertise is the peak of hubris. Put that in your talk.Chris: Yeah. So, one talk I really want to see, and I've been threatening to give it for a while, is okay, if there's seventeen ways—or sorry, seventeen times two, soon to be seventeen times three ways to run containers in AWS, there's that many ways to exfiltrate credentials from those containers. What are all of those things? Do we have a holistic way of understanding, this is how credentials can be exfiltrated so that we then as defenders can go figure out, okay, how do we build detections and mitigations for this?Corey: Yeah. I'm a huge fan of Canarytokens myself, for that exact purpose. There are many devices I have where the only credentials in plain text on disk are things that as soon as they get used, I wind up with a bunch of things screaming at me that there's been a problem and telling me where it is. I'm not saying that my posture is impenetrable. Far from it. But you're going to have to work for it a little bit harder than running some random off-the-shelf security scanner against my AWS account and finding, oops, I forgot to turn on a bucket protection.Chris: And the other area that I think is getting really interesting is, all of the things that have credentials into your Cloud account, whether it's something like CircleCI or GitHub. I was having a conversation with somebody just this morning and we were talking about Roles Anywhere, and I was like, “Roles Anywhere is great if you've got a good strong PKI solution and can keep that private certificate or that certificate you need safe.” If you just put it on a disk, like, you would have put your AKIA and secret on a desk, congratulations, you haven't really improved security. You've just gotten rid of the IAM users that are being flagged in your CSPM tool, and congratulations, you have, in fact, achieved security theater.Corey: It's obnoxious, on some level. And part of the problem is cost and security are aligned and that people care about them right after they really should have cared about them. The difference is you can beg, cry, whine, et cetera to AWS for concessions, you can raise another round of funding; there have solutions with money. But security? That ship has already sailed.Chris: Yeah. Once the data is out, the data is out. Now, I will say on the bill, you get reminded of it every month, about three or four days after. It's like, “Oh. Crap, yeah, I should have turned off that EC2 instance. I just burned $100.” Or, “Oh hey, we didn't turn off that application. I just burned $100,000.” That doesn't happen on security. Security events tend to be few and far between; they're just much bigger when they happen.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time to chat with me. I'm sure I'll have you back on between now and re:Inforce slash fwd:cloudsec or anything else we come up with that resembles an email subject line. If people want to learn more and follow along with your adventures—as they should—where's the best place for him to find you these days?Chris: So, I am now pretty much living on Mastodon on the InfoSec Exchange. And my website, chrisfarris.com is where you can find the link to that because it's not just at, you know, whatever. You have to give the whole big long URL in Mastodon. It's no longer—Corey: Yeah. It's like a full-on email address with weird domains.Chris: Exactly, yeah. So, find me at http colon slash slash infosec dot exchange slash at jcfarris. Or just hit Chris Farris and follow the links. For fwd:cloudsec, we are conveniently located at fwdcloudsec.org, which is F-W-D cloud sec dot org. No colons because I don't think those are valid in whois.Corey: Excellent choice. And of course, links to that go in the [show notes 00:31:32], so click the button. It's easier. Thanks again for your time. I really appreciate it.Chris: Thank you.Corey: Chris Farris, Cloud Security Nerd at Turbot slash Turbo. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. 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