Bean Emerges From Stealth to Reimagine Specialized Accounting

Bean gives CFOs access to world class service delivery once controlled by the Big 4 legacy firms.

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Bean, a digital accounting platform, has officially launched from stealth mode with missions to democratize the $585-billion global market for accounting services still controlled by the Big Four firms. The Bean mission is helping CFOs solve the current accountant shortage threatening global economic growth.

“Many accountants want to be entrepreneurial and chart their own career path, but the industry has never accommodated that,” said Bean cofounder Anees Pretorius. “This is why the country is facing a dire accounting shortage when we actually have an abundance of new graduates who excel at mathematics, critical thinking and analysis. They view the accounting industry as stodgy, regimented and reliant on outdated technologies. Bean was launched to change that.”

Bean, a 2022 graduate of accelerator TechStars LA, has raised $1.7 million from Matchstick Ventures, Far Out Ventures and Acadian Capital Ventures, joined by angel investors Wayne Chang and Jeff Seibert–founders of AI accounting firm Digits.

Bean matches a fast-growing community of elite financial accountants with companies worldwide that have project-based needs. It offers a SaaS-enabled market network as well as workflow management tools to serve the global accounting industry. Bean enables top accountants to step away from the long, tedious “partner track” offered by top accounting firms and build equity in themselves instead.

Since its launch, Bean has completed more than 17,000 project hours, mostlyfor high-growth technology companies with revenues between $50 million and $1 billion. These companies turn to Bean to support their finance leaders draft and prepare annual 10Qs and 10Ks, quarterly and annual reports, financial statements, board decks, technical accounting memos and other specialized tasks that would have previously been handled by a Big 4 firm for a far larger price tag.

“We’re thrilled to invest in Bean,” said Natty Zola, a partner at Matchstick Ventures. “We see a huge opportunity to rethink how accountants and finance professionals work with CFOs and companies. We believe in a future where these professionals can easily be connected to the projects they love, helping them produce their best work, giving them newfound flexibility and freedom while also enabling CFOs the flexibility to find and hire the best talent for their needs.”

Bean’s stringent vetting process for accountants requires at least three years of public accounting or private industry experience. The company admits just 4% of all applicants seeking to join its network.

Ian Hathaway, an investor in Bean and cofounder of Far Out Venture Capital, said, “Bean represents an exciting category of business with tremendous growth potential—SaaS-enabled marketplaces built around human capital. More importantly, for us, we believe that Anees and Cono are the precise leaders to realize this concept.”

In addition to its service delivery, Bean’s workflow tools provide greater transparency and insight into project completion for clients. The company’s unique approach to entering the market has enabled Bean to begin projects in as little as 48 hours after initial conversations. This has saved clients as much as 50% compared to the biggest traditional firms.

 “We are disrupting the whole accounting model, where the top firms develop proprietary technology and talent and keep it to themselves,” said Cono Onorato, CTO and cofounder of Bean. “We are open-sourcing all of it, so a much wider range of companies can access sophisticated tools and elite accounting talent. At the same time, we are reinventing the whole partner track for accountants, letting them create their own track for the first time. 

About Bean

Bean is a digital specialized accounting firm powering a thriving global economy by democratizing and productizing access to specialized accounting and professional services. The company matches its fast-growing community of elite financial accountants with companies worldwide that have project-based needs. Bean enables top accountants to build equity in themselves and gives any company access to the technology, content and people that were once the sole domain of Big 4 accounting firms.