Oleg Kozyrev is a serial founder and is most recently the founder of Para (formerly Tingz), a platform which enables creators to monetize their relationships with superfans. Tingz provides various monetization mechanics — such as wishlist or wheel of fortune — on a single page to make fans’ donation experiences more entertaining and interactive.
Although Oleg does not have formal training in accounting, he uses AngelList Stack and Puzzle to give himself and the team at Tingz superpowers for creating and managing his business, far beyond the typical startup with only 10 employees.
Here’s the interview with Oleg:
We emigrated in December 2021 and launched our MVP in May 2022. We incorporated quickly with the help of AngelList Stack and use it to manage our cap table and investor communications.
Tingz is in the creator economy space, and the industry is changing right now. Previously like 95 percent of the money to creators was from advertisement and brand-related revenue. In the last two, three years, there has been a growing trend of direct payments from users to creators. It's some donations and some payment for extra content.
Editor's note (2026): This interview was conducted in 2022. Since then, the shift Oleg described has accelerated significantly. By 2025, brand deals and sponsored content accounted for ~59% of creator revenue — down from historic highs — with subscriptions, memberships, and direct fan payments now making up a growing share of the remainder. The creator economy itself has grown to an estimated $310 billion globally in 2026, per Grand View Research.
And so we built Tingz, which provides a set of tools for creators to monetize their relationship with their true fans. We build a lot of different mechanics for a superfan or just fan to interact with the creator and get some attention just to buy some items or to buy five seconds of fame.
One was Rocketbank, which was a mobile-first bank, like Chime or Revolut. And it was pretty huge; we had about 1 million users. (Rocketbank was shut down in January 2021 after its parent company Qiwi was unable to find an acquirer; the brand was later acquired by Sovcombank and relaunched in 2025.) And another was called Local Kitchen, which does food delivery of prepared packaged foods using a network of retail kitchens and delivery.
At these previous companies, we tried to build some internal tools to make some reporting and reconciliations. We set up a lot of our compliance and business processes manually, which took a lot of time. We always wanted better systems that would help us automate some of these processes that we had to do ourselves.
It helps to have a bigger picture, helicopter view. Right now, Tingz is not a huge company, and we don't have a huge team; it’s only 10 people. But I want to have the business in control at the start. I want to put good accounting into the DNA of the company. I really feel that it's important that you keep track from the beginning; later on it will help us when we will hopefully be bigger and more complex.
“But I want to have the business in control at the start. I want to put good accounting into the DNA of the company. I really feel that it's important that you keep track from the beginning; later on it will help us when we will hopefully be bigger and more complex.”
Using AngelList and Puzzle make business setup and financial management possible for teams of any size.
Disclaimer, I don't have an accounting education, and I don't have a CPA, but I believe that it's really important for the founder or entrepreneur or some C-level [person] to keep track of accounting. It's really useful and important to understand what is happening inside your company, inside your finances.
It's really hard to find people and accountants who understand the goal of accounting for a founder. It's not just about taxes. Yes, that’s one issue which we need [our accounting] to deliver. But the main thing is an information system or management of the company. And really, a lot of accountants don't feel that pain, because they mainly just try to follow the rules for taxes and regulations.
I log into Puzzle almost every day or at least a few times a week to review our position. And we have established meetings every month to see our P&L and balance sheet. I sit down with Kirill, the co-founder of Tingz, to see how things are going regarding net revenue and how much money we have left with burn rate and runway projections.
We share status updates with our investors each month. Our investors use AngelList. We describe what we learned, what we are going to do next, and a financial update, including how much money is left and our runway. We share a P&L and balance sheet for the month from Puzzle.
The trends Oleg described in 2022 have played out at scale. The creator economy is now valued at an estimated $310 billion globally in 2026, per Grand View Research, with strong growth projected through the decade ahead. Direct fan monetization (subscriptions, memberships, tipping mechanics like Tingz's) is no longer a niche trend; it's a core revenue layer for creators who have reduced their reliance on brand deals alone.
On the financial infrastructure side, the bar for early-stage founders has also risen. Investors in 2026 expect real-time visibility into burn, runway, and cap table — not a quarterly spreadsheet sent by email. Tools like Puzzle and AngelList Stack, which Oleg adopted early, have become a common stack for venture-backed startups precisely because they make that visibility cheap to maintain from day one. What Oleg described as a competitive advantage in 2022 is now table stakes.
In the future, when new investors come and see that we are serious about keeping track of what is happening with the money and our cap table and can speak in detail about anything that has happened, they will be more confident to invest in that kind of company. Founders preparing for that moment can use the Series A Readiness Pack to make sure their financials are investor-ready.
| AngelList Stack | Puzzle | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary role | Cap table management & investor communications | Accounting, bookkeeping & financial reporting |
| What it handles | Equity, SAFEs, shareholder updates | Transaction categorization, P&L, balance sheet, burn rate & runway |
| How often Oleg uses it | Monthly investor updates & cap table events | Almost every day (or several times a week) |
| Key output shared with investors | Equity dashboard & update communications | Monthly P&L and balance sheet |
| Integration | Puzzle financials feed directly into AngelList investor dashboards — no spreadsheet export required | |
Puzzle is built for exactly this situation. Oleg logs into Puzzle almost every day to review Tingz's financial position — with no CFO or controller on staff. Because Puzzle connects directly to your bank accounts and fintech tools and categorizes transactions automatically, your cash balance, burn rate, and runway update in real time without anyone on your team manually entering data. For a seed- or early-stage founder who needs visibility but can't yet justify a full finance hire, that means you always know where you stand — not just at month-end when a spreadsheet arrives.
The fastest path is connecting your bank and payroll accounts to accounting software that maintains a live general ledger — rather than pulling numbers manually into a spreadsheet every few weeks. Oleg's setup at Tingz: Puzzle handles the daily transaction categorization and keeps a running view of net revenue and cash, while he and his co-founder sit down monthly to review the full P&L and balance sheet and model their runway. That combination — automated daily data plus a disciplined monthly review — means runway surprises are rare. You don't need a finance team for this; you need software that does the categorization work so you only have to do the thinking.
The combination Oleg uses at Tingz — and that has become common among venture-backed early-stage companies — is AngelList Stack for cap table management and investor communications, paired with Puzzle for the accounting layer. AngelList Stack handles equity, SAFEs, and investor updates; Puzzle maintains the books and generates the monthly P&L and balance sheet that go into those updates. Because the two tools integrate, founders can share accurate financials with investors directly from Puzzle without reformatting or exporting to a spreadsheet. For a 10-person seed-stage company, this stack provides the same investor-reporting discipline that a larger company might get from a controller — without the overhead.
Yes. Puzzle connects directly to revenue sources common in digital and creator businesses — including Stripe — and categorizes incoming payments automatically against your chart of accounts. For a platform like Tingz, that means subscription fees, direct fan payments, and payout transfers all flow into the books without manual entry. Your P&L updates in real time, so you can see net revenue and gross margin on any given day rather than waiting for a month-end close. If your payment processor isn't natively integrated, Puzzle supports PDF bank statement imports that it categorizes automatically, so you're not locked out of visibility just because your stack is nonstandard. For a deeper look at how Puzzle handles Stripe specifically, see our guide to accounting software for Stripe users.
Puzzle maintains a live view of your cash position based on what has synced from connected accounts. For transactions that haven't cleared or synced yet — pending payouts, delayed ACH transfers — Puzzle gives you the current confirmed balance alongside recent transaction history so you can make an informed judgment about where you actually stand. Founders like Oleg check this daily rather than waiting for a reconciliation cycle. If a feed temporarily disconnects, you can upload a PDF bank statement to bridge the gap; Puzzle categorizes those imported transactions automatically so your books stay current even without a live connection.
For payroll providers that don't have a direct Puzzle integration — such as ADP — Puzzle supports uploading payroll reports or PDFs, which its AI can process to generate the corresponding journal entries automatically. This covers the standard payroll entry: gross wages, employer taxes, net pay, and the liability accounts that clear when the bank transfer settles. For a small team where payroll is one of the largest recurring expenses, getting those entries right without a manual import routine is one of the areas where Puzzle's automation pays for itself fastest.
No. Oleg's experience at Tingz is a direct example: he has no formal accounting education and no CPA on staff, yet he reviews Puzzle daily. Puzzle categorizes 85–90% of transactions automatically — founders spend roughly 15–20 minutes a week reviewing what the AI has done rather than entering data manually. The goal isn't to turn founders into accountants; it's to give them accurate, real-time visibility into cash, burn, and runway so they can make better decisions.
Oleg frames it clearly: "I want to put good accounting into the DNA of the company." Building clean financial habits early pays dividends later. When future investors ask detailed questions about your cap table, cash position, or P&L history, you can answer confidently — because the records were maintained continuously, not reconstructed in a panic before a due diligence call. Running out of money is the number-one killer of startups; real-time visibility into burn and runway is what keeps that from blindsiding you.
Puzzle connects directly to your bank and fintech accounts (Mercury, Stripe, Brex, Ramp, Gusto, and more) and updates your cash position, P&L, and balance sheet daily. Oleg checks Tingz's position almost every day. Monthly, he and his co-founder sit down to review the full P&L and balance sheet and model runway. The combination — automated daily data plus a disciplined monthly review — means you're never more than a few clicks from knowing exactly where you stand.
The two tools cover different jobs. AngelList Stack handles the equity layer: cap table management, SAFEs, and investor communications. Puzzle handles the accounting layer: transaction categorization, P&L, balance sheet, burn rate, and runway. Because the two integrate, Oleg can share accurate financial statements with investors directly from Puzzle inside AngelList's dashboards — no spreadsheet export, no reformatting. For a 10-person seed-stage company, that combination delivers the investor-reporting discipline a much larger company might need a controller to maintain.
Before you think you need it. Oleg incorporated Tingz and set up AngelList Stack and Puzzle almost immediately after launching in 2022. The argument is simple: catching up on disorganized books later is expensive and time-consuming; building the system correctly from the start costs almost nothing extra. Investors who see clean, continuous records from day one are more confident — and more likely to write a check.
The AngelList and Puzzle integration is really nice because you can have some dashboards within AngelList, and you can easily share with your other shareholders and investors and employees.
