Puzzle started with a simple belief: accounting is one of the most important inputs to a company's most important decisions. And it has been held back by legacy software. We believed accounting should be
Accounting can be more useful to the people building businesses today, while still solving tax and shareholder compliance for tomorrow.
Over the past several years, we built the technology to make that possible. A modern AI accounting platform where software generates financial statements that accountants can trust. Along the way, we learned something important:
Technology alone doesn't transform an industry. The business model and incentives around it have to change too.
That is the opportunity behind Puzzle's next chapter.
We believe AI can create a better accounting market for everyone: better products and outcomes for customers, stronger businesses and better work for accounting firms, and a technology ecosystem whose incentives are aligned with both.
That is what we are building next.
We do not believe that the future of AI accounting is replacing people, and neither do our customers. The narrative of AI vs. people have been at odds. It’s time for this to change.
Customers don't just want transactions categorized more cheaply. They want confidence that their books are right. They want someone to answer when something looks strange. They want help understanding cash flow, taxes, profitability, and the financial health of their business. They want judgment, accountability, and advice.
Those things become more valuable as AI gets better, not less.
What AI changes is everything underneath them.
AI can eliminate enormous amounts of repetitive work. It can make accounting more real-time. It can identify problems earlier. It can improve consistency and accuracy. It can give accountants better information and more time to spend helping their customers.
It should be better accounting.
More accurate. Faster. More proactive. More insightful. And still delivered by a human being who knows the customer and stands behind the work.
We believe the accounting firms that win the next decade will look less like traditional professional-services firms with software layered on top, and more like technology companies with exceptional accountants at their center designing and overseeing the technology.
For decades, the incentives in accounting haven't always lined up.
Customers want better service, more transparency, and faster books.
Accountants want to spend less of their lives doing repetitive work and more of it exercising judgment, advising customers, and solving hard problems.
Firms want to grow without having to add people at exactly the same rate as they add customers.
Technology companies want their products to create measurable value rather than become another piece of software sitting beside a firm's existing processes.
AI creates the opportunity to align all of those interests.
A firm that embraces AI can serve customers better while allowing its people to spend more time on the work humans are uniquely good at. Customers can get a higher-quality product without sacrificing the relationship and accountability they value. And technology can become part of delivering the outcome instead of merely another tool firms are asked to adopt.
The opportunity isn't to take the human out of accounting. It's to build a model where technology makes the human more valuable.
That's the market we want to help create.
Puzzle is going much deeper with the firms that use our technology.
For customers, we want to make buying accounting and advisory dramatically easier. Today, finding an accountant, bookkeeper, tax professional, or financial advisor can mean weeks of searching, interviewing, comparing inconsistent proposals, trying to understand pricing, and figuring out what "good" even looks like.
We can make that experience much better.
Puzzle will work with a our most AI-forward firms to create clearer products, transparent pricing, defined service expectations, and a modern technology experience.
And we'll give those firms something equally important: the technology, workflows, and customer-acquisition engine to help them build the firms of the future.
That means:
This is helping the best firms become much bigger and much better.
This next chapter also comes with a leadership transition.
Ozgur Uzuner is stepping into the role of CEO.
Oz has spent his career building growth engines, products, and businesses that scale. Most recently, he led growth at Poplin and Swimply and previously served as COO of Steady. Since joining Puzzle, he has been the driving force behind the customer-acquisition engine that will sit at the center of Puzzle 2.0.
Jason Mitchell is stepping into the role of CTO.
Jason brings a rare combination of accounting and engineering experience. He is a former CPA, accountant, and auditor who became an engineer, worked at Affirm, and went on to build and lead major parts of Puzzle's ledger. He understands both the technology and the profession we are trying to change.
They are exactly the leaders needed for this next version of Puzzle.
Sasha Orloff, Puzzle’s cofounder and CEO, will join Accrual full time while remaining on Puzzle’s board, where he will continue to support the company and advocate for the startups and small businesses Puzzle serves. John Cwikla, Puzzle’s cofounder and CTO, will continue advising the teams through the transition and helping set them up for success in their next chapters.
What this means if you use Puzzle today?
Nothing about your account changes. Your data stays with Puzzle and doesn't move anywhere. Your pricing and terms are unchanged. Your support contacts are unchanged.
If you already work with an accountant or firm you like, keep working with them. The partner network is something we're adding as an option, not a requirement, and we won't share your information with a firm unless you ask us to.
The only difference you should notice is that finding good accounting help, during onboarding or later when you want it, gets a lot easier.
Every major technological shift changes more than software. Eventually, it changes the structure of the market around it.
We think AI is reaching that point in accounting.
The firms of the future won't win simply because they use AI.
They'll win because they use AI to build a fundamentally better product for their customers: real-time instead of retrospective, proactive instead of reactive, more accurate, more insightful, and more human where being human matters most.
That creates a better outcome for the business owner.
A better job for the accountant.
A stronger model for the firm.
And a healthier ecosystem for everyone building technology around them.
That is the future Puzzle 2.0 is built to help create.
We're excited to get started.
