Jumping Ship From Tax Tech To Fintech: A New Chapter In My Journey Through Disruption

When I first entered the tech world, it was 1995. Amazon.com had just started selling books online. Hackers, the movie starring Angelina Jolie that explored an…interesting view of technology, had just been released. And Hotmail was just an idea that needed funding. I was getting my computer science degree, and while most of my peers’ idea of a dream job involved working at a big company like AT&T or GE, I opted to work as a video game programmer for a startup. The company was far ahead of its time. We built an online role-playing game (RPG) that ran in our own data center, while players connected via our dial-up internet service. While we chuckle (or cringe) at the thought of dial-up video games now, this was quite cutting-edge back then. You could even say it was — to use a buzzword from today — “disruptive.” I loved working for a company that was changing the way people thought about technology. In 1999, while getting my Masters in Information Systems, I was enticed by the entrepreneurial path and co-founded what became known as GoFileRoom. It was the first-ever workflow and document management software that was 100% cloud-based, before the cloud was even a concept. In today’s terms, if the workflow of Salesforce and Google Docs had a baby, it would be GoFileRoom. GoFileRoom quickly became the #1 workflow and document management software for the accounting industry. We created an entirely new market, changing the way accounting firms manage their operations, resulting in increased profitability. We made the process paperless and all electronic over the internet. Then 2005 came. That year, Thomson Reuters acquired GoFileRoom. Our company’s platform became the underlying technology of Thomson Reuters’ ONESOURCE Tax platform. Today ONESOURCE is the #1 global tax platform that runs tax departments of the world’s largest multinational corporations. At the time of the acquisition, I was managing a team of 25 technologists. In the span of 11 years, in my role as Thomson Reuters’ VP & Head of Software Development, that number increased to 900 people across the globe. The acquisition of GoFileRoom was a defining moment in my career as both an entrepreneur and technologist. Today marks another milestone. I am excited to announce that I have joined CommonBond, the fast-growing NYC fintech startup, as the company’s first Chief Technology Officer. The path from video games to tax technology to fintech may seem circuitous but there’s a common thread through all three: disruption within an established industry. We hear the word disruption a lot these days. To some, it might not mean much. But my view of the concept is simple. At CommonBond, I’m leading a team that is tasked with building technology to disrupt a centuries-old industry that has yet to be disrupted: banking. To date, CommonBond has focused on funding and refinancing student loans. We’re transforming the user experience of taking out a loan with a process that is entirely online, while using a wide range of sophisticated data points to make lending decisions — and, thanks to the technology we’re building in-house, we’re doing it in record time. The incumbents in our industry will have a difficult time keeping up. However, what I’m most excited about — and why I am excited to be joining CommonBond — is not the now of fintech, but rather the future. My vision for CommonBond’s technology involves delighting our customers through an experience they never seen before in personal finance. Our technology strategy involves the application of machine learning to provide our customers tailored products and building software robots to automate the lending processes we have in place today. In 1995, machine learning was pretty much unheard of and robots were largely considered a thing of the future. Today, we have the capability to apply these concepts to the age-old lending industry and deliver a best-in-class customer experience. I’ve set some lofty goals for myself as CTO of CommonBond. While it’s a change leaving an established company and going back to my entrepreneurial roots, I’m energized by the greenfield opportunity to innovate and build a world class company. And, as another decade goes by, I’m even more excited to look back and see what we’ve managed to accomplish.