Outright – The Company and the People Behind It
Our Mission:
Outright dramatically streamlines the work involved with running a small business, by helping entrepreneurs pay the right taxes, organize their income and expenses, and keep their businesses on track. We help small businesses thrive in our connected world.
Outright's Beginnings:
When Kevin Reeth & Ben Curren left Intuit in 2006 to start their own businesses, they struggled with organizing their financial data. "Some of the data was in PayPal, the rest was in bank accounts and spreadsheets, it didn't make any sense, that all of that data was available but in distinct accounts and formats – we needed it in ONE place to be useful." They knew enough from their Intuit days to know that integrating those data sources would be hard, but not quite impossible. Their problem mirrored one faced by millions of other small businesses - too much time and effort spent on the least enjoyable part of running one's own business. Kevin and Ben wanted to help.
They gathered a team of experienced, passionate Rails engineers that would make any high tech entrepreneur drool. This small but growing, agile team has been releasing weekly improvements to the Outright bookkeeping service since late 2008.
Where we are today:
With over 150,000 customers signing up since that first day in 2008, we've reach a number of milestones over the last three and half years – Even a marriage proposal of sorts. One customer said, I love Outright so much, "I would marry Outright if I could." We are not stopping there. We're fanatical about helping small businesses and what they represent. There's much more work to be done, so we better get going.
Our office is in the heart of downtown Mountain View, overlooking Castro Street's array of restaurants and bars, which the team enjoys regularly. There's plenty of in-office athletics, and a healthy dose of hard work... all to improve the lives of small business owners.
The team, the opportunity to help over 25 million small businesses, and the secret sauce of data as an asset convinced leading investors including Sequoia Capital, First Round Capital, Shasta Ventures, SoftTech VC, and Felicis Ventures to back Outright.
Steven Aldrich
CEO
@spaldrich
Steven loves small businesses. He had a paper route as a kid. Later he and 2 friends ran a small business in college picking up and storing other kids' stuff for the summer. After grad school he founded a web company to simplify the process for shopping for insurance. Steven's Dad, who researches what makes entrepreneurs successful, warned Allison - at the time Steven's fiancé - that the likelihood of success for any start-up was low. Steven started the business anyway (and Allison married him). After that business was acquired, he spent over a decade at Intuit building solutions to help small businesses get paid, use the web to grow their businesses, and run their stores more easily. Outside of Outright, Steven is President of the Board of the Bay Area Glass Institute (www.BAGI.org), a non-profit glass studio, and enjoys spending time with Allison and their son, Jackson, at many sports and arts events.
Kevin Reeth
Co-Founder
@kmr2
Kevin has spent more than 15 years bringing software applications and services for Intuit, Yahoo! and eGroups. With Intuit, Kevin launched numerous small business products, including versions of Quicken, rental property software, and the JumpUp community for entrepreneurs.
Ben Curren
CTO
Co-Founder
@bcurren
Ben has spent the last 12 years developing web and desktop applications for both small and large corporations, including several years in Intuit's QuickBooks Group. He specializes in using technology to solve real world problems by creating easy-to-use solutions.
Ryan Thompson
Biz Dev
@socialryan
Ryan joins us with 10 years of business development, corporate strategy and finance management experience across Intel and Intuit. While at Intuit, Ryan managed the acquisition of MyCorporation.com, then became a leader of TurboTax's New Business Initiatives. In 2008, Ryan founded FileLater, an IRS e-file provider for filing tax extensions and estimated taxes for small business customers.
Christie Strasia
Customer Care
Christie brings over 15 years of customer care and operations experience to the Outright team. And 20 years wowing audiences as a modern / jazz dancer has carried over nicely too. At Outright, she is responsible for developing the Customer Care team and processes, and above all, a customer-centric culture where delivering "wow" is again, the definition of success.
Laurel Lee
Product Leader
Laurel has been focused on financial management products for small businesses for over a dozen years. Initially, at Intuit, leading product management for QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online Edition, and now here at Outright. Her favorite part of the job is always hearing the stories of the courageous people who make a living by doing what they love. It's these stories that inspire her daily to strive to enable small businesses to do more of what they love. In her free time, she enjoys quiet time with her family, but is happy with whatever volume they have to offer.
Laura Messerschmitt
Marketing
Laura has over 10 years of experience working with small businesses at Deloitte Consulting, the Export-Import Bank, and Intuit. Her first job was in a small business (an after school tutoring program for young kids) and she's still serving small businesses today at Outright. While at Intuit, Laura spent 7 years in marketing and product management for QuickBooks. She launched multiple versions of QuickBooks and led up an effort to sponsor $1M in grants for small businesses. In her free time, Laura likes spending time with her young son and husband. She also enjoys dragonboat racing and speed-walking.
Tilmann Bruckhaus
Data Platform and Analytics
Tilmann is thrilled to help make the Outright product, in part because he believes that bookkeeping, tracking finances, and paying taxes should be easy: when he co-founded a startup before Outright was available he quickly found he had to hire a bookkeeping service. At Outright, he drives data strategy and builds services that power customer-facing services and customer insights. He previously was with Eventbrite, PayPal, Numetrics, Sun, and IBM. Tilmann holds ten US patents, a Ph.D. in Computer Science from McGill University, and he received a Sun Microsystems Innovation Award and an IBM Advanced Research Fellowship.
Investors
Ravi Mohan: Managing Director; Shasta Ventures
Prior to co-founding Shasta Ventures, Ravi was a general partner at Battery Ventures where he led eight investments and served on the boards of 12 software and technology-enabled service companies. He is an active Charter Member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and regularly volunteers his time helping put together TiE events.
Rob Hayes: Partner; First Round Capital
Rob came to First Round Capital from Omidyar Network where he was their first venture investor. He led most of Omidyar Network's initial venture capital deals and later built and ran the technology investing group. Prior to joining Omidyar Network, Rob was at Palm where he started up their corporate venture fund.
Bryan Schreier: Partner; Sequoia Capital
Bryan is a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital focusing on internet, enterprise and mobile investments. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital, Bryan was Google's Senior Director of International Online Sales and Operations. Prior to Google, Bryan served in Morgan Stanley's Technology Investment Banking Group.
Jeff Clavier: Founder and Managing Partner; SoftTech VC
One of the most active seed investors in Web 2.0 startups, Jeff has invested in more than 50 consumer Internet companies. Jeff was recognized as one of the 13 "Web 2.0 King Makers" by Business 2.0, and in 2008, BusinessWeek named him one of "The 25 Most Influential People on the Web".
Aydin Senkut: Founder and President of Felicis Ventures
Active angel investor since 2005, in more than 50 start-ups and had 7 portfolio companies acquired by corporations including Microsoft, Intuit and AT&T. Aydin has been featured on New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Financial Times Germany, South China Morning Post and San Francisco Chronicle.
