Pat Larsen on crypto tax software at ZenLedger

0:01I'm Ashen Addison from event chain for investment pitch media and fintech News Network and today on blockchain interviews we have Pat Larson the co-founder and CEO of Zen Ledger Pat welcome to the show it's a pleasure to have you on today thanks Ashton nice to be here you're very welcome uh and it's a pleasure to have you I'd love to start with getting a little bit of background

0:21on the Zen Ledger crypto tax software uh what's it all about and what is your guys unique value proposition yeah sure uh at its core what we are is a web- based uh software that helps accountants and individual uh cryptocurrency investors bring all their transactions together from multiple exchanges and wallets and you know take care of the accounting for you in a very

0:42automated fast way and produce your tax reports for you wonderful I take I took a look through the site and it looks like you guys have a variety of services uh and there's a lot of things that sort of surround crypto tax maybe you could elaborate on what kind of services specifically you guys are offering yeah sure um so at its core what we're doing

1:01is we're ingesting all your data for you um doing some accounting analysis on it and then producing the tax reports the main service is in the end uh giving you your capital gain and loss on your Investments uh but we'll also fill out a schedule d and a form 8949 um you'll also get uh a completely transparent uh spreadsheet that we call Grand unified

1:22accounting that's basically a full audit package for you uh that's very useful for accountants to tick and tie everything together and then we'll also do uh tax loss harvesting so um December 2018 was very useful before the end of the year for people to see you know by a lot where their coins are at and if you had like 10 ether that you'd acquired over two years and um and you you know

1:42you sell two here two here two here like what the tax impact of that is very interesting I know a lot of people store their cryptocurrencies on an exchange you know wholly which I wouldn't recommend but there's a lot of people that have a little bit on an exchange they have some in a hardware wallet a paper wallet on their phone there's so many different ways that you can store

2:03cryptocurrencies um and it's great to have you know a diversification in terms of the ways that you're storing it but also it makes it a little bit confusing uh when you're trying to calculate this all out do you guys have some kind of software that helps you know sort of accumulate all this information from different locations yeah and and that's that's a lot of what we're doing to help

2:23you is we're putting it all in one place so you know by API we'll ingest from a lot of um changes and that's a very clean way of doing things uh if we need to we can help you create xub addresses to bring you know all of your transactions together from a hardware wallet like a Jax or a treasure um you know if you need to you can just enter by hand or or uh you know stuff like

2:45that so we we understand that people were you know going all over the place uh in 2017 2018 investing in icos moving uh things on off wallets and and we like try to back out all these you know non-t taxable self transfers as you like uh you know turn cash into Bitcoin on coinbase send it to your wallet and then send that to binance then get an Ico and

3:08come back like we we do all that for you that's great and Pat how long has the software been live in the market for uh about 18 months now yeah that's great so I guess a lot of people have already been adopting it what does your guys user acquisition uh look like and do you are you guys doing active Marketing in order to grow your user base or is it

3:28more of an organic growth yeah we've had you know over a billion dollars of transactions analyzed in several thousand customers uh in the last 18 months we're doing pretty well uh growing uh in a couple ways one is by referral another is um by you know CPAs using it for their customers and referring it uh we we uh sponsored a couple podcasts like uh you know pomps

3:50uh off the chain um and we do uh you know a lot of content marketing and and uh pay-per-click stuff like that as well so we we try a bunch of different uh channels to see uh what will work that's wonderful and are there is this a competitive space are there other people that are building software similar to this and you know how are you getting an advantage over those other competitors

4:12yeah I'd say it is it is competitive I think uh because it's such a an obvious need um that a lot of people um you know a lot of smart people came into the space to to create startups to to address that need um so I think the way Zen Ledger separates ourselves one is the the quality of art automation um and then two is you know the quality of our customer support like you can get

4:34us by phone email or chat uh we talk to people you know in the evening early uh in the morning on the weekends because you know it's taxes and and it's pretty stressful so those are like we kind of add uh more of a human touch which is generally lacking in in blockchain and crypto that's great to hear and on top of that you know the blockchain industry

4:54is 24 hours a day so it's no more 9 to5 in the stock market here we're we're going all the time around the world um and you never know when you wake up in the morning and and the prices have shifted dramatically or you need to move something in your wallet right very interesting and are you guys just of course it's just for American taxes but have you guys been focused on

5:16you know New York California any of these uh targeted regions or are you just sort of blanketing over uh the states I mean we find that our customers are distributed all over um they there are a bunch in New York and California but I think a lot of that yeah is to do with uh you know early adoption of Technology but then just like where the population is the United States but um

5:38you know the events we go to um are generally in New York Chicago and uh Los Angeles and San Francisco and Seattle um th those were those are where the blockchain events are but I'm I'm really excited to you know see what Wyoming or Nevada will do with you know a legislation at the state level with blockchain and maybe that'll help adoption definitely I'm very excited to

5:59see that as well and hopefully some provinces are you know taking strides to make the first step and put that in so I'm I'm looking forward to that and it sounds very promising and I'd love to hear a little bit more about your guys' business model how are you guys driving your profits and are you looking at other ancillary revenue streams or is it just a basic

6:20subscription yeah uh it is purely like an accountant with charge you so if you just want your 2018 taxes done by us then you would just purchase that year of uh tax reports and it's a one-time fee but you can come back you know in a month six months seven years and make adjustments and rerun you know fresh reports um so that's our our current model and we just uh some people will

6:43sign up for this year and then realize that they can do their 2017 2016 taxes as well uh all in one shot and they'll just do all of that to get themselves compliant up to current day and then you know we we hope to you know please the customers and uh bring them back for 2019 and going forward um we are offering we're you know um we'll be expanding our business lines uh going

7:07forward we'll be working with some larger uh accounting firms and um it won't just be purely uh an income tax or capital gains individual income tax calculation we be looking more at uh you know corporate accounting for crypto as well that's great and I was just going to ask you about that in terms of the software and the growth of it and the development are you guys actively devel

7:30veloping and managing new features or what does the development road map look like in the short term for you guys yeah uh so we kind of think of it as two tracks one is to make the you know the core uh individual income tax uh product better and so that's adding Integrations making it easier to use improving you know the the logic in there uh so that

7:51we're just um you know ingesting your transactions and turning them around uh much quicker uh and we we do a lot of that um and then the other part is is like you know um what should we do next or what should we do uh next to this we've developed a lot of expertise in you know programming in the space but also in you know blockchain analysis you know cleaning up data and analyzing it

8:12um and so there are some interesting um offerings that that we'll be developing in the next six to 12 months uh based more around um the blockchain analysis part that's wonderful and are you guys expecting to expand your team what size is your team right now and are you expecting to expand it more on the support side or development yeah I think we'll uh we're

8:33at 10 people right now and I think we will expand in the future we'll probably be um raising uh another round of capital after April 15th when things uh sell down a little bit uh but you know we're making uh you know we're generating good revenue and and profits right now and um we've uh to dat you know raised a seed round um from Individual you know crypto investors and

8:57and um and venture capital and we'll be having another around uh in a couple months that's wonderful Pat and I was just going to ask you um if you're looking for either outside investors or more employees or just more people to learn about the software and join the community uh what's the best way for those people to reach out for you and I know you mentioned you know April's a

9:15busy month uh with the taxes so you know when's best and how do they contact you guys yeah you can always contact us through the website um you can uh email us at hello zenledger doio and just let us know what we can help you with and if you're interested to learn more about the company um I'm happy to talk to you that's wonderful Pat Larson co-founder

9:36and CEO of Zen Ledger uh it's been a pleasure speaking to you today um I've gotten a very clear image of Zen Ledger and you're very precise in your answer so I really appreciate that thanks for taking the time and I'm looking forward to following up with you in the coming months to see how Zen Ledger is growing and hopefully the market is growing with

9:51it as well and you guys have increased adoption so thank you so much yeah I really appreciate it Ashton thanks