Summary CEO on AI operating system for accounting work

Good afternoon. And welcome to Flibongo Monstro Thank You. With me, Tony Stevenson. Today, I have a wonderful co-host.

Zoe Ladykiller, hello.

A magnificent guest.

Kirsty from Summary.

There we go. Brilliant. So, sure a few of you will be expecting will feel slightly jarred by the fact that it wasn't Dale that did the intro. Dale always does the intro. But

Zoe going to say about that?

I don't know. We'll find out in the comments, I guess.

No.

I just imagine that there'll be a lot of comments coming in about where has the big man gone. Or maybe we'll get the real scoop. I I don't know. We shall see. We shall see. Um but welcome everybody. And thanks for tuning in. Sorry we are a couple of minutes late. Slight bump around in the background to make sure all the admin was working and we had a go live button to hit, which we do now. And we've got a couple of people dialing in already. Let's say hello to Kirsty. Yeah, it's very special. Kirsty is comfortably everybody's favorite co-host. So, Dale has to pay a distant second fiddle and third fiddle to Kirsty. So, and it's also nice that Kirsty's made it on time because what usually happens in the show is Kirsty turns up halfway through and then apologizes for being late. So, we've told her a number of times she doesn't have to apologize for being late, but yeah, she still does cuz she

This is a day of winning today, Kirsty.

That's absolutely yes, isn't it? Absolutely.

What a fantastic day, huh?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And hello, Mehal. Good to hear from you, buddy. Um, right. We are going to start um, we can start with I want to say boring, but it's not the boring bit. Um, Pascal. For our listeners who aren't familiar with you, what do you do? Who are you?

Do you want me to give you the

Give us a little bit about you. Give us the long version of it. I love the long version.

Let me give you a longer version of my background. So, as I said, my name is Pascal. I'm one of the co-founders and the CEO of Summary. Summary is and we call it an AI operating system for all accounting work. Uh, I'm sure we'll get into the depth of what that is in a second. So, I'll I'll just give you a bit of background on myself. Um, I'm actually my background is probably as far away from accounting as one can get. So, I'm an engineer. Started my career at McKinsey. So, I have a lot of experience from professional services. Did that for a handful of years. Left McKinsey 10 years ago to start my first company, which is a company called Pleo, which was sort of a a company at the intersection between tech and e-commerce. Ran that for the past 10 years out of Copenhagen, Hong Kong, and LA. Uh, was fortunate enough to raise $25 million for it and I guess we turned over like 50-60 million dollars last year. And almost exactly a year ago actually, was very lucky to sell the majority of that business. And then basically started working on Summary at that time.

So, no rest for the wicked, then.

No.

Any rest?

No rest No rest for the wicked. Uh, and my wife keeps sort of hammering me for that, but there's no rest for the wicked.

Amazing. Uh, wow. And and in there somewhere, when I was doing my due diligence on your um, on your profile, I saw Stanford University. Is that right?

That is right. That is right.

Tell us about Stanford, cuz I'm pretty sure you're the first our first guest that's been attended Stanford.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I did I did a stint I did one semester as a visiting graduate student. So, I studied something called management science and engineering, which is basically like a bunch of math and statistics and machine learning and supply chains. And they have actually the best program for that. Um so, I applied was fortunate enough to get in. And I mean, I must say the hype is real. That was a fantastic place. The people that go there, the environment is just, yeah, very exciting. That's probably, I think, what initially sparked my interest in actually entrepreneurship. They sort of They really They really foster like a really cool culture of entrepreneurship. I mean, your professors are from Google. You go on field visits to Google, to Meta, Facebook, whatever the case is, right? So, generally you're very excited about uh They're very excited about startups, which is probably what sparked my interest in it.

I can imagine it being pretty cool to spend your your days like kind of interacting with those people. And then also, I imagine there's plenty of people in the cohort that you attended with that will be long entrepreneur hours, right?

Yeah. Smartest Smartest people I was ever put in a room with, probably. So, uh I was uh clearly clearly the the least smart of that bunch, but uh yeah.

Don't give me that. No way.

Did you also notice, Tony, that um our guest was also a Forbes 30 under 30?

Oh, I did notice that as well, yeah. Possibly another another first for the show, maybe. I don't know. Um

Pretty cool. How's it How's it How's that even happen, Paz?

That's a really good question, actually. I think you get nominated. And the the the review is very much a black box process. I actually had no clue until the list I mean, I I had a sense when they basically sent an email asking for a picture the day before or 2 days before. But basically, you don't know. So, it's really hard.

cruel if they if they asked you for a picture and then not included you, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

So, an OBE or an MBE next then, Paz?

Maybe I'll get one.

Huh?

Yeah, an OBE or an MBE next. Big honors list from the from the king maybe? Maybe that's probably that's like the next best thing, isn't it?

Yeah, you don't know. It's a

Lord P Lord P

Lord P

I think it's sounds cool, but probably a bit of a bit of a little bit of a stretch. Uh no, I mean that was that was really that was really good fun. It's um I mean back then I think it was pretty early in Europe. So it was like yeah, at least it was very cool. Uh they basically fly everyone out to London and then have a fantastic event with like I think a bunch of really really cool people and then I think a few weeks later they flew everyone to Tel Aviv. And we then had like a week, absolutely fantastic week where we like did all sorts of cool things, fantastic speakers. This was back in 2019 must have been. Yeah, 2019 when it was uh yeah. So fantastic uh fantastic experience.

Work with me here. I've got a question. Do you have any siblings?

Yes, two.

Oh my god. So like your siblings MUST HATE YOU.

I MEAN THE MASSIVE THING THAT YOU'VE ACHIEVED THIS YEAR, personal greatest.

Your sibling to do all of what you've done. I hate you, I think. Oh, how can you how can you match that?

Oh my They're actually fantastic. They're both They're both medical doctors. My brother just got his PhD and my sister just graduated. So they're actually both fantastic. So uh

Okay, what do they feed you in Copenhagen? Cuz I want some of that. What do they feed you in Copenhagen cuz I want some of it for my kids.

Yeah, I mean we grew up but we actually grew up in the countryside in Denmark. So my my parents came to Denmark in the late '80s and uh settled in like some random suburbs outside of the second largest city called Aarhus. And as we grew up in a very small and very boring suburb.

I love that.

Plenty of time to study, right?

Yeah, yeah.

But Copenhagen cuz the British always deem Scandinavia or the Nordics as a very, very cool place to go. Um as you know, I used to run events out in Malmö. So I I just love the Scandinavian life. Um but you you you'll see you're going to be moving to London. Um obviously you moved you you lived in London a little bit in the past, but what was what's the main um What was what's the main thing you're going to miss when you come when you move over?

The main things we're going to miss are obviously my friends and family. Here is going to be it's going to be a big one, but I think the biggest thing is London is a massive city, right? I mean, if you're out west and you have something to do out over east, it's like a I mean, it's almost like a day trip, right? Whereas in Copenhagen in Copenhagen, you can literally bike to anything in less than 20 minutes. There's nowhere you need to be that takes you less than 20 minutes to go to. Um which obviously also means the city is smaller, it's a bit sort of you go to the same places, there's not as much to explore, but generally, I mean, it's such a small and cozy city. Fantastic food all over, fantastic coffee all over, fantastic restaurants, people, everything is just great. Yeah, but it is a very small city.

Lots of fun. Sorry, Tiny, I'm doing lots of questions. Sorry, I'm all over the place. All these questions in my mind. You're such an interesting person Paz.

I know, right? People notice in London I always find it funny for people that live in London that they sort of forget that there's a world outside London. I think cuz it's so massive and like whenever you mention something anything that happens outside the M25, which is our uh um the uh the halo around London, they're all just like I mean, the size of London is just I mean, it's mental. It's it's a

you're like I'm north of London, I get a nosebleed um cuz I live in the England. So anyone that goes past London north, I I get a nosebleed. We That's north for me. Anything north of London is still

So this might this might be a fairly obvious question and segue and then we'll we'll jump into some maybe some slightly sillier questions, but so what Actually, let's rewind a minute. So, you you left essentially, you said with McKinsey, wasn't it? Um

Yes.

Uh to start your business. What like talk us through that period of your life? Like what what prompted that directional change, and how did you find the shift between um employee and I guess founder, CEO, entrepreneur?

Yeah. Y