AI operating system for accounting work debuts in livestream

withony breaking all the rules, talking tech and straight up chaos. Quick fire guest. Oh yeah, we slay those. Good afternoon. Welcome to Flabongo Month. Um, with me, Tony Stevenson. Today I have a wonderful co-host,

Zoe Lacy Cooper. Hello.

Magnificent guest,

Pascar from Summary.

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

But, how are you going to feel about that?

I don't know. We'll find out in the comments, I guess. No,

I should imagine that there'll be a few comments coming in about where is the big man gone. Or maybe we'll get the real scoop on it. 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. Uh, slight um 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. Uh, and we've got a couple of people dialing in already. Let's say hello to Y. It's a Zoe special. Yeah,

Zoe is comfortably everybody's favorite co-host. So,

me and Dale have to play a distant second fiddle and third fiddle to Zoe. 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 told her a number of times she doesn't have to apologize for being late. But, um yeah, she still does.

This is a day of winning today, Kirsty.

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

What a fantastic day, huh?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh and hello uh me. Good to hear from you buddy. Um right, we are going to start um we could start with I want to say the boring bits, not the boring bit. Um Pascar, for our listeners who aren't familiar with you, what do you do?

Who are you?

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

Let me give you a longer version of my background. So, as I said, my name is Pascar. I'm one of the co-founders and the CEO of Summary. Summary is an 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 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 McKenzie. So I have a lot of experience from professional services. Did that for a handful of years. left Mckenzie 10 years ago to start my first company which is a company called Blaza 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 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. My wife keeps sort of hammering me for that but 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 because I'm pretty sure your first our first guest has been attended Stanford.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah. I did I did a stench. I did one semester as a visiting graduate student. So I studied something called management science and engineering which is basically like bunch of math and statistics and machine learning in 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 and that's probably I think what initially sparked my interest in actually entrepreneurship. They so 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 to Meta, Facebook, whatever the case is, right? So generally you're just 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 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 lifelong entrepreneur powers, right?

Yeah.

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

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,

that's pretty cool. How how did how did that even happen, Paz?

That's a really good question, actually. I think you get nominated and the the review is very much a blackbox process. I actually had no clue until the list. I mean, I I had a sentence when they basically sent an email asking for a picture the day before or two days before, but basically, you don't know. Be pretty cruel if if they'd asked you for a picture and then not included you, wouldn't it?

Is there an OB or an MBE next then? Pass.

Huh?

An OB 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. I don't know.

Lord Paz.

Lord.

It sounds cool, but probably bit of a little bit of a stretch. Uh, no. No, I mean that 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 a Viv 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 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 your siblings must hate you. Massive thing have you achieved this year P?

Oh my god. your sibling through all of what you've done. I take you. I think Oh, how can you how can you match that?

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,

okay. What do they feed you in Copenhagen? Because I want some of that for the kids. What do they feed you in Copenhagen? Because I want some of it for my kids.

Yeah. I mean, we grew up 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 Ous. And so we grew up in a very small, very boring suburb.

Love that.

Any time for study, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

But Copenhagen because the British always deemed Scandinavia or the Nordics is a very very cool place to go. Um as as you know, I used to run events out in Malmo. So I I just love the Scandinavian life. Um, but you you obviously you're going to be moving to London and obviously you move you've lived in London a little bit in the past, but yeah, what what's the main um

what what's the main things you're going to miss when you come when you move over?

The main things are going 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 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 go 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. Um,

yeah, but it is a very small city. Love that. Sorry, Tony. I'm doing lots of questions. Sorry questions on my mind. You're such an interesting person, Paz.

I know, right? 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 because it's so massive and like whenever you mention sort of anything that happens outside the M25, it's just like, you know, um the the halo around London was just like

I mean, the size of London is just I mean, it's mental. It's

I go I go north of London and I get a nose bleed um because I live in the south of England. So anyone that goes past London north I get nose bleeds. We that's north for me. Anything north of London that's what it is.

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 um actually let's rewind a minute. So you you left was it essentially you said Mckenzie 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. Yeah. I mean it's a really good question. So I think for me I've always wanted to do something on my own. I figured back then then you're going through McKenzie was probably the best way of sort of get