Sequoia just described what we've been building -Michael Cutajar

In 2019 I was sitting in an accounting firm in Malta, manually entering receipts into a spreadsheet for a freelancer who made thirty thousand euros a year.

I had an ACCA qualification. I'd trained at PwC. And I was typing numbers from a photo of a crumpled receipt into a cell, then looking up which VAT box it belonged in.

I remember thinking: I spent years learning how businesses actually work - audit, compliance, financial strategy - and I'm doing data entry. This isn't unique to me. It's how most of the profession still operates. Talented people, spending most of their time on work that doesn't require their talent.

Last week, Sequoia Capital published an essay called "Services: The New Software." Their argument is bold and, I think, correct: the next trillion-dollar company will sell work, not tools.

They call these companies "autopilots" - AI systems that handle the repetitive work, not just help the professional do it faster. Not a better spreadsheet for your accountant. An AI layer that handles the data processing so the accountant can focus on what actually matters.

They specifically called out the accounting profession. 340,000 accountants gone in the US. 75 percent approaching retirement. A profession losing talent because so much of the work is reconstruction - piecing together what already happened from documents and bank feeds.

I read the essay and thought: we've been building this.

AI-powered accounting in practice

Accora is the platform I built to put this into practice. It's how I serve my clients.

A freelancer sends receipts. AI handles the data processing - categorisation, reconciliation, VAT calculations. I review the exceptions and sign off the work. No dashboard to learn. No accounting knowledge required. Just compliant books and an accountant you can call when you need advice.

Sequoia calls this the autopilot model. I think of it as what the best accountants will look like in five years: using AI to handle the repetitive work so they can focus on judgment, advice, and the client relationship. The work budget is bigger than the tool budget. Don't sell tools. Do the work.

What Sequoia doesn't say

The Sequoia essay is written for founders and VCs. It's about market size and opportunity. What it doesn't explore -because that's not its audience -is what this means for the profession itself.

It means accountants evolve from data processors into reviewers and advisors. The human judgement layer. The best accountants won't serve fifty clients and spend most of their time on data entry. They'll serve five hundred clients and spend their time on the decisions that actually matter - tax planning, business advice, spotting the risks before they become problems.

It means the way firms operate will change. Less time on manual bookkeeping. Less reconstruction. More time on judgement, client relationships, and the regulatory sign-off. The technology handles the repetitive work. The accountant handles everything that actually requires an accountant.

Twenty-eight million Europeans

Here's the number that drives everything we do: there are 28 million self-employed people in Europe. Most of them can't afford a traditional accountant. The software that exists assumes accounting knowledge they don't have. And every country has different rules -different VAT thresholds, different filing deadlines, different tax codes.

Nobody is solving this at scale yet. Not because it's impossible, but because it requires building the technology from the ground up. Country by country. Rule by rule. A deterministic compliance engine wrapped in an AI that learns from every accountant correction.

That's what we're working on.

I'm writing a book about this. It's called AI Is Eating the Firm, and it's about what happens when AI replaces the work that professional services firms were built to organise. What it means for the accountants, the clients, and the billion-euro industry sitting between them.

More soon.