Join us in Italy, all expenses paid, at ExpensiCon
It can be hard to look past the grim headlines that seem to pummel us daily, but beneath the bad news are some good trends. The worst of the pandemic is behind us, the markets have stabilized and are recovering. Good days are on the horizon, and as we scramble to stay afloat, it's easy to overlook the slow tectonic shift happening in the accounting industry around us: the Age of the Preaccounting Superapp is dawning. And just like we did at previous moments of transformation, we’re heralding this dawn by hosting our third ExpensiCon – and you're invited!
In May 2023, 100 accounting titans will gather in the pristine Puglia countryside at Borgo Egnazia to experience the finest in Italian food and wine – by the pool and around the table – while swapping stories, sharing best practices, and planning the future of our industry. If you haven't been to ExpensiCon before, here's a quick glimpse of what it'll be like:
I can understand if you might not follow the slow developments of the accounting space as closely as we do, and for possibly not appreciating the significance of this latest change. So to catch you up on how we got here:
- The First Age of Expense Management takes us from around 2000 BC to 2000 AD – paper and pencil (or papyrus and ink) had a long, long run of being the best practice for getting reimbursed.
- The Second Age started when expense management came to the cloud, establishing web forms over paper forms as the new state of the art, and that lasted a good decade or so.
- The Third Age began when we launched the Expensify app, the first ever expense management mobile app, and introduced high accuracy mobile receipt scanning linked to online reimbursement. We formalized the concept of "preaccounting", which uses "realtime expense reports" to reduce every step of the expense management process down to a single tap of a camera app, right there at the point of sale.
- The Fourth Age was the most tumultuous yet, as VCs discovered a clever way to exploit historically low interest rates and historically high savings rates (both caused by unprecedented levels of pandemic stimulus money) to subsidize a raft of wildly unprofitable "neocard" companies using the age-old wisdom of Silicon Valley: lose money on every customer, but make it up with scale! Unsurprisingly, those houses of cards are quickly collapsing under the weight of their inverted economics, as interest rates rise, default rates soar, and blind VC dollars dry up. But from their ashes emerges a market that appreciates the benefits of a truly digital end-to-end experience more than ever before, that bypasses the need to even scan a receipt.
- Which brings us to the Fifth Age: the Rise of the Preaccounting Superapp.
Not sure what that means? Well, come to ExpensiCon to find out! Learn why every vendor in your accounting tech stack – not just Expensify – will gradually consolidate a diverse range of historically fragmented use cases ever more seamlessly into a single platform. Hear my irreverent candid take on all the players and how they stack up (and why we feel our chat-first design will revolutionize the space). Listen to top industry execs share the trends they are seeing – past speakers have included Travis Kalanick (former Uber CEO), Zach Nelson (Former NetSuite CEO), and even Rene Lacerte (CEO of Bill.com). Brainstorm with leaders of the top firms in the world on how to navigate through these powerful tidal forces without being run aground. And do it all with incredible Italian hospitality and networking that will create memories and relationships for life.
We don't host ExpensiCon every year; we only do it when there is something important to discuss. Join that discussion at ExpensiCon.com.
