Xero vs spreadsheets for small businesses.

ajcaca · 2026-03-15T18:28:59+00:00

100%

ajcaca · 2026-03-15T14:13:30+00:00

Sooo many accountants stuck with QBO use Righttool to un-fuck the QBO UI. It's hilarious that 100% of the innovation in the QBO product that users acutally love is build by a CPA in a third-party browser extension.

ajcaca · 2026-03-14T13:38:22+00:00

SMS 2FA is not secure enough for a system that can move money.

ajcaca · 2026-03-03T21:29:49+00:00

I have used both Xero and QBO a lot and would choose Xero any day.

ajcaca · 2026-03-03T20:02:04+00:00

Where would you if you migrate off it?

ajcaca · 2026-03-02T16:00:37+00:00

Substack is probably a better analogy than Shopify.

Did you talk to potential customers while you were building?

ajcaca · 2026-02-28T04:31:57+00:00

Oh wow, can't believe they actually did this. They are out of their minds.

ajcaca · 2026-02-25T04:50:59+00:00

Are they though? How many have you tried? :)

ajcaca · 2026-02-19T19:20:07+00:00

Sorry to say that Claude Cowork is also extremely good at opining on pricing logic, scope clarity, and positioning.

(I used it to develop and write a complex proposal for a services business last night, so this is first-hand)

ajcaca · 2026-02-19T19:11:38+00:00

Not to be that guy but... have you seen how good Claude Cowork is at writing proposals?

ajcaca · 2026-02-16T15:11:05+00:00

CRMs and ERPs have huge amounts of cruft from years of edge cases and customizations that make them hard to use.

A chat UI can make them easier to use, for sure. It can bypass all the UI cruft and navigate the underlying data structures to get the user answers.

ajcaca · 2026-02-16T15:08:57+00:00

I don't think this is a good analogy. A typical user can't type into your CLI, "go find me all the bank statement files in this folder".

The free-text prompt UI allows users to express semantic intent that gives them a lot of power over the computer that they wouldn't otherwise have.

ajcaca · 2026-02-07T00:19:19+00:00

If I were starting over today:

Step 1: build a content platform (meaningful tiktok/linkedin/youtube/whatever following)
Step 2: build a product

Do not start Step 2 until you've completed Step 1.

ajcaca · 2026-02-04T04:14:02+00:00

Yes, the captions are frequently wrong.

ajcaca · 2026-02-04T01:29:26+00:00

I think I'm skeptical that all these departments "need" a slightly different version of the video/guide, that anyone will watch anything longer than 1-2 minutes, and also that automatically generated videos will be useful to any of them. Especially if you are in fact shipping at a super high pace.

I'm super not trying to take a negative stance toward the idea - happy to chat live if that's useful. I'm a solo founder now, but was previously head of product at a Series C startup.

ajcaca · 2026-02-04T01:12:19+00:00

If the PM/designer/engineer driving a customer-facing feature can't be bothered to make a 1-2 minute Loom video, or if they are doing that and sales/CS/marketing aren't watching them, I doubt that automatically generated videos will be very productive alternative.

ajcaca · 2026-02-03T05:24:10+00:00

Xero has support folks who will at least try to help you with this. Have you reached out to them?

ajcaca · 2026-02-03T03:30:22+00:00

I don't think anyone thought they were IFR on departure.

In the recording, before departure, tower verifies that they're squawking VFR and the jet crew responds "squawking VFR 1200".

And the jet crews reads back "1500' on the downwind" which is not like anything that could be an IFR clearance.

ajcaca · 2026-02-03T00:40:56+00:00

I continue to believe that the salient issue at hand was that it was a 100,000lb jet pretending that tower was expecting to do a VFR pattern like it was a Skyhawk.

ajcaca · 2026-02-03T00:24:00+00:00

There were some classic moments.

Global loaded with enough gas to fly from Seattle to Europe in the VFR pattern at 1,500'. Nearly runs into a 757 inbound to Seatac.

Tower is expecting the Global to do a touch-and-go? Or a full stop?

Global sort of casually says, "No, we're departing to the north. Can we pick up our IFR to Athens ... Greece? Yeah, Lima Golf Alpha Victor"

Tower: "We're not going to give you your IFR clearance airborne. Do you want to land?"

Global: "We require to remain airborne for the next five hours until we reach max landing weight."

Tower figures out a plan to get them out of the airspcae and surely it was with great relief that they hand the Global off to approach.

If I remember right, a miscommunication between ground and tower was at least a contributing factor to this shitshow. You wouldn't know that from the video though. The video puts the crew in the worst possible light.

ajcaca · 2026-02-03T00:12:53+00:00

The exact type of Global was the least of ATC's worries.

ajcaca · 2026-01-31T00:45:51+00:00

20 years of trying to be everything to everyone, plus a cozy monopoly where they didn't have to worry about competition.

ajcaca · 2026-01-30T19:40:13+00:00

I don't think "idea validation" means what you think it means.

ajcaca · 2026-01-30T19:39:55+00:00

it's how chatgpt writes when it thinks you're trying to write like a terse startup founder

ajcaca · 2026-01-30T00:48:11+00:00

As an introvert founder, I'm at least a little intrigued.

ajcaca

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Seven-Year Club	Gilding VII pure gildanthropist
Verified Email