Building a Crypto SaaS with a Two-Person Team, with Bassil Eid & Selem Essaeid from Breezing

[00:00:00] Bassil: Maybe it works in the short run, but in the longterm, I really see like the individual play working out much better. And the other key thing is like, um, there's a lot of, uh, are you taking out a book to fact check me or what? So there's a, the other key thing is like, uh, it's basically this guy's fact checking.

[00:00:17] Bassil: He's like, I see. What did he say? This has turned into the US political debate. He knew he knew it was going to take a long, he knew. I'll tell you why I took out the book. He knew it was going to take a while. So he's catching up on his reading. He's like, let me just take a chance to read chapter three

[00:00:37] Bassil: I'll tell you why. Of animal farm, let me just continue reading orwell's, uh, 1984 year. So anyways Are you gonna tell me why you're gonna read a quote now anyways, so then uh, Can I finish my thing? Hold on. I was I was chattting away here. I wouldn't want to show this as a cold intro. What do you mean? This is what cold intros are about. People messing things up.

[00:01:01] Bassil: This is The Accountant quits By the way, take two. Accountant Quits x Breezing, take two. Thanks to Selem's little, uh, little technical blunder. Now we got to listen to Umar run through his like monologue, Selem. 

[00:01:13] Umar: Welcome to The Accountant Quits, where we help accounting and finance professionals learn how to manage a business using crypto.

[00:01:21] Umar: Can one person create a billion dollar business using AI? Well, I'm not the one saying it. That's the prediction of Sam Altman, the CEO at OpenAI. For the past two years, downsizing has been rampant across the board at companies embracing AI. According to TechCrunch, in 2024 alone, there have been more than 130,000 job cuts across 457 companies from tech giants like Google, Salesforce, Dropbox, Microsoft, and Consensys.

[00:01:53] Umar: AI's invasion of the job market is well underway. And if existing companies are slashing their workforce, the new startups are also leveraging AI to build a lean workforce. One company that aroused my interest is Breezing, a crypto subledger. For the past year and a half, Breezing has been quietly hustling, shipping products and onboarding customers with just two people running the entire show.

[00:02:20] Umar: Today, I have the pleasure to be speaking with Bassil Eid. The CEO of Breezing and Managing Partner at Detof, a crypto accounting firm, and Selem Essaeid, their CTO. And while its competitors have fundraised and are hiring aggressively, Breezing is entirely bootstrapped until now. Some of their customers include industry renowned names like SAFE, SingularityNET, Zerion, and well known accounting firms like Harris & Trotter, Myna, R3gen, and Onchain Accounting.

[00:02:52] Umar: Bassil and Selem, welcome! 

[00:02:54] Umar: I'm thrilled to finally have you guys here.

[00:02:55] Bassil: We're happy to be here.

[00:02:56] Selem: Thank you Umar. 

[00:02:59] Umar: I want to start our conversation with how AI is allowing companies to downsize while increasing their productivity. When Alexis Ohanian, the Reddit Co-Founder interviewed Sam Altman earlier this year - the CEO at OpenAI and the company behind ChatGPT, Sam shared, and I'm paraphrasing this, that he regularly speculates with his friends, when the first founder will reach a billion dollar valuation without even hiring a single employee.

[00:03:27] Umar: So it's quite a radical idea, to have this one person unicorn company that would defy basically conventional wisdom, right? That a company needs to hire more employees the further they grow. We've touched on this subject before, and both of you, you're adamant that it's not a far fetched idea at all, and Breezing is actually living proof.

[00:03:50] Umar: I want to ask you guys, how have you been implementing AI into your business? That's basically allowing you to build a subledger with just two people. 

[00:04:00] Bassil: That's the technical question. Selem go. 

[00:04:02] Selem: I mean we don't use AI that much. We barely use it. So usually, nowadays, big companies try to put as many AI generated code into their software. But I don't think it's a good idea for now, but later we can have a much better code quality code generated by AI, but for now I'm still skeptical and I don't use it that much.

[00:04:26] Selem: It's actually less than 1 percent of the code generated by AI in our code base.

[00:04:32] Bassil: Umar just to kind of, also backtrack. You mentioned like us trying to build like a, one person billion dollar business. Obviously we can't do that anymore. We're two people, so that boat has sailed. But listen, man, we're not trying to build like a two person billion dollar business. We just kind of like are in the scenario that we're in, accidentally. So basically, like, we saw a problem personally we started building a product and we got into a crazy cycle of helping our customers and building product and, we've tried to hire. We're trying to hire now. We've been trying to hire an engineer now for six months. Hiring takes a lot of time and it's a skill.

[00:05:07] Bassil: And especially when you're trying to hire top talent. So you can't just do it on the side. While you're like running a business and building a subledger. So we are trying to hire, but we haven't dedicated, I think, the necessary time to do it. And I think we're just so busy with like customers and product.

[00:05:23] Bassil: If you ask customers, if they want to feature, it's kind of like shipped, ask our customers it's ship, like same day almost, or like same week. So we ship fast. And the reason is that because we prioritize that versus trying to find customers. The other thing too, is obviously when you want to hire people, it'd be nice to have some capital. So we're also not in a cycle where, we've raised capital and we are now needing to raise more capital. And so typically the cycle goes, you raise capital, pre-seed, you build a little prototype. And then you hire a bunch of people, you build a little prototype and then 12 months later, because you raise capital for 18 months, usually 12 months later, you're out raising capital again.

[00:05:58] Bassil: So the CEO of the company, his predominant job is like raising capital, hiring people, not like CS and product constantly all the time. And so I'm not in a cycle where I'm hiring people, raising capital, every like 12 months. Cause that's like the cycle. So if you raise two rounds of capital, you spend one year raising capital out of the three years that you use the capital. So that, iterative process, we're not in a cycle of raising capital, hiring people, raising capital, hiring people. And so that's kind of like, we're accidentally, I would say landed in this scenario. And to be honest, our priority is always going to be customer product versus capital.

[00:06:36] Bassil: It'd be nice to have more people. Capital and people. We're like accidentally in the situation. If I'm going to be honest with you, 

[00:06:42] Umar: Okay. So if you've not been leveraging AI that much, like Selem just shared, I still want to go through a little bit more of how you've been able to build this product with just like a two person team, right? So Bassil, you're an accountant by trade. 

[00:06:55] Umar: Selem, you're a full stack developer. And I've seen that Selem was one of your previous employees at your previous startup Bassil, which is called Earny for the listeners, which is a Swiss payroll platform.

[00:07:07] Umar: So Breezing is not, your first startup venture. So that's it. One CEO, technical accountant, and one dev. So you have no marketing, no sales, no product people. Uh, you just. Yeah, wearing so many different hats. So you said that you didn't fundraise yet. We can touch on fundraising a little bit more later on.

[00:07:29] Umar: So you're not a first time founder. You're also an angel investor at different tech startups.

[00:07:36] Umar: When we previously spoke, yeah, you did mention in the early days, you were considering to fundraise, but then you discarded the idea as you started shipping the product and onboarding your first customers.

[00:07:47] Umar: I want to ask you what has changed this time around building Breezing, which is a subledger, which is a very complex product to build alone. But then there's all these different functions that you're handling by yourself, like the sales, onboarding, marketing, customer support.

[00:08:02] Bassil: Yeah, I mean, what has changed this time around, if I'm going to be honest, is Selem is just like, at another level, that's the reality of it. 

[00:08:08] Bassil: His aptitude to learn and his ability to learn fast and his ability to execute that on product is like really what has changed this time around then maybe my first startup, I would say, and maybe back then I was initially, I think you and I met, Umar, a while back and we were looking at like maybe Request. Maybe putting in some capital back then. 

[00:08:27] Bassil: But then eventually just the pace and speed that Selem has been able to ship product. Puts me in a situation where I need to cater to customer support constantly and I need to feed him with clientele. And so him learning him pushing product, me then needing to help on support, pushing demand back to him, then pushes product back out to me, then support.

[00:08:48] Bassil: So it's like that iterative loop is constantly keeping us way too busy to the point where we're just not able, not like able to focus on raising any capital. And so typically, like when you ship product, right, it takes a long time to ship product usually. That's the reality of it.

[00:09:02] Bassil: If you go to any of these other tools or any kind of software, B2B software companies. It would take them like, they have like massive I dunno sprints and like they might ship like one feature in a month, basically like Agile.

[00:09:14] Bassil: Like, there was a customer last week who needed Cardano. Last week on Thursday or Wednesday, Cardano was shipped yesterday already. Like you cannot do that. I feel the pace in which Selem ships is like madness and then then you have support issues and all that kind of stuff. 

[00:09:31] Bassil: We're not against, raising capital. It's just more we just don't have the time to go out and do a proper fundraiser, like a proper fundraiser takes three to six months, basically, including all the prep time, the scheduling meetings, the going out. I can't go out and meet investors for two weeks straight, otherwise who's going to take care of our customers. Basically. So I think that's where we're stuck. We are approached by some investors. And we're open to like discussing with them and going through the process. But to be honest, we don't give it enough care. I don't know. Selem what do you think, man? 

[00:10:00] Selem: So, I mean, okay, I don't know what you... 

[00:10:06] Bassil: You have nothing to say. You have nothing that You

[00:10:08] Bassil: can just say. I have nothing further to add.

[00:10:10] Umar: Cut

[00:10:14] Bassil: No cut. What 

[00:10:15] Selem: Caught me off guard! 

[00:10:17] Bassil: I'm talking off script. What do you mean?

[00:10:20] Bassil: Wait! Selem. I said, basically, I think it's Selem That's been basically the reason why we haven't raised capital to be honest. He just ships products fast.

[00:10:27] Selem: So actually, because the main reason is that we are actually profitable. So, we're not like: we cannot pay the bills or cannot pay the servers or like we have financial issues. Actually we are profitable. And the revenue is increasing. Because I heard really bad stories with investors.

[00:10:44] Selem: They try to push you to make reports every month. They try to influence you to make decisions that you actually don't like. 

[00:10:52] Selem: So without investors these stories that have been heard, as a developer and as a founder, and the good thing is that because we are super close with our customers. So we actually know what they want and we actually know what they need. And basically Bassil owns an accounting firm called Detof. And his customers are actually using Breezing. So basically Bassil is actually a customer of Breezing.

[00:11:18] Selem: So we know exactly, what the product needs. And that's what we try to push to, to build for like, okay.

[00:11:27] Bassil: I just want to say something. Hold on. Whilst you've messed up here, I want to say that like not all investors are bad, by the way. There are some great investors out there that try and guide you in the way they want to guide you, right? So, but there is like a, an even, you can even check that out.

[00:11:39] Bassil: Vinod Khosla from Khosla Ventures. Maybe you guys don't know him, but he invested in like Open AI invested in a bunch of startups, right? Vinod Khosla's on a podcast way back in YC with Sam Altman before even Sam Altman became a thing. This is like back in. I don't know, 2017 or 16. And he says, Vinod says this, he's a venture capitalist himself.

[00:11:58] Bassil: One of the best ones. He says that 70 or 80 percent of, venture capitalists who sit on boards add negative value to the startup negative as in it hurts. They hurt the startup, basically their advice hurts the startup. It's better for them to say nothing, basically. That's what he says pretty much.

[00:12:17] Bassil: And he has like a ton of experience. And so, Selem and I were in a venture prior, like the same venture called Earny. It's a payroll venture in Switzerland, similar to like Gusto in the US or Pento in the UK or Payfit in France. And we had a board basically that, we struggled to explain the issues to our board.

[00:12:33] Bassil: It's not our board's fault. We struggled to explain the issues to our board. And our board, were like investors. We struggled to explain the issues to our board because they just weren't in the daily business. They never ran a payroll pretty much in their life. They never built product in their life.

[00:12:47] Bassil: They never tried to calculate like a miscalculation of social security in their life. So when you try to explain these issues, it just doesn't resonate with the board. The board is then trying to help. They have really good intentions. They're trying to tell you, Oh, have you tried this? Have you tried that on go to market?

[00:13:00] Bassil: Have you, they like put you in contact with like people that maybe could help like a developer or a payroll specialist or whatever. But ultimately it's distracting, actually, it doesn't at all help. 

[00:13:12] Bassil: So I think like that experience, again, right. It's good intentions from the board. I think that experience deters Selem from wanting to take on capital, but I'm not against it. Right. I just think that you got to find the right investor. You've got to sit down with them. You've got to get to know them. They don't have to understand your space. But they've have to like, felt the pain of having a bad board or a good board them themselves as a founder.

[00:13:35] Bassil: And then can like really relate to the founder as they're trying to build a business. 

[00:13:38] Umar: Yeah. I mean, I'm really blown away by the success of Breezing in such a short amount of time. And to your credit, the, both of you, you seem to have been focusing on actually the right features in building a subledger.

[00:13:52] Umar: So Bassil for the past three years, you've been running a crypto accounting firm called Detof. And during this time, you actually had to use many of the other subledgers on the market. So you have quite a unique profile. Subledgers is a product built for accountants. You're an accountant with crypto knowledge, but you're also an entrepreneur and a builder.

[00:14:11] Umar: I want to ask you, how has your experience of using many different subledgers and running Detof at the same time allowed you to build the subledger you actually wanted?

[00:14:21] Bassil: You, you can ask like a thousand accountants, or actually there probably isn't a thousand accounts who've used crypto subledgers. You can ask maybe like 55 accountants who've used crypto subledgers. It was not that many. And I'm sure like you could sit in a room and you can ask them all day the things, the issues they had. And the things they want to see in a subledger to be improved. Like the list goes like on and on and on. I sat with one today actually from a big protocol, in Sweden pretty much, or a big project in Sweden. And yeah, like we went through issues that he was having that he would like to see improved. I think my issue was like, I just knew those were not going to get done because like I, yeah, I'd built software before and I know what it's like when you have like a team, a product team, sprints, engineers. I've seen like how long it takes to release features. And to be honest with you, like I knew the prioritization was not so much like the, the features I wanted.

[00:15:11] Bassil: Like I was looking for like technical accounting features that I wanted built. And I know, there was not going to be a focus on that because that doesn't really win new clients. What really wins new clients is do you have this blockchain? Have you added like Pulse or Fuse or whatever Scroll or some random chain I never heard of, or Starknet, not to say Starknet is a random chain I never heard of. 

[00:15:31] Bassil: But basically it's like these kinds of features are prioritized in subledgers because that's how you win customers. When you're demoing a subledger to a client, they don't see the little nitty gritty accounting nuance features that you're going to face like three, four months down the road after you've purchased a subledger. They're just seeing, I added a Pulse wallet. Hey, all the transactions landed. All right, I'm good.

[00:15:55] Bassil: Let's go. So I just knew that those are just not going to get tackled. So at the end of the day, like it was either suck it up and whine, or let me see what Selem is doing and, give him a call and see, maybe he wants to build some kind of random project. And that was like how we've gotten here now, Umar. That's the reality of it.

[00:16:13] Umar: And Selem, you're not an accountant, but you have an accountant by your side, feeding you with the knowledge of what accountants need for crypto bookkeeping. How much of crypto bookkeeping did you know going in? And I want to ask you in hindsight, what would you say were the critical areas you had to really get up to speed on as a developer to build a subledger? 

[00:16:36] Selem: Basically all the knowledge I had for accounting was like super basic counting that I learned at the university. Nothing more than that. But thankfully Bassil's really responsive and so whenever I have a question, I just call him any time, ask him and he answers back and he told me like basically everything that I needed to know to build Breezing. 

[00:16:57] Bassil: Just a side note Umar, this is how bad ass and customer obsessed. Selem is. While I was doing my monologue he replied back to OCA On Chain Accounting on Telegram pretty much as he's on the podcast, basically. I'm not even kidding you 3:26 PM from OCA. He literally replied back in middle of the podcast.

[00:17:15] Selem: You gotta keep your customers happy and be responsive. 

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[00:18:59] Umar: So I also want the listeners to understand how do you build a subledger? We've had a lot of subledgers on this podcast before. 

[00:19:07] Umar: And if there are new listeners tuning in for the first time. A subledger is actually a tool that allows you to convert blockchain data from different wallets, exchanges, and custodians into your accounting software to facilitate your reporting, right?

[00:19:22] Umar: And your audits and tax filings. So you would use it in conjunction with your Xero QuickBooks, which is referred to in the space as the main ledger. So in order to collect data from all these different blockchains we have available today, a subledger needs to integrate the blockchains, either via nodes or via APIs through third party providers.

[00:19:46] Umar: Some of the well known ones include Moralis, BlockDaemon, Alchemy, and Infura. So based on the feedback and conversations I've had, aggregating this blockchain data and ensuring completeness and accuracy is one of the biggest challenges. There's a lot of subledgers today, and I anticipate to see even more pop up in the years to come.

[00:20:09] Umar: For the listeners to understand, how do you, build a subledger and what are the features that a crypto subledger should do well?

[00:20:17] Bassil: Hmm. Um, yeah, there's a lot of basic features, Umar. I'll tell you the biggest issue I would say in the blockchain space and in the crypto accounting space is data completeness and data accuracy, 100 percent. 

[00:20:27] Bassil: Anyone who's done anything in crypto can tell you that's the issue. That's one of the biggest issues. 

[00:20:32] Bassil: And so I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we face, I would say especially on like non EVM chains. It's pretty annoying. So I would say like that is a major issue. And then the other things too, when you're building a subledger, you want the basic stuff, right?

[00:20:46] Bassil: Like you want to be able to get the data you want to convert it to Fiat, basically as accurate as possible. And some pricing pretty much is annoying, right? Cause it's not even on, sometimes there's private tokens that aren't even listed yet on, CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap. So the price is hard to get, or it's on a DEX.

[00:21:03] Bassil: So you got to get like DEX pricing. So then you got to convert it to fiat and then you've got to pull in your chart of accounts from an accounting system, like a Xero or QuickBooks, whatever. Or if you're not using a Xero or QuickBooks, right, you've got to be able to upload the chart of accounts. Like manually via CSV. 

[00:21:19] Bassil: We have a lot of like clients who are not on Xero or QuickBooks. And they're able to upload their chart of accounts via CSV using different accounting systems. And then the next step is you got to be able to push a journal entry to the accounting system again, via an API.

[00:21:32] Bassil: So again, that gets pushed directly via QuickBooks or Xero. And if you don't have QuickBooks or Xero or Netsuite, for example we then produce a CSV, like a journal entry CSV that is compatible with your accounting system. So we have some weird accounting systems out there not weird, but more niche, like Banana or Odoo some weird, Abacus is my most hated one. 

[00:21:51] Bassil: We're like, we got to spit out this crazy CSV that like matches it's supposed to be compatible. And then they upload that CSV into their accounting system and it generates the entries. So I'd say those are like the core functionalities of what the subledger should do. And then but the real, the real USPs are in the details, man, and you really don't get into that.

[00:22:09] Bassil: Like I said, until you start using the subledger 3, 4 months down the road, and even then you don't even realize if you have a good subledger or not, because you haven't compared nothing. You don't know. 

[00:22:19] Bassil: If you're an accountant at a project, for example, and you're using a subledger your whole life or like for a year, you don't know what else is really out there and what else like, you can say you've experimented, but you haven't until you've actually implemented it. But if you're an accountant, for example, like maybe the H&T's and the Myna's, they know, like they know or R3gen or OCA, like they know, they used countless of them and they know which ones are better, which ones are not. And they've touched every single feature and felt every single pain.

[00:22:45] Umar: Okay, you said that really fast, but for the listeners, H&T stands for Harris & Trotter, which is an accounting firm in London. Myna, and Onchain Accounting is based in the US. 

[00:22:56] Umar: Now I want to ask you on your opinion of having organizations run their own nodes and indexing the data themselves as opposed to using third party node providers.

[00:23:07] Umar: So, on your website, it says Breezing supports 17 chains. I think that's a little bit more because I didn't even see Cardano there, so you 

[00:23:15] Bassil: We're gonna get the, yeah, that's the website. That's Selem's favorite.

[00:23:18] Selem: Yeah, it's coming. The new update is coming.

[00:23:22] Umar: So what's been your approach and trade off, you would say, that you've considered along the way, between, running your own nodes and indexing the data, or using third party node providers? 

[00:23:33] Bassil: like running your running your own node might be the better approach, but like going to market with a product really fast. And having a node indexer, you can, maybe we can do it on some like major chains, but to get that node provider across all the change and many chains, it's like, going to take a lot of time. So that's probably like the better approach. But it's, it's going to take, take a bit more time. I don't know, maybe it's more technical. If you want to throw in some comments there. 

[00:23:56] Selem: Yeah, sometimes you need to build your own APIs. And sometimes you need to use a combination of multiple third party APIs because sometimes you need this blockchain and you need it fast, but you don't have the time to build your own node, which doesn't make sense because you only need to fetch transaction of specific wallet address.

[00:24:14] Selem: And you don't need to fetch everything, you're not going to use like only less than 1 percent of that data. Which is not efficient. 

[00:24:21] Selem: But I just want to go back to the main points that you need to build a subledger. Is to build a really nice spam filter. And in this case, we had another, because still, even with big competitors, they're still struggling with spam and it's the main issue with accountants too. So we tried to run around and find a really good spam filter API. And it was a struggle. We couldn't find a good one. We found one, it was super pricey. Like we need to pay 2k per month. Yeah. 

[00:24:56] Selem: Or even exactly. Yeah, exactly. That's 2k per month just for support actually. 

[00:25:08] Bassil: That was the basic package which was gonna go up. That was like a special pricing deal For a spam filter, but go ahead Selem. 

[00:25:19] Selem: And, but we had no choice back then because we needed a solution to this issue really fast. So we implemented, we played around with it and it was really slow. That slowed down our processing for the transactions and it wasn't even working correctly. Like it was leaving some spam transactions on the dashboard, which messes up your balances actually. So in this case, they only have one chosen. It is to build your own spam filter API. And for example, for Breezing, now we use our own homemade. And it's basically free and super fast. 

[00:25:57] Bassil: So Selem built another product pretty much for another business to use on his business basically. So, yeah.

[00:26:06] Selem: But I mean, data quality for building subledgers is just like 30 percent of the work. 

[00:26:12] Selem: The other 70 percent is you need to make sure that because usually have hundreds of users using your product. In concurrency with millions of transactions and tons processing happening on the backgrounds. That's, that's a huge infrastructure you need to build and you need to make sure that whenever you update, there's no downtime. Building a subledger is really not easy. It's a really complicated. 

[00:26:36] Bassil: The customer doesn't care about that part. Do you know what I'm saying? Like what Selem just said, like improving his infrastructure so that it scales it. Like the customer doesn't care about that part. Basically the customer cares about data.

[00:26:48] Bassil: How, if it works, basically, that's all he cares about. 

[00:26:51] Bassil: If it works, right. They care. Accountants also, I was trying, I'm trying to tell this to Selem. He's still, it's a concept he hasn't understood yet. 

[00:26:57] Bassil: Yeah. Like Accountants don't care too much about speed. They care a little bit about speed, but what they care about more is accuracy. Like they're willing

[00:27:07] Bassil: to wait four hours if they know they had a wallet address and the balance is going to match a hundred percent, they're willing to wait six hours if they sync everything to Xero or QuickBooks, and they know it's going to match exactly with the subledger that they synced. 

[00:27:19] Bassil: Heck, I'll wait a one week, man, if it's going to match basically, but that's that's something I'm trying to ingrain into a young GenZ Selem, who like doesn't do accounting, man and that's not easy because he's all about how the UI has got to be nice, sleek, simple, and everyone says, Oh, it's nice, sleek and simple. But I don't care. I want to make sure like it's correct. Accuracy, a hundred percent. 

[00:27:41] Bassil: And Selem says, Oh, accurate data quality is only 30%. No, man, for me, data quality is 80 percent of the battle. But anyways, that's an argument me and Selem have all the time.

[00:27:49] Umar: Yeah, I've heard Web3 people complain about not accountants, but complain about the UI of Xero and QuickBooks, but those tools actually work really well.

[00:28:00] Bassil: bingo.

[00:28:02] Umar: So, I also want to go through some of the features that some of the other subledgers are offering. Some of the other subledgers right now in the market today, they started offering invoicing and payment capabilities. So the feedback that I've received is that accountants and CFOs prefer a single subledger that covers all functions, largely due to the fact that there are so many different tools, right, that you have to use when you do Web3 accounting.

[00:28:29] Umar: You have to use, a subledger, you have to use a different one for payments, invoicing, a different one for payroll. Now, what's your perspective? Do you think subledgers should aim to be this all in one solution? Invoicing, subledger, what you're offering, payments? 

[00:28:45] Bassil: I mean, to be honest, Umar it's like these guys like don't learn from the products of the past. Okay. For example, like Xero QuickBooks, they offer like all those things as well. Right. Like expense reporting, payroll, and all that kind of stuff and invoicing, but everyone still uses the third party applications that connect to those ones. 

[00:29:04] Bassil: They use a Xero in combination with like a Dext or an ApprovalMax or well, ApprovalMax is actually owned by Xero anyways, but they got bought out. Or like Gusto will be connected to QuickBooks with Expensify. It's like they haven't learned from the histories of the past of guys trying to do everything.

[00:29:18] Bassil: Right. You might capture some share if you do that, but over time in the long run, you will lose out to the better quality products. So I don't understand that approach. I think it makes sense. Maybe you want to capture more share. Yeah. Okay, cool. 

[00:29:31] Bassil: So maybe it works in the short run, but in the longterm, I really see like the individual play working out much better. And the other key thing is like, um, there's a lot of, uh, are you taking out a book to fact check me or what? So there's a, the other key thing is like, uh, it's basically

[00:29:48] Bassil: this guy's fact checking, obviously, what do you say? This is turning into the US political debate. 

[00:29:54] Selem: He knew, He knew, it was going to take long.

[00:29:58] Umar: I'll tell you why I took out the book. I'll tell you why I took out the book. 

[00:30:02] Bassil: He knew he was catching up on his reading. Ha ha! He's like, let me just take a chance to read chapter 3. Ha ha! Of Animal Farm. Let me just continue reading Orwell's, 1984 year. So anyways Are you going to tell me why? You're going to read a quote now. Anyways, so then, uh Can I finish my thing?

[00:30:25] Bassil: Hold on, I was, I was chatting away here. 

[00:30:28] Bassil: So anyways the other thing, by the way, is there's so much work in the subledger game, man. I don't understand how these guys are already doing invoicing, payroll, and payments, all that kind of stuff. If you think you cracked the subledger game, you're like, alright, we got it.

[00:30:39] Bassil: Let's move on to the other stuff. That's insane to me. Selem and I I say our product's 50 percent where we want it to be. Like there is so, and our product is pretty good and and there's so much work. So like for us to add like an invoicing or expense reporting or a payroll yeah, just to try and gain more share doesn't make any sense. 

[00:30:59] Bassil: And the other thing too, by the way, I know you, you said something like accountants prefer the all in one solution. I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if they do. Maybe. I don't know if the, I don't, I'm an accountant. I think the best accountants don't. The best accountants care about. The best products and those products need to speak to each other seamlessly. That's what I think the best accountants will prefer.

[00:31:21] Umar: Well, I didn't hear this feedback from accountants at accounting firms. Got this feedback from accountants in the industry, right? So I think accountants working in accounting firms due to the volume of clients that they're handling, they actually know, right? That one tool cannot do everything. The reason I took, I, I reached out for the book.

[00:31:40] Umar: I reached out for this book called the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. One of the best books I've read about marketing. I think it's a timeless book and there's a law. I'm not sure which law it is, but it's the law of focus and when you're trying to build a product, you cannot be building like everything at once.

[00:31:57] Umar: So you mentioned this, it reminded me of the law of focus. The book was behind me. I just reached out for it because I forgot the name of the author, which is Al Ries and Jack Trout. So if the listeners want to check it out! 

[00:32:07] Bassil: They nailed it. Yeah, they nailed it. 

[00:32:10] Bassil: I'll tell you a funny story, Umar, while we got to your, so Selem, like when we were building the MVP version, I think it was like, we were like launching it, like November ish. And Selem was like, all right, Bassil, some you gotta I think I'm done pretty much.

[00:32:20] Bassil: I think the product's good. There's no more, there's not so much work to do. Make sure you get me some customers. Okay. So then I was like, so I got them like a wave of customers early and he was like drowning and then he realized how much work he really had to do basically. So,

[00:32:37] Bassil: Yeah, he he now thinks that he can move on to the, he's thinking, ah, next year we'll move on to building outside the subledger game.

[00:32:43] Bassil: He's crazy. He has no idea. Yeah.

[00:32:45] Selem: Now, but see how we are from last year to this year.

[00:32:50] Bassil: Yeah. But we're still like miles away, miles away.

[00:32:54] Selem: Yeah, true. 

[00:32:56] Umar: One thing you've done really well is working closely with accounting firms who obviously would subsequently use Breezing for their clients. I mentioned Harris & Trotter, Myna, R3gen, On Chain Accounting. These are solid names, like well recognized names in the Web3 space. I want to ask you, how did the accountants at these firms help you build Breezing?

[00:33:18] Bassil: Oh yeah. They were like instrumental we have like some key guys in like numerous accounting firms who like, and some of them like get on calls with us, once a week, once every two weeks. And we have like constant feedback loops on Telegram with all of them, by the way. So it's like real time, I need this, and real time feedback and, and and I think they, they give that feedback because they know it's actually implemented. 

[00:33:40] Bassil: Like it's actually done pretty fast. I think if you do that, if you react and you basically deliver on the feedback, there's going to be more feedback. So I think that is like one area where we are true listeners to feedback. We're not just telling you we're listening to feedback and we'll put it in like a JIRA ticket somewhere in the backlog and we'll, we'll look at it in our next sprint, like six weeks out and we'll prioritize it to be released in two months. 

[00:34:04] Bassil: It'll get delivered like that week, pretty much.

[00:34:06] Bassil: You can ask the clientele, man, we ain't joking. So I think that helps as well. If they know, not just that you're listening, that you're executing on the feedback, you're going to get more feedback. I think that, and then the second one is too, is I also speak accountant, by the way, that also helps.

[00:34:19] Bassil: So you're not talking to a sales guy who like just is interested in upselling you something basically. Cause that's what it used to be as quota. Like I speak accountant, man. So when you have a talk with me, we can talk debits and credits. We can talk balance sheet accounts. We can talk VAT.

[00:34:34] Bassil: We can talk stuff. Yeah, so that also helps, by the way, when you're talking to accountants. 

[00:34:39] Umar:  Yeah, if you have any message to the community who's helped you build Breezing. 

[00:34:45] Bassil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We want to give some, some shout outs on a first name basis so we don't disclose anybody. But shout out to, and they know who they are Tom, Joe, Daniella, Rob Who else Selem? Jan, Jake & Sophie The old school Jake and Sophie the other guys who we got Philip, Patty Joe, Hamad, 

[00:35:05] Selem: Ricardo, Meta, Meta.

[00:35:07] Bassil: Meta, yeah, the old school days, Ricardo, Meta Matt Aaron, 

[00:35:12] Umar: You're saying a lot of names. I hope these guys are listening. Maybe when you're saying Hammad, I recognize Hammad from R3gen, for example. 

[00:35:20] Bassil: Yeah, I don't want, I don't want to throw down the name. I don't want to like out them. Right. So I think I just want it to like high level. I want to go first name. Cause I don't want to like, yeah, I don't know if they want to be outed. Right. So that's why I'm going more first name basis with these guys.

[00:35:33] Bassil: Yeah. But yeah who else, who else we got, we got the Linda, Philippa, Monica damn, I don't know, the list keeps going. Ben, James and they know who they are. Who else? I'm probably missing a few. You got David and Aria,

[00:35:47] Bassil: Philip. Yeah. Yeah, man, the list just keeps running, but these are just some of the key individuals that were like instrumental, I would say, and helping us get off the ground, giving us the feedback that we need. Yeah. Just being there for us when yeah, we're trying to figure things out. Yeah. And I probably missed a couple and I apologize, they know we're grateful. 

[00:36:08] Umar: That's all right. It's like you were receiving an award.

[00:36:11] Bassil: Exactly. 

[00:36:17] Bassil: We're at the Academy award actually. Oh, a few more, but I want to give shout out to like Jessica, Abdullah, Will, Nic, all these guys, man. Yeah. Instrumental instrumental, but yeah, 

[00:36:27] Umar: I guess now you're going to have to share the episode with all of them, right? That you mentioned.

[00:36:32] Umar: Yeah, I guess that's your head start because I've seen subledgers like founders or teams who are not really accountants, right? And when you speak to them about specific accounting issues. Like you don't really get an answer. 

[00:36:45] Bassil: They tell you, oh, let me just throw on, but they do have accountants in house. So, oh, let me just go get that guy who's an accountant. Then they go back and bring him in and it's like a whole other meeting. And then that guy's oh, we don't have that feature, but here's like a work around. And then he'll might go back to the product team and he'll basically like tell them to backlog that. With us, like you get that in one person basically. Yeah. 

[00:37:06] Umar: Now I want to go through some of your startup successes and failures as well. 

[00:37:11] Umar: So I mentioned this earlier that you previously built a payroll SaaS product called Earny. Then you stepped down as the CEO. Currently you're the Managing Partner at Detof. You're also the CEO at Breezing. What has been some of your previous failures or setbacks that at the time it did feel like a major roadblock, but in hindsight, it proved to be a major learning moment, both at Earny and maybe in the early days of Breezing? 

[00:37:38] Bassil: I mean, I've always kind of like gone first! Selem, what were some of the learnings that Earny man? Cause Selem was with me and

[00:37:44] Bassil: Earny from the early days.

[00:37:45] Selem: yeah, so the first issue I encountered is that it was, I didn't join on the early days. I joined 

[00:37:53] Bassil: No, you joined three months in. 

[00:37:55] Bassil: Yeah. Yeah. The product started in like April, 2021,

[00:37:59] Selem: But anyway, the issue whatever, it was long enough, but based on the code I saw, been sitting there for I thought it was a year, but there was a lot technical. What's called, Debt.

[00:38:14] Selem: Technical debt. Exactly. That's the word I don't use it that much now.

[00:38:18] Bassil: These guys don't know what you're talking about. Debt, but go ahead.

[00:38:21] Selem: It means that the code is not of high quality, which is, was like rushed in another sense. And usually in the startup, if you rush your code, you will have a lot of issues you wouldn't, you can even you can even make the, the startup fail because you rushed code. So on Breezing, we had a different approach and it's more like we cleared the technical debt. Each week or something. 

[00:38:46] Bassil: What I learned is building a company is really hard, like extremely difficult. And I don't I don't recommend it. Basically that's kind of what I would say. The things I learned, when I was building the first venture, Earny. Everybody wants to give you feedback no one's ever done what you're trying to do. And just yeah, be weary of that feedback. Don't take industry specific feedback.

[00:39:06] Bassil: Cause they don't know your industry that well, as much as you, and don't take product related feedback cause they don't know your product as well as you. 

[00:39:10] Bassil: But, but you can take if you are talking to another founder who you can relate to you, that feedback's and you're relating on hiring issues. I don't know. Customer issues, fundraising issues, whatever. Those like high level issues, like those are relatable. But everything else I would say, yeah, watch out who you take feedback from. And cause you're super susceptible to feedback as a founder, because like you're, yeah, it's a bit of desperation. Yeah, that's what I would say.

[00:39:35] Bassil: I learned in that in that first venture, the biggest the biggest learning. And then, the other biggest learning is also try and get a product out much faster. Like much faster than you think you're ready to get it out. Like it could be like totally embarrassing. Try and get that out, like as fast as possible.

[00:39:49] Bassil: I know LinkedIn founder says this all the time as well. And there's other guys who say it, but like when you're actually in the mode and implementing a product and building it, you forget that, that you should get the product out much faster, no matter how garbage and junk it is. 

[00:40:01] Selem: Just ship it.

[00:40:02] Bassil: Just ship it. And so that was a great learning in Earny and in Breezing actually we did that and it was like an embarrassment. There was like one night Selem and I were like up to three in the morning like manually deleting journals in Xero for a client. It was like horrendous. Basically cause we shipped it too fast, basically. But the beauty is we learned a lot and it was worth it. And we got the client and it all worked out. But but yeah, like it was like, you end up in these kinds of painful situations. That's how, you shipped it right on time when you're up at three, four in the morning, manually deleting stuff from the, because the product didn't work, that's how, you did it right.

[00:40:35] Umar: Cool. So let's talk a bit more about Breezing now. I love Breezing slogan on your website. So it's written, it's for accountants who manage crypto business clients and not individuals who need a tax return or crypto tracking. The listeners are familiar with what's a subledger. Could you touch on the features that differentiate Breezing from its competitors?

[00:40:57] Bassil: Yeah, yeah. The biggest, honestly, the biggest wow feature we get all the time, there's like probably two of them. One of them is really big is so when you sync everything from your subledger into your accounting system, Xero or QuickBooks, whatever that is, Right. And then you realize, oh, I made a mistake.

[00:41:13] Bassil: Maybe I miscalculated net gain loss, or maybe I chose the wrong account on a specific transaction type. You've got to go back into Xero and QuickBooks. You've got to find that journal and you've got to delete it. And then you've got to go back into your subledger and you have to re sync it, basically, into QuickBooks or Xero. In Breezing, you don't even do that. You just you sync everything from Breezing into Xero or QuickBooks. 

[00:41:36] Bassil: And then in Breezing, if you want to change something on a transaction or you change your net gain and loss, you just re-sync everything and it updates the journals you've already synced in Xero and QuickBooks. So you never delete a journal in Xero and QuickBooks. It's like a direct sync between the two and it updates seamlessly. 

[00:41:54] Bassil: I literally showed that feature to an accountant this week on Monday, like a big accounting firm in the US. I had to re-show them that three times because they thought it was like a magic trick.

[00:42:03] Bassil: I was like, I was basically like using the Chrome share screen. So I was just sharing tabs and I was like sharing this tab and that tab. And I had to share the whole screen because they didn't believe that like it was actually done. So I had to reshow them three times sharing the whole screen basically. 

[00:42:18] Bassil: I know that feature sounds like nothing and remedial, but like when you're an accountant and you're reconciling your subledger to your QuickBooks or Xero. And you make changes in your subledger that isn't reflected in Xero. And you've got to go through one by one to try and find it. It's a painful experience, but if it matches one to one and you can re-sync and update from the subledger in Xero, those exact journals you have in Xero and QuickBooks. It's a massive lifesaver. 

[00:42:41] Umar: Can I interrupt you just for the listeners to understand this feature a little bit better. So let's say in the subledger, I categorise a transaction as marketing fee and synced it into Xero. But then I realized, oh, it was a wrong classification should not be marketing, but legal.

[00:42:57] Umar: So I would go back into Breezing, change the account code. And when I would sync it into Xero. There would not be two journal entries. They would just be one right? 

[00:43:07] Bassil: Yes. That first journal entry you synced would just get updated with legal basically.

[00:43:13] Bassil: So I know that sounds like a nothing feature, a nothing banana feature, right? But honestly, when you're working away, when you're three, four months down the road, and you've chosen another subledger, and you need to make maybe an update on 10,000 transactions, or you're trying to find a needle in a haystack, you might remember listening to this pod when I said this exact point, basically. Because I was like a major pain point. I remember when I was yeah, when we're working with our clients, there's that major feature. 

[00:43:42] Bassil: And the other interesting one is like being able to close an invoice without using a clearing account. That's also like a pretty cool wow feature, but that to be honest with you is like less big, I think less big than the update, the journal feature, because the update journal feature, everyone uses. 

[00:43:55] Umar: So can you explain, with other subledgers, how this would work? Or maybe before you implemented this feature with a clearing account, how would that work? And how it works now?

[00:44:05] Bassil: So with a clearing account, right. You have a clearing account on the balance sheet pretty much. And what you do is you, you would post the bill from Dext or wherever you post it. And it would credit AP and debit an expense account in the P&L. So I know Selem has no idea what I'm talking about, but maybe your listeners would and Umar would. 

[00:44:21] Bassil: But so you credit AP and you debit an expense account. Then you would go in and you'd like manually close that AP, right? And then it would post it to a clearing account. So it would debit the AP account and it would credit the clearing account. And then when you found the transaction, the subledger, you would then sync it into that clearing account so that it could like, yeah, so they could clear that account.

[00:44:44] Bassil: So it would credit your asset account and it would debit your liabilities account. And that would clear the AP invoice. Now, I know I use a lot of debit and credit terminology. I hope I didn't lose anybody with the liabilities account and asset account, clearing account, but ultimately at the end of the day, that would then reconcile everything and you would be okay, ideally.

[00:44:59] Bassil: Right. So the way you close it, in Breezing to Xero Breezing to QuickBooks is, you could basically like enable, if you have your asset account as like your main crypto account, let's say USDC as an asset account, or you could basically enable it for payment. You could fetch the open invoices and bills from Xero. You match it to the payment in Breezing, and then you sync it back to Xero. And it just like closes that invoice basically. That's basically the close. 

[00:45:25] Bassil: In QuickBooks, it produces a journal entry with the name of the vendor. And then you're able to then use that journal entry to close the bill in QuickBooks basically is the other alternative. That's in QuickBooks. If you don't add it as a bank account, right?

[00:45:39] Bassil: Many people are forced to add these accounts as bank accounts to do these kinds of things. But again, you can just add as an asset account and you can close it this way. So those are like the two, yeah, options on Xero and QuickBooks that you have. Selem, go ahead and pitch your part.

[00:45:52] Selem: So we released a new feature, which is going to auto apply your accounts for trades and the turnout transactions automatically. So based on your balance sheet set up. If it's token based or wallet based or even wallet and token based, you just select those transactions go to the options and click on auto apply accounts and it will apply accounts for you. It can be like a hundred thousand trades you have on a wallet and it will auto apply the accounts for you.

[00:46:22] Umar: I don't think I really understood it. Is it a rule that you would create to apply this type of transaction to a account?

[00:46:29] Selem: No it's not a rule. It's just for example, when you select transactions and you try to edit that transaction, It's like a new feature you just go to manage and hit auto apply accounts. That's it.

[00:46:41] Umar: I guess I'll to try it out. 

[00:46:42] Umar: All right. So, I also want to touch on pricing. You've recently introduced a SaaS pricing model based on the number of transactions. And I think the entry level package starts with 600 transactions for unlimited wallets. I want to touch on this because previously you had a different pricing model used to charge clients, I'm not sure how much, but for every transaction.

[00:47:05] Umar: Why did you decide to change this pricing model? Is that something what your clients wanted?

[00:47:10] Bassil: Yeah. I can talk a bit about that. Basically on the pricing model where we struggled, like Umar, we had a per transaction pricing model. So like a pay per use pricing model initially. But what happened is we were too expensive. For the larger volume clients, and we were too cheap for the smaller volume clients. So we had it set at 18 cents per transaction was the initial pricing model. 

[00:47:34] Bassil: And 18 cents per transaction was like, we thought was like the sweet spot where we can make the business work. But yeah, that priced us out for the larger clients and we didn't make enough money on the smaller clients.

[00:47:42] Bassil: And if we decreased our price even further to get the larger clients. To be like a lower price, like it would basically be free then for the smaller clients. So like you pretty much like we're in a real difficult situation there on the price per transaction model. So what we did is we tried to be super flexible.

[00:48:02] Bassil: And so we just created again, a pricing tier for unlimited wallets, unlimited users. And we just pretty much had like a, a tier there for so the first package up to 600 transactions, next one's for 1500, next one's for 5000 or I forget 10000. But basically we tried to have a lot of pricing tiers. Based on number of transactions so that we can accommodate for all kinds of businesses, right? 

[00:48:24] Bassil: And the price is super transparent. There's no like quotations. So you don't like jump on a quote with us. Imagine like going to QuickBooks or Xero you just like the pricing's there you take out a subscription and you're done. Like don't bother us. 

[00:48:34] Bassil: Like our ideal scenario sometime in the future is we don't hear from you and you just go by yourself. We don't want to quote you. So we want to get away from the whole like quoting, let's quote pretty much get on a call. Let's assess your business and let's quote you. Yeah, that's the business we want to get away from. We want to be on the beach and you're just subscribing to the product and moving forward. And watching all our videos and yeah, and maybe I'm doing some CS work in my swim shorts, basically 

[00:49:00] Umar: Not in Switzerland.

[00:49:01] Bassil: Not in Switzerland, exactly.

[00:49:03] Umar: All right. I'm looking at the time, time's passing. There's a last topic I want to go through. So Bassil, based on the feedback that I hear, you're very well respected in the industry, not just being the Co-Founder of Breezing, but a very knowledgeable crypto accountant. I want to ask you what learning habits have you developed along the way to make sure you're always updating your knowledge around crypto accounting.

[00:49:26] Umar: You have a circle of crypto accountants you regularly connect with, are their specific resources that you tap into both as an accountant and an entrepreneur.

[00:49:37] Bassil: So I would say what I do is. I actually do accounting work, Umar. That's what I do to stay updated. Like I do accounting work for clients. Like I'm in there booking journal entries. Like I'm in there staying up to make sure that yeah, we're meeting certain standards on those journal entries.

[00:49:53] Bassil: So I'd say being in the game yourself and then supplying a product for the game is two things that like help you stay super sharp. So I think I'd like to stay in a world where I'm continuously like forced to yeah do accounting work. Because it like forces you to stay sharp on what's coming.

[00:50:10] Bassil: So it was like a new regulation, for example, in the US now that just came out. It's a, you have to do like net gain loss on per wallet. It's like a force, like ruling is coming out. And so for example, I probably wouldn't have known that if I'm not in the game, basically. And and to be honest, I spoke to a customer, Selem I think it was on call, you weren't on the call, say, but a customer in the US and they were like, they talked to sales guys from other subledgers who don't even know that that's a thing basically. And so the key to stay super sharp is yeah, just do the actual accounting work basically, and then you're forced to stay up to date. There's no way around it.

[00:50:45] Umar: Yeah. Regarding this update, so it's the end of the universal wallet tracking. Now companies would have to calculate the realized gain or loss per specific wallet.

[00:50:58] Umar: So, I don't see, it's become so much complicated for accountants who are not using a subledger now to track all of this. Before you could track the aggregated let's say if Ethereum tracked the whole, like amount of units in like spreadsheet and then whatever you're disposing, you take like the first lot, but now it's per wallet. How are you accommodating for that in It's 

[00:51:18] Bassil: already there Umar, what are you talking about? We already did it.

[00:51:22] Umar: I didn't try all the subledges, but because you have like per wallet, so per wallet, and you have all the transactions. You were smart maybe to build it that way. 

[00:51:31] Bassil: But we knew this was like coming. We knew also like that there was, that this was like a method that's used by a lot of accountants. I think like subledger, all the subledgers, I think have a per wallet mechanism. I think now I have to remember, but yeah, .

[00:51:44] Umar: And also I want to ask you this question, because there's a lot of accountants doing crypto accounting every day, but sometimes given like crypto is everything is so novel. There's innovation. There's like something new happening. Okay. Restaking comes out. Now you can do restaking. So how does accounting work?

[00:51:59] Umar: So, sometimes you have to know other crypto accountants and discuss what are you guys doing? What do you think should be done here? Because a lot of times there's no guidance, right. From the IFRS, from the US GAAP.

[00:52:10] Bassil: You saying what do I do in those scenarios?

[00:52:13] Umar: Yeah. Speaking to other accountants. I believe sometimes can 

[00:52:17] Bassil: Oh, definitely. But we, but obviously like when you're in the space as a crypto account, you will get connected to other crypto accountants. It's like inevitable, like these guys, like in the crypto accounting world, like they're competing with each other, but they're also not, it depends on who you ask, right?

[00:52:30] Bassil: Some guys say they actually compete against each other. But a lot of times, like there is a lot of like they all know each other, like the crypto accounting world's small. So they all know each

[00:52:38] Bassil: other. And there is like a, this, there is generally, like a help community, basically, if you ask. And Umar, you run a great one as well, by the way, through your community. Like just like the channels that you run as well. Like I see them it's a friendly post. Some guy has problems with something like tons of like advisors in there that will jump in and help. Yeah. So, like the, once you get into that world, there is help there. You shouldn't feel shy to ask for it. 

[00:53:05] Umar: I want to probably wrap up the episode. The title of the episode for today was Building an Enterprise Crypto SaaS with a Team of Two. As closing thoughts, it doesn't have to relate to the title, or it could. But What would be your closing thoughts for this episode today?

[00:53:20] Umar: Has there been anything that maybe we didn't touch on or you would like to reiterate to the listeners?

[00:53:25] Bassil: Hmm. I think you did a good job of covering it. You didn't ask me the sales question, but that's all right. 

[00:53:31] Umar: I'll ask you the sales the other question now? 

[00:53:36] Umar: So for the listeners, this is the second take of us , recording with Breezing. There was a technical issue for the first episode. Regarding the sales question, I had asked Bassil that I'm actually really impressed by his ability to onboard so many clients in such a short amount of time.

[00:53:53] Umar: And I was telling him that Bassil, I think you're very good at sales.

[00:53:57] Bassil: That resonated with me because you think I'm good at sales. That was very interesting to me that you think I'm great at selling basically. And that's like something also, the reason why I want to maybe bring that one, because Selem also says like the same thing to me, like in the early days, it was just like, Oh, you're a great sales person.

[00:54:12] Bassil: And also like my wife says that to me all the time. And I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but she

[00:54:16] Bassil: has, you're a great sales person. So listen, like spaces I've built products in are spaces where I am the, user, so I am like selling to myself and I understand the person I'm selling to because I felt the pain.

[00:54:30] Bassil: I was like, I was messing around with payroll late in the evening at three in the morning. I was trying to make a deadline on the Friday night, and the subledger wasn't working or I don't believe in sales guys coming in, trying to sell in the early stages of a venture.

[00:54:45] Bassil: Who like, haven't felt the pain themselves because it's really difficult to sell. Cause at the beginning, it's all about relatability and it's got to be there. And so I think this is just like a, not just for, for subledgers, but I don't think anyone who was starting like a venture, try and be the customer, try and feel the problem yourself.

[00:55:01] Bassil: If you haven't, and you want to go into the space and build already, I'd recommend like taking a year. And just like literally becoming the customer doing some manual service work. I don't know if you're a farmer going, if you want to build a farming product, go do some farming for a year and then go and build your product.

[00:55:17] Bassil: If you want to revolutionize I don't know, carpet making, like a carpet machine, go build carpets manually for like a year. So I say like, you know, try and feel the problem, feel the pain. And then you ain't selling anymore. You're just like having a conversation about that. You're relating on the pains and the problems of the customer you're speaking to. So that's the reality of it. That's why I think Selem also says the same thing. 

[00:55:38] Bassil: I just think it's a misconception from a lot of people who haven't done sales. Or who haven't tried to sell any I just feel like sales is not I'm trying to make magic, and present something that isn't there.

[00:55:49] Bassil: It's like relatability. It's understanding. It's yeah.

[00:55:53] Umar: Yeah. So you wouldn't be able to sell cowboy boots because you haven't worn cowboy boots. Right. But you can sell a subledger! 

[00:56:01] Bassil: Exactly, I can sell a subledger cause I've felt the pain., The greatest one is like the Jordan Belfort one. Sell me this pen. That's what it's all about. And then he says, he says, Hey could you sign this for me? And he's I don't have a pen. Boom! Supply and Demand. 

[00:56:16] Umar: Based on what you told me, you, you told me that you do listen to this pod. There's a last question that I usually ask, which is do you have a favorite quote, or maybe.

[00:56:24] Umar: A maxim that you live by both of you. 

[00:56:32] Bassil: Who uses the word Maxim anymore? But hold on, who uses the word Maxim anymore? Maxim. only heard that on a magazine, I think

[00:56:40] Bassil: Maxim. Alright Selem, what's your Maxim?

[00:56:44] Selem: I mean, for my side, this is the one I have on my LinkedIn. It's big winners pay for thousands failed experiments because it's actually true. I tried to build my own startup and the first one I failed miserably. I couldn't even get one customer. Second one has a bit because I learned from those mistakes and and the next project, you don't, you don't make the same mistakes and you actually get a few more customers. And basically this works for everything. 

[00:57:14] Bassil: What's my maxim?

[00:57:15] Bassil: Let's see, my maxim I don't know, maybe you gotta not give up, 'cause times will get pretty tough. 

[00:57:20] Bassil: Maybe that's maybe the biggie. 

[00:57:23] Umar: And there's something that, I went through your LinkedIn profile prior to preparing this episode and something that for me stands out is the fact that you're always like reinventing yourself as an accountant, as an entrepreneur. So this like constant learning and you've got this insane drive, I would say, basically. 

[00:57:45] Bassil: I think it's more of like an addiction than a drive, I would say. It's it's not a good thing. So, I, I, I wouldn't recommend it. But yeah it's just this desire to I don't know, try and change the status quo or try and do something different or to go up against the, like a massive challenger or big company or an established player or yeah, it's not recommended by the way. The easier life and the life that's more taken is like the corporate life.

[00:58:12] Bassil: And I'm talking about like big corporate, I'm talking, there are some guys who are like in some seriously, like heavy stress roles and startups and firms that are like growing really fast where they have a lot of work, but like maybe like the more nine to five, like corporate life and like a traditional corporate that is the much more easier, yeah, more common path taken and yeah. And sometimes I do look at that path and I, and I think to myself, man, like maybe I'd be happier in that path. Um, but ultimately I'm just an addict. And so, I always go back to my addiction. Which is not healthy, but what can you do? 

[00:58:48] Selem: It's more like an obsession.

[00:58:50] Umar: Listen, Your calling, I think your calling is to build the best subledger out there.

[00:58:57] Bassil: I don't know if that's my calling. It's just like an addiction that I'm on. It could just fizzle out and die, but who knows, but ultimately right now it's looking pretty good, so we'll keep going. 

[00:59:06] Umar: All right. So, Bassil and Selem, thanks a lot for coming in today and for the listeners to know this. Breezing, both Bassil and Selem have been very supportive of the work that we do at The Accountant Quits. So Bassil is actually an instructor at the Crypto Accounting Academy. He's contributed to articles, workshops.

[00:59:27] Umar: So I think your help has been very valuable to us, like to build this community and you're always available to chat with students. Also with me, whenever I have like crypto accounting issue, you're always there easy to reach out to on telegram. So thanks a lot for that. And I hope we can, yeah, keep building this relationship. 

[00:59:47] Umar: For people who want to maybe reach out to you, Bassil and Selem, or learn more about Breezing.

[00:59:52] Umar: Where should they go?

[00:59:53] Bassil: Breezing.io 

[00:59:56] Umar: two E's and if people want to reach 

[01:00:00] Bassil: Oh LinkedIn. I'm trying to revive my Twitter account. We have a Twitter account. 

[01:00:03] Selem: It's been gone.

[01:00:06] Umar: Breezing has a Twitter 

[01:00:07] Selem: Oh yeah, 

[01:00:08] Bassil: We just launched it. Yeah. We're live.

[01:00:11] Selem: it's alwaysbreezing.

[01:00:13] Umar: I'm already following it. So we'll have a few more people to follow it. All right. So guys, thanks a lot for coming in today. I'll let you guys go and 

[01:00:21] Umar: we'll stay in touch. 

[01:00:22] Bassil: Appreciate it.

[01:00:22] Selem: All right, thank you, Umar.