Looking to transmit returns for next year's tax season.
Our team is 3 looking for a 4th: myself, another full stack dev, and a NYU tax attorney.
We're looking for founders with full stack abilities and good communication. Remote OK.
Interested in joining? Check the site & blog for more! http://taxcompactor.com
Email me: ecolner at gmail dot com Please include your Github portfolio in email :)
Also, there are strong forces working against a tiny company that wants to enter this complex market. A company with four people:
- Can't afford to hire as many testers as Intuit (or H&R Block, or the other major players) to test their software to make sure that it operates correctly.
- Can't hire as many CPAs and tax lawyers to confirm that they comply with the latest tax laws. If they want to "make income tax preparation and filing free for every taxpayer in America" (as their web site claims), that would involve staying on top of federal tax regulations, the tax regulations of fifty states, and also cities like NYC that have their own income tax.
- Can't hire as many security specialists to make sure that they're haven't overlooked a vulnerability on their web site.
So what's the value proposition? Why should people risk using this product next year instead of shelling out $25 or $50 dollars for the tax prep software they used for the last several years?
Everything you said is true. There's a pretty big difference between 4 people versus 400 people working on software. All I can say is that probably 10% (that's optimistic) of the people working on any given project make a difference in a large company. At least that's been my experience. And that's why you get startups bringing products to market with great success over and over again.
We encourage you to keep spending the money if it gives you the warm feelz! It's your money and it's our job to convince you to make the switch. You'll be able to use any product out there and compare the results for yourself before submitting your returns next season, so we've got that going for us.
Presumably they're building something a little more innovative in which case the product speaks for itself and the lack of reputation is outweighed by overcoming a severe pain point.
Good luck.
I find this a problem with all the newfangled webpage designs... but on others, there's an indicator that there is more content below.
As others have said you should definitely put a sign-up form on your site.
One completely unrelated question (and I hate to be that person on HN): is the accelerated scroll on the website intentional? It's a really good looking site, but the scroll speed makes it very hard to read.
I heard from my CPA that Intuit provides very poor support for their ProSeries / Lacerte software, because they are trying to get everyone to use Turbotax instead. So even CPAs have a pain point that you could solve.
It seems like a domain a developer typically wouldn't have much insight into without a tax professional talking about it openly, or having worked on a product previously.
I'll change the title to make the cofounder bit explicit.
Are you open to sharing what stack your team will develop with? I didn't catch that here, on your site, or your HN profile. As someone that's interested in this, that's one of the first questions I have; others may as well.
I'm not co-founder level, but I'm going to keep an eye on this.
Best of luck, I really hope you guys knock it out of the park.
That said, web is pretty broad so if you're a database expert that also dabbles in sys admin and node then we're interested in talking with you. If you're a talented engineer you can adapt to new technologies is the way we see it.
I'm positive I'm not co-founder material though. I'm still going to keep eye on you guys, primarily b/c I hope you succeed, though I also want to see what future developer opportunities may arise.
It would be fun to see everyone claim deductions on dog food the same way a rich guy might deduct on his horses.
The AI is going to be superior in terms of explaining which factors played in your return. This will become clearer how powerful it is when the application suggests ways to optimize your situation and you basically have a playbook in hand to use.
I also read that you're going the Java route. Decent option for handling the load (free tax returns will pull in a big amount of people - assuming they trust the service), but considering you guys are going to be 4-5, perhaps python with the data packages(numpy et. al) might help with AI (which reads like intense probability calcs).
Glad someone is doing this by the way, and best of luck!
