Ask HN: Advice needed on our startup, a professional tax preparation marketplace

2 points by tsestrich 10 years ago | 3 comments

Hey all,

We just launched our on-demand tax preparation platform, Taxaroo (https://www.taxaroo.com) last month. We have over a hundred CPAs signed up, we've gotten great positive feedback from our early users, and we're now working on getting the word out to a wider audience. However, given that our market is highly constrained by the looming April 18th US tax deadline, we need advice on what we could be doing to maximize the time we have. Specifically, we wanted to ask two things:

- Usability/conversion optimization. If you look at our content, would you be interested in using Taxaroo (assuming you wanted professional tax help)? If not, what are one or two major hangups that would give you reason to hesitate? We'll be doing in-person usability testing in the coming days, but your feedback would be very valuable.

- Reaching customers. We're a bootstrapped company, and given we don't have a large advertising budget, what avenues would you use to find customers? We've aggressively pursuing press, but with virtually no press relationships we've not had any major success.

Thanks for looking!

Background:

Our Show HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074466

Our mission is to make taxes as simple and painless as possible so that people can get back to doing things they actually want to be doing. Taxaroo allows people to have their taxes prepared by an experienced certified professional, at prices lower than a tax office, and all without even leaving home. Everything is done securely on our online platform, and we can even give instant quotes so people know what they will pay up front (which is impossible at most tax offices). The end result is that clients save hours of time and hassle compared to going into an office, and save nearly $100 on average. We already have well over a hundred CPAs from across the country signed up to start preparing returns, and they can handle taxes from every U.S. state!

Thanks, Tim Co-founder & CTO

chowdown627 10 years ago |

Hi Tim,

Congratulations on your launch. I checked out your site and did some reading - nice to run into a fellow Deloitte alum. I worked in their Private Client Tax division. So hopefully I can share the perspective both as a preparer and reluctant payer.

I like the concept, but I'm just a skeptic who's cynical about all of the on-demand, Uber-for startups. With that being said, it's obviously being done and at least capital is flowing to them for now.

Perhaps I'm old-fashioned, but I either want 100% control (prepare my own taxes) or I need to completely trust the preparer. I need to meet this individual and know he/she is qualified; I have to know who physically receives my docs, completes the return, and sends it out. Taxes are just about the most stressful topic for people and nobody wants to even think about the risk of facing the IRS. So I imagine the assurance of the face-to-face relationship (at least on the onset) with a preparer outweighs the inconvenience of simply hopping in the car to drive to H&R Block. Because apples to apples, it's the same amount of effort otherwise: receive forms, scan/e-mail/deliver documents, sign off and send.

That's just my opinion.

Obviously, online financial services is a hugely successful industry. However, I think of the contrast with a company like Betterment, for example. It's easy to automate the number-crunching from a customer investment questionnaire, and prepare a cookie-cutter asset allocation and investment plan. But taxes are even more specific to each individual's finances; then it's made much more complex by the deadlines, laws, IRS.

I'm also curious: who is your target market? I'm just trying to gauge the effectiveness of the pitch (i.e. save $100, convenience).

I hope you enjoyed my rambling - I promise you I'm offering my opinion as a potential user or preparer, versus any kind of expert. Grain of salt :)

tsestrich 10 years ago | |

Thanks so much for your well thought-out response!

I think your perspective is one that many people share, though fortunately for us, not everyone does! My co-founder is a CPA with his own tax firm, and they handle ~1000 clients/year without meeting anyone in person. The demand there is what ultimately led us to giving this model a try in the first place.

As you described, it all comes down to trust, and we're working on building that up right now. I think our messaging, as it stands today, doesn't do enough to build trust. So far we've gotten a fair number of early users that will hopefully help build up credibility in the process, and we'll do a better job explaining how we vet our preparers.

Looking specifically at H&R Block, our value proposition is actually more than just convenience. They typically will hire people each year off the street with little to no tax prep experience, and give them a crash course in just a few hours. Compare that to our CPAs and EAs that average over 15 years of experience, and I think we have a strong value proposition in terms of expertise as well. We're not a true "Uber" model either, where the assignment of work is a black box. We let clients select their preparer from a set of compatible tax pros, and they are free to research which one makes them most comfortable. We encourage preparers to write about their experience, and to provide LinkedIn profile URLs to make it a little easier to find their background.

Obviously we're not in a position to convince someone with an existing relationship with their accountant to switch to using us, but we're targeting someone who otherwise would walk into a big-box tax store to get their taxes done.

As for target market, we're still struggling a bit to narrow it down. It's a little more complicated than just picking one at random, but we're testing hypotheses. We're looking in two directions right now - either on-demand economy workers who are working as independent contractors, and/or early career business travelers. Independent contractors because they are comfortable with the "gig economy" model and may have complicated tax situations, and business travelers because I know that world and know that they are busy and can have complex tax situations as well.

Hopefully some day in the future we can convince you to give us a try!

tsestrich 10 years ago |

Link for ease of access: https://www.taxaroo.com