A Birmingham-based startup, SmartWiz, has returned from a three-month stay in Los Angeles during which it took part in the prestigious Techstars Los Angeles accelerator.
The startup, which created one of only 15 approved IRS tax softwares, is now expanding in Innovation Depot by moving into a larger office and making key hires. The move comes on the heels of the company being chosen for as a recipient of the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund in July.
SmartWiz is bringing on a head of engineering and head of marketing as well as a few more engineers. Tevin Harrell, founder and CEO of the company, formerly called TaxxWiz, said he is also seeking full-stack developers and wants to hire locally. In the next year, Harrell wants to go from eight to 10 employees to about 40.
Read more about takeaways from the Techstars Los Angeles accelerator, growth and future plans in a Q&A with Harrell. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What has SmartWiz been up to?
We're basically changing the way that most people will experience taxes. We're empowering tax professionals and CPAs to serve their clients faster, easier and make it more of an enjoyable experience for both parties. So because this is the only industry in the U.S. that every single person deals with every year and most of the solutions have been here since 1980, we've gotten a lot of recognition, a lot of exciting partners who think this is a big deal as well, TechStars being one of those I'm referring to.
Going into TechStars, we moved out to Los Angeles for three and a half months. It's the No. 2 accelerator in the world. It's harder to get into than Harvard. That's how little the chance of getting in that was.
What were some of your biggest takeaways from the accelerator?
I will say, one, we were in California during this interesting time where AI kind of blew up, so that was pretty cool, because you're in a place where it's happening in real time. They're kind of leading the revolution.
In TechStars, we were getting challenged on every component of our business and how we're going to go about it at the same exact time. We got to rethink how we're going to solve this problem. So never really straying from the goal of solving a problem for tax pros and their customers, but now, how can we do it faster and more efficiently and think about this in a way of what is it going to be five years from now instead of just using what we have today.
That's kind of what led us to SmartWiz. I wouldn't even say it's a name change. It's really a new company. SmartWiz is fully a software company that is bigger than just AI, but using AI, using modern technology to solve a problem.
I think the more resources that we can get and more access is going to be phenomenal for the city (of Birmingham). That'd be another takeaway. Being in California, we had access to any and everybody or any and everything that we needed at all times. Whether that was capital, a mentor in this particular category, whether that was a particular resource or whatever the case is, I think that that's the next stage for Birmingham, Alabama. I think we have those people. How do we get them all together? How do we leverage some of the biggest companies and their resources to make sure that we are giving as much resources and mentorship?
Now that the accelerator is over, are you planning to stay in Birmingham?
We are. We believe that you can build anywhere. We think there is talent here. We think there's magic here. And we were approached multiple times, especially by investors, about coming to California. Some of the sentiment was they don't think that we'll be able to get the talent that we need to reach the speed we want to grow here. And kind of our challenge to them was, 'We think we can get most of it and then what we can't, it's a hybrid environment now.'
Just like we moved to California for three and a half months, wherever we gotta go, but, you know, it's gonna be a lot easier here. Our money goes further here as far as costs and benefits like the Innovation Depot with cheaper office space and all those kind of things. And if we need to travel for certain deals or conferences and other things, we will go where we need to go.
What else is in the works?
We are a B Corp., and we want to give back as we grow, so we've got an academy teaching people like women and those in underserved communities skills they can use for the rest of their life. So they learn taxes, but it's bigger than that. They learn marketing, all these cool things. ... So that's that's been pretty awesome, having that kind of mission-driven commitment on top of making money.
