René Lacerte: Building BILL to Process 1% of US GDP
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Accounting is the language of business, but almost no one starts a business because they want to run the business. You've literally spent nearly 30 years building software for small businesses in their financial operations. Why would you dedicate decades of your life to this?
SMBs are the fabric and the glue of our society. And so I think for me, like this passion around helping SMBs with their finances goes way back. But then when I started the first company was after I'd been successful at into building a their payroll franchise. And in that process of running PayCycle, I found that the day to day process of managing the back office was the exact same thing that my grandfather had done 60 years earlier.
Said SMBs don't want more AI, they want less work. What does it look like for agentic payments?
If you think about what is so core about agentic AI, it's gonna be the data is centralized. And so for me, the big aha was like, oh, we're gonna have all this data in one place with Bill. We wanted to make sure transactions were connected seamlessly, not because they were being forced to be connected, because one person's AP is another person's AR. And so what we did last year was we actually built an AI platform so the engineers and the product leaders could actually Build agents on top of that and it would be consistent. The next thing is to make sure that we're not trying to replace, we're actually trying to augment.
Welcome to Between Two Founders. I'm Jeff Seibert, the founder and CEO of Digits. We build the AGL, the world's first agentic general ledger that automates the end-to-end month and closed accounting process for small businesses and accounting firms. Digits is my third venture-backed company. And way back in 2007, I had the privilege of leading Stanford University's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar Series, where we hosted incredible entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, Vinod Kosla, Reid Hoffman. Today, with Between Two Founders, I'm honored to be able to have conversations with some amazing entrepreneurs and share their stories. You can check out the full series at digits dot com slash BTF. Today, I am thrilled to welcome Renee Lasert, the legendary founder and CEO of Bill, the intelligent finance platform trusted by nearly half a million businesses and accountants to manage, move, and maximize their money.
Renee is one of the longest-tenured founder CEOs in fintech, a fourth-generation entrepreneur who has spent nearly three decades building the financial infrastructure that powers millions of small and medium-sized businesses. He started his career at Intuit, where he helped create and scale the company's early payroll and payment systems. He then founded PayCycle, one of the first cloud-based payroll platforms, before launching Bill in 2006. Today, with a quarter of US SMBs represented in its network, Bill transacts 1% of US GDP, serves nearly half a million customers, and powers the financial operations of 9,000 accounting firms. Renee, welcome to Between Two Founders. Well,
thank you, Jeff. Great to be here. It's always great to talk to another founder. So looking forward to the conversation and sharing the stories that we both have.
Well, I'm so excited for this because you've literally spent nearly 30 years building software for small businesses in their financial operations. And and what what about that got you so passionate? Why would you dedicate decades of your life to this?
So my parents and grandparents each had half a dozen businesses.
What is the story behind René Lacerte’s entrepreneurial roots and family legacy?
Uh, and many of the businesses since the sixties, in fact, all of them since the sixties were serving other SMBs and accounting firms. And what I saw growing up, the dinner table conversation always would go back to business. And you would hear about the pain points and the customers and what they were doing and how they were making an impact on the communities that they served. And so I distilled this into that SMBs are the fabric and the glue of our society. It is what makes every community different. It's what makes every community special.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:20
2
What is the story behind René Lacerte’s entrepreneurial roots and family legacy?
3:20–5:14
3
How did the early payroll innovations lead to the creation of Bill?
5:14–7:09
4
What was the pivotal moment that sparked the genesis of Bill’s platform?
7:09–16:27
5
How did Bill evolve its leadership and adopt the “Owner Mode” mindset?
16:27–18:28
6
Why do SMBs want less AI and how is Bill addressing that need?
18:28–21:00
7
What does building an AI‑driven agentic payments platform look like at Bill?
21:00–23:34
8
How does Bill’s network effect and scale enable processing over 1% of US GDP?
23:34–41:50