Arnav Bathla in San Francisco, California
21-year-old Arnav Bathla had dropped out of college, made a bold move of moving to the United States with a one-way ticket, and founded Coinbooks, a San Francisco-based Web3 startup, building an accounting software designed for crypto-native organizations.
The company, which Arnav calls “Quickbooks for crypto,” is only 6 months old and has now raised a total of $3.2 million with support from world-class investors like Lattice Capital, Founders, Inc. Multicoin Capital, and even Polygon’s
Originally from India, Arnav had dropped out of college just last year to pursue his dreams of founding his own tech company. He said that ever since when he was 13 years old, he was always fascinated by computers and technology. He was then inspired by the stories of Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs to create a product of his own that will impact billions of people all over the world.
However, it wasn’t always a straight line and certainly wasn’t an overnight success for Arnav. For the past 2 years, he has played around with different ideas and almost none of them solved a ‘pressing’ problem. He went from one idea to the next until, at some point in his journey, he had nothing but $0.50 cents in his bank account. He said that he was basically able to survive by in pitch competition money.
“I had $0.50 cents in my bank account and at some point, I had to go 2 days without a meal and survive with the money I received from pitch competitions.” Arnav says.
Arnav Bathla’s tweet about his journey into Coinbooks
Despite what he’s been through, Arnav developed one important skill: grit. He believes that grit is a skill all founders must have. Additionally, he always believed that he was destined to become a startup founder which is why he never gave up.
The idea of Coinbooks was born when he saw that a growing number of crypto-native companies had to handle their bookkeeping in a very manual and repetitive way. Additionally, no one wants to handle back-office work. So, the idea is simple, crypto teams will connect their crypto wallet/s and integrate their existing account software like Quickbooks, then Coinbooks will process transactions and accounting under the hood in just a few clicks. Tagging and labeling a transaction is easy and quick.
According to Bankless, there are more than $14B in DAO treasury volume and more than 978,000 DAO members. The total number of DAOs has grown more than 660% in the past 2 years. 36% 0f US SMBs accept crypto and there are more than 250K transactions every day. By hitting the problem end-to-end, the company is tackling a trillion-dollar market with an ambitious product roadmap.
Coinbooks landing page
There are competitors in the crypto accounting space like Guilded, Blockpath, and TaxBit. However, according to Arnav, Guilded and Blockpath (which are both available as Quickbooks integrations) aren’t specialized for B2B and TaxBit is a mix of B2C and enterprise. What makes Coinbooks different is that they’re specialized for B2B and to fill in the GAAP rules for accounting. The company is also designing for speed with the goal of enhancing the user experience since they’re operating on an assumption that users themselves don’t want to spend a lot of time handling their transactions.
Arnav also adds that, “Accounting is an area that needs more iteration and innovation in the crypto space and the truth is that founders and teams don’t want to handle accounting operations themselves, even for the non-Web3 companies, which is why they always delegate and outsource.”
Coinbooks landing page
Coinbooks is currently building the fastest accounting software for crypto-native organizations and already has customers like Layer3, ThirdWeb, and Pointer. The company has also established partnerships with bookkeeping and tax preparation companies like Fondo, Metacounts, and Electrafrost.
When asked what’s his 10-year vision for Coinbooks, Arnav said, “To become the financial infrastructure for the crypto industry.” The plan is to not only build an accounting software but to provide an entire financial back-office, which includes handling crypto payments, payroll, and compliance for Web3 organizations, preparing taxes like TurboTax, and providing a CFO
When asked what advice would he give to aspiring founders and tech entrepreneurs, he said that developing grit and resiliency is the key. “It’s going to be hard and challenging. You have to make sure you surround yourself with the right people, especially those who you look up to or people that have been where you are. In my case, I had to reach out to Series B founders to get their guidance and mentorship.”
Arnav envisions a world where everyone pay in crypto and that a decade from now, every company that transact in crypto will use Coinbooks.
