Our Story
By Eric Feltin
I love the Number 3. I mean, I really love it.
If I spill a few nuts from a bag into my hand and there are 4, I put one back. If there are only 2, then I retrieve precisely 1 more.
I guess you’d say I’m neurodivergent … slightly.
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“So, what is it with 3s?”, I hear you ask. Well, I have an inner voice but it does nothing but count. It counts everything, like stairs. (There were 78 steps up to my London flat.)
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But counting is not always innocent.
Imagine being at a junction and wanting to turn right. You look right. (That’s 1). Then you look left. (That’s 2.) Then I look right again. (That’s 3.) But why stop there?
While looking to the right, a car could have appeared on the left. Shouldn't I check left again?
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And that is the beauty of the Number 3. It is a safety vest, a reason to stop, and it has become my super power!​
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“Really? A super power?”​ Yes. It stops me when I have done enough, and it prevents me from making mistakes. See, I don’t just do a thing and then move on. I check it, not once but twice.
More importantly, my super power inspires me to start things new, largely because I know my first attempt is not my final effort. After all, I still have to check it/ revise it twice more.
When I was a child I knew I would be an accountant when I grew up. I've always been good at numbers after all.
Instead, when I grew up, I founded a tech startup and it was a success: £14m per year in revenue, and sold off in 2017.
Through it all, I've always been attracted to the finality of a correct calculation, a well-articulated statement, and the perfect metaphor.
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Maybe this is why one service offered by my start up was helping pensioners reclaim overpaid tax. We created an entirely online sign up process for that.
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More recently I've deployed Generative AI to ​help small business owners make R&D Tax Credit claims.
I now realise both of these ventures were only Steps 1 and 2 on my latest journey, and I have now reached Step 3.
My latest venture combines all I've learned about customer journeys, detecting mistakes, interacting with HMRC, and assembling the final numbers into the right boxes. In a nutshell, everything has led towards automating the work of professionals, professionals working with numbers, accountants.
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I thrive on looking at a process and tuning it, looking again and tuning again, and then finally automating it.
Sealing forever in amber the elegant simplicity and precision of a finely tuned process – until the regulations change, a new technology emerges, or something else triggers us to start again.