The people behind Sweet

Hey,

I'm Toni, one of the founders of Sweet.

When I was 19, I dropped out of college and moved across the world to a city I had no ties in. I had two suitcases, $200 in cash, sleeping on the floor of a youth hostel. All I knew was my desire to start a business working with cool tech.

But I didn't know anyone. No friends. No advisors. No idea what I was doing. I felt how lonely being an entrepreneur can get.

Since then I've come to believe relationships are the only thing that really matter. Then I spent years mastering the art of people: finding talent, building relationships, cold emailing to get in touch with anyone, creating content that resonates, curating IRL events, etc.

And for most entrepreneurs like me, one of the most important relationships is with your accountant. But sadly, most accountants are too swamped to focus on what really matters. Early in my business journey I had a tax pro who barely got the job done, when really I needed someone to guide me. If compliance work was taken off their plate, they could be the financial therapist I needed.

I know it sounds weird coming from a guy building agents — but I believe AI will make finance more human again.

It's estimated we spend ~50 billion hours globally on tax preparation every year. That's over 14 times the total labor hours of the Apollo program, maybe humanity's greatest achievement. We want to give that time back to the world to focus on what really matters: people.

— Toni

Hey,

I'm Femi, one of the founders of Sweet.

My mom was an accountant. Every tax season, she came home stressed in a way the rest of the year couldn't touch. She had to close out her books, and the worst part was never the work itself. It was the why. She's chasing down paperwork, emailing clients, digging through documents for things that should have been handled months ago. Her software let invoices go out all year without collecting W-9s. Then January hits, and suddenly that's her problem. The tools she depended on were creating work, not preventing it.

When I got old enough to understand what she was dealing with, I saw it clearly. This wasn't a discipline issue. It wasn't a her issue. It was a software issue.

I'm a software guy. I love building tools. I've spent years writing code to make my own workflows better, and I was waiting for the day I wouldn't have to write another line of it myself. With AI, we're there. And that's exactly why I'm building Sweet.

Software should let you do your best work. It should catch things before you notice them, not dump them on your desk after the fact. It should be the reason your season goes smoothly, not the reason it doesn't.

Work shouldn't feel like work. And your software should never be the reason it does.

— Femi