They suck because
1. They haven't been innovated for decades
2. Quickbooks is built for bookkeepers that help small businesses. Founders, in-house accountants and finance people experience low NPS
3. They only collect information at the surface level for the purpose of financial reporting, but if you have a deeper level question, you have to go back into another system. For example, Quickbooks will say you're Starbucks expenses are 2x from prior month, but you have to go into Brex/Ramp to find out what happened and who's purchasing more
4. They made business accounting and finance really hard to understand. Debits, credits, revrec, amortization, etc. I've worked with many CEOs that knows exactly what they want the P&L to show, but can't do it in the tools. If everyone can have a clear view of their spending + spend by category from their personal cards, why can't it be done in the same way for business?
5. It's really painful to use the tools. Think of Figma vs Adobe
Quality is really low when I have nothing - typical conversation from a tech person is: do you have revenue? do you have customers? how big is your idea? Ok talk to me when you have everything and I'll build for you. But if I get there without them, I don't need them after.
So I'm trying now again (also through HN) because I've made a ton of progress.
Unfortunately I didn't work with many engineers as I did finance and analytics. About to exhaust everyone I know and want to work with. Thanks for the suggestion though!