XU: Could you tell us a bit about your background and how it led you to co-found Socket?

JG: My background is that I’m a Chartered Management Accountant, I worked in ‘Corporate World’ for nearly 20 years, majority of time at Lloyds Banking Group. I’ve always been fascinated by businesses and in 2012, with the emergence of cloud computing and Xero, I realised that I could provide small businesses with the same level of finance support that a large multinational business has.

We work with ambitious businesses. One of our clients were software developers and I made a random off the cuff comment “I wish I could code”. The rest is history, we developed Xavier Analytics, we won Xero’s Emerging App in 2020 and we were acquired by ReceiptBank. Whilst there we had great fun, we learnt a lot and we helped with the rebrand to Dext and Xavier became Dext Precision.

James, Rich and myself exited Dext at the end 2022. We had an itch to scratch and wanted to build another start-up focused on Accountants and Bookkeepers.

XU: What inspired you to venture into the tech industry, and what were some of the pivotal moments in your career that led to the creation of Socket?

JG: I’ve always tinkered in technology, I say ‘tinker’ as I’ve used the tools I knew such as a spreadsheet and writing long formulas, that connected workflows to make our practice more efficient and a better experience for everyone involved. More recently I’ve adopted no-code tools and I’ve taught myself to write some basic code. It’s not pretty.

Building software is hard. To venture into the tech industry you’ve got to have a couple of things.

A great idea. We didn’t have any specific problem that we wanted to solve, instead we spent the first 6 months of 2023, working in FD Works, experimenting and exploring ideas, and having lots of conversations with other Accountants and Bookkeepers.

We started to narrow our thinking to resource management and scheduling - how could we move away from tracking time, to measuring results. To do this we need the information from the proposal.

Either lots of money or the skills to execute. We’ve got the perfect team.

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XU: For those who might not be familiar, can you explain what Socket is and what it aims to achieve?

JG: Socket’s mission is to empower accounting and bookkeeping firms to effortlessly convert prospects, seamlessly onboard clients, banish scope creep and do this while truly understanding the profitability of each service for each client.

We are starting with pricing, proposals, engagement letters, billing management and workflow automation.

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XU: What specific problem does Socket solve, and how did you identify this need in the market?

JG: We’ve set out to spearhead the problem: The proposal should define the scope of the services agreed between client and accountant. Except right now it doesn’t!

We have a secret sauce: Alongside Socket, I manage an accounting firm FD Works, which I continued to manage part-time alongside Xavier Analytics & Dext. This enables us to understand the problems that Accountants and Bookkeepers face, and run experiments that provide blueprints for future ideas.

XU: How has Socket evolved since its inception, and what are some of the key milestones the company has achieved so far?

JG: Our approach has been to work with a small number of clients, learn as much as we can, implement what we learnt and then expand who we work with.

FD Works was Socket’s first customer in August 2023, they were able to migrate away from their existing tools - we learnt a lot and .

Accounting and bookkeeping is complex and with very little standardisation of processes it becomes complicated. By curating a waitlist of interested people, and understanding their tech stack we were able to understand who used what, what systems were popular, what were the main pain points and focus on solving problems for specific customer groups.

Getting to Xerocon in July 2024 was a significant milestone for us, our option to show what we’d been working on.

We’re now fully open for business.

XU: Can you tell us about the team behind Socket? How did you go about assembling your team, and what qualities do you look for in potential team members?

JG: The founding team is James, Rich and myself - we’ve worked together in the past and our skills compliment. James has a background in Software Engineering and building scalable systems, Rich also has background in Software and Product Engineering, he’ll ask lots of questions: “Why are you doing that? Then what?”. They’d make great accountants.

The team has grown. We’ve worked with Ben and Oliver in the past and Emma (who we’ve known for a long time) is a bit of a unicorn- she’s an accountant and has worked in the accounting tech space.

What makes a great team member? Right attitude is high on the list.

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XU: How do you ensure that your team stays innovative and motivated, especially in a competitive tech landscape?

JG: We’ve very hands-on with our Accounting and Bookkeeping partners and this helps us to understand their problems, what they are doing to manage the problem now (often a spreadsheet) and what else they are doing (the what next).

We shape the problem and then we give our developers the space to be creative and solve the problem.

Often we’ll make a change into production, quicker than it would to write up a full spec and create a mock-up. But we don't cut corners, and iterate quickly to produce high quality software.

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XU: What sets Socket apart from other similar apps and solutions in the marketplace?

JG: We’re trying to make it as simple as possible for a wider group of people in the firm to get involved, with the system doing the heavy lifting. A successful firm of the future needs an intelligent system to manage client relationships at scale.

What does this mean? Making use of adjacent data sources, getting data directly from Companies House and integrations with practice management tools, making it easy to apply scope-adjustments. Our API enables the proposal data to be unlocked and made available to the wider workflow - the very problem that started us on this journey.

XU: What are your long-term goals for Socket, and where do you see the company in the next few years?

JG: We're buzzing with excitement about where we're heading. Our roadmap is packed with features that we can't wait to roll out.

Socket Engage, our take on Engagement Letter management that’s as powerful as it is simple. We’re incorporating all the latest best practices with automatic updates, so you can stay focused on what matters most—your clients.

And when it comes to turning prospects into clients, Socket Onboard will be your new best friend. We’re integrating with AML, Risk Assessment, and Work Management systems to automate the entire workflow.

We’re also playing nicely with your favourite tools. Think seamless scheduling, work management, collaboration, and a must is using APIs. It’s all about making automation work for you, without the headaches.

We’re making it easier than ever to manage leads—whether they come from Hubspot or Zapier. Picture a smooth sales pipeline with all the discovery data you need right at your fingertips, feeding seamlessly into proposals.

Geography wise, we’ve focused on the UK to start with but we plan to take it globally, we learnt a lot from our time at Dext and this has been factored into Socket from day 1.

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XU: Are there any upcoming features or developments that you're particularly excited about and can share with us?

JG: Our plans for Socket are ambitious - in the short term, we got some exciting features planned.

Socket Engage will be launched soon. We’ve teamed up with an industry expert to develop and maintain best practice Engagement Letters that meets the requirements of the professional bodies.

We’ll enable the management of bulk price changes - simply change the underlying price of a service and then select which clients you want to apply that price change to and then inform them. This will enable you to apply price changes when your vendor increases their prices with minimal effort.

We want to transform the onboarding experience with Socket Onboard, no one has really tackled this.