Meet Richard Laviña: CEO & Co-Founder of Taxfyle

We had the good fortune of connecting with Richard Laviña and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Richard, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
To put it simply: I needed someone smart and affordable to do my taxes! I was in the accounting industry, first as a CPA then an auditor at PwC, one of the biggest accounting firms in the world, and in 2015, still had a hard time finding someone I could trust to do my taxes on time and at a fair rate. I quit my job at PwC and founded Taxfyle with my friends Michael Mouriz (Chief Operating Officer) and Will Sahaditjan (Chief Technology Officer), and our mission was to transform the accounting industry, starting with tax filing for people and small businesses. Today,  we’ve helped over 40,000 file their taxes easily and affordably with our network of 3,000 certified tax pros; are venture-backed; and one of the fastest-growing companies in any sector in the United States, according to the 2020 Inc. 5000 list by Inc. Magazine, where Taxfyle ranked No. 74!

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Taxfyle is successfully addressing deep pain points experienced every year by both American taxpayers and accounting firms nationally, and overseas, around tax season. Taxfyle’s B2C tax-filing app is the fastest, most efficient and most cost-effective option for taxpayers – personal and business – offering an easy-to-use tool that takes so much of the dread away from the onerous task of filing your taxes, and it does it, on average, in under 48 hours and for 30% less than other retail tax filing companies and brick-and-mortar options, with all of the convenience of ordering food for delivery on your smartphone. It’s the first company to successfully leverage consumers’ smartphone habits to make tax-filing seem and FEEL simple. And the easier it is for people to file their taxes, the faster and more consistently they’ll do it, preventing larger tax burdens that could later pile up. For companies, Taxfyle is making it more cost-effective to take on that juicy seasonal work which, while accretive to CPA firms’ bottom lines, is also burdensome because it often means hiring new accounts or overloading current staff to burnout levels during the months leading up to the tax-filing deadline in the United States. This makes it possible for any CPA to grow their margins, take on new clients, and grow their businesses in ways that were not available before. And for Big Four Accounting firms, Taxfyle represents a major boost of tech efficiency and innovation in an industry that is famously bureaucratic and outdated. The same infrastructure that Taxfyle created and improved since its inception in 2015 will be further developed and leveraged to to progress its mission to democratize access to professional services with unprecedented speed and ease.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
The Taxfyle office is in a building in Coconut Grove that we’ve come to call “The Fuel Station,” for the Fuel Venture Capital company office there and the other portfolio companies based inside the place. The Grove is one of my favorite neighborhoods in Miami. I’d probably take that friend around to show the architecture, the cobblestone streets and the feel of the area, then grab a burger and beer at Lokal – the best burger joint in town. Then what better way to pass the afternoon than by taking a boat ride through Miami? We’d head from Lokal over to Dinner Key and go on the boat for a few hours for sunset. An ideal day.  The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Jeff Ransdell, the managing director at Fuel Venture Capital, is the first person that comes to mind. He has provided me with unwavering support and guidance, from the earliest stages of Taxfyle, when Fuel first invested in our Series A round. (Jeff was actually an investor, personally, before then – he invested in our seed stage!) The experience that he has in building businesses from scratch, identifying profitable opportunities, and just his general philosophy on work ethic and leadership, are all inspiring and invaluable. Secondary would be Dick Deas, who was my boss at PwC and a former partner of the firm. We teamed up professionally on Taxfyle when he retired. He came in as an investor, and ever since, he has been an amazing source of reference as I tackle industry-specific problems.

Website: http://taxfyle.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taxfyle/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tickmark-inc./

Twitter: https://twitter.com/taxfyle

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/taxfyle

Image Credits
Taxfyle