Ahad Ali spent years as an accountant, running a stable practice with a team of 20 and handling more than 2,000 returns a year. The work covered bookkeeping, accounting, sales tax, and taxes. But he grew frustrated with how much of his day was dictated by accounting software that was rarely designed for actual accountants. QuickBooks in particular bothered him, and eventually the whole idea of SaaS-based accounting did. As he put it, small businesses don’t need better accounting software; they need less accounting software, something that just does the job for them.

That realization led to Tabby, a product Ali describes as a real-time bookkeeping interface. Tabby uses Plaid to import live account data, then applies AI to build an up-to-the-minute dashboard showing a business’s profit and loss while handling the underlying paperwork. There is also a version aimed at accounting firms that want a smarter alternative to QuickBooks, but Ali’s main goal is to sell directly to end users whenever possible. He sees products like Tabby potentially automating away bookkeeping entirely, turning it into a recurring monthly charge similar to internet access or payroll services.

The early traction is modest but real: fourteen months in, Tabby reports 5,500 small businesses using the platform and roughly $100,000 in annual recurring revenue. The company is still just seven people — Ali, his technical co-founder, four engineers, and a go-to-market specialist — and is in the process of raising $1 million in pre-seed funding. At the time of the interview, the team was preparing to launch Tabby Talk, a natural language interface for the product.

Ali acknowledges significant competition. QuickBooks remains the biggest player, and well-funded startups like Sequoia-backed Rillet, as well as finance tools from major AI labs, are also pushing into the space. He believes Tabby can find a niche by focusing on the same small-to-medium-sized firms that supported his accounting practice. He also notes the broader opportunity: there are 30 million more businesses out there, which makes him believe the market is large enough for other players to succeed. The profile positions Tabby as part of TechCrunch Disrupt’s Battlefield competition, highlighting the company’s bet that the visible software layer of bookkeeping can effectively disappear.