I'm Finally Building Kamili

I've been meaning to build a cloud accounting app for small businesses. 

What is Kamili?

At its core, what Kamili aims to do is very straightforward: we provide software to help small businesses and freelancers. Specifically we offer invoicing, expenses, payroll, double entry book keeping, accounting reports and much more.

Position Position Position

The first spreadsheet program was VisiCalc, written for the Apple II computer in 1979. For a lot of users, this application most vividly showed the utility of personal computers for small businesses—in some cases turning a 20-hour-per-week bookkeeping chore into a few minutes of data entry. Fast-forward to the 90s; actual accounting software like Quickbooks, Myob, Tally and Sage empower small businesses, even spreadsheet are still in use. But the world is connected but not how we run our businesses; enter Cloud Accounting.

It's believed Netsuite(formely Netledger) was the first cloud accounting service, but it wasn't until Freshbooks came into the picture that it was widely used . Currently there are many cloud accounting services like Xero, Quickbooks Online etc.

So why bother? 

I see a great opportunity not despite but because of the current cloud accounting ecosystem. All these companies big and small have identified and serve their users and niche, while also popularising cloud accounting, but that revolution never happened in the emerging markets.  

We are building a cloud accounting software for the Next Billion Users. A service accessible to people in the emerging markets. This is reflected in the engineering, user experience, design, pricing and everything else we can think about.

Engineering

Building software for the emerging markets doesn't mean we build a 'lite version' of something. We intend to make use of the state of the art of technology to deliver robust software. Every user interface will be responsive, loads fast and can run on the cheapest of devices. 

Design

We are building accounting software for the masses, we are targeting small business owners who might not have easy access to an accountant. We want your invoicing app to be desirable to use as a messaging app. We want our users to do double entry accounting without them necessary knowing they are doing it. This requires extreme design thinking and we are ready to meet the occasion.

Accessible

A lot of our users are unbanked, don't have access to accountants, don't always have good internet connection, have never used accounting apps, have less data, some are disabled etc. We  still want give these users a great experience, in-fact inclusive design can help improve product usability in general. 

In summary our approach is to build a service with a fresh perspective using bleeding-edge technologies. Our position is to do the best execution in the ecosystem to build for the forgotten masses.

Progress so far

I've decided the development approach like the design approach is Outside in, that is we start out the auxiliary parts of the service, like the marketing website, the blog, support platform then finally building the actual product. This means the development is somewhat in the open.

Much like the Outside in approach in product design or in customer service, we gather a lot of input and direction from our potential users and other professionals. We are constantly testing the product with actual people as features are being development.

I am also looking forward to finally building a SAAS product and cater to users directly. I still love doing freelancer work and I still do it, but I think I prefer executing my own vision. 

Finally, I'm excited to continue to help others as well; and lead a small technical team to build a great product.

There is so much work to do. Time to get back to work.