Karl Paadam made partner at PwC Estonia at 26. Then he left to spend a decade in tech. Now he’s back, building a firm on a thesis that sounds backwards at first: the future of accounting is human.
Here’s what he means. AI is going to eat the mechanical work — the bookkeeping, the categorization, the reconciliation. That’s not a threat, it’s the point. Once the mechanical work is gone, what’s left is the stuff that’s always been the real product: trust, judgment, and relationships.
The firm he’s building, United Accountants, runs on an AI operating system that layers on top of whatever software a firm already uses. No rip-and-replace. CPAs keep their own local brand and hand off the grunt work to the machine.
Karl and I dug into all of it in episode 115 of the Earmark Podcast. And now you can earn free CPE credit just for listening.
Register here: https://earmark.app/c/3507
