How can a vertical AI startup in a category like *accounting* possibly compete with the likes of OpenAI and Ramp for talent? At $1.15B startup @trybasis, CEO Matt Harpe says he first sells people on the category: "Accounting is extremely important, it's under-appreciated." Then, there's the tech: finding ways to leverage AI models and advances for an untapped market of 3 million knowledge workers in the field. "We really want to be the home for applied AI talent in New York," he says. "And I think there are a number of properties of accounting as a discipline that have forced us to be on the frontier of what's possible in terms of leveraging the abilities of these models to build very capable systems." Catch the full interview on The Upstarts Podcast, presented by @Rippling 🫡