Onshore CEO: Why AI Will Replace Accounting Firms

Why AI Is Coming for the Accounting Industry Next

Software engineering and law have already felt the tremor. Now accounting — an industry whose largest firms are nearly as old as America itself — faces the same reckoning. Dominic Vitucci, CEO and founder of Onshore (YC W23), spent years inside Grant Thornton before leaving to build what he believes will make traditional accounting firms obsolete. His company just raised a $31M Series B, targets $100M in revenue this year, and operates at roughly 10x the revenue-per-employee of a Big Four firm.

On why accounting firms won’t disrupt themselves: “I learned at one of these large firms the investment was purchasing three to four million dollars of co-pilot licenses so that everyone could have co-pilot. What do you guys do with that? Nothing. It’s horrible. It doesn’t work.” Vitucci describes firms where the head of AI had zero software engineers, where “innovation” meant playing certification videos in the background and collecting badges. The structural problem is deeper than technology adoption — senior partners nearing retirement have no incentive to fund transformation they’ll never benefit from.

On the pivot from selling to accountants to replacing them: “Accountants have kind of just wormed their way into the middle and artificially set themselves up to be the middleman, the expert. What if we just didn’t have to have that?” Vitucci spent two years trying to sell automation software to accounting firms. Junior staff heard “automate 80% of your work” and translated it to “I’m going to get fired.” Partners heard “higher margins” but couldn’t overcome the billable-hours incentive structure. In 2022, Onshore fired all its accounting firm customers and rebuilt the product to serve corporations directly.

On the economics — $1M revenue per employee vs $100-150K: Onshore is targeting $100M in revenue this year with roughly 75 employees — over $1M per head. Traditional firms like Grant Thornton or Deloitte operate at approximately $100-150K revenue per employee. “You’re an order of magnitude better and you will only get better going forward because you’re software-based, whereas they can’t really change.” While Big Four firms invest in overseas operations that further dilute this metric, software-native firms compound their advantage every year.

On what accountants actually do: The R&D tax credit workflow Vitucci describes is revealing — a senior partner coaches a client to inflate their R&D time percentage, a junior associate transcribes the answers onto a legal pad, then types them into a spreadsheet. The value isn’t the math (which is trivial), it’s the substantiation — proving with documentation that the work happened. This is precisely the kind of evidence-gathering that AI models excel at: pulling Git issues, Jira tickets, and time logs to build defensible records.

On the wedge strategy: Despite AI’s expanding capability, Vitucci strongly advocates starting narrow. “The allure of starting a net-new startup — it’s me and my AI agents and we’re going to just supplant all the things that Deloitte does — technically possible from a tech perspective. From a business perspective, it’s just not possible.” Onshore started with R&D tax credits alone, proved the value, then expanded based on customer pull rather than product push.

5 Takeaways from Dominic Vitucci on AI vs. Accounting

• Incumbent inertia is structural, not cultural — Senior partners with 3-5 years to retirement won’t fund transformation that pays off in 10. The decision-makers are precisely the people with the least incentive to change.
• Revenue per employee is the real scoreboard — At $1M+ per head vs $100-150K, AI-native firms aren’t just more efficient — they’re playing a different game entirely. And the gap only widens.
• Selling automation to the automated is a losing game — Two years of selling to accounting firms taught Vitucci that the customer isn’t the middleman, it’s the corporation that actually benefits from the outcome.
• Law is further along than accounting — Lawyers are more accepting of technology and the industry has been moving to project-based billing. Accounting firms still cling to hourly billing and resist change more stubbornly.
• The pyramid will flatten — The traditional accounting firm shape (few partners, massive junior base) will compress as AI agents replace the bottom layers. The top stays for sales, a middle layer handles expertise and compliance, and software does the rest.

What This Means for AI-Powered Professional Services

Vitucci’s story is a case study in what happens when AI meets a protected profession. The accounting industry’s resistance isn’t about whether the technology works — it’s about whether incumbents can afford to acknowledge that it does. The firms that built their business models on billable hours and junior labor arbitrage face an existential choice: cannibalize their own revenue model or watch startups like Onshore do it for them. As Vitucci puts it, Deloitte has existed for nearly 250 years. That doesn’t mean it’s earned another 250.