Work01
Abacor
Project facts
- Client
- Abacor
- Sector
- AI assistant for accounting firms
- Stage
- Seed
- Year
- 2025–26
- Duration
- Embedded since June 2025, ongoing
- Team
- Up to 17 people at peak, studio and extended bench
- Services
- Brand, website, product vision, product design, design system and launch
Situation
Abacor came to us in June 2025 with a product for accounting firms and no design function. Its users are accountants, a room that distrusts adjectives; its investors needed to see where the product was going before it got there. We became the design team: first the story they would raise on, then the product their users would trust with client work.
The reframe
What we saw
“AI meeting notes for accountants.”
What we said
“A proactive junior for accounting firms.”
Meeting notes were one part of the job. The value ran from the prep before a client meeting to the follow-up after it, so the product had to be framed around the role, not the feature.
The work
We started at the widest altitude: the product two years out, built as a clickable prototype. The brand and website followed, then the product itself, module by module, on one shared system.
Decisions
-
insight
Every agent action lands in a reviewable trace.
What we chose An activity log as a full-screen table, with the detailed trace in a side panel and a stated reason for every AI action.
Rejected
A feed of individual messages the agent touched.Why Firms audit by client conversation, not by message. The reason column answers the first question an accountant asks: why did it do that?
-
finding
Drafts never send without a human.
What we chose The email assistant drafts the reply; the accountant sends it.
Rejected
Auto-sending routine replies.Why The trust boundary around a client email differs by firm, by client and by message. Autonomy has to be earned one level at a time.
-
insight
One language from prototype to product.
What we chose The vision prototype’s rules hardened into Accord, the design system the product and the website share.
Rejected
A marketing look and a separate product look.Why When the promise and the interface match, the website sells what the product does.
Outcome
-
Delivery
Brand, website, a two-year product vision and shipped product modules: onboarding, agent workflows, admin analytics and the Accord design system in Next.js and Storybook.
- 2× client follow-up speed
- More than 10 hours saved weekly per accountant
What we’d tell the next founder
Prototype the product you’ll have in two years before you pitch it. Investors fund what they can click through.
Put the trust boundary in the interface: show what the agent touched, and let a person press send.
Keep one visual language from deck to product, so the promise and the interface match.
Next
30 min · we name the first three things we’d change · written scope in 48 hours
