The Accountant Quits Founder Umar // Web3 Accountant Radio Ep3 Transcript
Umar is the founder of The Accountants Quits, a Crypto Accounting Academy that allows accountants to learn crypto accounting so they can be hired at companies using digital assets.
In this conversation, we dive into:
1. How do we actually get a job in the Web3 crypto finance market?
2. How did the The Accountant Quits begin?
3. Interview questions that Web3 finance job seekers face?
4. Difference between traditional finance job and web3 finance job?
5. Why did Umar decide to enter the Web3 space？
6. What is the most important lesson learned in the Web3 space?
7. What is Umar looking forward to in the Web3 space? And more!
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Connect with Umar & The Accountant Quits👇 Linkedin: / umarmhassam
Website: https://www.theaccountantquits.com/
Email: [email protected]
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Web3 Accounting Radio, the podcast where we dive into the fascinating world of Web3 finance and compliance. I’m today’s host, Diana.
And my partner is Wei Xiang. Hi, Wei Xiang. Hi, Diana.
Yeah. And as the one who’s new to this Web3 area, I’m excited to learn with you and share insights from our industry experts. And today we have a special guest, Umar.
Umar is the founder of the Accountant Quits, and a crypto accounting academy that allows accountants to learn crypto accounting so they can be hired at companies using digital assets. Hi, Umar. Nice to meet you.
Hey, Diana. Hey, Wei. Thanks for having me on.
Thank you, Umar. So I think today we are very fortunate to have Umar here with us. I met Umar in Portugal.
And whenever there’s anybody who is asking me about, you know, I want to enter the Web3 crypto finance industry, I need some knowledge. How do I enter the industry? My first course that I would always refer them to is the Accountant Quits, namely of two things. One, I think Umar has brought together a team of very strong Web3 finance leaders.
Because if you want to learn about software or payments, who better to learn about them than their CEO or founders itself? Because they would know all the issues with what is happening with the world and how best to use their softwares. And with regards to even taxation and in the latest course, Umar managed to bring in a person in legal to help with corporate structuring to share more into this knowledge because he recognized this is what is needed within the industry. So this is point one.
And point two is I have spoken to actual graduates from the course itself and they have enjoyed the course and have nothing but good reviews for the course. And I think one question that many people actually have is how do I find a job in the Web3 finance market? And today we are very fortunate to be able to tap on the knowledge that Uma has. And especially with his experience with building the popular Web3 finance club, where we can all take a look, he will be in a very suitable position to advise us in today’s market, especially with the booming crypto market everybody is looking.
How do we actually get a job in the Web3 crypto finance market? Yeah, Uma. Yeah, it’s a great intro. And I just want to mention to people who are, it’s the first time they’re hearing about The Accountant Quits.
It’s called The Accountant Quits, but then we’re like, I’m trying to educate people about accounting, about crypto accounting. I mean, the reason it’s called The Accountant Quits was because I used to be an accountant in the past. I worked for many years in audit and the accounting industry.
And then at some point, I mean, long story short, but I saw blockchain and all the new technologies, which I was not learning at work. I became a bit frustrated and long story short, I quit my job to go and learn these new technologies and mainly blockchain. So that’s why I decided to call it The Accountant Quits.
And when I first started, it was just to do podcasts and write articles about the impact of blockchain in accounting. And after two years, this is when I started, this is when I wanted to then launch the course. So very quick, like backstory on why it’s called The Accountant Quits.
Thank you, Umar. So Umar, how do a person who wants to get a job in the Web3 finance space start? So a lot of the people who are working in accounting and finance roles today, the reason they were able to get this job is because they have a lot of curiosity and they want to learn about cryptocurrencies and blockchain. They got that job, not because how much they know about crypto.
I mean, obviously it helps, but it’s also because of their traditional finance background. Maybe they are very good chartered accountants, but then they have a very high level of curiosity to learn crypto accounting. And very often that is what would get them inside the door at the company hiring.
And then it’s a matter of, you can learn something, but if you don’t apply it on a day-to-day basis, you will kind of forget it. I mean, when I speak to, let’s say, accounting firms, and I ask them, but what do you look for in candidates when you hire? The main thing they always tell me is curiosity, a very deep appetite to learn, and they must be comfortable with using crypto. I mean, they’ve sent a few transactions before, they’ve seen a block explorer, they’ve looked at some, let’s say, DeFi applications, invested some money into some liquidity pools, received a receipt token return, and then got some interest.
They kind of understand how it works, like the whole DeFi space, and accountants need to know accounting. So these companies want to hire people with good accounting knowledge. Thank you, Umar.
So I think it’s very important to speak about curiosity, because curiosity comes with due diligence. With the amount of information or misinformation happening around in the Web3 space, and a lot of scams happening, it’s very important for a new accountant to be very updated on the latest technology, the latest malware, the latest scams, or the latest information. So this is a never-ending learning process.
So myself, I have been working in the so-called the Web2 world for a while, and the amount of learning that I require in the Web3 world is at a totally different level. So definitely for somebody trying to look for a job inside, I think one is curiosity, and the other one is actually being hands-on and try it for yourself. Maybe do a transaction, get into the DeFi space, and after that they would be able to try, they will be able to enter the door.
So maybe, can you be possible to share, what are some of the questions that the students would face when they are going through an interview for a job in the Web3 company? Sure, just before sharing that, just to share how I got into it. I mean, the most important thing for people who are interested to work in this industry is to start somewhere. I personally did a course on Coursera.
It was like a very high-level blockchain fundamentals course, but it got me interested into it. It was, I forgot how many hours, and then I came across another course, it was like certified blockchain expert, I mean, in between inverted commas. But this is what initially got me inside, and then I just played a lot with like putting some money there, sometimes losing some money, understanding how gas fees work, and this is what I recommend anyone, and then it’s like the sky’s the limit, it is a rabbit hole, and you never stop learning.
The key part to learn, if you want to learn crypto accounting, is on block explorers. So because, and I always say this, for an accountant in, let’s say, traditional accounting, you would take like a bank statement to book the journal entries into your accounting software, but in Web3, if you’re operating fully on-chain, there is no bank statement. Most companies also have bank accounts, but in this case, there is no bank statement.
So how do I get my transactions, inflows, outflows, from these so-called block explorer, or from the blockchain, into my accounting software like Xero and QuickBooks? So this is, I think, the area which requires a lot of practice. It’s not easy, depending on what chains you’re operating. Now, coming back to your question on what questions, would typically recruiters be asking candidates, you said? I mean, a lot of times it’s just to kind of know the experience, dealing with crypto.
It would depend, maybe, if it’s an auditing job. For an audit job, I mean, it is like the same set of audit assertions that the crypto auditor would have to test on the financial statements of the company. I think it would be interesting for, let’s say, the recruiter to ask them, okay, let’s say the company has a self-custodial wallet, where now we cannot be sending third-party confirmation.
How do you think we would check for ownership of wallet? And just to see how the student, it might not necessarily be right, but at least they went through a thought process to understand what is like a self-custodial wallet, what are the challenges there. And I think there’s no right or wrong answer sometimes. Obviously, there’s more right answers to what the audit firm is actually doing to test the ownership assertion, but it’s just wanting to hear how the candidate answers, right? There is no place to go and learn crypto accounting today, other than this academy that I launched, which is very, very small, as compared to, I’m a very small player.
I’m a very small player. I mean, universities are not teaching this. So most people don’t know they can exist or a crypto accounting academy exists.
I think it’s just to see how the person would reply in response to the experience. Thank you. Yeah, and for the candidates, I’m very curious that when they transfer their job from the Web 2.0 accountant to the Web 3.0 accountant, which important part or some key experience that you can share for them? And maybe, I mean, some accountants will change their job and which part they will focus on, yeah.
And what is the big difference from these two jobs, the Web 2.0 accountant and the Web 3.0 accountant? I would say in Web 3.0, you require way more than just bookkeeping skills. I mean, in Web 3.0, you have to have a sense of also how to manage the treasury of a company, which in Web 2.0, it’s pretty straightforward. In Web 3.0, you have to understand sometimes how to bridge assets from one chain to the other.
Also, are you able to use different tools with crypto accounting and finance? It’s not very difficult. I mean, you just have to get the exposure to it and then you learn. But if someone already have maybe some experience of using a subledger or understand at least what’s the purpose of a subledger coming in, I think that would be very enticing for the company trying to recruit them.
It is difficult though, right, to get exposure to them because these are like expensive premium tools that you would not generally use just for your individual transactions. Yeah, I think I just want to share, like just now Umar actually mentioned the audit portion. So actually the answer to his question is on his The Accountant Quits website itself.
So he writes articles regularly and he has thankfully given me a chance to contribute as well. But if you want to know about audit and what are the various ways to actually look at the assertions, take a look at his blog itself. There are monthly posts, but if you go to there today, there’s actually, because of the way he has been building up the information through the time, there is actually quite a lot of information inside.
And when you think the time is suitable, you can sign up for the course as like a phase one, phase two, kind of a step up portion. And I think, Umar, the other one that I think exciting for a lot of Web2 accountants is wanting to enter the Web3 accounting world other than salary itself, which is going up by quite a bit. The other one is that I think the Web3 accounting role allows a lot of accountants to work from home and to do remote working, which is what a lot of people in our generation in today’s age after COVID enjoys.
Absolutely, and to that, Request Finance recently published this Web3 compensation survey where they interviewed, I think over 800 accounting and finance professional in Web3. And the figures speak for themselves. I mean, the salaries are higher in Web3 as compared to Web2.
There is more remote working opportunities. I think it’s a great time for accountants who are, who previously we didn’t really have this, like it would be most of the time, maybe developers or people working in IT or maybe some marketing team who would have the opportunity to work remote. Now an accountant can have this flexibility.
And I’ve worked in a remote-only company previously, so Request Finance, and I would never go back, right, to having to work for an employer tomorrow, let’s say, where I had to go to the office. It’s also nice to meet employees, but you have this flexibility and it’s also building this relationship of trust. And honestly, I saw myself working more sometimes, even though I was working remotely.
So I would also, if people want to find out about these remote accounting jobs, every month I publish, or in the newsletter, I sent like a few remote-only accounting jobs. I always send if it’s remote-only, so anyone in the world would be able to apply and work with these companies. So you can join the newsletter and you’ll be notified of these jobs.
Yeah, so I will put the compensation report that you mentioned in the description below. And the other one, Umar, I think before we go into the personal Umar that I think many people would like to meet but don’t really have the chance, is Uma, for a Web 2 job seeker itself, when would be a suitable time for them to enter the Web 3 Finance Club? Because I think the Web 3 Finance Club is a very esteemed club. And many people have come to me and say, I’m very happy I got into the club.
And I’m very happy for them to get into the club. I think for people listening to this podcast, they are looking sometimes at the club. Previously, it was Web 3 CFO itself.
So, I mean, from a job searching perspective, joining a community, when would be a good time for them to approach the club, to join the club? So in the beginning, the criteria that we had set was very strict. It was, you have to be working in the Web 3, you have to be working in operations, accounting, finance. Let’s say if there was a developer, a marketing, a sales person, a product person, we would actually refuse the application and not let the person in.
But we, obviously with time, we spoke with other people in Web 2 who want to learn about Web 3. And because like resources are like so limited and there’s not really a community out there. So we started accepting like more people also just Web 2, but at least they have, because we do an onboarding call. And so we ask them a few questions about their interests and curiosity to enter this group.
Because if you think at the end of the day, what I really wanted, I mean, when I was building the club, now I left Request. But when I was building it, I wanted to maintain this level of exclusivity. Because usually when a community gets so big, it kind of loses its prestige, right? It’s too easy to come in.
You want to have like a proper gating system that people who are in like deserve the right to be here. If I’m not using crypto, if I have no interest in crypto, like you don’t really have to be there, right? Because we want people to contribute, to share the experience. And that’s how everyone learns.
So I would say if there are people right now working in Web 2, but they are interested to work. I mean, you can apply, provided you work in accounting and finance, and I’m sure they will be accepting the application. I’m not working there anymore though.
Yeah, but I think I hear the key thing is interest. So like, you know, if you tell me you have watched all your podcasts or maybe read all your articles, or, you know, show deep interest, like, you know, I’ve done various transactions and I think this is the future. So I think this is something that a job seeker can actually show.
And a lot of it is available on public resources, yeah. Because, I mean, if I can just add also what was very important to us when I was there was to protect the members inside. So imagine there’s like the CFO of a very well-known Web 3 companies like Ledger, The Sandbox, Aave, The Graph.
And we want to protect like these members, right? Because they’ve been here from the very start. So if we allow like anyone to come in and they start to spam them, so it will, they won’t even want to come on Slack, right? Because their messages are like filled with spam. So we try to monitor this and to… For first, it was not like a numbers game.
It was more like providing quality to the existing members. Yeah, thank you. Thanks, Uma.
Diana, can we start with the personal touch before we… Yeah, it’s time to go to our free talk session. And in the free talk session, I have a lot of questions that I’m particularly excited about. So the first question is that I think you’ll be very proud to set up a community for the Web 3 accountant.
So why did you decide to enter the Web 3 space? Why I decided to enter the Web 3 space? The long story short, I came across a paper, a white paper called Triple Entry Accounting, which was written by a financial cryptographer called Ian Grigg. He published this in 2005. Well, I read it much after.
And he had published a series of articles on audit. And for example, the Enron collapse and a few of the financial scandals and what led us there. And he spoke of the idea of having this public distributed ledger where the counterparties of a transaction could have… You could basically have a transaction there on the blockchain where you don’t have to go and reconcile a transaction between counterparties.
If you think about it for accountants, the main thing, the big frustration is having to reconcile transactions all the time. So counterparty A with counterparty B, what did they book in their books? And this is why we do audit. This is why we send independent confirmation letters at the time of the audit.
So I thought that was very interesting and then I came across other articles speaking about how blockchain solves this and this article on triple entry accounting. So given that I was an accountant and obviously all accountants know double entry, triple entry sounded like… I was curious about what triple entry means. And this is how basically I got into it.
At the time, there was not a lot of accountants speaking about blockchain. The idea of triple entry is very theoretical. It’s not… In practice, we don’t see that so much today, but I think we’re still in the very early days of blockchain.
And yeah, so I would recommend to people who want to learn blockchain. In the beginning, what I also did, which was wrong, I was trying to learn it from a technical perspective. So understanding what is cryptography, how that works, but I didn’t understand anything and I was a bit frustrated.
So at the end of the day, when I looked at it from my accounting lens, then I understood what is blockchain because at the end of the day, if you think like blockchain is just a ledger and accountants are familiar with what a ledger is, containing a set of immutable transactions, which are transparent. So this is what basically the blockchain is. And for an accountant, it speaks to us a lot.
So this is what I would advise to anyone wanting to learn blockchain is to look at it on how it applies to your industry and to what you’ve learned before. It will be much easier to get in. Okay, and I think as an accountant, maybe you will have less chance to explore some technique like the blockchain or some decentralized structure.
And I would like to know at the beginning, whether you think it’s very hard to learn about the blockchain or whether you need to spend a lot of time to explore what is the blockchain. Is it difficult for you? I think in the beginning, instead of trying to learn too many white papers, it’s good, like at least if you can read the Bitcoin and the Ethereum white paper. But the main thing then is to download like a MetaMask wallet to send a few transactions.
When I first started learning this, there was a website, but I think it’s still there, the website, it was called rabbithole.gg. That was the URL of the website. And what they had is, they had a lot of different quests, they used to call it. So you do a quest on that website, you collect points or something, and you can level up like your knowledge.
I think there’s a lot of other websites who also offer this. Right now, I can’t remember the names, but rabbithole.gg was one of the OGs, let’s say in providing this kind of education. So I learned a lot because it was practical.
I was not reading like long white papers because I would not understand anything. I don’t have such technical knowledge to understand it. But I really recommend people to find these websites, these quests that take five to 10 minutes to do, right? You just have to top up like your wallet with, let’s say, if you’re interacting on Polygon, which is not expensive, you put a few USDC there, like you put 10 USDC, you put one MATIC, and you can do a lot of things with that.
And then if you want to go even one step further, you start to understand how to bridge assets from one chain to the other. And this is what I would recommend people to start with. Okay, I will search this website later.
And I think that you, because you entered, you can say that you entered this area very early, maybe in the 2005. So in the nearly 10 year, and can you share maybe one key experience or lesson that you have learned in your web3 journey? And or maybe these lessons or experience will be valuable for other finance professionals to explore this space. Yeah.
I wish I had joined in 2005 though, but I read this 2005 paper, I guess in 2020. So I read it really late, right? Okay, sorry. But what I would, I mean, what I would recommend and what has helped me a lot is to surround myself with people who are way more intelligent than me, that know way more things than I do.
For example, you doing this podcast, I think is a fantastic avenue for you yourself to learn, because you have to prepare like a new topic each time you go and interview a guest. And I personally learned a lot through preparing for my own podcast over the three years. This is how I learned most of the things because it’s a different subject, each time and I have to understand what their company does.
So for you, this is a great training opportunity just for yourself. I used to think like, if no one listens to my podcast, like sometimes if no one reads my article, no one listens to it, at least I would have learned something. So I took comfort in that, like I was not chasing, you know, to have thousands of listeners, thousands of readers.
I just wanted to learn myself. So yeah, get yourself to find, there’s so many podcasts like these days, but find the one that speaks to you more. If you can join a community, you can do so.
Subscribe to like a few newsletters. It’s not like a lot of, let’s say commitment to start learning. Like you go for a run, you listen to a podcast, you read like a five minutes newsletter every week.
It’s not a lot of commitment to start. Okay. And I think on The Accountant Quits website, apart from the podcast or some articles, you also recommend a lot of tools for the accountant to do better in their area.
So I also want to know that which is the most important website finance or compliance SaaS tools for the professionals in this area. Okay. So this one, maybe I interject a little bit.
Umar, you can choose to answer that question or because I know of your privileged position. Maybe the other question that you can choose to answer is what are you looking forward to in the Web3 finance or compliance world? So I think because you’re in a very unique position. Yes.
I’ll try to answer both questions. So to answer this, you have to look at maybe the finance stack that an accountant would need. So you still need the xero or QuickBooks to prepare your financial statements.
But before what happened, so everything starts like with the wallet, like the funds that you have transferred to a wallet. So first you had maybe money in your bank account, you onramped it maybe to an exchange or to like an onramping provider like Transac or there’s a few others or to circle let’s say a new minted USDC. So then now you have the money that sits in your wallet.
So everything starts with a wallet and then like the one tool I would recommend for every accountant to use if they do crypto is a subledger. This is like the most important tool that you need because it allows you to categorize all these transactions from the block explorer and to understand what is happening and you can do a lot of automation. So Diana, I know you work for AEM.
Wei used to work for Elvin. These are all great subledges that you can use. I did publish like an extensive list of subledges on the website.
It is a very competitive market and everyone understands this is like the tool that everyone needs to do crypto accounting. And then you have like all the tools which allows you to document like your payments, which is also important. There’s new tools now for payroll.
Basically everything that exists in Web2, people are, I mean these companies are now finding a way to create that tool for crypto because the way crypto works is different. You cannot use like a Web2 tool to like a build.com. You cannot really use it too because they don’t incorporate like cryptocurrencies. They are always like workarounds that you can use.
But I always suggest to use like these Web3 native tools, which a lot of times because they are new, they don’t have maybe very advanced features like a build.com, Augusto, a deal. They’re getting there, but maybe yeah, you can be a bit patient with them. And the other question you asked me way was around what are you looking forward to in the Web3 world? So, I mean, we know your history.
We know where you are at today. You know, thankfully you have shared, you know, you went from where you were to request to the, you know, starting your own school and then doing podcasts, having interest. And I know there’s a lot of life and things are very exciting, but what are you looking forward to? I mean, yeah.
Well, I’m looking forward to the main thing I’m looking forward to is to how to onboard Web2 accountants into Web3, so how to facilitate all of that. And I’ve come to realize that people won’t just learn it if they cannot apply like the knowledge. So today, a lot of my work, I’m also trying to reach out to a lot of traditional accounting firms to, yeah, get them curious, let’s say about crypto accounting, because it is a big market.
And a lot of times people who have never worked in this industry, maybe they are not aware that so many companies are using crypto in their daily operations. It’s not just to invest in Bitcoin and put Bitcoin on the balance sheet, right? It’s way more than that. So I’m excited for this.
I think like we all, we work in this industry and we all believe that eventually cryptocurrencies will become mainstream. Probably we won’t be speaking so much about crypto, then everything will be working under the hood. It’s going to be powered like blockchain.
And people will still be using fiat a lot, but a lot of the transactions will be conducted on the blockchain rails, as opposed to traditional banking rails, which have existed for a long time and are not very efficient, let’s say. And there’s a better way to do it now. So I think, yeah, slowly, we’re going to get, obviously this year, everyone’s speaking about a stable coin adoption.
There’s been a lot of growth this year in terms of stable coin adoption, and I’m waiting to have even more. And yeah, my main challenge is to educate like Web2 accountants who want to learn crypto today. And this is what I’m looking forward to, with different initiatives that we can do.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Umar, because I think on my end, we are seeing the Web3 enter politics.
Just over the weekend, we have Trump speaking and then everybody was raving about it. Or even myself, I’ve been hearing some churches saying that they collect a little bit of digital currency crypto. So what are they going to do with it? How is the accounting going to be done? And that’s where a lot of the Web2 accounting firms that you’re speaking to, their clients would have small exposures to crypto.
And that’s where suddenly for them to keep their business, they would be interested to say, hey, this is something that, you know, from our client is pushing to us. And that’s where, you know, there’s a bigger picture to play. Yes.
A lot of accounting firms, I mean, the small ones I speak to, a lot of them offer tax for individuals, but they do realize that the corporate market is also like a big one. And a lot of them are now trying to offer accounting and tax services and understanding how to use a sub ledger or like these different tools. I think there’s a big opportunity for accountants.
We are seeing a shift in how accounting is done, like with a better technology like blockchain. Everything is not perfect yet, but I think it’s a great opportunity to start learning. Thank you, Umar.
Just before I end, I would like to give two clarifications or two shout outs. So number one is Umar’s The Accountant Quits accepts students globally. So he is based currently in Europe itself, but his students don’t only come from Europe.
He comes from as far as Australia. So today, if you are listening in from Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, you know, you can check out The Accountant Quits. It’s a global e-learning course.
Yes, it’s not one where you have to be physically on the ground. Yeah, Uma, I’m correct, right? That’s right. And we had students from Singapore, from the Philippines and from Hong Kong, actually, in the previous four parts.
Yes. And then the other one is that Umar and myself will be coming out with a crypto tax report in August itself. So that’s the other thing that we can all look forward to.
Yeah. With that, see you guys in the next episode. Thanks for dialing in and remember to subscribe.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Umar.