Frustration to Innovation: Fixing Family Office Software | Alex Lin, Co-Founder & CEO at SumIt

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Mark Wickersham: alright, alright, Alex, welcome to The WealthTech Podcast. I'm excited to have you on the show. I think you're one of the more thoughtful and innovative people in the space. Looking forward to this conversation, would you mind giving kind of a a brief introduction about yourself and Summit.

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Alexandre Lin: Yeah, of course, I'm the co-founder and CEO of Summit and Summit is a multi entity general ledger software specifically focused on the family office space, and we're a younger company. We're about 3 years old, roughly, team of 10 people roughly across the Us. And serving a lot of single family offices multifamily offices about 35, 40 families now on the platform. And yeah, we've been growing fast, and

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Alexandre Lin: I'm excited to be here to talk about it. Personally, I'm I've got. I'm based in New York City. I've got 2 kids.

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Alexandre Lin: 2 and 4, and so we submit summit to my 3rd kid.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, so it's you're busy. Let's put it that way.

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Mark Wickersham: You're I always, whatever I get a chance to talk to. You know a founder co-founder. Love to talk to about the the your founders journey. I know this was born out of frustration with your own family experience, your own family office experience. Can you describe what led you to co-found summit.

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Alexandre Lin: Yeah, I'll tell you more about the story. I think, like many Gen. 2 folks.

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Alexandre Lin: you don't really plan for it. And so for me.

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Alexandre Lin: I was in my 1st year of consulting, and one of my parents got sick, basically. And they had to go back to China. And I knew a lot about our family businesses, our real estate portfolio, but not too much, I would say. And so they kind of had to drop everything. And they asked me to basically take over while they were

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Alexandre Lin: back in China, and I took a leave of absence for about 8 months, turned to like a longer one. But I basically ended up having to create all the legal structure for all our family entities. And in that process, of course, I had to do the bookkeeping, and I hired an accounting firm.

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Alexandre Lin: and they gave me an accounting software, and it was really bad. And so I think I told you. But I almost ended up suing them. We settle outside of court, and it was really bad, but.

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Mark Wickersham: And add user experience.

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Alexandre Lin: It was a bad user experience. They had bank sheets that didn't work and things like that. So it was bad. And so I ended up doing a lot of the work in excel

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Alexandre Lin: and back. Then

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Alexandre Lin: I had no idea what a family office was, because in France the concept is not as

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Alexandre Lin: popular, I would say, but it was my 1st foray into that world, and I just did a lot of the work myself, with the different service providers, accounting firm lawyers, estate planning, and whatnot. And then, years later, about 4 years ago, I kind of went through an incubator sponsored by family office, and that's when I started looking at the space again with other family offices and realized that.

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Alexandre Lin: oh, wow! There's a lot of innovation when it comes to family office software when it comes to the front office. I think the likes of Adipar Maestro were born in 2,009, 2010. And now recently, you have a sora and things like that.

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Alexandre Lin: But when it comes to the back office

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Alexandre Lin: everyone, 75% of the market was using

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Alexandre Lin: a outdated, not outdated, but a legacy software. So software that was built more than 20 years ago most of the time. And so.

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Alexandre Lin: thinking about my story and my experience with excel, it really resonated strongly. And so that's how we decided to build Summit, together with a family office space in mind and with family offices as investors.

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Mark Wickersham: That's a.

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Mark Wickersham: It's always interesting when

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Mark Wickersham: software has been commercialized from that from that experience it it shows a kind of a deep domain experience.

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Mark Wickersham: You've been at it for for 3 years. Now, when you look back on that, what are some of the early decisions that that you you kind of nailed. And what were some of the the points where that journey was? Maybe a little bit harder than expected, or where you had to pivot.

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Alexandre Lin: I'm sure you know that there are so many ups and so many downs on the way together. When I started the company it was just me, and thinking about the product and everything, and then getting my co-founder and starting to build something.

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Alexandre Lin: I'd say there are probably 3 things that really mattered a lot.

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Alexandre Lin: and one of the 1st decisions we made was to hire a group of advisors, a council of advisors in the space. Because

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Alexandre Lin: I think a lot of my clients or prospects asked me, hey, how do you make sure you don't overfit for my family the entities that I created like. Well, the reality of it, I said.

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Alexandre Lin: It makes more sense to get a better understanding of

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Alexandre Lin: everyone in this space, and what their problems are, so that I don't overfit for one particular use case. And so we, the 1st thing we did was build a council of advisors of about 30 people, plus

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Alexandre Lin: and those 30 people ranged from

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Alexandre Lin: an accountant, a Controller, a Cfo. All the way to the principal of an actual family office. So that was through my connections through some cold outreach, too. But that really helped us get a good sense of what the problem was

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Alexandre Lin: across the board, so that if you wanted to solve for a report. We knew what a lot of different people would think of that report and not just me. That was super important, and that drives a lot of the product research and product development. Today.

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Alexandre Lin: the second one was

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Alexandre Lin: staying focused, I think, when we started building, we realized that from the back office standpoint. You have many problems you can solve.

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Alexandre Lin: But we want to stay on the Gl. I think it's very easy to start spreading across many topics. Okay, let's build a new bill pay system. Let's build a new investment reporting system.

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Alexandre Lin: There are folks who do that really well and who are more innovative. At this stage we decided to stay focused on the Gl and partner with an adapar for investment, reporting a build.com for the bill pay, because

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Alexandre Lin: honestly, you kind of have to choose your battle, too, and for us the Gl. Was the battle worth fighting worth fighting for right now that's the second thing.

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Alexandre Lin: and then I would say, not a decision, but more of a general comment for anyone out there. Considering software or considering building a software company, it just takes longer than expected.

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Mark Wickersham: Right.

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Alexandre Lin: You're like, all right, I I think I'm gonna build this, you know module. By the end of the year you kinda need to have a bit of a buffer I need to have like 35, 40 families. Well, it took us like 2 and a half years to get there, you know. So it's not

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Alexandre Lin: especially with family offices. We move.

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Alexandre Lin: I was gonna say, slower, but really it was more intention. And so we take more time.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I think even with the most conservative estimates, with building products or going to markets, it always takes twice as long as you think, and can cost you twice as much. And then, I think, to your point, in in terms of

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Mark Wickersham: product market fit. You know, there's nothing's more dangerous than one data point, right is that.

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Alexandre Lin: You know, are you building to the 80%, or you're building to the 20%. And that can make a big difference down the road, because, as you know, you have pretty limited.

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Mark Wickersham: Resources. That's always the constraint. And then, you know, is this, am I gonna have impact, you know? Is this gonna be part of that Mvp approach? And will this add value to the next client? Or is this specific to that client could be tough to tell when you only have that, that one data point.

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Mark Wickersham: you have an interesting product pro approach in terms of how you designed your product and and how you develop it in terms of

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Mark Wickersham: simplicity, yet focused specifically on the family office. And I I really kind of admire that I think too often

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Mark Wickersham: products can be too complex, or get kind of overstuffed with a lot of features and functions that aren't necessarily used by the user. It can be just kinda laid out in a confusing way. But can you tell me a little bit more about your approach?

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Alexandre Lin: Yeah, to? To answer your question. I kind of have to go back to the original thesis for Summit

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Alexandre Lin: when we I spoke to probably 200 family offices, plus by now. And the overwhelming feedback was that they wanted something that was simple, like a retail software like a quickbooks, because

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Alexandre Lin: they didn't want to train someone on the software and then have that person leave and then have to retrain someone for another 6 months. That was really a big, a big feedback point that we got, but then they wanted something that was still more robust, so that they could do some of the consolidation like mid tier erp, and also more specific to the family office space

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Alexandre Lin: when I was doing that. So this is Summit when I was doing that research. One thing that, and when I talk to prospects, one thing that I hear almost every time is.

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Alexandre Lin: oh, we looked at X, and it's super powerful. But when I opened the software, when I looked at the demo, I got intimidated. I got scared like, really, that's like, literally the feedback that I'm getting from a lot of prospects.

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Alexandre Lin: And I think that's because sometimes people don't necessarily think about the user. They think about the capabilities they think about the problem to solve. But they forget about who's actually doing it.

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Mark Wickersham: Right.

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Alexandre Lin: So for us, it was really putting the accountant back in the in the center.

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Alexandre Lin: like not necessarily thinking about the family principle, because it's not the main user. That's the reality, like, who's actually doing the work. And what what is it going to look like for that person?

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Alexandre Lin: And so

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Alexandre Lin: we said, we don't want people to look at our platform and say, and say, we're intimidated, we're scared. We don't know how that's gonna work. So

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Alexandre Lin: we decided to look at what quickbooks does to be honest like. How do we keep it? Simple, like a quickbooks, because we can complain about quickbooks? But quickbooks has so many features. It's very feature rich.

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Alexandre Lin: yet it's still kind of easy to use, you know we can. We can complain about the lack of functionalities for a multi entity world, but still pretty easy to use for the beast that it is. And so that's kind of how we think about it. It's like, let's use something that is familiar to most people. So we kind of use quickbooks as the main layer, and then and then decided to add on top, based on the actual problems that were needed to be solved by by the space

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Mark Wickersham: I think.

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Alexandre Lin: I'll say that one thing.

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Alexandre Lin: I have a tremendous amount of respect for the competition. I think that what's difficult for someone who's been around for 20 or 30 years is that you have 30 and 40 years.

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Alexandre Lin: Yeah, tremendous amount of for the for the comp tremendous amount of respect for the competition. I think the problem is, when you have 30 years of development. You have 30 years worth of features. And so it starts getting very. It's got. It starts getting crowded right? I think, how we think about it is, let's build what is just right for family offices, because then you can be very focused, and it can be more simple. As a result.

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Mark Wickersham: I I think, to your point. You know, accountants know how to do their job. They need software that facilitates that when you start to get into situations where it requires training and user manuals and online help that normally indication that there's some sort of deficiency within the user experience that it should naturally kind of support the

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Mark Wickersham: you know the accountants, natural workflow and and job, and I think you know, from a design standpoint it can be tempting to

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Mark Wickersham: add more features, but you know, if it's looked like looked at, it is like.

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Mark Wickersham: can you take? Keep on taking elements away until it breaks down, and then you add it back like, can you get it to that level of simplicity where you you've kind of

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Mark Wickersham: put it, put it right down to the rails.

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Mark Wickersham: and then then you can build back a little bit. But I think too many

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Mark Wickersham: firms, maybe not taking a user centric design will will take a more of a feature function, type of approach and and try to try to jam stuff in. So I it's prevalent. I think the part of the problem is that institutional software, I mean, granted, an institutional user will put up with more than a kind of a retail software retail user. But it's not an excuse not to have, you know, a quality user experience.

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Alexandre Lin: Yeah. And I also say that in general

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Alexandre Lin: there was a certain philosophy when it comes to developing software, maybe 40 years ago versus today.

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Alexandre Lin: and you can tell them in the design.

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Alexandre Lin: That's yeah. One.

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Mark Wickersham: That is, the design is not part of the the sdlc, it's like an afterthought, you know, and then, obviously, it's a lot more expensive to do it that way, too. But let's talk about re retail software a little bit. Why are so many family offices so reliant on retail software. What are some of the downfalls and gaps when it comes to to using that software.

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Alexandre Lin: I think in general, people don't necessarily start a family office right of college when it comes to the accounting. And so people start an accounting firm, or their Cpa or whatever. And so most of the tools available out there are retail software. And they do that because it's easy to use simply said, they learn how to do taxes, using a quickbooks, downloaded data from there. So they're familiar with it. So when they move to a family office.

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Alexandre Lin: What do they use? Well, I know how to use quickbooks. So that's what I'm going to use. That's typically how it works. And that's why you see QuickBooks so prevalent in that space.

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Alexandre Lin: It's just that it's familiar.

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Alexandre Lin: and it's simple to use. It's the second point. It's simple to use.

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Mark Wickersham: It's easy to stand up right.

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Alexandre Lin: Yeah.

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Mark Wickersham: Part of it is like it's inexpensive. But I think the real reason is that oh, I gotta get going. I need something today like you only have a handful of entities. You stand it up. You're you're by the end of the day you get it stood up right and then next, you know, 1213 entities later, you're kind of underwater.

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Alexandre Lin: And and this comment that you just made is so prevalent. I have so many folks who are like I just need to get something started. I don't have the luxury of waiting for 6 to get a new software. Now it's a little bit changing, because we there's more of a blueprint

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Alexandre Lin: for hey, family office, family, office software, how to search for it and whatnot. But for a lot of people, they just need to get going.

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Alexandre Lin: yeah. And I think some of the downfalls. It's just that. It's just not if you take an accounting software and you take all the different modules, right? Transaction categorization, reconciliation accounts, payable accounts, receivables.

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Alexandre Lin: you know, inventory module blah blah. If you take a quickbooks, you probably use only 50% of quickbooks, because that's what the family office needs. It doesn't need. It's not a business.

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Mark Wickersham: It does need inventory.

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Alexandre Lin: Exactly. And so that's the one that's 1 of the things it's like. There's a lot of clutter that makes it not relevant. But then, if you take like a retail software, typically, it's not in a multi entity software. And I think that's the biggest. That is the by far the biggest problem. And that's why people move to

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Alexandre Lin: move to a sage and Netsuite and Microsoft dynamics. Granted, I think, quickbooks is also realizing that. And they are offering now, I think what they call it quickbooks ies, which is the the multi entity competitor that's gonna try to beat Sage. I think that's what I heard.

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Alexandre Lin: But I think then, you have the same problem with with what I said, which is, it's not fit for purpose, so it does some consolidation. But it can. It can give you a personal financial statement with ownership percentages that are different from 100%.

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Alexandre Lin: So that's that's that's the the gap. The last thing I'll say is.

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Alexandre Lin: it's retail. So it doesn't have a family office focus and will never have. So it's never gonna be built. Things for that space.

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Mark Wickersham: I think user permissioning, you know, is another one right person that enters the bill shouldn't be the person that approves the bill.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah.

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Mark Wickersham: that would be a big one, I think auditability obviously is, is not necessarily a top of mind, like, you know that those those become important factors that maybe aren't top of mind when when people are are searching for software.

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Mark Wickersham: let's talk about

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Mark Wickersham: AI and how AI is impacting certainly technology all across the board. But in the family office space in particular, what is Summit's approach to AI? How how is AI impacting the user experience.

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Alexandre Lin: I think there are 2 things here for me. One is

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Alexandre Lin: 3 things. One is, yeah. AI is here. It's not going away. You're gonna have to deal with it one way or the other, whether you incorporate that within your workflows or within the platform. You gotta do it.

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Alexandre Lin: The second thing, though, which is super important, is AI is a tool amongst other tools.

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Alexandre Lin: And what does that mean? It means that it's not fit for every workflow on your platform, and I think that's something that people forget about.

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Alexandre Lin: It's like, what are the if you if you take a if you take a nail. How are you going to like? You're going to use a hammer for that. And so AI is just one of the. It's probably one of the hammers right? And so you kind of have to use the right tool for the right problem

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Alexandre Lin: for us.

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Alexandre Lin: AI is about helping the accountant

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Alexandre Lin: spend less time doing manual things, such as categorizing transactions

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Alexandre Lin: right? It's the idea that AI is pretty good at

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Alexandre Lin: taking a transaction. The description, the vendor and kind of figuring out based on your database. What categorization this should be. It should go to family expense, for instance, because that's what you've done for the past 50 transactions.

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Alexandre Lin: And so helping the accountant with those assist the accountant. It's basically an assist assisting the accountant with AI. That's what we're trying to do with the workflows that are relevant transaction. Categorization is one of them. Another one that we see more often now is Pdf. Reading capabilities and being able to extract information and turn that into a draw entry. So we're working with a family office on that. But that's kind of how we think about it. And then the 3rd thing is

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Alexandre Lin: I think people are cautious with AI, especially in the family office space.

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Alexandre Lin: And we, our philosophy with AI is, and with anything when it comes to the product is we'd rather not automate the whole thing right away. We'd rather crawl before we walk. We'd rather automate a couple of steps within the whole process and make sure that the data is correct as a result.

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Alexandre Lin: and then roll out the more full-fledged

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Alexandre Lin: AI module if that makes sense. So that's kind of how we approach it. To go back to the question right now on Summit, it's more of a matter of assisting the user with certain flows, such as transaction categorization, and helping them save time. As a result.

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Mark Wickersham: Makes sense pattern recognition. I think you know also that that ton of information that's in Pdf unstructured information. How do I convert that into.

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Mark Wickersham: you know, structured information automate. You know, 80% of that 1st mile while still keeping the human in the loop on on the on the processing. I I think that makes a

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Mark Wickersham: a lot of sense. What other areas are you seeing in terms of driving innovation in the family office space? It does seem like there, this is, you know, what I like to say this, we're entering the the beginning of the Golden age for family office software. I think some. It's a good example of of that. But what where are you seeing innovation within the space.

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Alexandre Lin: I'm seeing so much innovation. I think one thing that I want, I'm sure a lot of people realize is that

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Alexandre Lin: the barriers to building software have gone down so much.

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Alexandre Lin: And I'm not joking. I think if you, if I spend one week on my own with some of the tools available. Now, I can put together a prototype that can work for certain workflows. So it doesn't take long now to build software.

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Alexandre Lin: So this is being commoditized. Which means that you see a lot of innovation as a result, and the differentiation is going to be down to

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Alexandre Lin: your focus on the client problems, your relationships, your distribution channels and whatnot. So I think that's why, despite the innovation, what matters a lot is, hey? Do you understand the problem? Right? Do you have the right people to solve for that problem. Do you have the right counsel of advisors and whatnot? I think that's that's super important to

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Alexandre Lin: to to state before we even talk about the innovations.

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Alexandre Lin: As far as innovations go.

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Alexandre Lin: there are a lot more AI native platforms built. So that's the difference between just having an accounting software and then building something on top versus starting with AI 1st and then building things around. Which means that you see a lot more

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Alexandre Lin: software companies coming up with those chat boxes right for family offices, instead of having an account and send you an answer to how much did we spend on this, just having the chat box and just being like, hey, let me query my data. So a lot of innovation like that. And that means that you have a lot more innovations about real time information being able to connect multiple data sources and then being able to answer questions on the go.

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Alexandre Lin: I think all of that is, thanks to all the Llm models. So so that's great. I see a lot of

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Alexandre Lin: innovation. I see a lot of people starting Mfos. A lot of

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Alexandre Lin: private practices is starting at, you know, get emerging from accounting firms. And I think there's a lot of innovation when it comes to serving those Mfos.

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Alexandre Lin: And thinking about not just the accounting, but also, how do we integrate that with

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Alexandre Lin: taxes, with legal, with wealth, management? And so there are like more. All in one. Solutions are trying to cater to that to that need. So those are some of the things that I see.

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Alexandre Lin: I'm kind of curious what you see, too. Because, mark you, you've been that space for for a long time, but that's roughly what I see right now.

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Mark Wickersham: I think what I see is, well, obviously.

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Mark Wickersham: AI is having a major impact. And I I think large language models the ability to kinda

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Mark Wickersham: you don't necessarily have to know, like a business intelligence tool, to be able to query your data and to be able to get insights. You know the information that you want, and you could just have a natural conversation with your data. Now, I think, is is tremendously impactful. I I think the other area that, you see is

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Mark Wickersham: a lot of firms that are now focused specifically on the family office space. And a lot of particular like we call point solutions

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Mark Wickersham: previously, you know, not to date myself too much. But back in the day you had to take software from an adjacent industry like hedge fund industry or asset management, and then you had to. You know your alternatives within a different system, your marketables in there. Never! The 2 spoke you had like. It was really hard to piece it they together. Now, you see.

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Mark Wickersham: not only do you see all in ones, or comprehensive solutions, and a number of them out there, but as well as seeing the ability of best of breed to be, you know, is moved beyond the science experiment, that it's really a practicality that that it that you see vendors integrating, you know, for summit in adapar is a great example, right? The client doesn't need to figure out how to convert investment data into financial data which is

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Mark Wickersham: fairly hard and complex. The 2 vendors have coordinated in in such a way that that there's a more of a plug and play on that.

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Mark Wickersham: Now, I'm not saying that that you know one's 1 way is better than another. But there, there's more optionality in the in the marketplace, right? That you people can choose a particular path that meets their operational requirements as well as their technology personality. So I think that's the great news, as I I'll often say. You know, the the good news is, there's more options. The bad news is that more options right? Which is quite a bit of

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Mark Wickersham: buyer confusion, I think within this space it's it's not simple. I think if you use an AI for search, too, on family office

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Mark Wickersham: software. Your your results are not going to be great. It brought up Morningstar when I did that I was doing some research, and you know Morningstar was was a low end. Rea software that's exiting the Ra market. Even so. You know. Still, buy, beware. Get get yourself an expert. If you're going in that space. But

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Mark Wickersham: talk to me a little bit about, you know comprehensive versus best in breed, and how how you see that, and the applicability towards the family office, and what family offices should be thinking about in that area.

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Alexandre Lin: I think it depends on what you're trying to do. It depends on how much power you're looking for, and

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Alexandre Lin: I think the the answer is not black or white, it's not like everybody should do all in one or everybody should do best in breed, both pros and cons. So it's a bit of a political answer. Excuse me for that, but it's true. I think the reason why we decided to go for best in breed, and why it matters for the marketplace is, we recognize that

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Alexandre Lin: it's not like the family office. Space is a new industry.

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Alexandre Lin: There are so many people who've been in the industry for a long time.

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Alexandre Lin: and they have been using software in a long time. And

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Alexandre Lin: they are already connected to the software like the number of people that are using bill.com in the space is just incredible. And so for us it was a realization that even though bill.com has some cons has many, many pros. One of the biggest one is that it is actually being used by so many multifamily offices and single family offices. And for us.

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Alexandre Lin: I think one of the one of the things we want to talk about is also change management.

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Alexandre Lin: When you go from an existing tech stack

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Alexandre Lin: to an all in one. I think there's a really big gap, and there's a lot of learnings that need to happen. And I want to go back to the original thesis for summit. We want to be simple, right? We want. We want to make that transition easy.

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Alexandre Lin: And so for us, that means that we want to respect the ecosystem, and see and acknowledge that there are some partners here that have been there for a long time, and that it's better for us to partner than build something on our own.

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Alexandre Lin: Whether whether that's going to be the case in 10 years, who knows but right now this is our approach.

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Alexandre Lin: And so I think that a lot of people come to us because they already use an adapar. They already use a bill.com, and they don't want to move to something else. Some people come to us and they're like, Oh, we're also considering an Eton. And we're like, Yeah, that makes sense. They're very powerful, but just very different experiences, very different

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Alexandre Lin: capabilities, too. Right? So it's a bit of a

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Alexandre Lin: it depends on what you have right now, if you have nothing, then it's an easier solution. If you already have something typically, you would want to go for. Well, that's what I see.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, no, I think it's there's no one right? Answer. There is a right answer for every single family office. There's no one right answer for all single family offices right when it comes to that.

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Mark Wickersham: And I, I do think, even with the comprehensive, the all one solutions, there still is a need around the fringes for those systems to be able to plug in the certain components of of that family offices. Tech stack. You can't just completely live on an island any anymore. You have to have some sort of interoperability. With with different functions.

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Mark Wickersham: wait in terms of change management, you know so many family offices are, are reluct, have been reluctant to modernize.

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Mark Wickersham: What are

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Mark Wickersham: what are some of the best practice that you've seen? How long does it take a typical summit client to be able to, you know, adopt, and and be stood up and live on on your product. And what have you seen as in terms of best practices, in terms of of being able to to manage that change process.

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Alexandre Lin: Yeah, it's funny. We actually wrote an article with the fox on that, and we had had to go through.

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Alexandre Lin: I had to go back to my customer success manager, and like, talk about all the different implementations we've done to kind of collect the feedback.

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Alexandre Lin: I think there is the marketing answer, Mark, and then there's the real answer. So I'm gonna share both.

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Mark Wickersham: Actually, I'm gonna combine them.

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Alexandre Lin: The timeline it takes depends on client readiness and data readiness.

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Alexandre Lin: That's it.

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Alexandre Lin: We have had clients that

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Alexandre Lin: had all the data figured out and were power users of accounting so software. And that setup summit for a client with 60 entities within 2 or 3 weeks. And we're live.

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Alexandre Lin: That's an exception. That's not the norm. Typically, it takes more like 2 to 3 months, or maybe 4 months, to get like someone up and running, especially if they decide to add a build up, come integration and add a part integration. And then if they decide to migrate 30 years of data history, and it's gonna take 4 weeks. So there are like many, many components to it.

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Alexandre Lin: I'll say that

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Alexandre Lin: what's super interesting is when it comes that when you, when it comes down to data, readiness and client readiness. This is the amount of time it takes to implement the software and to get live.

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Alexandre Lin: But before that, the amount of time it required the family office to be ready to make a move.

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Alexandre Lin: That's a tremendous amount of time.

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Alexandre Lin: and sometimes we see clients come to us and be like, we want to move to a software. And we want to do that within that amount of time. And we're like, okay, is your data clean

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Alexandre Lin: question, is your data clean meaning like.

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Alexandre Lin: are the books closed? And do you have to do not have to go back to clean stuff because

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Alexandre Lin: there are so many times where clients have to do that and just delays the onboarding. So that's 1.

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Alexandre Lin: And then the second thing that we see is so get get your data ready, is what I'm saying, or at least know about it, so that you account for it when you do the timeline with the with the the provider.

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Alexandre Lin: And then the second thing is.

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Alexandre Lin: and that's sometimes really tough. Do you have the right people in place for that?

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Alexandre Lin: And I'll give you an example

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Alexandre Lin: if you're trying to implement a an investment reporting platform on top of a summit.

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Alexandre Lin: But your team has never done investment accounting. It's just going to be brutal, just going to be very painful.

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Alexandre Lin: And we've seen that. And I think it's a realization for us to to always have the discussion upfront with the client and be like, Hey.

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Alexandre Lin: okay, you want to implement at a partner like, have you done? Do you have experience with, you? Know the whole portfolio accounting flow and whatnot cause? If not, then we're gonna spend more time on the onboarding.

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Alexandre Lin: We don't want to teach the account how to do it. But

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Alexandre Lin: right, if you don't have that, it's going to be very painful.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I I think it's those are good points. I think there's a there's a people component of it. Are they ready for the change. Do they understand why they're making the change

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Mark Wickersham: or do? Can you bring in some help temporarily, like a consultant or experts that kind of augment that because they have a day job while that's going on right.

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Mark Wickersham: The data, you know. A lot of times, too, they'll look at. Oh, that's great. I'm moving to a multi entity, general ledger. And now I'm gonna redesign my chart of accounts and have standardization across the entities. Meanwhile, you know, every entity has a slightly different gl, or the older you get that the gl, the chart has changed, and that there's somehow this desire to wanna keep 30 years of transactional history. But it it's expensive. It's a land war in Asia, as I say, because it it's so hard to be able to.

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Mark Wickersham: You know, migrate, that data set over. To what value? To what extent is that you know the cost? Is that worth the benefit that these firms need to think about that.

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Alexandre Lin: It's real. Someone who comes to me and says, like, Wanna have 30 years of history. More is like, you're never going back to those 30 years.

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Mark Wickersham: What are some of the where do you? Where do you see the future of accounting the future of the book? Keep keeping an accountant. Where?

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Mark Wickersham: How do you see the profession changing? How do you even see the the market and family office changing over? You know, I think 5 years is almost too too far to look but

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Mark Wickersham: 3 years. What? What's your prediction? Going 3 years out.

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Alexandre Lin: I guess there are 2 parts to it. One is the future. Honestly, Mark, no one is equipped

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Alexandre Lin: to envision what

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Alexandre Lin: software is going to look like in 5 even 5 years, I would say. The pace of innovation right now is just so so fast.

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Alexandre Lin: You're gonna be able to do so much kind of Jarvis

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Alexandre Lin: that's gonna be that's gonna be the the norm in, I think, in 5 years, or something like that. And I don't even joke. I think we're really gonna get there. But just the gap between this and that right now, it's hard to imagine. But I really think that that's the case. So I don't think we're equipped. I don't even want to think about what my kids are gonna use in terms of software and like 15 years old. Innovation that is going on.

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Alexandre Lin: The second thing is

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Alexandre Lin: the future of accounting. I think what we see is simply that AI is being used to augment people's capabilities.

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Alexandre Lin: And the best way to think about it is that everyone is going to get upgraded.

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Alexandre Lin: Everyone is gonna be the bookkeeper is gonna be a controller. Now.

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Alexandre Lin: the bookkeeper is not just gonna put in stuff. The bookkeeper is going to review the work done by the AI agent.

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Alexandre Lin: and you can take that logic and apply it to every different role.

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Alexandre Lin: That's kind of how I think about it.

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Alexandre Lin: Which means that it's great, because, to be honest, there's a shortage of accountants in the country, right? We need more more technologies like that. But that's really in a nutshell. That's what I see. It's gonna be the upgrading of people's capabilities, and therefore I don't think you'll need as many resources as before.

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Mark Wickersham: I I think that makes sense. I like that. That concept is gonna upgrade everybody up to the next position. I I was talking to a

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Mark Wickersham: accounting firm. Not too long ago they were looking for help, and they're like we can't even they couldn't even hire bad accountants, you know the talent constraint is so tight out there that I do think I don't think AI is gonna replace. You know, accountants. I I think accountants using AI is gonna replace accountants, not using it, or

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Mark Wickersham: it's gonna replace bookkeepers. And the and the the low value 1st mile is is gonna be somewhat, you know, drastically reduced. I I think that's gonna add to higher quality work, more analysis better client retention and and talent retention.

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Mark Wickersham: I think all those things are going to be positive, but I think to your point, 5 years out is way too far to predict anything, but it is. The pace of change is, is going to be faster. I think that's probably the one thing that you can say is, you know, what's not going to change in 5 years is, is. The acceleration of change is is one of those things.

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Alexandre Lin: Yeah, for sure 100%.

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Mark Wickersham: So, Alex, I like to end these on a personal note. 3 questions that have nothing to do with with wealth, tech, or 3 questions that have nothing to do with dual side accounting. So you're in Brooklyn, what's what's your favorite spot in Brooklyn?

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Alexandre Lin: Well, that's a tough one, I guess.

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Alexandre Lin: We moved to Brooklyn because it's got some good French American schools. My wife and I are French. But one thing we love doing is the Brooklyn like just going on a stroll in the Brooklyn Promenade.

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Alexandre Lin: Brooklyn Heights. It's pretty awesome. You're by by the sea. And

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Alexandre Lin: and then, you see, Manhattan, the financial district, it's pretty awesome. So we like to do that with the kids. It's pretty good.

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Mark Wickersham: You've had a chance to live in in the Us. France, China, citizen of the globe. What do you? What do you like about each location. Tell me a little bit about, you know. Compare and contrast those those 3.

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Alexandre Lin: That's a tough one.

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Alexandre Lin: I learned I learned a lot of different things from different cultures. I'll say that where I grew up friends

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Alexandre Lin: taught me a lot about culture, taught me a lot about

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Alexandre Lin: the appreciation for the fine things in life, food, wise and and whatnot, but also taught me that

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Alexandre Lin: not everything is about work, and that by making this, not everything, by making, by not making everything about work, you're actually better at work. If that makes sense, and I think that's something that I carry with me even at this company.

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Alexandre Lin: I think my time in China showed me how

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Alexandre Lin: how much hustle there is going on there, and that you can't really rest on your laurels anywhere in the world, because there are a lot of people working hard to basically get better. And so you need to work hard. And you need to work smart.

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Alexandre Lin: And then I think in the Us. What I learned from what I've learned so far from my experience, is that the reason why I live here and I built my business here is that there is

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Alexandre Lin: for all the talks that's going on, whatever. There's a lot of openness to try new things in this country, and I think that that

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Alexandre Lin: it shows with all the innovation that is going on here. It's very easy here to strike up a conversation with a stranger and talk about ideas.

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Alexandre Lin: I think building this business in the Us. Is possible. Building this business elsewhere would have been a lot harder because of that.

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Alexandre Lin: So I really appreciate that that openness in the Us. To try new things and all the opportunities that emerge. As a result, that's my biggest takeaway from my experience so far here.

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Mark Wickersham: Those are great. And what did you learn about working in the family business?

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Alexandre Lin: You know my parents had a bunch of businesses before getting into real estate restaurants, massage parlors.

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Alexandre Lin: What else? Real estate was the big one, of course. And I think what I got that I'm still using today is

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Alexandre Lin: customer service and speed.

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Alexandre Lin: You know, there's nothing that beats that you're gonna

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Alexandre Lin: exceed expectations. If you listen to your customer, serve them well, and you do that in a fast manner. And that's really what

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Alexandre Lin: this is. The essence of Summit.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, yeah, I I had a chance to work in the restaurant industry for a little bit. I will tell you. You learn one is, you learn the value of hard work?

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, you've learned how to kind of function in a environment that has a certain level of chaos. Right? So I always like when you see candidates, they have somewhat of an untraditional background, especially if they have any sort of food service background I'm like. Don't don't sleep on those type of candidates. They know, you know, the value of hard work, that's for sure. So.

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Alexandre Lin: The real world. Let's put it this way.

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Mark Wickersham: Alright, Alex, this has been great. I really appreciate the time. It's been a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much.

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Alexandre Lin: Thanks, Mark, for the time, and for your insights too.

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Mark Wickersham: Okay.

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Alexandre Lin: Cool.