Why We're Building the Next Generation Accounting Firm | Arush Jain, Vinay Kasat, & Pranav Pillai

Learn more about Modus at https://www.modusaudit.com/ Lightspeed partners Justin Overdorff and Amish Desai sit down with the Modus founding team to discuss why financial audits, despite being central to trust in capital markets, have remained largely unchanged for decades. The founders explain how audits are still driven by manual workflows, fragmented tools, and sampling based methods, even as firms face growing workloads and talent shortages during busy seasons. They outline how Modus is using AI and direct access to financial system data to rebuild the audit process from the ground up. Instead of selling software to firms, the company is acquiring CPA practices and deploying its technology internally to automate repetitive audit work, reduce timelines, and free auditors to focus on judgment and client outcomes. The conversation explores how this model could increase audit coverage, improve consistency, and create a new generation of AI enabled audit firms. #InvestmentMemoPodcast #Lightspeed #Modus Chapters 0:00 Welcome, Arush Jain, Vinay Kasat, & Pranav Pillai! 2:40 Why Audit Is a Massive Opportunity 3:17 The Core Problem Auditors Face Today 4:10 The “Audit in 2 Weeks” Vision 5:04 Proving the Model Works Without an Audit Background 5:53 Why Audit Software Has Failed Before 6:25 Reinventing Audits from the Ground Up 7:25 Inside 7 AI Workflows & 40% Time Savings 9:03 Palantir’s Influence on Their Strategy 10:00 Embedding Engineers Inside Audit Firms 11:12 Turning Time Savings into Growth 12:25 Improving Audit Quality with AI 14:01 Where Audit Errors Actually Happen 16:24 The First Acquisition Journey 17:50 Early Results: Growth & Efficiency Gains 19:05 The “This Works” Moment 20:18 From Friends to Co-Founders 22:34 Hiring in the Age of AI 24:08 Advisors Behind Modus 25:41 Choosing the Right Investors 26:55 The Future of AI in Audit 28:03 What Excites the Founders Most 28:48 Advice for Founders ABOUT THE INVESTMENT MEMO PODCAST The Investment Memo is a podcast interview series where founders see their original investment memo for the first time and revisit the deal that started it all. The memo becomes the spine of the episode — sparking honest conversation about early conviction, risk, growth and the relationship that formed between founder and investor. Stay In Touch: Website: www.lsvp.com X: https://x.com/lightspeedvp LinkedIn:   / lightspeed-venture-partners   Instagram:   / lightspeed   The content here does not constitute tax, legal, business or investment advice or an offer to provide such advice, should not be construed as advocating the purchase or sale of any security or investment or a recommendation of any company, and is not an offer, or solicitation of an offer, for the purchase or sale of any security or investment product. The views expressed by our guests do not necessarily represent the views of Lightspeed. For more details please see lsvp.com/legal.