OK but apparently they did get to make the startup mistakes? They built the quick thing that worked well enough, got some customer traction, and then when they had bugs they were able to rework it and continue.
Frankly I'm not even convinced that double-entry is the sole right answer in this space. There are things you need to be able to represent, but the original reasons for doing double-entry (making errors when subtracting figures) no longer apply.
(I've worked at investment banks and fintech startups)
Hmm, can you elaborate on the original reasons for double entry and them not applying any.kre? I'm not in that space and double entry always seemed an extremely weird, arbitrary requirement / paradigm. Thanks!
The main point of double-entry account keeping is the notion that money never vanishes, it's always tracked as going somewhere.
I think this tends to get misrepresented by people trying to literally keep two entries like we were working with pen and paper book-keeping though.
Because if I have a simple list of transactions, I can easily use a SQL query to recreate a view of double-entry book-keeping. It's perfectly fine to just record the amount of money, and two entity names in a table.
Coz the whole point of the system is that you can explain where the money went at any given time, referenced against something which should be independently auditable: i.e. a vendor receipt which in turn says "there's a physical item of X we gave you".
The "double entry" system's actual merit is when there's multiple people keeping the books. i.e. if you're in a business and your department is spending money on goods, then when you're doing that those transactions should be getting reflected in the shipping departments books (owned by a different person) and maybe your accounting department or the like. The point is that there have to be actual independent people involved since it makes fraud and mistakes hard - if you say you bought a bunch of stuff, but no one else in the business received it or the money to pay for it, then hey, you now need to explain where the money actually is (i.e. not in your pocket).
Frankly I'm not even convinced that double-entry is the sole right answer in this space. There are things you need to be able to represent, but the original reasons for doing double-entry (making errors when subtracting figures) no longer apply.
(I've worked at investment banks and fintech startups)