Sierra Ventures: Our Early-Stage Investment in Paro

Another Chicago Hidden Secret; and It’s Not a Top 50 Restaurant

Sierra Ventures was one of the first investors in Intuit and we saw, firsthand, the power of the finance professional. Since then, there have been a number of seismic shifts with the emergence of marketplaces, the gig economy, and the remote workforce. Paro is right in the middle of all these macro trends and is well-positioned to benefit from them. Sierra is excited to announce our recent investment in the company. Paro is a network of top-tier financial professionals from CFOs to accountants, bookkeepers, due diligence experts and more. We’re excited to work with the team to build the future of knowledge-based work, starting with finance and accounting. When we met Michael Burdick, the CEO of Paro, we were immediately impressed by the future Michael envisioned and the depth with which he understood the business. Paro’s unique differentiator is its marketplace of high-quality, uniquely skilled finance and accounting professionals. Its platform has thousands of well-qualified, highly vetted professionals that are working with hundreds of customers across various industries. The platform’s data-driven matchmaking algorithm connects clients with perfect-fit subject matter experts and is so effective that 95% of clients choose to work with one of the first two experts they’re matched with.In the future, Paro sees a world where ALL professional workers are free to control their destiny while using Paro as the operating system to run their businesses. The gig economy is not limited to drivers and delivery people. Workers in all sectors are increasingly interested in being independent. In fact, Paro is already enabling a significant number of finance professionals to earn enough so that Paro is their primary source of income for their family. For a vast majority of the freelancers, 80% of their available hours are spent on the Paro platform. We think Paro has the power to increasingly bring sophisticated professionals to this market and with their unique matching algorithm, will change the way businesses think about leveling up their talent.We feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to be a part of the Paro team and if you’re looking to enhance or solve temporary challenges in your finance/accounting organization, please be sure to check out www.paro.io!