Meet Slava Akulov, CEO and Co-Founder at AI-Powered Financial Assistant: Jupid

Tell us about Jupid

 

Jupid is an AI-powered financial assistant that takes that burden away. We automate bookkeeping, taxes, compliance, and even company formation. No dashboards. No accounting jargon. Just a voice or message away. Like having a pocket CFO who understands small business, never sleeps, and costs less than your phone bill.

Jupid is for the kind of entrepreneur I used to be. I ran a dance school with just two teachers. Later, I worked at a small grocery. We weren’t building empires — we just wanted to work on our own terms and do what we loved. But every week we were dragged back into a swamp of receipts, licenses, tax filings, forms, and penalties for missed filings. It was like having two jobs: one you love, and one that slowly eats your energy.

Currently, there are over 35 million entrepreneurs in the U.S. with fewer than 50 employees — they generate close to a third of U.S. GDP. And yet, they’re the most overworked and under-supported group in the economy. Jupid is built for them. These are people who create value with their hands, their time, their hearts. And they’re forced to spend 40+ hours a year just dealing with paperwork — that’s an entire week lost to red tape. They deserve better.

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 

I studied accounting in college by accident. I finished the degree and realized I hated it. Not just disliked — hated. I have mild dyslexia, so filling forms stresses me out like I’m being tested on a language I don’t speak. And yet, every time I started a new business, that’s where 70% of the work went.

I built Jupid to solve my own pain. And then I saw it wasn’t just mine. Millions of others are losing time, money, and energy to a system that was never designed for them.

 

 

What do you think makes Jupid unique?

 

Most software is designed around the accountant. Ours is designed around the entrepreneur.

Think of it like self-driving cars. You can’t build one by upgrading the steering wheel. You have to start by imagining a car with no driver at all.

Jupid works the same way. You don’t need to “do the accounting” anymore. You just talk to your assistant. “Send this invoice.” “Did we get paid?” “Can I expense lunch with a client?” Everything else happens invisibly — categorization, compliance, filing. We’re building autonomy, not just productivity.

And we’re embedding it directly into banks. Because accounting shouldn’t be in a separate app — it should live where your money is.

 

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

 

Jupid is new. But I’ve been solving this problem for seven years. In the UK, I helped build a platform used by tens of thousands of entrepreneurs — from filing taxes to issuing invoices to running a business bank account.

Now I’m bringing everything I learned to the U.S., but rebuilt from scratch, with a different mindset: AI-first, mobile-native, and designed not to assist the accountant, but to eliminate the need for one in the first place.

 

What is your advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?

 

Do something small and something you care about. Something that makes someone’s life a little easier, or tastier, or calmer. Even if it’s just three people who love your buns, that’s enough. Build for them like they’re the only ones who matter.

And don’t chase trends. Follow the pain.

 

What most excites you about Jupid?

 

That it gives people their time back. Imagine if you didn’t have to take Sunday night with a bottle of wine to sort receipts. Imagine if you could talk to your accounting system the way you talk to a friend. “Hey, did I file that form?” “Do I owe anything this quarter?” “Can I pay myself this month?”

Also: imagine what happens to accounting as a profession. Most young people don’t want to study it anymore. Accountants are aging out. AI isn’t replacing them — it’s rescuing them from work they never liked doing in the first place.

 

What’s your long-term vision for Jupid?

 

No more separate tools. No more switching tabs.

Accounting should live where your money lives — inside your bank. Jupid is embedding directly into banking platforms so that financial support is part of your infrastructure, not an afterthought. Just like you don’t install separate software to access the internet, you shouldn’t need to install software to run your business finances.

We’re not building an app. We’re building a new baseline — where every entrepreneur has a financial brain in their pocket.