Khosla Ventures is betting $10M on Ian Crosby, whose last startup, Bench, imploded
Key takeaways
- Ian Crosby, whose previous startup Bench Accounting famously shut down in 2024 before being bought for scraps, is taking another shot at building a business out of automating the arduous work of bookkeeping.
- His new startup, Synthetic, aims to build a fully autonomous AI bookkeeper that can generate accrual-based financials without direct human involvement.
- But Khosla partner Jon Chu told TechCrunch he sometimes does just the opposite: “I tend to run towards controversy a little bit.”
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Ian Crosby, whose previous startup Bench Accounting famously shut down in 2024 before being bought for scraps, is taking another shot at building a business out of automating the arduous work of bookkeeping.
His new startup, Synthetic, aims to build a fully autonomous AI bookkeeper that can generate accrual-based financials without direct human involvement. Although the product is still in the design phase — and Crosby admits his vision may not yet be technologically possible — the startup has raised $10 million in a Seed funding round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Basis Set Ventures and Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke.
Most investors would run from a founder facing the kind of challenges Crosby is right now — the fallout of his previous business collapsing, and a vision that may exceed the technical feasibility of current foundational models. But Khosla partner Jon Chu told TechCrunch he sometimes does just the opposite: “I tend to run towards controversy a little bit.”