01Systems architecture
How should it all fit together?
Six weeks · fixed priceHow it works
Tax credit platform · Fintech · 2023–2024
They asked what to build next. The IRS kept raising the bar for proof.
Fourteen months with the founders of a tax credit platform and the engineers we’d hired for their first company: designing the product and its processes, and keeping the next step clear while the IRS changed its rules.
- Years
- 2023–2024
- Sector
- Fintech, COVID-era tax credits
- Role
- Product and process design, and direction, alongside the founders
- Engagement
- Embedded, the founders’ second engagement with us
- Team
- Duncan Platt, with the two engineers we’d hired in the first
- Closest service today
- Systems architecture
- government orders, sorted with AI
- 13K+
What they asked
We have a great team. What should it build next?
About six months after their previous platform went on ice, the same founders called again. They had moved into COVID-era Employee Retention Credits: refunds from the IRS for businesses harmed by COVID shutdowns. Claiming one was hard, and most business owners didn’t know where to start.
They had the two engineers we’d hired for their first company, and real momentum. What they lacked was structure: a clear next thing to build, and a way to show the engineers why it mattered.
What was really going on
Every claim had to point to a government order.
To claim the credit, a business had to show what the government did to it. For a restaurant, that meant finding every order that closed or limited it, from the city, county, state, CDC, OSHA, or federal government, and the date each one was lifted.
Early on, the IRS asked for little. Over time it became far more meticulous about proof, and each change reshaped what the platform had to collect.
And the platform had three kinds of user: business owners gathering documents, document administrators building the case, and tax attorneys and CPAs filing it and paying out each party’s share of the refund.
The call
Give owners a careful path, not a quick form.
A short form and a fast filing was the easy product to build. Instead the first version walked a business owner, or someone on their team, through the claim step by step, so the evidence was gathered properly from the start. That care set the platform apart. As the IRS asked for more, the question stayed the same: what is the simplest thing that adds value now?
The trade-off: a longer process for business owners, in a market where others promised speed.
What we did
Design, structure, connect.
The founders ran the business and made the calls. We turned each next step into something the engineers could build, and designed what people would see.
Design the process
Flows for each of the three sides, built in order: the business owner’s intake first, then the document and case work for administrators and CPAs, then the engine that proved each claim.
Design the product
The screens for all three sides, and a big hand in the design language. Later, the senior engineer we’d brought on board took over the design process.
Find the orders
Proof meant matching each business to the orders that affected it, and when each was lifted. Thousands of orders overlapped across cities, counties, states, and federal agencies, so we built an AI pipeline to sort them, and hired a team to prepare the data it learned from.
Connect the partners
The company’s website, and connections to the partners who referred clients, tracking who brought in each one so the partners could be paid.
The role
Duncan Platt worked alongside the founders from 2023 to 2024: the bridge between what they pictured and what the engineers built, and the lead on design and process. We built the website and the partner connections; the engineers built the platform.
The work
Every order, with its dates.
The order search: every city, county, state, and federal order that could have closed or limited a business, with the day it started and the day it was lifted, so each claim could point to the orders behind it.
What changed
One platform, from first upload to refund.
Business owners, document administrators, and tax attorneys and CPAs worked in one place, from a business owner’s first upload to the refund check and each party’s share of it.
When the IRS tightened its rules, the platform changed with them: new questions for owners, new checks for administrators, and a clearer link from each claim to the orders behind it.
Afterwards
The engineers stayed. We stepped out.
In 2024 the company was operating with clear parameters, and we stepped out. The engineers carried on, and the senior engineer took over the design process.
Who carried it forward
The two engineers we hired for the founders’ first company, with the senior engineer leading design.
Keep reading
The service behind it
Next case study
Mainsail · With Openfin
They asked for a system to help people launch a business.Customers needed a person checking the AI's work.
Read the case study: MainsailTalk it through
Bring the question you can’t quite phrase yet.
That’s usually the right place to start.
A conversation, not a pitch. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll say so, and point you to who is.