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Q&A with Arthur Shaw December 6, 1999 myCFO's "High-Tech, High-Touch Model" Arthur Shaw, the new CEO of Jim Clark's latest startup, explains how the Net will help him deliver major time savings for wealthy clients myCFO Inc. is one of the hottest new startups in Silicon Valley -- even if it's not for the masses. Far from it. myCFO aims to use the Internet to help the upper crust, or mega-millionaires, manage their complex financial lives. It might sound elitist, but with backing from the likes of three-time entrepreneur James H. Clark, Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers, and venture capitalist L. John Doerr, it's hard to dismiss myCFO as some small-time niche play. Recently, newly minted myCFO CEO Arthur V. Shaw sat down with Silicon Valley bureau chief Linda Himelstein to discuss his move to the company and hopes for its future. BW: So why did you come here? Shaw: First of all, it was the uniqueness of the opportunity. It's a terrific market space. I believed strongly in the combination of the high-tech, high-touch model. That was critical to what made this so attractive to me. And when Jim Clark gives me a phone call, I listen. A couple of great conversations, and I was addicted. Jim is very much involved. He's here a lot. We talk multiple times a day. But he wanted somebody to run the company, which is what I wanted. It's terrific to have his experience and network to grow the firm. Great team, great opportunity, and the chance to create something that really doesn't exist. Also, Jim had put together the board, which is the board of dreams. Some of the press I'd seen about this was about it being a great business. But Jim and I talked about building a great firm. I really identified and bonded with that. BW: Why couldn't you have done this at Schwab? Shaw: They have a very capable set of CEOs there. It's different to run a firm, and that was an exciting opportunity for me. BW: So what do you plan to do? How does this work? Shaw: Our bent here is with tax and accounting professionals, and it is unique and different. The breadth of the online system is broad. And I'm very focused on building the culture: trust, teamwork, speed, focus. We're building the foundation of great service for our clients. As a client, you will have your own personal client service director. You'll have your CFO. That client service director will do all your bookkeeping, bill-paying, tax management, and accounting for you. And he'll do that in a way that integrates all the current relationships you have. Ultimately, we'll deliver that to you via an online system. It's one system that either you or your director will be able to use -- like a dashboard [control for] flying a plane -- that oversees all aspects of your financial life. BW: Why should a client use you instead of a traditional service provider? Shaw: Simplicity and piece of mind. Some of our clients have 10 to 15 separate entities that they have for multiple legal or tax reasons. Instead of having these pieces all over, you will have it in one space. We hope to integrate and aggregate that. We'll provide the best-in-class service, and all that will result in huge time savings. You can't buy love, and you can't buy time. Almost all of our directors have come from the Big Five firms and are accountants and tax professionals with sometimes 10 and 15 years' experience. BW: So how far along are you from offering this service? Shaw: Today we can offer the service we've talked about. It's just that the back end is done through paper. So we will enter all your paperwork. We will scan your bills. We will extract the data so we can integrate it into your unified financial picture. We'll do your bill-paying and your bookkeeping. Over time, the online system will continue to automate the paperwork. Then it will take less time to serve clients. We are writing checks for clients. Right now you can't monitor that online. We're aiming for next quarter to offer the expense-management piece, and we'll be able to categorize data for tax purposes. And we'll go from there. But people will start to be able to interact with us next quarter. Ultimately we want to be an integration source. That doesn't exist right now. And it's a huge endeavor. BW: What do you provide that I can't get now? Shaw: Most people employ many entities, and we wanted to be neutral amongst all those entities. Many people really have the need for getting best-in-class accounting and tax services because when you have wealth, there's a lot of leverage in getting the best help. Most people find it really complex to integrate and aggregate all their financial activities across all their needs. So if you want best-in-class, we think we're the right solution. And again, the bill-paying side of it alone is a huge time savings. BW: Is this going to be cheaper? Shaw: I'd say it's today very much equivalent to what you would pay for getting the tax and accounting services from one of the Big Five firms. Over time, by automating many of the activities and by integrating many of the activities, it will be cheaper and better. BW: So what else should we be looking for? You could link into mutual funds, do online trading, banking, and many different things. Shaw: I could do umpteen different things, but what I'm really focused on is building out the professional services side, building the online system, and creating a great company. Ultimately we want to be an integration source for our clients. That's all I can tell you at this point. We are going to be provider- and institution-neutral. So my guess is our clients have multiple relationships with multiple firms, and we will respect that and try to integrate that in a simple way so the client has a single place to view everything. BW: Are traditional financial providers threatened by what you're doing? Is this a threat to the Establishment? Shaw: I don't see this as being threatening. We are provider-neutral. We will work with all the different banks and brokerage firms that our clients utilize. BW: I thought the idea was to put all these people's assets together and then use them to leverage all kinds of different things from the financial-services industry. Is that the ultimate goal? Shaw: Building an online system that integrates someone's financial activities in one place is a huge picture, and for me, at this time, represents the horizon. That doesn't exist right now. And then to integrate that with personal help, so you get the best of high-tech, high touch, has not been done. That is the core. BW: So how do you do this? Do you need to have partnerships with the brokerages and banks? Shaw: We're exploring many paths for doing that. But we're not there yet. I don't have the answer. There are multiple people who we could be involved with. BW: Can I only do this if I live in the Bay Area, since you only have offices here? Shaw: No. You can do it from anywhere in the country. Clearly the face-to-face part is easiest in the locale, and we will be looking at opening up other offices. We are looking to be nationwide. We want to grow fast. At this point, nationwide is probably a handful of offices, maybe a dozen. We'll pick the locations that make the most sense to grow into. The next location could be...in the Los Angeles area. We have a lot of presence here in California so we want to leverage that. [We're looking at] the centers where wealth has been created and [that have] a tech spin. We're looking at centers of population growth and technology. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS BW e.biz Cover Story, Dec. 13, 1999: "myCFO.com: Managing Megabucks"