He Raised $80 Million To Build An AI-Driven Tax Platform To Enable Users To Plan And Manage Their Taxes Throughout The Year

Some founders are shaped by success. But Ben Borodach’s journey is forged by the lessons of failure, reflection, and the relentless pursuit of doing it better the second time around. The co-founder and CEO of april, he learned extensively from an early stumble.

Ben went on to master the inner workings of enterprise systems and returned a decade later to build one of fintech’s most ambitious platforms. He went on to raise an impressive $80M for his company.

Listen to the full podcast episode and review the transcript here.

Early Curiosity and the Spark of Entrepreneurship

Born in the Bronx and raised in New Jersey, Ben grew up in a bustling home as the eldest of four. His parents were both lawyers, so naturally, the plan was to follow in their footsteps. But a curious mind and an affinity for problem-solving took him elsewhere.

At NYU, a pivotal class changed everything. The course Ready, Fire, Aim, taught by venture capitalist Larry Lenihan of FirstMark Capital, emphasized building before overthinking. It came with a twist. The winning student received $12.5K in seed funding from the professor’s own salary. Ben won.

That single class launched his entrepreneurial journey.

Building His First Startup and Learning the Hard Way

While still in college, Ben co-founded Publish, a marketing and content automation platform that aimed to bridge the gap between CRMs like Salesforce and the dynamic web. At the time, Ben and his cofounder were sophomores at NYU and Rutgers, respectively.

The duo was doing marketing and website consulting for small businesses. They were learning about building websites and what businesses needed to drive leads. This was 2010, when HubSpot and Marketo were defining inbound marketing, and the idea of personalized B2B content was still novel.

The idea behind Publish was to render content, primarily in the B2B space. Think webinars, eBooks, podcasts, white papers, and more, dynamically serving up the content to the customer base.

Backed by FirstMark Capital and New York Angels, the young founders raised $250K, a significant seed round at the time. The New York Angels was also interested in backing the company that two students were running out of their college dorm rooms.

Yet, like many first-time entrepreneurs, the co-founders soon discovered how little they knew about scaling.

“We didn’t understand how to go from MVP to production, or how enterprise contracting even worked,” Ben recalls. “We got a big corporate interested, and when they asked for a contract, we didn’t even know what that meant.”

Instead of burning more investor money, Ben and his co-founder shut down the company, a decision driven by humility rather than pride. That failure taught him two core lessons: how hard startups really are, and how much he loved building and scaling technology.

A Decade of Learning Inside the Machine

Determined to fill his knowledge gaps, Ben did something unconventional for a tech entrepreneur. He joined Deloitte Consulting, diving deep into the world of finance, insurance, and payments. It was, in his words, a “masterclass in how business is actually run at the highest level.”

As Ben recalls, the position gave him unparalleled access to the world’s leading financial executives, as well as the largest insurance and payments companies. He also gained a first-hand look at the problems they faced and the challenges that they had in running operations.

At Deloitte, Ben became the go-to person for solving complex innovation problems across Fortune 500 companies in sectors such as insurance, wealth management, and banking. He quickly developed real expertise within financial services.

This was where Ben learned to navigate enterprise structures, understand regulatory challenges, and observe the friction that slowed transformation, especially in financial services. He was more interested in customer or direct-to-consumer apps. But corporate life was only one chapter.

Valuable Lessons Learned in Entrepreneurship

As Ben reminisces, he could have gone on to build another startup or become a product manager. But being an entrepreneur is the ultimate exercise in humility. We tend to idolize highly successful entrepreneurs and place them on pedestals.

It’s crucial to remember that behind their success stories are tons of failures. They reached the pinnacle of success by digesting failures, reflecting, pivoting, and moving forward. Recognizing failure is key to succeeding the second time, as Ben points out.

He considers himself a self-diagnosed systems thinker who admits to his shortcomings and sets out to cover the gap. Thus, Ben learned enterprise sales processes and requirements, as well as how to build relationships with enterprise buyers.

He is grateful for his time at Deloitte and for the way they invested in young professionals.

Working at Team8, the Israeli Venture Fund

Eventually, Ben joined Team8, an Israeli venture fund founded by former intelligence officers. Here, Ben worked with Nadav, who had a thesis. Nadav strongly believed that strengthening cybersecurity and solving highly challenging technical challenges needed more than just adding venture capital.

What was needed was to bring together the world’s largest platforms—like Microsoft, Cisco, and Citibank—and have them invest in a single platform. This platform would allow entrepreneurs to think beyond just building for the next 6 to 18 months. It would attract talent to solve technical snags.

Thus, Ben joined as the chief of staff and led corporate strategy for the robust go-to-market platform. He helped scale the firm from a $40M AUM fund to a family of 4 to 5 funds with about $1B AUM across multiple funds.

His four years at Team8 taught Ben two enduring lessons: to think at a massive scale and to build with long-term horizons. “You can’t iterate on a Fortune 500’s infrastructure,” he says. “You need to de-risk in stages and think in years, not months.”

Ben learned that Fortune 500 companies need a different build model that breaks risks into smaller components and addresses them one at a time. This was a crucial learning that he would leverage when building april, his next venture.

In retrospect, Ben conceded that he was never really passionate about cybersecurity, and he saw hacking as more about slowing organizations down. However, he could see how the largest of them was dealing with tons of complex patchwork, which was very inspiring for Ben.

He wanted to unlock business productivity, not play offense and defense against the bad guys. Team8 gave Ben exposure to Nadav, a general, and Admiral Rogers, who ran the NSA and became an operating partner in the company. Furthermore, Doug McMillan from Walmart would regularly visit the office.

Founding april: Fixing the U.S. Tax Experience

Out of Team8, Ben spun his next big idea, april, a fintech startup aiming to entirely reimagine how Americans do their taxes. For decades, U.S. taxpayers had only two options: an accountant or legacy software like TurboTax.

april addresses the totality of the tax experience for 170 million American households and 32 million small businesses that pay $3T in taxes annually. Ben wanted to optimize that huge problem by building the first national tax engine in 20 years. It was his superpower to think big.

It took Ben and his cofounder, Daniel Marcous, three years to build april, the national tax engine. They started with the IRS and a couple of states and scaled to other states, fintechs, and organizations.

These entities were already building on top of april’s infrastructure pilots and initial rollouts. This strategy enabled Ben and Daniel to de-risk the model and technology. Since Ben spun april out of Team8, the company has become an investor and is now a board member.

Finding the Right Co-Founder: A Match Built on Values

Ben describes finding Daniel Marcous as “co-founder dating.” Ben recognized himself as more of an operationally minded and business-oriented person. He needed to partner with a technologist.

Ben was looking for someone who shared his views about the world and his grit to take on the problem of this magnitude. He needed a cofounder who was a good person, would work hard, and could challenge him while complementing his skill sets. He was looking for the right fit.

During the pandemic, Team8 helped him connect with technologists who shared his vision. What sealed the partnership wasn’t just skill alignment, but philosophy. At the time, Daniel was the CTO of Waze and Google Israel, “a very prolific data scientist, and a wonderful person,” as Ben says.

The duo each wrote lengthy “manifestos” about what they believed in, the world, and how they envisioned making the venture successful. They edited each other’s writing until there was no disagreement left. This approach became the cornerstone of a four-year partnership.

“That’s how we’ve run april ever since,” Ben says. The pairing worked. Daniel became the product visionary, excelling in taking ideas from “minus one to zero,” while Ben focused on scaling, partnerships, and strategy.

The april Business Model

As Ben explains, the genesis of april is taxes, which is a very painful activity for Americans across the board. Currently, it’s siloed, retrospective, and once a year. Ben wanted to embed tax directly into the financial tools people already use–banking apps, payroll systems, and digital wealth platforms.

april is a platform that integrates tax considerations into financial decisions. It’s the most connected tax software in the world. Ben markets the product as a white label version of TurboTax to the largest banking, wealth management, and payroll platforms in the US.

Raising $80M and Navigating the Market Swings

Armed with a bold vision and a clear strategy, april raised $80M across three rounds, including a recent $40M Series B led by QED Investors. But the road wasn’t smooth. As Ben learned, entrepreneurship that involves venture capital is a rule of exceptions.

Founders have to be willing to take leaps and to enumerate them. When pitching to investors, they must iterate on their conviction in making their products work and in evaluating their success. With april, Ben realized that building the tax engine involved crossing technical and regulatory hurdles.

The april platform was the first of its kind in 10 to 15+ years, and the software and company had to get approval in every US state. Furthermore, they had only one shot per year to do it and then prove it. Aside from regulatory approvals, they also had to prove to customers that april could work.

Proving Traction and Customer Engagement

Investors and customers wanted to see april’s track record and traction, including acceptance rates and resolution rates over multiple years. From a business model standpoint, there was also a risk that digital banks, payroll companies, and others would not adopt these capabilities or pay for them.

Over the next three years, Ben and Daniel proved that their target customers were willing to engage and derive value from it. They showed that digital banks were attracting more deposits on their platforms and wealth management companies had higher LTVs.

The duo also proved that small business platforms generated millions in fees. Their customers didn’t just refer their business to an accountant; they were open to engaging in a more wholesale SaaS arrangement with april.

The company raised its first $40M at the peak of the 2021 fintech boom. And then the market cooled.

Storytelling is everything that Ben Borodach was able to master. The key is capturing the essence of what you are doing in 15 to 20 slides. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley legend (see it here), where the most critical slides are highlighted.

Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that founders worldwide are using to raise millions below.

Investors wanted instant revenue, not multi-year infrastructure builds. “We had told everyone we were going to spend three years building before revenue,” Ben recalls. “That wasn’t fashionable at the time.”

The discipline paid off. april grew from zero to its first million in revenue, then 9x growth the following year, validating the long-term thesis. Ben gives a shout-out to Edie and Nigel, who he calls “amazing team members,” who made things happen at april.

Lessons in Redemption and Growth

For Ben, the journey from his dorm-room startup to leading a high-growth fintech isn’t just about success; it’s about redemption. He considers self-doubt a significant factor. As he points out, at different phases of his journey, he needed patience and finesse, which weren’t his strong suits.

Ben considers himself better suited to be an entrepreneur for the middle and later stages of his founder path. The parts that really challenged him at the early stages were the minus one-to-zero and the zero-to-one transitions. Now he is well beyond the one point.

In some ways, Ben is relieved to be moving beyond the gate because now he’s “dealing with a business that’s in the market and competing every day to win market share.” And that’s obviously what he loves as an entrepreneur— and why he’s in the game. It’s an inventive process.

Ben credits Daniel with being the inventor who shaped the partnership. Daniel excels at taking things from minus one to zero and enjoys the process. Although Ben tries to contribute, that part of april is entirely Daniel’s. The duo has benefited from being great partners, as Ben points out.

The Vision Ahead: Tax as an Always-On Financial Engine

In Ben’s view, taxes aren’t just compliance; they’re one of the biggest untapped data assets in the economy. Americans pay over $3T in taxes annually, yet most lack real-time visibility into how tax affects their daily financial decisions.

As Ben points out, the single largest check or the largest or second-largest expense of the year, for most individuals and businesses, is their tax bill. And taxpayers lack optimization for it. People rely on bankers, advisors, and CPAs for help.

But it’s time to move toward consolidated software platforms that will primarily serve taxpayers, augmented in some cases with human assistance. These platforms will recognize what humans need and optimize for them.

april’s mission is to make tax intelligent, embedded, and personalized. Imagine your bank, brokerage, or payroll app automatically telling you how to optimize your cash flow, save more, or prepare for, say, stock sales. All of this is now powered by real-time tax intelligence.

“Tax should be the backbone of every financial platform,” Ben says. “If you know someone’s tax situation, you know almost everything about their financial life.”

april is about bending the curve on one hand—how tax manifests itself and how decision-making is presented to the customer—so they’re actually getting more dollars back in their pockets. Most importantly, the platform adapts to individual customer needs.

In Ben’s opinion, when we think about an agentic future or a self-serve personalized future, tax is a must-have behind every financial services provider. The future we imagine is one in which tax is embedded everywhere, particularly where the financial infrastructure powers it.

Advice to a Younger Self: Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself

If Ben Borodach could offer his younger self one piece of advice before launching a business, it would be simple: don’t be so hard on yourself. As someone who has always been his own harshest critic, Ben admits that his drive for excellence often came at a personal cost.

Over the years, Ben has pushed himself relentlessly, sometimes to the point of neglecting his own well-being. A health scare last year, when he lost a bit of vision in one eye, became a wake-up call. It forced him to reexamine how he approached work, health, and longevity as a founder.

“It’s a reminder that if you’re already doing everything you can, you don’t need to worry so much,” Ben reflects. “Make sure you enjoy life and the process along the way.” He encourages entrepreneurs to find balance early on, to prioritize what truly matters rather than equating effort with endless hours of work.

Redefining Work: Lessons from a Professional Athlete’s Mindset

With experience, Ben’s definition of “work” has evolved. Early in his career, productivity meant sitting at a computer until he was exhausted.

Today, he views his professional rhythm through the lens of a professional athlete, sometimes playing the game, sometimes training, sometimes resting, and sometimes strategizing.

Now, preparation extends beyond the desk: his diet, exercise, thinking time, and even informal activities like recruiting or networking outside the office all contribute to Ben’s effectiveness.

“You have to look at all of it as part of the equation,” he explains. “And that balance shifts depending on your career stage, the business you’re building, and your strengths.”

The Compounding Power of Experience and Efficiency

With maturity also comes efficiency. Tasks that once took Ben a week can now be completed in an hour. Where it once took a month of networking to reach the right person, today it’s often just a phone call away.

Ben likens this compounding effect to what happens at the highest levels, with founders like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, who can compress massive impact into minutes.

For Ben, success today isn’t about clocking more hours; it’s about maximizing leverage and clarity. The key, he says, is taking a wider view, focusing not on how long you work, but on how intelligently you work, and ensuring that your drive to build doesn’t come at the cost of living.

In Conclusion

Ben Borodach’s story is a rare blend of first-time failure, deliberate reinvention, and world-changing ambition. “I made every first-time founder mistake possible,” he reflects. “But the key is to diagnose your gaps, learn what you don’t know, and come back stronger.”

From building websites in college to redefining how 170 million Americans manage taxes, his journey reminds us that true entrepreneurship isn’t about speed; it’s about the stamina to keep learning, building, and scaling what truly matters.

Listen to the full podcast episode to know more, including:

• Ben Borodach’s early startup failure became the foundation for a more disciplined, world-class approach to building april.
• A decade inside Deloitte gave Ben rare mastery of enterprise systems, regulation, and financial-services complexity.
• Team8 taught him to think in decades, not months, and to de-risk massive infrastructure challenges step-by-step.
• april was built to reinvent the entire U.S. tax experience by embedding real-time tax intelligence into financial platforms.
• Ben and co-founder Daniel formed a values-aligned partnership grounded in shared “manifestos” and complementary strengths.
• april’s traction proved the power of long-term conviction, growing from zero to millions in revenue despite market swings.
• Ben now prioritizes balance, efficiency, and well-being, urging founders not to be so hard on themselves as they build.

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Keep in mind that storytelling is everything in fundraising. In this regard, for a winning pitch deck to help you, take a look at the template created by Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley legend (see it here), which I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash. 

Remember to unlock for free the pitch deck template that founders worldwide are using to raise millions below.

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