The Accountant vs. QuickBooks Test with Mohammad Moahid

On the latest Founder Mode episode, Jason Shafton and I talk with Mohammad Moahid, an operator who's turning AI agents into an actual part of how a business runs, not just another tool bolted on the side.

🎧 Listen to Founder Mode Episode 73 here:

The Accountant vs. QuickBook... Sep 10 · Founder Mode 26:21   ​

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Mo built his first AI system to solve his own problem: an influencer-seeding tool for his e-commerce company. From there, he took the same approach into legacy industries like real estate and construction, where some companies are still writing million-dollar invoices on paper. His pitch to those businesses is built around what he calls a "chief agent officer," an AI layer that oversees a whole workforce of specialist agents and reports back on what's getting done.

Mo doesn't charge for software licenses. He charges for outcomes, usually around a third of what the equivalent human role would cost. He compares it to hiring an accountant instead of buying accounting software: you don't pay an accountant to hand you a tool; you pay them so you never have to think about your books again.

We also got into where the line sits between AI and people. Mo's framework: agents handle about 80 percent of the work, and humans own the final 20 percent - the judgment calls, the accountability, the review before anything goes out the door.

I closed the episode with five takeaways, straight from the show:

1. Be your own customer. Solve your own problem first before you try to sell the solution to anyone else.
2. Go to where the technology isn't. Legacy industries running on paper and email threads have the most room to benefit.
3. Implementation breaks on people, not on tech. The hardest part is never the software; it's getting people to actually use it.
4. Sell the outcome, not the software. Customers pay for a problem solved, not a tool they have to operate themselves.
5. Agents do the eighty, humans own the twenty. Know exactly where that line sits, and make sure someone is actually checking the work.

🎧 Listen to Pretty Good AI Episode 3 here:

40 Service Lines, One Hospit... Sep 8 · Pretty Good AI Podcast 24:57   ​

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My guest this episode is Jay Carmichael, CEO of Horizon Health, a critical access hospital system serving a rural stretch of eastern Illinois. In the last five years, Horizon has grown from 200 employees to more than 900, with $150 million in net revenue and 40 service lines you wouldn't expect at a small rural hospital, including spine surgery, urology, and orthopedics.

Jay spent his early career on the vendor side, working at Cerner before it became Oracle Health. That experience taught him that technology alone never solves a problem. People and process have to move together with it, or healthcare workers will just build workarounds that defeat the whole system.

Since stepping into the CEO role, Jay's biggest adjustment has been letting go of the day-to-day and focusing on long-term strategy instead, while still protecting the "know your neighbor" culture that rural healthcare depends on. Horizon reinvests its profits directly back into its community rather than sending them to a distant parent company.

On AI, Jay pushed back on the idea that it's coming for healthcare jobs. His team uses an ambient listening tool during patient visits, which frees up physicians and nurses to focus on the patient in front of them instead of documentation. He sees AI as a way to add capacity, not cut headcount, freeing his team for higher-value work instead of replacing them.

Here's how I summed up the conversation:

Final Thoughts

Both conversations circle the same question from different angles: where exactly does the line sit between what AI should own and what a person has to own. Mo's answer is a clean split: agents handle the 80 percent, humans own the judgment-call 20 percent. Jay's answer is that AI should free up his clinical staff to spend more time with patients, not replace them. Neither guest treats AI as a way to cut people out. They treat it as a way to get more of the right people doing the work only people can do.

Watch the new Founder Mode episode, then listen to episode three of the Pretty Good AI Podcast. Subscribe so you don't miss what's next.

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-kevin

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