In this episode of the [A] Growth Ventures Podcast, Hamlet Azarian sits down with Jason Jones, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Tellen, a vertical AI company reinventing how accounting firms conduct audits.
With a background in venture capital, hedge funds, fintech, and DeFi, Jason brings decades of experience in identifying disruptive trends and translating them into scalable businesses.
This conversation explores Jason’s journey – from investing in early Web 1.0 companies and launching Lending Robot, to pioneering securitization protocols on the blockchain, and now building AI-powered tools for the audit and accounting space.
His central insight: disruption always follows a recognizable pattern, and opportunity lies in spotting it early.
What We Discussed with Jason
1. From Investor to Operator: A Pattern Recognition Playbook
Jason shares how his early career allocating capital at Cambridge Associates and Goldman Sachs shaped his ability to recognize disruptive technologies. From the internet to blockchain to AI, he explains how “white space investing” helps him anticipate where the puck is going, not where it is.
2. Founding Tellen: Solving a Critical Problem in Audit
After exiting multiple ventures, Jason founded Tellen in 2023 to address a growing crisis in accounting: a shrinking workforce, rising complexity, and high error rates in audits.
Tellen’s AI-powered agents are designed to automate key accounting workflows, starting with audit quality.
3. Why Audit Is a Perfect Fit for Generative AI
Audit is heavily rule-based, procedural, and time-intensive, making it an ideal use case for agentic AI. Jason explains how Tellen maps workflows into modular agents (like PDF extractors, Excel modelers, and report generators) to improve efficiency and reduce human error.
4. Enterprise Adoption: Sell Before You Build
Tellen began pre-selling its vision before any product existed, onboarding design partners, validating problems, and adapting the roadmap based on real auditor feedback. As of early 2025, the company has 10 accounting firm clients, including CohnReznick, a top 20 firm.
5. Privacy-First Architecture: A New Model for Enterprise AI
Due to the sensitivity of accounting data, Tellen deploys virtual private cloud environments inside each firm’s infrastructure. The AI never sees client data directly, solving one of the biggest barriers to enterprise AI adoption in finance.
6. Agentic Frameworks Will Reshape Financial Workflows
Rather than building a horizontal AI product, Tellen is laser-focused on financial services. Their thesis: the most powerful AI applications will come from industry-specific, regulation-driven agentic frameworks.
Key Takeaways
01:03 – Why pattern recognition is the most valuable founder skill
06:00 – How Jason identified fintech and credit as massive “white space” opportunities
18:30 – The pain point that inspired Lending Robot and his obsession with fairer credit access
21:45 – How a side meetup turned into LendIt, a global fintech conference
35:00 – Why audits are the perfect use case for AI — and the surprising 40% deficiency rate
41:00 – Telen’s go-to-market strategy: sell the vision before building the product
44:00 – How Telen solved enterprise AI’s biggest blocker: sensitive client data
50:15 – What makes Telen different: building a vertical agentic AI platform for accounting
Final Takeaway
Jason Jones’s career is a masterclass in strategic entrepreneurship—rooted in research, driven by regulation, and powered by pattern recognition.
His latest venture, Tellen, offers a glimpse into the future of how AI will not only assist but transform industries once considered too complex for automation.
Whether you’re a founder, investor, or working inside a professional services firm, this episode is a must-listen for anyone trying to understand how to build AI-native companies that solve real, systemic problems.
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