Scaling Trust Through Fintech

What happens when you design a company around the real frustrations of your end users—and stay obsessed with solving them at scale?

For Bill CEO René Lacerte, the result is a fintech platform that now helps move 1 percent of U.S. GDP and serves nearly half a million SMBs. Built on trust, automation and deep customer empathy, Bill has become a category-defining leader in intelligent financial operations.

A fourth-generation entrepreneur, Lacerte likes to joke that he earned a “dinner table MBA.” But his leadership lessons go far beyond family wisdom. Since founding Bill in 2006, he’s taken the company public, scaled to 2,500+ employees, and strategically acquired Divvy, Invoice2Go and Finmark to broaden Bill’s platform across AR, AP, spend and forecasting.

In this conversation, Lacerte shares what it takes to lead with purpose at scale—why trust is more than a value, how to acquire without losing culture and what CEOs should consider when designing companies for longevity, not just growth.

Tell us about Bill’s growth and why you’ve been so successful. 

Bill is focused on solving a real and persistent problem: the complexity of financial operations for businesses and accountants. Disjointed and manual processes have bogged down entrepreneurs and finance leaders, slowing growth for far too long. When I founded Bill, my goal was simple, but powerful: make it easy for businesses and accounting firms to connect and do business with confidence.

Today, we’re not only delivering on that promise—we’ve gone so much further. We support more than 9,000 accounting firms, almost half a million SMBs, and the leading U.S. financial institutions. Our network has expanded to more than 7 million members. In 2024, we efficiently and safely moved approximately 1 percent of the U.S. GDP for our customers.  That scale gives us a unique vantage point and responsibility, to help modernize how businesses manage their financial operations.

What drives our success is our belief and care for businesses and accountants, combined with our commitment to constantly innovate. Our platform has grown, our scale has compounded, we have strengthened our payments infrastructure and expanded our partnerships, tools and offerings in a way that is unmatched. But we couldn’t do what we do without trust. Businesses, investors, banks and accountants trust Bill. We’ve nurtured this trust over two decades and it’s a huge part of our success. 

At the end of the day, innovation has to be an investment in this trust. This is where true leadership shines. 

You have four decades of experience in the finance, software and payments industries—what are your thoughts on how these sectors have evolved? 

Bill has been leading the convergence of the finance, software and payments industries. Bringing them together to serve businesses and accountants is the category we created two decades ago. What makes the work we do so exciting is the constant evolution. I’ve seen the transition from paper checks to digital payments, from manual bookkeeping to cloud-based solutions, and now to the next generation AI.

What inspires me is not just the technology advancements—rather, the enthusiasm of businesses and accountants that adapt and adopt technology. The impact it has is freeing and enabling for those that adopt.

Businesses have always been resilient, but one of the biggest changes I’ve seen is a widespread mindset shift that sees automation and AI as not just new, but necessary. Fintech has fundamentally transformed how business is run and done in the U.S. It’s a vote of confidence in our industry, our Bill platform and in the future of intelligent financial operations.

You’re a fourth-generation entrepreneur—what lessons have you learned from your family about starting and nurturing a business? 

Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs, our dinner table conversations centered around business challenges and opportunities. Often, they provided learnings on managing cashflow and building relationships with employees, customers and partners. Entrepreneurship is something I love and respect—it’s in my DNA. 

More than the “dinner table MBA” though, my family instilled in me an understanding and appreciation for the role that SMBs play. To run or serve an SMB was one of the highest forms of contribution you could make to a more prosperous, safer and tight-knit community. Every business leader I speak to shares a passion for their customers, and pride in the ability of their business or team to deliver for them.     

Business success comes down to understanding the power of this passion, and the “why” behind what drives your customers. It doesn’t matter which sector you operate in, or who you serve, empathy for your customer is the foundation of trust. I don’t see Bill as a software or payments company—I see Bill as a company that empowers our customers, businesses and accountants, to achieve their dreams. 

What’s next for Bill? 

Most of the attention in our industry is focused on the Fortune 500. I’m focused on the “Fortune 5 Million”—the millions of businesses that power our economy, but have been traditionally underserved by technology. Bill is leveling the playing field for these businesses. We’re giving them the innovation, capabilities, expertise and intelligent financial operations that the largest companies have always had—and we’ve tailor made it for them.

We’re trusted by almost half a million businesses today, and I won’t be satisfied until we’ve reached every business. We created our category, and we’re going to continue to lead and expand it. We do that through innovation and reinvention.

Our platform will continue to expand. We recently added procurement to the Bill  platform and became the first company to offer procurement alongside AP, AR, spend and expense, and insights and forecasting. We’ll continue to evolve to deliver more for businesses of all sizes.

We’re expanding relationships with trusted partners to seamlessly reach even more businesses. We recently launched our embedded partnership with Xero to power their bill pay, and we’ll have more partnerships coming on line in the future.

We’re always innovating to build on our AI-powered solutions in ways that businesses and accountants actually need. We’re not only using AI and automation to help businesses fight fraud and protect their assets—we’re also helping them unlock control, visibility and speed when it comes to managing their cash flow in real-time.

And we’re continuing to strengthen our software solutions and payments infrastructure, so we can reimagine what it means to empower businesses with a truly intelligent financial operations platform.

This is the future we’re cultivating at Bill.