Xerocon 2026: Finance, Entrepreneurship and the Audacity to Build

I went to Xerocon expecting to learn about general ledgers, financial reporting, working capital and accounting technology. And I did. I left with pages of notes about Xero, Syft, artificial intelligence, automation, forecasting, advisory services and the future of finance.

What I did not expect was to leave thinking about courage, purpose, resilience and audacity. Specifically, the kind of audacity it takes to keep moving when you don't have all of the answers...yet.

1. Building a Business Without a Roadmap

One of the more uncomfortable parts of becoming an entrepreneur is learning how to live with two seemingly contradictory emotions. This is especially true when you're a Type A, plan-my-life-in-a-spreadsheet kind of person like me.

There are moments when I have extraordinary clarity about what I am building. Every day, my work is driven by a deep belief that business owners deserve access to the tools and expertise they need to build strong financial foundations beneath the companies they are working so hard to create.

My vision for Jewel Investing Solutions is to help entrepreneurs build the financial infrastructure, intelligence and discipline necessary to transform an idea, skill, experience or passion into a sustainable business and, ultimately, into wealth.

Wealth for the founder. Wealth for employees. Returns for investors. A thriving business built on a strong financial foundation can create life-sustaining opportunities for families and communities.

There are other moments, though, when that clarity collides with the reality that I do not yet have every piece of the roadmap. The vision may be clear while the path toward it is still being built.

That can be terrifying.

Xerocon reminded me that this tension isn't unique to me. In fact, it may simply be part of building something meaningful.

During the conference, Andre Agassi talked about reaching one of the lowest points of his professional career and realizing that although he may not have chosen the life he had been given, he could choose to take ownership of what came next.

That distinction stayed with me because entrepreneurship is full of moments when certainty is unavailable and the rug can be pulled out from underneath you. In those moments, you still have to choose to move through the fear and keep moving forward with your vision.

Another speaker, Jasmine Crowe-Houston, described recognizing both enormous food waste and enormous hunger and refusing to accept that the two problems had to coexist. She knew very little about technology when she started. What she had was conviction that the problem could be solved differently.

Eventually, that conviction became technology, logistics infrastructure and millions of meals delivered. Her story reminded me that entrepreneurs rarely begin with every answer. Sometimes they begin with the audacity to believe that a different answer is possible.

The American Dream - A Masterclass in Audacity

Perhaps that's why these stories affected me so deeply.

When you really think about it, there is something inherently audacious about the American Dream. At its core is the belief that where you begin does not have to determine where you end. That you can look at the circumstances in front of you, imagine something entirely different and then have the nerve to pursue it before you have any guarantee that it will work.

In many ways, that audacity is woven into the country's origin story. Imagine deciding that one of the world's great powers would no longer govern you, declaring yourself independent, fighting a war to make it so and convincing another world power to join your cause along the way. There was no guarantee that experiment would succeed.

The American Dream carries some of that same audacity: the belief that something different is possible, even when the path from here to there isn't entirely clear.

And perhaps that's why it has always felt so personal to me.

My very existence is the result of that kind of audacity.

My mother was a young girl raised by a single mother in the middle of three housing projects who dared to imagine a world much larger than the one immediately around her. As a young adult, she crossed the country alone in pursuit of education and opportunity and eventually traveled the world as a runway model.

My father grew up in extreme poverty as a migrant worker in the segregated South. Through extraordinary athletic talent, discipline and determination, he eventually became a three-time Super Bowl champion and changed the trajectory of his family's life.

Neither of my parents began their journeys with a perfectly drawn roadmap. Both had to possess an almost inexplicable belief that where they started did not have to determine where they finished.

That is the part of the American Dream I still believe in.

Not the promise that success is easy or happens overnight. Not the idea that opportunity is distributed equally, because we know it isn't. But the possibility that courage, preparation, persistence, community and opportunity can change a family's trajectory for generations.

My parents are proof of that possibility. They moved our family's starting line.

Their courage changed their lives, but it also changed mine. Because they were willing to imagine something beyond the circumstances they were born into, I inherited opportunities they did not have.

And now they've handed me the baton.

My responsibility isn't to recreate their journeys. It's to take what they built, add to it and create even more opportunity for the people who come after me.

For me, part of carrying that baton is building JIS.

It's having the audacity to believe that I can build a company that helps other entrepreneurs create stronger businesses, make better financial decisions and ultimately create wealth and opportunity for their own families, employees, investors and communities.

Do I know exactly what that company will look like five or ten years from now? Absolutely not.

I'm Type A. I would love a spreadsheet with the entire roadmap. I don't have one. What I have is the conviction to keep building.

2. Finance Is About More Than the Numbers

Much of Xerocon focused on where the accounting and finance professions are headed as technology increasingly handles repetitive financial work. Xero demonstrated tools capable of automating reconciliation, improving client readiness and helping practitioners manage increasingly complex workflows. Syft demonstrated how financial data can move beyond static reporting into monitoring, working-capital analysis, forecasting and scenario planning.

Conversations about artificial intelligence repeatedly returned to an important distinction: technology can increasingly assemble information and automate work, while human beings remain responsible for judgment, relationships and decisions.

That is an exciting future to me because the real value of finance was never the spreadsheet. It is what better financial information allows someone to do.

It allows an entrepreneur to know whether she can hire another employee or make payroll. It helps a founder understand whether a product is actually profitable, whether the company is ready to raise capital, whether it can afford to grow or whether it has enough liquidity to survive an unexpected downturn.

Audacity may be what makes someone start. Financial discipline is part of what gives what they build the opportunity to last.

Finance is a critical part of building something that lasts. Financial infrastructure may sound technical, but its consequences are deeply human.

Helping an entrepreneur build a stronger financial foundation isn't just about producing cleaner financial statements. It is about giving someone better information with which to make decisions about a business, a livelihood and, potentially, a family's future.

3. The Importance of Community

Perhaps the most unexpected part of Xerocon was having the opportunity to experience the humanity surrounding the profession itself.

I met women who generously shared their experiences, their businesses and pieces of their lives with me. They gave their time without knowing whether they would ever receive anything in return, and they reminded me that building a business does not have to be a solitary exercise.

There is a community of accountants, advisors, technologists and entrepreneurs who care deeply about doing excellent technical work while also caring about the people behind the numbers.

That combination resonated deeply with me because that is what I'm designing JIS to become: technically rigorous, technology-forward, financially sophisticated and unmistakably human.

4. Back to the Trenches

I am returning home with plenty of tactical work to do. There are new technologies to test, processes to redesign, services to productize, systems to build and, of course, a company to grow.

And the roadmap still isn't entirely clear.

But I'm returning with something that may be more important: conviction. I'm reminded that I'm not alone in wanting to build something that positively affects my family and my community. I'm not alone in occasionally wondering whether the dream is larger than my current ability to execute it. And I'm certainly not the first person who has had to begin before knowing exactly how the story ends.

My parents didn't have the entire roadmap when they began. Neither did many of the entrepreneurs whose stories filled the stages at Xerocon.

They had enough information to take the next step, enough conviction to believe a different future was possible and enough courage to keep moving toward it.

Maybe that's what I needed to be reminded of.

I don't need every mile of the roadmap today. I need the audacity to keep building.

So I'm heading home inspired, humbled, refreshed and ready to get back into the trenches.

Which is quite a lot to take away from a conference I thought was going to be about P&Ls.