I didn't come from one world.
Not fully accounting. Not fully technology. Not fully community building. Somewhere in between all three — which turned out to be the most useful place to stand.
Nothing is on fire. But nothing is working.
The work is getting done… technically. But it's slower than it should be. Messier than it should be.
Deadlines slip. People step on each other. Leaders are tired of holding it all together.
And nobody can point to one thing and say, "that's the problem."
The systems don't talk. The process lives in someone's head. The team is guessing more than they should.
And the tools that were supposed to fix it? They just made it harder to see what's actually broken.
On the other side, software gets built for clean demos… not for real teams, real pressure, and real expectations.
Right in the middle of the confusion. Between what was sold… and what actually shows up on a Tuesday.
The story, in fewer words than LinkedIn would suggest.
I'm not an accountant. I came from tech, sales, and operations — and somehow ended up spending nearly two decades inside accounting firms, fintech war rooms, conference green rooms, and the communities where this industry actually moves. I'm an anomaly. It's been working out pretty well.
I built my career in the spaces most people ignore. Over the years, I became the person firms called when things felt stuck — not when they needed software recommendations, but when the system itself was confused.
When teams stopped communicating. When processes broke under growth. When leadership lost clarity. When firms outgrew the systems they built years earlier. When founders needed someone who could see both the operational side and the human side.
At the same time, fintech companies started asking a different question:
Because software alone is never the whole story. I became a translator between worlds.
Credibility, without the résumé sludge.
- Named to Accounting Today's One to Watch — among the Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting.
- Built the first community in accounting — before it was a category. Mine still runs.
- 7,000+ hours of live conversation across that community alone — none recorded.
- Circle Certified. 12+ thriving communities built — many in accounting, several outside of it.
- Worked with 300+ accounting firms.
- Advised fintech founders and product teams across the accounting stack.
- Speaker at major accounting industry events.
- Came from tech, sales, and operations. Not an accountant — and that turns out to be the point.
- Known for asking the questions other people avoid.
For the long-form, slightly outdated version: linkedin.com/in/richardroppa
Humans first. Systems second.
Technology matters. Processes matter. But if the humans inside the system are overwhelmed, disconnected, undertrained, afraid, or exhausted, the best tools in the world will still fail.
Real change happens when operations, communication, technology, and people start working together instead of fighting each other.
The vintage tech part.
I have a deep affection for old broadcast equipment, vintage 10-keys and adding machines, CRT televisions, and analog systems built before everything got optimized into beige sameness. Those things weren't just hardware — they were communities. People wrote service manuals for each other. Repair was a craft. Operators knew their machines.
That's how I think about the work I do now. The accounting industry doesn't need a faster, glossier interface — it needs operators, repair, and craft. It needs people who know what's actually under the hood.
Being an outsider between industries became my advantage. The pattern is always between things, not inside any one of them.
Want to talk?
Easiest start is a 30-minute call. Worst case, you get a free hour of pattern recognition.