While the search for investors tends to be the most visible side of financing for startup and smaller tech enterprises, the need to establish reliable and effective accounting practices, including the use of mobile programs, can be considered just as vital to the success of these businesses.

During the first day of QuickBooks Connect 2016, John Walls (@JohnWalls21) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-hosts of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, sat down to take an initial look at the event, its themes and some of the guests set to be featured.

Linking activity

As Walls and Frick discussed an overview of the event, they picked out a few highlights that had already been established this early in the conference. Among these was the drive toward developing customer and business engagement with mobile utilities, as well as the general emphasis on entrepreneurship.

Another point, noted by Walls, was the way in which social networks are increasingly driving personal and professional decisions, with company image and product branding serving as important related aspects. Frick also picked out the rising speed of time to payment that many of the attending companies have been working to improve. “Cash flow is the blood of business,” he said.

Small companies, big results

As Walls highlighted, there’s an increasing trend in the tech world of “looking to big names to help small business.” In a similar way, he felt, QuickBooks is “giving small businesses the kinds of tools they didn’t have before … to go head-to-head with bigger names.”

These tools are important, because as Frick pointed out, smaller companies can often find themselves stuck in the position of trying to make enough profit to move past simply delivering products, unable to grow to a point where they have room to experiment and innovate and make something more out of their business.

“It’s an amazing reach that small business can have,” Walls said. “It starts with a germ of an idea, and with the help of QuickBooks, grows into a thriving business.” Frick agreed, with the QuickBooks Connect event, in his estimation, “really [being] about small business,” and having a level of enthusiasm to match the passion of those enterprises. “I love the positive energy; I love the mojo,” he added.

Watch the complete video interview, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of QuickBooks Connect.

*Disclosure: Intuit and other companies sponsor some Quickbooks Connect segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Intuit nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Photo by SiliconANGLE