Ben Borodach is co-founder and CEO of april, where he is working to make the tax process more approachable and affordable for American taxpayers. Ben has spent his career at the intersection of financial services, cybersecurity, and technology, beginning at Deloitte Consulting, where he advised the largest US banks and insurance companies on growth, M&A, venture and technology strategies. More recently, he led corporate strategy for venture group Team8, where he played a critical role in starting and scaling new FinTech and Cyber ventures such as Curv (acq. by PayPal) and Visible Risk (acq. by Bitsight). Ben is a co-creator and designer of the Team8-WisdomTree Cybersecurity Index and the TU-Team8 Cyber Fellows PhD program. Ben is a graduate of New York University with B.A. in Economics, where he held the distinction of Presidential Honors Scholar.
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If fintech has a fault line, it runs between those who understand how large financial systems really work—and those who try to change them without that context.
Ben Borodach belongs firmly in the first group.
Before co-founding april, Ben had already been inside the boardrooms of some of the world’s largest financial institutions. At Deloitte, he wasn’t just observing decision-making at scale—he was analyzing it, learning how capital, incentives, and internal politics shaped what financial giants could or couldn’t do. That kind of access doesn’t just make you sharp. It gives you an unusually clear view of what needs to be rebuilt—and how to build it.
But what makes Ben’s story interesting isn’t just his corporate background. It’s how seamlessly he moved between advising incumbents, launching new ventures, and ultimately founding a product designed for one of the most underserved needs in U.S. financial life: making taxes less painful, more human, and less costly to navigate.
In this interview, Ben shares what he’s learned about building tech with staying power, why he thinks personalization in finance is still underdelivered, and how AI—if architected from the ground up—can actually improve execution, not just pitch decks.
This isn’t just a conversation about tax innovation. It’s about how to turn deep institutional understanding into sharper, faster, and more human-centered products—without losing the discipline that serious fintech demands.
Let’s get into it.
1. Your career has spanned consulting, venture building, and entrepreneurship. Reflecting on this journey, what pivotal experiences have most significantly shaped your approach to innovation in financial services?
I spent the early days of my career at Deloitte—probably not the first place you’d expect to train as a founder. But I got a front-row seat to study the power dynamics of business and watched high-stakes decisions reshape entire industries.
As a part of Deloitte’s Global Financial Services group, I shared the room with CEOs and CIOs talking about billion-dollar acquisitions, restructurings, or competitive threats. Watching senior executives deliberate over decisions that would reshape an industry and impact thousands of lives gave me a decade of education compressed into two years.
Most young professionals see the outputs, such as press releases, organizational changes, and strategic shifts. But I was witness to the inputs—the real conversations, hidden incentives, and unspoken rules that actually govern how large organizations operate. I learned how to make an effective argument to persuade stakeholders or how major strategy shifts emerged in informal talks.
This became invaluable at my next role at Team8, a global venture group. I was more effective selling to organizations because I understood how they worked inside. While I felt the firm was too large to make an immediate direct impact, it was an excellent place to start and something I’d recommend to any would-be entrepreneur aspiring to solve enterprise problems.
2. Transitioning from advising large financial institutions to co-founding startups involves a shift in mindset. How did your previous roles prepare you for the challenges of building and scaling new ventures?
I actually started my career as a founder. When I was at NYU I started a company called Published while simultaneously working on my economics and business degree.
I would Uber back and forth between classes, investor meetings, and customer meetings. I eventually made the decision to turn down more institutional money and started at Deloitte. Early on I recognized how difficult enterprise sales were, so I wanted to immerse myself in that world and become an expert. Of course, I eventually continued my entrepreneurial journey, but I had that basis of knowledge from the very beginning.
3. You've been involved in developing initiatives like the Team8-WisdomTree Cybersecurity Index and the TU-Team8 Cyber Fellows PhD program. How have these experiences informed your understanding of talent development in tech-driven industries?
Developing talent starts with leadership. Our leaders play a pivotal role in shaping, promoting, and maintaining our company culture by embodying our values and motivating our teams to contribute to our ongoing mission.
Despite significant growth, we have ensured that as we scale up, our culture remains intact by emphasizing the importance of our core values in every aspect of our operations. They encourage open communication, provide opportunities for cross-functional collaboration, and prioritize employee well-being and growth.
4. In your view, what are the key factors that contribute to successfully integrating emerging technologies into traditional financial systems?
We're entering the age where most financial services are going to be increasingly delivered online, and that means that consumers will expect that what they're seeing is completely contextual to them.
Most financial storefronts today are digital, but they don’t service their customers in a personalized way—it’s fairly generic. The responsibility of stitching together a digital financial profile shouldn’t fall on the individual, the family, or the small business.
The future of fintech and financial services will revolve around bundling and providing solutions that are custom to the user. Software and AI are major players in that personalization as well. I think we’ll see a lot more room for specialization and intelligence to better serve more specific types of customers. This isn't about technology, but about reimagining the service model from the client's perspective rather than the provider's convenience.
5. Throughout your career, you've witnessed the evolution of financial technology. How do you stay ahead of industry trends, and what strategies do you employ to adapt to rapid changes?
Staying ahead in fintech means building for change, not stability. We have architected our tech to be agile from the start. One core strategy: integrating AI — not as a bolt-on, but as foundational infrastructure. We use generative AI and NLP to translate dense, complex tax code into software, which is then refined by our team of tax engineers.
This human-in-the-loop system continuously improves our models and dramatically accelerates development cycles. It’s how we’ve expanded product coverage and slashed time to market. We also prioritize robust, secure data APIs — because in fintech, connectivity isn't just a feature, it’s a force multiplier. These strategies allow us to not just keep pace with industry shifts, but help define them.
6. For professionals aspiring to make an impact in fintech and related fields, what advice would you offer regarding building a career that balances innovation with practical execution?
As someone who has been in the industry and the venture market for north of a decade, I think the most crucial element for building a career is working with great people. The ride is always going to be unpredictable, but one thing you can control is who you surround yourself with. For founders in search of investors, you really are buying a business partner—find someone who challenges you but complements your skillset at the same time.
