Afirmo was born after the founders had built the largest domain name company in New Zealand.

Afirmo was born as a concept on Waiheke Island, New Zealand, in early 2021, when the founders, a couple and business partners, Robert Rolls and Mary Fitzgerald, sold their previous IT business.

Selling the Freeparking group was bittersweet. We had built the largest domain name registrar in New Zealand with over 100,000 customers and 40% market share, but the experience left us wanting more. We had created a great kiwi company, but small businesses wanted so much more than a domain name!

We set about creating a new concept that had not been built anywhere else.

AI and Open Banking provided the opportunity to create something groundbreaking.

Open banking had been in the UK for several years and was starting to gain traction in most developed countries, including Australia and New Zealand. This stood to enable apps that analysed bank data securely.

AI was going to enable service-based industries to be disrupted. In 2021 apps had largely disrupted physical things like paying for car parking, making a hotel booking, banking without going to a branch etc, but the next wave of apps was going to automate the service industry by using AI to solve problems.

Rob is an accountant by profession, so we saw the opportunity to leverage these two huge developments in technology to better support small business owners with tax, accounting and money.

The UK was leading the way with tax digitisation.

We saw automated tax apps in the UK aimed at sole traders. These were being replicated elsewhere. They were easy to use but heavily limited as their calculations overtaxed sole traders and made them pay tax too early. That did not feel like a winning long-term strategy!  

Also, most small businesses were companies, so the existing apps were limited in terms of reach. We like limited companies because they protect small business owners better so wanted to support these customers as well as sole traders get a better outcome.    

The tax landscape was also changing. Tax authorities were growing tired of global businesses coming into their jurisdictions and changing business models, which was reducing their tax take. Think Airbnb, these 'new rooms' were being sold via a global platform and not collecting GST for the tax office. This ultimately led to tax departments forcing the platform to collect GST on all bookings. This then changed the tax goal posts for the property owners.  

At the same time, the UK's tax office was digitising its tax systems in a move called Make Tax Digital (MTD). This was changing the landscape for business owners by increasing the tax return reporting frequency and requiring them to file online to remove manual errors and increase the ability for the tax department to audit activity. It seemed inevitable that other countries would follow this trend, and we wanted to help.  

The current accounting model is broken for small businesses.

We knew how challenging it was for business owners to use the current accounting software, and the high cost of using highly trained accountants to file their routine small business tax returns.

The accountants were also frustrated as they were having to support customers with low levels of understanding. The whole approach needed rebuilding, and the technology was becoming available to do it. It was a great opportunity to serve both the clients and the accountants if we could build Afirmo!

The Afirmo concept.

The rough concept of Afirmo was born to build an easier-to-use accounting system, leverage open banking and AI to automate as much as possible and give the power back to small business owners supported by accountants for advisory and other higher-value tasks that needed their experience.

We could cut the total cost to customers by using this new approach and increase revenue for accountants to focus on more value-added work. After all, this was what they qualified for, not filing tax returns for small businesses with low compliance requirements.

Four years in the making.

In 2021, Rob and Mary teamed up with technical co-founder Ertan Sarikaya, who led the development of Afirmo’s advanced automated tax and accounting platform, and Julie Robertson, who manages customer support.

We had all worked together at Freeparking so knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses. The Afirmo app took four years to perfect and is now a comprehensive solution that covers every aspect of accounting, tax and money.

The Swiss billionaire and family support.

Waiheke is a cool place to meet new like-minded people and one afternoon in 2021 Mary and Rob and Mary’s parents, Norman and Barbara, were at a local vineyard when they met Joachim Schoss and his family. Joachim is a global serial entrepreneur and within a month he was investing in Afirmo.

The combination of the founders funds, Norman and Barbara’s strong financial support and Joachim’s Swiss francs provided the funds needed to launch the app in 2025.

Next the world.

Afirmo was built to travel across borders and be relevant globally. New Zealand has been a great launch market, and we have listened to local customers to make the product better. We have global ambitions and aim to make life easier for SMEs all around the world.

The diversity of Afirmo’s directors and founders is like the diversity of all our team members. Our team come from all over the world but live and have strong ties with New Zealand.

Introducing us personally: