Rivet Bolsters Engineering Leadership with Former TextToImage Founder Nathan Wagenknecht Following Lobby Acquisition

Rivet, a tech-enabled tax preparation firm, has announced the significant addition of Nathan Wagenknecht as its Founding Platform Engineer. Wagenknecht, co-founder of the cloud-based image generation platform TextToImage, joined Rivet last month, a move that underscores the company's strategic focus on leveraging advanced technology and a founder-driven culture. This key hire follows Rivet's recent acquisition of Lobby, a company specializing in AI-powered data extraction, whose founder, Wilson Hobbs, also joined Rivet as an engineering leader.

The announcement was made by Nick Abouzeid, EA, Co-founder and CEO of Rivet, who stated in a recent tweet, "A huge welcome to Nathan Wagenknecht to Rivet 🎉... it’s been immediately clear how lucky we are to have him on board." Abouzeid highlighted Wagenknecht's entrepreneurial background, noting, "Nathan joining marks another former founder joining the team." This aligns with Rivet's distinct company culture, where, "outside of our tax team, 6 out of 7 Rivet team members have started their own company."

Wagenknecht's previous venture, TextToImage, focused on developing a platform for image generation and editing, utilizing technologies like Stable Diffusion. His expertise in platform engineering and generative AI is expected to significantly contribute to Rivet's in-house technology development. Abouzeid emphasized how this "founder’s mindset is part of what makes our product/engineering move so quickly," aiming to enhance client support across various tax services, from bookkeeping to audit defenses and standard tax filings.

The integration of Lobby's capabilities and the recruitment of its founder, Wilson Hobbs, as an engineering lead, further solidify Rivet's commitment to AI-empowered tax preparation. According to Hobbs, Lobby's work centered on "reliably pulling specific answers from reams of unstructured data." The combined talent and technological advancements from these strategic additions are poised to accelerate Rivet's platform development and streamline complex tax processes, promising clients a more efficient and less burdensome tax season.