From Trouble to Trailblazing

A rogue accounting agent and his colleague teamed up to approach tax, assurance, and advisory services from a new perspective

words McKenzie Watson-Fore

In 2008, Matt Fargo got in trouble for sponsoring TechStars. At the time, he was working inside a national accounting firm, trying to convince leadership that Boulder’s scrappy, venture-backed startups deserved more than being treated as “rounding error clients.” The idea didn’t land well.

It did, however, plant the seed for what would become Kurtz Fargo LLP.

Now, the Boulder-based accounting firm, founded by co-managing partners Matt Fargo and Chester Kurtz, is celebrating its 15th year of serving Colorado, and prioritizing collaboration, planning, and strategy.

“Those three things are what we do better than anybody else,” Matt says. He’s worked long and hard to be able to say that. Matt and Chester met in 2007, when they both worked in the audit practice of a national accounting firm. Together, the two men started dreaming about serving a more specific, high-engagement business niche.

For Matt, these ideas started to germinate after a 2008 meeting with Dave Cohen, one of the founders of the originally Boulder-based startup accelerator, TechStars. The meeting with Cohen was to help develop ideas around the specific accounting needs of startups. At the time, Matt explains, small technology companies were being directed by their venture capital firms or their investors to large national public accounting firms. Still, national public accounting firms viewed these new clients as extremely small—what you might call “rounding error clients” As a result, they would put some of their least experienced people on those jobs until the companies grew a little bit. It was a mismatch. “These small businesses that realistically needed the most help and the most long-term knowledge weren’t getting that,” Matt says.

That early push to sponsor TechStars didn’t exactly win him internal applause. “I remember getting in trouble for sponsoring them the first year,” Matt recalls. 

“You were always getting in trouble,” Chester says, laughing. Chester—who was Matt’s internal coach at the time—reminded management that Matt wasn’t the kind of guy who would fall in line with a standard, replicable,
one-size-fits-all approach to accounting. “I said, if you want the accounting equivalent of beige tract homes, that’s fine, but that’s not Matt. He wants to build custom homes.” 

From that early point in their relationship, the two men recognized each other’s complementary skill sets and visions. “I wanted to partner with people who were trying to change the industry, who were forward-looking,” Matt says. “And it felt like we were surrounded by a bunch of people who wanted to run the same kind of practice as everybody else out there.” Together, Matt and Chester decided to leap into starting their own firm, one that specifically targeted clients with complex debt and equity structures. 

Chester and Matt designed their new business in a spreadsheet over a six-pack of beer. “We measured Chester’s basement to make sure I could move in there if it didn’t work out,” Matt says, only half joking. They officially launched Kurtz Fargo LLP on August 10, 2010. “We quickly discovered that Boulder County, with its small business environment, was a huge market,” Chester says. “There were a lot of folks who were underserved, and referrals started flowing.” 

Kurtz Fargo started out prioritizing investor-backed companies, filling a niche that so many larger firms had long neglected. “You have to do high-quality work for these very small businesses that don’t have a lot of money,” Matt says, “and then you scale with them over time. But if you ignore them, you’re missing out on a huge portion of their growth.” 

Initially branded as a boutique firm—“top-tier work with local flavor,” Matt describes—Kurtz Fargo soon found that its model applied to additional niches: consumer packaged goods like natural foods, professional services such as marketing and design agencies, and even the specific accounting needs of ultra-high-net-worth individuals. 

As the company has grown, its greatest edge has been its ability to find and keep quality employees. “For a service business, your growth is capacity-constrained,” Chester explains. “Your number one issue isn’t marketing; it’s recruiting talent and creating capacity to serve your clients.” The firm has developed strong relationships with universities all over Colorado, from CU Boulder to Fort Lewis College in Durango, where Kurtz Fargo operates another office. 

Now, Kurtz Fargo is the largest locally owned firm in the state, with around 75 to 80 full-time equivalent employees. Matt and Chester see that growth as a byproduct of their overall success. “Growth was never the original goal,” Matt recalls. “We weren’t saying, ‘We want to be the biggest firm in Colorado.’ Our goal has always been to be the most influential firm in the markets where we operate.” 

Eighteen years after that initial meeting with Dave Cohen, Kurtz Fargo’s influence still derives from the collaborative principles embedded in Boulder’s entrepreneurial community. “The give-first concept is really about making introductions and helping people out,” Matt says. Kurtz Fargo provides its clients with a collaborative approach to tax, assurance, and advisory services, and the firm’s influence will be felt in the Colorado business landscape for years to come. 

For more information, visit kurtzfargo.com.