Local Business Showcase: e-File

For many, tax season can be a nightmare. That’s a fact alumnus Aaron Rosenthal ('02) knows all too well. As co-founder and director of marketing for this month's #LocalBusinessShowcase, the online tax preparation company E-file.com, Rosenthal strives to remove as much of the anxiety and stress from the tax-filing process as possible.

After having moved to the North Florida area during high school, Rosenthal wanted to stay local for college, so the University of North Florida felt like the best fit. He never anticipated starting his own tax preparation business, but without realizing it at the time, the Coggin College of Business helped arm him with many of the tools to be a successful entrepreneur.

As a student, he had the opportunity to take a study abroad trip to the UK during his final semester, visiting London, Cambridge and Edinburgh. He met the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, took a tour of Lloyd’s of London and heard from numerous London stock traders. “It was the most enjoyable experience I had while earning college credit,” Rosenthal said.

After graduating with degrees in finance and economics, Rosenthal started working for a marketing firm where he met another Osprey, Robert Reynard (’10). Rosenthal had an idea for a startup that focused on lead generation, which he named Thought Projects LLC, and soon after Reynard left to join him in this venture. In this business, they would build websites that helped visitors find products and services they were in search of. “We attracted a large number of visitors looking for tax filing solutions,” said Rosenthal. “It was during this time that Robert and I had the idea to provide our own software.”

Rosenthal and Reynard co-founded E-file.com because of their frustration with other online tax preparation companies. While their company is similar to other online tax-filing programs, Rosenthal said that cost is one factor that sets E-file.com apart from its competition.

“Our software is only offered online via the Cloud,” he said. “We don’t have that production cost involved, which means we pass along that savings to the customers.” They also provide a free “no-strings attached” federal tax filing to users who qualify for their basic software.

In addition to the lower cost, Rosenthal said that E-file is dedicated to protecting its customers’ privacy.

“There are other companies in the space and they tend to resell their customer information to third party advertisers,” he explained. “We’ve taken the stance that we are never going to sell any of our customer information.”

During the early years, everything was reinvested back into the company for the sake of growth. As they built E-file.com, both Rosenthal and Reynard continued to work for Though Projects, which meant the work hours added up. However, it allowed them to create it without taking any outside investment.

The sacrifice has paid off as E-file.com has been featured by Inc. Magazine as one of the 5000 fastest growing private companies in America five times. It was also named the fastest growing company in North Florida by the Jacksonville Business Journal as well as included in a Financial Times list of the fastest growing private companies in America.

When he’s not working, he enjoys spending time with his family. He’s got three kids between 11 and 16, so they’ll try to make it out for the occasional Ospreys basketball or baseball game.