#financial statements

I can interpret them at the basic level, but that doesn’t mean I know specifically what the amounts relate to (and anyone pretending they do is full of shit)

Top line is that Erskine had £3 million more in March 2019 than it did a year earlier, and Harry is a very wealthy man.

Erskine has assets of £24.7 million.

It owes £9.8 million in accruals & deferred income. That means it has received this money but hasn’t yet paid it out or carried out the work that was paid for.

If I were to guess I’d say some or most of this money relates to Harry’s record deal with Columbia. As of March 2019 he still owed them 2 albums. ie he had the money, but still had to do the work. But perhaps Erskine received investment from another related company too.

A part of this sum is corporation tax that Erskine owes, some debts to traders, and some money owed to a related company.

Of the 24.7m in assets, £11.4m is in investments (could be anything - Harry’s real estate, art collection, business investments etc), £2.7m is still owed to Erskine, and then there’s business equipment etc.

The rest - £10.5m - is money in the bank.

Subtract the money owed in deferred income & accruals, and Erskine currently has £14.86 million sitting pretty.

On February 13, 2018, the New York Times reported that Uber is planning an IPO. Uber’s value is estimated between $48 and $70 billion, despite reporting losses over the last two years. Twitter reported a loss of $79 million before its IPO, yet it commanded a valuation of $24 billion on its IPO date in 2013. For the next four years, it continued to report losses. Similarly, Microsoft paid $26 billion for loss-making LinkedIn in 2016, and Facebook paid $19 billion for WhatsApp in 2014 when it had no revenues or profits. In contrast, industrial giant GE’s stock price has declined by 44% over the last year, as news emerged about its first losses in last 50 years.

How to Read Financial Statements 

The commercial real estate technology sector is becoming increasingly competitive as software providers race to deliver faster, smarter, and more automated solutions. In this environment, successful companies must continuously evaluate how their technology can create value beyond its original purpose. For David Bratslavsky, founder of QuickData.AI, one of the most important growth opportunities emerged from a simple but recurring request from the market itself.

QuickData.AI had already established a strong reputation among multifamily real estate professionals by automating some of the most time-consuming aspects of underwriting. The platform helped investors, acquisition teams, and analysts extract critical information from rent rolls, T12 financial statements, and offering memorandums, transforming complex documents into structured data that could be analyzed quickly and accurately.

As the platform gained traction, a new trend began to surface.

Proptech companies repeatedly approached QuickData.AI with a similar question: Could they access the technology powering the platform and integrate it into their own products?

At first glance, the request appeared to be a technical challenge. Creating and maintaining an API requires additional infrastructure, support processes, and long-term product management. Many software companies hesitate to pursue this path because APIs can introduce complexity and divert resources away from core development efforts.

However, David Bratslavsky viewed the situation through a broader business lens.

The repeated interest from other technology providers suggested that QuickData.AI had developed something valuable beyond its customer-facing platform. The company’s document extraction engine was solving a widespread industry problem, and other organizations wanted to leverage that capability without building a similar system from scratch.

This realization changed the conversation.

Instead of treating external requests as isolated opportunities, QuickData.AI recognized them as evidence of a larger market demand. If these companies could not access the technology through a partnership, they would likely search for alternative providers or invest resources into developing competing solutions.

From a strategic standpoint, that created both a risk and an opportunity.

By launching a white-label API, QuickData.AI could strengthen its position within the commercial real estate technology ecosystem while simultaneously creating a new revenue channel. More importantly, the company could extend the reach of its technology without abandoning its focus on document automation.

The design philosophy behind the API was intentionally simple.

Rather than attempting to provide a complete software platform, the API concentrated on what QuickData.AI did best. It processed documents, extracted relevant information, and returned structured outputs that partners could easily integrate into their own applications.

Everything beyond that remained in the hands of the partner.

Companies using the API maintained control over their branding, customer relationships, user interfaces, pricing structures, and workflow design. This separation of responsibilities helped minimize operational complexity while ensuring each organization could continue delivering a unique customer experience.

The approach also offered significant scalability advantages. Because QuickData.AI focused exclusively on improving its core extraction technology, the company could continue enhancing accuracy, speed, and performance without becoming distracted by unrelated product requirements.

For partners, the benefits were equally compelling. They gained access to advanced automation capabilities without dedicating years of engineering resources to building their own extraction systems.

David Bratslavsky’s decision highlights an important principle of modern software entrepreneurship: successful expansion is often built on existing strengths rather than entirely new ideas. Companies achieve sustainable growth when they identify the capabilities that create the most value and find efficient ways to make those capabilities accessible to a broader audience.