Episode 19: Mike McDerment ’94

About this episode

Mike McDerment discusses his entrepreneurial journey and the creation of FreshBooks.

Mike McDerment ’94 is an entrepreneur and the co-founder and board chair of FreshBooks, Briza and a new company in the works. Mike learned many valuable lessons of success, structure and hard work at Crescent. His time at Crescent led him to start multiple businesses, eventually leading him to create the software that is now FreshBooks.  FreshBooks is the #1 accounting software in the cloud, designed exclusively for freelancers and growing service-based business owners. Built-in 2003 after he accidentally saved over an invoice, Mike spent 3.5 years growing FreshBooks from his parents’ basement. Since then, over 30 million people have used FreshBooks to save time billing, and collect billions of dollars.  This episode is hosted by Jason Steel ’93, and recorded and edited by Andrew Loukas ’27. Coyote Conversations is made possible by Carson McGregor, Communication Technology Faculty and the Crescent Alumni Executive.  Music by Matt Large. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People in this episode

Host: Jason Steel

Guest: Mike McDerment

Topics covered

• entrepreneurship
• business success
• software development
• freelancing
• accounting software

Keywords

• Mike McDerment
• FreshBooks
• entrepreneur
• accounting software
• Crescent
• business
• freelancers

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: FreshBooks, Briza, Crescent Media House, Crescent Alumni Executive

Products: FreshBooks

More episodes of Coyote Conversations

• Episode 24: Greg Wells ‘89 · May 28, 2026 · 1h 5m
• Episode 23: Brian Lang '87 and Chris van de Water '99 · May 6, 2026 · 53 min
• Episode 22: Blake Rosenberg ’12 · February 23, 2026 · 1h 15m
• Episode 21: Pat Mills P’99 · January 19, 2026 · 46 min
• Episode 20: Catching Up With Jeff Mitz · January 5, 2026 · 35 min
• Episode 18: Bram Belzberg ’98 · November 17, 2025 · 47 min