Value Drivers

Paul Barnhurst (The FP&A guy) discusses current trends, challenges and opportunities of FP&A professionals.

Show Notes

[01:28] Paul discussed his journey of FP&A and his decision to launch an FP&A consulting firm.

[02:58] Paul shared the type of training services offered by his firm.

[04:26] Paul took a deeper dive into various training services.

[06:27] The primary target customers (and potential students) are discussed.

[08:16] Paul discussed why company can see value and ROI in FP&A training services.

[11:02] Paul touched on some of the recent developments in Microsoft Excel that are relevant to FP&A.

[12:05] The importance of people and process are discussed. Paul provided a quote "I'll butcher it a little bit, but old processes plus new technology equals expensive broken old processes."

[15:13] Paul discussed the key differentiation of his FP&A training services.

[18:08] Paul discussed some of the recent trends of FP&A tool which aim to enable siloed data and getting the data together in one place so that analysts can provide better insights.

[22:02] Paul discussed the evolution of FP&A tools. He broadly classified them into 3 generations: the first being the legacy tools such as Oracle, TM1 etc, the second-generation being Anaplan and the like and finally the latest generation of tools which target a broader segment of the market.

[25:43] The conversative nature of the CFO's choice of tools are discussed.

[28:03] The impact of AI on FP&A (and tools) is discussed.

[31:08] Paul shared his view on the biggest challenges and opportunities in the FP&A space.

[33:37] Paul discussed his perspective on key elements of impactful FP&A professionals.

Books mentioned in this episode

Financial Planning & Analysis and Performance Management by Jack Alexander

https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Planning-Analysis-Performance-Management/dp/1119491487

All About FP&A by CA ASIF MASANI

https://www.amazon.com/All-About-FP-ASIF-MASANI-ebook/dp/B0BPZN4P2B

Resources:

Link to Paul's website

https://www.thefpandaguy.com/

Stay Updated: Please visit Brio360 on other episodes and resources on driving value creation https://brio360.com

Follow our host: https://linkedin.com/in/peterhocm

Please note that information provided in the podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to take any particular action, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services presented. It is not investment advice. Brio360 does not provide legal or tax advice.

Thomas Kunjappu, founder and CEO of Cleary, discusses how Cleary can help companies improve internal communication and build organization culture.

Show Notes

[01:30] Thomas provided the backstory of the founding of Cleary. His background has mostly been in product management throughout the career. Typically, when someone is building products, it is built for customers. In the case of Thomas, the product was initially built for internal customers (at Twitter). The mission of Cleary is to build connected company culture and being the central hub for companies. With the rise of remote and distributed work, the purpose and mission of Cleary becomes more important and urgent.

[04:25] Thomas explained the sweet spot of Cleary's products. Originally, the sweet spot was for pre-IPO or public companies with some scale and reach. With the prevalence of remote work, more companies (i.e. smaller) can benefit from Cleary's product because of the nature of distributed teams.

[07:02] The use cases of Cleary are discussed. One key hypothesis of a great company is to treat the employees the way you treat your customers if you want to retain them and build a great workplace of the future. There are 3 main areas/benefits of Cleary. First one is around communications (e.g. the executives sending internal emails, having an all hands meeting, ensuring that everyone's in sync internally.) The second layer is about company culture.(e.g. Cleary has a badging system to incentivize the desirable employee behavior). The third pillar of Cleary is about search and productivity.

[11:01] Thomas discussed Cleary's differentiation. Cleary aims to disrupt the legacy Intranet market. (the repository to hold information but the market is very fragmented) For mid-market companies, Cleary is competing with is a dozen different tools. Cleary is not built to be a point solution, rather, it aims to operate as a central hub.

[14:23] Cleary's go to market strategy is discussed. In its early stages, the company relies mostly on customer referral. Recently, it has built up a sales and marketing organization.

[16:33] Thomas shared Cleary's fundraising journey. While the raise was successful, the company faced this dichotomy between revenue growth and customer stickiness on one side, just when the investor sentiment started to become more cautious.

[18:35] Thomas discussed how he handled difficult investor questions. An entrepreneur should be able to predict 90% of questions from investors. Always answer questions honestly. If you don't know something you say so, but then be sure to do 2 things: follow up with the answer and writing in short order, and then ensure you're adding that answer to your repertoire of internal FAQ. It's not just for investors, but you're becoming a better CEO for the company because you develope a better handle on all aspects of company's operations.

[20:26] Continued discussion on handling investor questions. A fundraising event is a sales function, not a finance function. A CRM can be used to manage the investor pitch pipeline. How do you know if your sales notion is working, the entrepreneur can analyze the pipeline, having a feedback loop. Obviously, the entreperenur needs a high energy level to be successful as you're not going through numbers. You're going through a vision.

[25:09] Thomas shared how he uses KPIs to steer the team towards the overall company mission.

[27:47] Thomas shared his perspectives on current developments of X (Twitter)

[35:40] Challenge and Opportunities are discussed (unlocking the community, creating the movement and creating that community that would be behind the movement of a great work community; balancing uncertainty with demand that you might see in the market).

Book Mentioned on the Show

The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Klemp

https://www.amazon.com/15-Commitments-Conscious-Leadership-Sustainable-ebook/dp/B00R3MHWUE

Stay Updated: Please visit Brio360 on other episodes and resources on driving value creation https://brio360.com

Follow our host: https://linkedin.com/in/peterhocm

Please note that information provided in the podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to take any particular action, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services presented. It is not investment advice. Brio360 does not provide legal or tax advice.

Nicholas Longano, founder and CEO of Scuti, discussed the market potential of G-commerce and Scuti's business model. Nick also shared with the audience his fundraising experience and his approach to align and inspire the team to reach the company's goal. Nick is an entrepreneur and thought leader with decades of experience in launching successful companies and brands in diverse industries such as video games, cosmetic and beverages.

Show Notes

[01:20] Nicholas provided an overview of Scuti. First, there was brick and mortar, followed by e-commerce and now Scut created G-commerce, which is commerce through games.

[06:21] Scut's revenue model is discussed. There are couple main revenue streams: advertising and revenue share from the transaction of the product gamer purchase on the platform. Scuti uses artificial intelligence to present to the players products that they want to buy. It's also a discovery platform for shoppers. Real world products are shipped directly from the vendors. They come directly from the vendors who guarantees the best price that they control.

[09:53] Nicholas discussed the market opportunity. Gaming is around 200 billion dollars a year in terms of total addressable market. (Bigger than the entire movie and music industries combined) The G-commerce market is estimated to be ~$70bn.

[23:28] Nicholas contrasted his corporate experience vs. running a startup such as Scuti. As a startup operator, every decision the entrepreneur makes is key and instrumental. (You can't afford to make mistakes as there are limited redundancies and support infrastructure.)

[29:41] Scuti's fundraising process is discussed. Nicholas believed that it is critical to know your audience. Finding the right investors is a needle in a haystack. You're not going to just send out or present a pitch deck and expect investors handing you a check. Significant work/diligence to find the right fit between the investors and your business is essential.

[37:56] Nicholas shared his approach in handling difficult questions from investors.

[41:40] The management approach of Scuti is discussed. Every company needs to be aligned in terms of its employees, its team, and in terms of what the goals of the organization. Every team member should be able to tell over-arching goals of the company, and the metrics beneath the goals.

Book mentioned on the show

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191145

Stay Updated: Please visit Brio360 on other episodes and resources on driving value creation https://brio360.com

Follow our host: https://linkedin.com/in/peterhocm

Please note that information provided in the podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to take any particular action, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services presented. It is not investment advice. Brio360 does not provide legal or tax advice.

Alex Furman, founder and CEO of Performica, discussed his journey from software engineering to HR, and how he developed the internal HR organization graph at Invitae, which seeded the idea of Performica. In a wide ranging discussion, Alex also shared with the audience his fundraising experience and management philosophy.

Show Notes

[01:19] Alex gave an overview of Performica. It connects various business systems of the customers and creates a picture of how work happens in real time ("org graph"). It helps companies understand how much time people spend together in meetings, cross functionally, all the way to knowing which engineers checking code into the github repository.

[03:15] Alex discussed the importance of "org graph" and how Proforma can inform organization how work is done in reality.

[04:37] Alex discussed how he got into HR and discovered the blindspots of the HR function. By developing an org graph functionality at Invitae, the company was able to fill in the leadership gaps by discovering hidden talents already existed within the organization. That was basically how the original idea of Performanica was seeded.

[09:48] Alex took a deeper dive on the org graph.

[15:04] The current target customers of Performica were discussed.

[17:37] Alex shared with us the revenue model of Performica.

[18:45] Alex discussed the key differentiation of Performica against other competitors: 1) It's been in production and used by multiple organizations for several years now. 2) The Performica team figures out the right way to collect feedback that doesn't take hours to finish and doesn't put people in positions where they have to lie (creating unbiased results)

[23:51] Alex shared with us his fundraising experience. The key lesson he shared was: don't wait for the perfect pitch. Don't wait for the perfect financial model. Try to talk to investors early.

[33:31] Alex discussed his approach on handling difficult investor questions. Try to be honest but do not undersell your business idea as there are no modesty points.

[37:36] Alex discussed his management philosophy at Performica: radical transparency to build trust among the small team.

Book mentioned on the show

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

https://www.amazon.com/Unbearable-Lightness-Being-Perennial-Classics/dp/0061148520

Resources:

https://performica.com/

Stay Updated: Please visit Brio360 on other episodes and resources on driving value creation https://brio360.com

Follow our host: https://linkedin.com/in/peterhocm

Please note that information provided in the podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to take any particular action, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services presented. It is not investment advice. Brio360 does not provide legal or tax advice.

Jacob Bank, founder and CEO of Relay, combines AI with Human Judgement to automate repeated tasks in modern workflow.

Show Notes

[01:11] Jacob provided an overview of Relay which is a workflow automation tool that aims to save you time on repeated tasks and help automate the components of repeated tasks that computers are really good at while still letting you apply human judgement and insight to the parts that need your assistance. It is essentially a modern and collaborative version of Zapier, Microsoft Power Automate.

[01:59] Jacob discussed how he got the inspiration for the company which traced back to his academic roots of computer science/social science research and product management experience at Google. There are 3 key insights during the initial ideation stage of the company: i) repeated process requiring human judgement ii) AI capabilities increasing dramatically iii) workers use many digital tools

[06:32] Jacob discussed the market opportunity of Relay which operates within a sub-category of workflow automation ($~70-$80bn market)

[08:53] Relay's competitive differentiation is discussed: i) human judgement added to automation ii) AI integrated directly/seamlessly into the workflow iii) cross functional collaboration

[13:47] Jacob provided couple use cases of Relay.

[14:52] The current market focus of Relay was discussed. Currently, the company is focusing on fast growing tech companies (10-500 employees). Jacob touched on the use cases (relatively high frequency) where Relay can be most beneficial to customers.

[19:48] Jacob contrasted his current journey vs. his experience at Google.

[28:12] Conversation on fundraising. Jacob discussed his earlier experience at Timeful where he worked with experienced cofounders which made the overall process relatively easier. In the case of Relay, the company was able to raise its seed round relatively smoothly as the market was hitting its peak in 2021/22. The company raised 2 seed rounds which is higher than the Series A of Timeful.

[34:06] Discussion on Jacob handled difficult investor questions. Jacob's high level approach is: never try to oversell something we haven't figured out yet; Acknowledge the level of confidence in how much we have it figured out.

[36:21] Discussion on operating metrics: The primary goal is to save time for customers and the best proxy for that is how many automations the company executes on. The company is tracking usage of its differentiators. (e.g. How often does an automation take advantage of a human in the loop or an AI in the loop?)

[41:44] Jacob discussed the grand challenge of a startup: no one's actually telling you what to do. Do we have the right combination of product led adoption versus sales led adoption? Are we pricing the product right? Are we targeting the right customers? The startup leaders have to constantly iterate and question the hypothesis.

Book mentioned on the show

Endurance by Alfred Lansing and Nathaniel Philbrick

https://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Shackletons-Incredible-Alfred-Lansing/dp/0465062881

Alex Smereczniak, founder of 2ULaundry discussed his journey from an entrepreneur in college to the founding of 2ULaundry. Alex discussed 2ULaundry's strategy, fundraising history and operating philosophy.

Show Notes

[01:22] Alex discussed his journey from an entrepreneur in college to a brief stop at a Big 4 firm before starting 2ULaundry.

[03:58] Alex took a deeper dive into the rationale and how he got involved as an entrepreneur in college. The experience gave him valuable business experience and laid the seed for launching 2ULaundry.

[06:55] 2ULaundry's business model and target customers are discussed. Their bread-and-butter customers are the dual income household (~$150 K in household income. Both parents are working). They have 2 or 3 kids and laundry is last thing they want to do after they get home from work.

[11:09] Alex explained the strategy behind LaundryLab (its retail laundromat franchise business line) and how he found out franchising is a good way to expand the business. (Like any entrepreneur or business building, you think it is going to work one way but you have to pivot and course correct.) This is one of the key inflection points.

[15:32] The competitive dynamics of the industry is discussed. Alex believed 2ULaundry's primary competition is the washer/dryer right down the hallway (i.e DIY).

[16:46] Alex shared 2ULaundry's customer acquisition strategy: word-of-mouth referral, influencer marketing, SEO and awareness through the delivery/pickup vans.

[18:22] Geographical expansion plan of 2ULaundry was discussed.

[19:36] Alex discussed his fund raising experience. (bootstrap, seed rounds and VC rounds); Couple key insights are i) build a good business, fundraising will become easier ii) get as much feedback as possible

[21:52] Alex shared his philosophy on how to handle difficult investor questions.

[23:20] Alex took a deeper dive into his earlier fundraising experience where he spent a fair amount of time trying to reach out bigger VC firms. He quickly found out that he can raise a significant amount from smart seed investors who can also be advisors/advocates for his business.

[25:47] Alex discussed how he uses BHAG and various metrics to track the progress of the business.

[28:04] Alex took a deeper dive into the metrics: (stores open, licenses sold, defects per millions)

[30:44] The importance of quality to retention was discussed.

[32:05] Alex shared with the audience one of his favorite books.

[33:56] The challenges of the current business environment were discussed. Cost of construction has gone up quickly. Alex and 2ULaundry tried to be more efficient (and pass on the savings) to the franchisees and customers.

Book mentioned on the show

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296

Resources:

Link to https://2ulaundry.com website:

Stay Updated: Please visit Brio360 on other episodes and resources on driving value creation https://brio360.com

Follow our host: https://linkedin.com/in/peterhocm

Please note that information provided in the podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to take any particular action, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services presented. It is not investment advice. Brio360 does not provide legal or tax advice.

Eric Martin shared with us his journey from the research lab at the University of Michigan to launching a hardware startup. Eric also discussed how he turned the first roadblock from NSF into a successful grant.

Show Notes

[01:15] Eric discussed his journey from a research lab at the University of Michigan to launching Monstr Sense Technologies. (Products were named Bigfoot, Nessie, etc.) He found out from the semiconductor industry that a potentially useful technology is imaging.

[05:16] Eric took a deeper dive into the support provided by the entrepreneur ecosystem at the University of Michigan. Through some of the entrepreneur classes, he learnt about customer discovery and patent applications which became very useful for his startup. The company also received support and mentorship from the University of Michigan Technology Transfer Office.

[13:10] The science behind Monstr Sense was discussed. Eric shared with the audience the background of nonlinear measurement and how he discovered that it can useful for semiconductors (silicon carbide) in the EV industry.

[20:37] Eric discussed the company's customers.

[22:34] Discussion on the trade war (semiconductor) with China and its impact on the company.

[24:22] Eric explained the company's business/revenue model. Currently, most customers are concentrated around university and national research labs.

[28:18] Eric discussed the initial target market (academic research labs) and he made the company in the small communities known by attending key conferences. Currently, the company only focuses on marketing (as it does not have a sales team).

[29:04] The first NSF grant application was discussed. Eric explained how he was able to use the experience from the first application and turned it into a successful one in the second grant application. For hardware startups, it is rather typical to receive funding/support from NSF as venture capital investment is less common.

[40:13] Eric took a deeper dive into the critical moment when he got the problem statement from the semiconductor industry participant so that he can come up with something new. (leading to successful grants, building the Nessie microscope and patents)

[44:25] Eric discussed the challenges as a hardware entrepreneur.

[46:41] Eric highlighted several books that he enjoyed.

Resources:

Link to Monstr Sense Technologies website: https://monstrsense.com/

Stay Updated: Please visit Brio360 on other episodes and resources on driving value creation https://brio360.com

Follow our host: https://linkedin.com/in/peterhocm

Please note that information provided in the podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to take any particular action, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services presented. It is not investment advice. Brio360 does not provide legal or tax advice.

Dr. Tim Cogan discussed how he and his team use AI to flight breast cancer by making the screening process cheaper, faster and more accurate.

Show Notes

Stay Updated: Please visit Brio360 on other episodes and resources on driving value creation https://brio360.com

Follow our host: https://linkedin.com/in/peterhocm

Please note that information provided in the podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to take any particular action, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or services presented. It is not investment advice. Brio360 does not provide legal or tax advice.

Ari Tulla is a San Francisco-based entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Elo smart nutrition service, transforming food from the cause of disease to medicine. Ari has a long history of turning ideas into products and businesses. In a wide ranging discussion, Ari shared with us the mission of Elo Health, his point of view on AI (and how it will help his business) and perspectives on innovation.

Evan Kaylin, founder of Grilla, discussed the company's mission and market opportunity. Evan also shared his fund raising journey and his source of inspiration to overcome challenges to scale the company.