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- [00:01]
John Glasgow
I got to series A with founder led sales and this is a brutal category to do it.
- [00:09]
Brad
Welcome back to another episode of Builders. As always, this show is brought to you by Frontlines IO, Silicon Valley's leading B2B podcast production studio. If you're bringing technology to market and want to learn from your peers, we have a library of more than 1200 interviews with Venture backed founders and marketers. Where they talk, all things go to market. Of course, if you want to launch your own podcast, we offer podcasts as a service to more than 80 tech startups. The idea there is very simple. You show up and host and we do everything else. Now with all that said, let's jump into today's episode. Our guest today is John Glasgow, CEO and CFO of Campfire. John, welcome to the show.
- [00:47]
John Glasgow
Right, thank you for having me on.
- [00:49]
Brad
Of course. Really excited to jump in. Let's talk about your technology. What problem are you solving?
- [00:53]
John Glasgow
Yes, Campfire is the AI native ERP for growing tech companies. And what that means is we help them with their accounting and their financial reporting. And so some of the fastest growing companies like Replit Posthog are scaling on Campfire.
- [01:07]
Brad
How'd you end up in this world? I see that you were at Invoice to Go, then you were@bill.com after they did the acquisition. How'd you end up in finance and accounting and building technology for those functions?
- [01:15]
John Glasgow
Yeah, it's a great question. I had a 10 plus year corporate finance career and so big public companies like Adobe, but also scale ups like Invoice To Go and through those experiences as the end customer of the ERP Enterprise Resource Planning saw in a campaign that there's very outdated technology and so applied to Y Combinator. After our company was successfully acquired for 625 million to build the kind of ERP that I wish we were on as we were scaling our own company. And so that was the very short version of the founding story. And happy to dive deep of course, if there's interest.
- [01:49]
Brad
And for you was this like a secret plan the whole time that you were going to go and work at these companies and have these experiences and have all these learnings, then go out and found a company. Where did that itch come from?
- [01:59]
John Glasgow
It's a great question. I think people often say, like, hey, why now? You know, you're like you're late 30s, like why start a company at this point in your career? When I talk to founders, you don't need to have this. But I felt if I was going to leave corporate career Behind I had to have some sort of edge. And this was A category been A3 Adjacent accounting software companies had been the end customer for many, many years. I felt they like deeply understood the problem and also like really understood what to go build. And so I think there was, when I applied to Y Combinator, it was, there's a lot of clarity in that. And so I think they knew that this is going to be a long slog to build, you know, a new system of record. There's a reason why the incumbents are as old as they are is because it's very hard that there's a lot of depth and breadth on the product build out. But given the just the high level of conviction coming from the category, I was just going to punch all the way through. And so I think that was something that stood out to them.
- [02:52]
Brad
What did the first 90 days look like for you?
- [02:55]
John Glasgow
Yeah, well, funny enough, my oldest daughter was actually a week old when I started Y Combinator. I was on parental leave when I did. And so first 90s are actually chaotic at home. I think a lot of people forget about being a founder or an executive or really anybody in the workplace. There's a lot going on in the personal life they were not all aware of. And so I certainly had a lot those first 90 days. Y Combinator is very focused on, hey, we have demo day in three months, call it 90 days. And so you've really gotta get to paying customers. You really gotta build something. We don't care if you're building a system of record that traditionally takes five years to build. So we very quickly, within a month, got paying customers. And it was a very rudimentary product. And then after that it was, how quickly can we take this rudimentary prototype and show that it's beyond just a few folks and go beyond that. And so the first 90 days was a lot of cold outbound, a lot of talking to folks that felt the pain, like myself, in getting some early paying customers that were ready to build with us and wanted to be a part of that early journey as a customer. And then going into demo day, we were fortunate that we had a lot of demand. And so we raised our seed round just before the 90 day mark.
- [04:05]
Brad
And how did you find those early customers?
- [04:08]
John Glasgow
Yeah, I would say I had a finance network, but I think the best customers are actually going to be ones that you've never met before in the very early days and they're harder to get. But then like I remember doing just a cold LinkedIn message to somebody hey, do you have this problem? Is your financial reporting and accounting just like, fundamentally broken? And I talked to him and he's like, it's so bad. He's like, I'm willing to meet with you weekly for an hour to help you build. No compensation, no equity. I just want you to build what I want out of the system. And so there was that level of investment of time from these folks that they were just like, just people I never met before, solving real problems for real people that I didn't know and then really just showing them a lot of product velocity weekly when we met. And they were like, wow, I think they're really starting to solve some real problems of ours. So again, the best, really customers were just doing LinkedIn outbound.
- [05:01]
Brad
And that person that you just mentioned there, when they were describing the pain and the problem, was that exactly how you were describing the pain and the problem that you were setting out to solve, or was there a gap there?
- [05:11]
John Glasgow
It's a great question. I would say the themes were the same, but there were nuances to the pain. So there's this one component called multi entity accounting when you have subsidiaries. And I knew that was a major pain for a lot of them, but folks will then say, we've kind of solved it, but here's like our flavor of pain for this. And so it fell within the themes. The most obvious one that we went and quickly solved for tech companies is there's such a high focus on revenue and many of them are solving, like, how do we automate invoicing? How do we automate revenue reporting for investors or for the board, if they had one, and there wasn't a lot of great tooling for that. So if we could deliver like a core financial software called a general ledger, plus great revenue reporting and accounting, then there was a tremendous value. And so I think quickly digging in on, like, the incumbents are so vast for this very narrow ICP within the incumbent. How do we just be amazing at this one thing? And so we ended up landing on, call it the 50 to 150 employee tech company, which was literally the company that I was at before we were acquired. How do we solve for this exact cohort, which essentially like a series B, ish, series C tech company, and exactly what do they need? And then we're able to kind of move out from there up into new verticals and new GEOs. But ultimately, like, how can we go as narrow as possible and make them incredibly happy?
- [06:31]
Brad
One thing I've learned from other founders is that the Go to market playbook that works for getting tech companies to say yes is a completely different playbook that works to get non tech companies to say yes. Is that true for you as well? It is.
- [06:43]
John Glasgow
I'd say there are some early adopters in every category particularly if they have like have previously worked at a software business. You know finance and accounting folks are not known for being early adopters. It's a category that's probably a bit more risk averse given the sensitivity of the data, given the importance of the reporting that they're doing. Just like from a tax perspective if it's wrong, if the board reporting, if the investor report reporting is wrong, the downside is vast. But I will say we were fortunate that there was enough pain that folks were willing to be candidly move earlier than I thought. We got pulled up market much quicker than I thought we would with intact because they were so ready for something new. The incumbents netsuite stage intact were about 25, 30 years old and so there was like this huge appetite we just had to go execute. And so I think they were mainly buying in the early days roadmap and so we were doing a lot of roadmap selling because of course we hadn't built a lot yet but they were willing to be on that journey like I mentioned, folks willing to meet weekly to help us get there and to solve their problems in ways that were they were being underserved elsewhere.
- [07:44]
Brad
And how do you find early adopters? I feel like every founder knows they need to find them, they need early adopters but they don't list it on LinkedIn necessarily that you know they are one or it doesn't come from criteria. How do you find early adopters?
- [07:56]
John Glasgow
I would say the common knowledge is like oh give it away for free or find design partners or sign Lois I found probably you know, not the best folks actually to go after. Find folks as soon as possible that are willing to actually pay for the product as rudimentary or as early stage as is. A lot of founders I talk to will say the product's not ready yet or let's wait for one more feature or a prospect will say hey once you ship X then we will buy and it ends up really not being the case and so I would actually push somebody if that was true then why don't you sign up now as a customer as soon as this feature's done it'll turn to a contract and actually push them on it but otherwise just get folks to start paying. And so those early folks it really came down to. I was going to a lot of events where they would hang out. I was asking for a lot of intros. One of our earliest customers, someone I worked with 10 years prior, I saw he was connected to someone on LinkedIn and I hadn't talked to this person in 10 years and I still had his phone number and I texted him, can you introduce me to X? And made the intro. And it was a warm intro and they are still a customer today. And so I think, like, go as deep as you can in your network. But it was not someone I knew previously. Otherwise I was doing a lot of LinkedIn outbound. I think LinkedIn, you can drive a lot of credibility because they can see who you are. For me, they were seeing that I was a peer for corporate finance, its background. And so the other one is really trying to meet them in person. When your product isn't the most credible. Building credibility through selling yourself is really important. And so then it's like, why you? Why do we think you're uniquely qualified? And so for me, it was my background and the pain I felt. But if you have no background at all, maybe just find something that you think you can sell and maybe the product's not quite ready. But again, get folks to start paying super early and go from there. And then they will rapidly give you feedback if you're onto something. If you're finding true pmf, they will be kind of hunting you down for feedback and pushing you. And that means you're really building something special.
- [09:57]
Brad
This show is brought to you by Frontlines Media podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage and grow their own podcast. Now, if you're a founder, you may be thinking, I don't have time to host a podcast. I've got a company to build. Well, that's exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit Frontlines I.O. podcast. Now back to today's episode. What other startup wisdom do you not believe to be true?
- [10:24]
John Glasgow
I think folks feel they need more capital than they do. We were incredibly capital light despite the fact that we're building, you know, the system of record kind of mission critical category. You know, I would say it's a great question. I think, you know, I do think about this one a lot. You're always going to say, once we have more funding, we'll be more credible and people will buy from us. And I remember we were a seed stage business. We'd raised 3.5 million after a demo day and I was talking to a series C company and they were like, yeah, we get a lot of pushback, like we don't have enough money. And I was like, wow. I thought series A, like we were going to be like, we're good, like no one's going to ask me this question anymore. And that's just absolutely not true. So learn to sell through the objections and because the day really will not come for a very long time where these things will go away. So I think as opposed to longing for tomorrow, learn to live for today. Whether it's a feature, a capital A hire, like I always tell the team, like we're not waiting for X, whether it's funding, whether it's a referenceable logo in a category like how do we get it done today? And I think that mindset will carry you a long way for you at
- [11:31]
Brad
what stage or how many months from founding until it started to really feel like it was completely repeatable. And then you could start to transition out of founder led sales. Not transition out, but start to build a sales team.
- [11:42]
John Glasgow
I got to series A with founder led sales and this is a brutal category to do it. So my advice is even with all of the AI technology in the world, still get to Series A or still get to PMF with founder led sales if it's a sales led business. And so for us, we started in June 23rd and it did not happen in almost for two years until May of 25. We raised our Series A and we got to traditional Series A PMF metrics at that point. But until then I was the only AE and I was the only solution consultant demoing the product as well. Where our category traditionally has a separate kind of solution engineer doing demos and separate from the ae. But what that allowed me to do those first two years is remain incredibly close to the product feedback. And then as of course the only PM at the company because we were super lean, that I was able to really translate everything and continue to build up until it was Q4, 24, we really started to take off. It's called a year and a half in. We really had to push and build and grind. And then the next six months were very magical as we found PMF going into the Series A with Excel in May of 25.
- [12:48]
Brad
As you made that transition, what are some of the lessons that have really stuck with you? Transition away from founder led sales?
- [12:55]
John Glasgow
Yeah. Our first AE decided to focus on what I had called like a sure thing. And that was someone that was actually at an incumbent. And I think the traditional knowledge might be like hey, go find someone from a startup. But there wasn't any real startups that had like exactly the knowledge I needed. And we had such strong pmf, I was completely underwater that the day they started their calendar was full of their own meetings that I wasn't even in. And so because they came from the incumbent, despite that being a much larger company, Oracle, they had the entrepreneurial spirit and the kind of self serve mindset to go with zero training, zero mindset. And the good thing is they were also able to sell against the incumbent. Because they came from the incumbent, they knew it quite well. We have since hired another 14 AES and I have been more varied of the background so they don't need to come from the incumbent anymore. And to this date I am the head of sales, I lead sales here with the, there's about 30 folks on the sales team in total with solution consulting and also bdr. And so that's my other recommendation is once you start hiring AES, don't go hire third party head of sales, go run sales yourself and then co. Once you hire head of sales the consistent advice I'm, you know, often receiving from other founders just ahead of us is like co own sales with that head of sales for call it 90 days and don't just do a hard handoff. But even when I was at Adobe, our CEO was on a lot of the deal teams and a lot of the big meetings helping us close. And so I talked to a lot of founders that say oh, once I hired an AE or head of sales I get to step away. And at a company you know, big as Adobe, that was not the case. So that's the mindset that I really have which is like I will always truly be called the CRO at campfire. And that's how you can stay incredibly close to the customer as well.
- [14:43]
Brad
It may just be lore, but I feel like you hear that about Marc Benioff as well, that he's still very actively doing founder led sales and he's not stepped away. So if a company that size is doing it, then think it's a good lesson for other founders.
- [14:53]
John Glasgow
Yeah, founder led sales to founder led head of sales would be my strong recommendation.
- [14:57]
Brad
What about on the marketing team? How have you approached building that out?
- [15:01]
John Glasgow
Yeah, of course, you know, as the only non technical person in the company in the early days I did everything but write the code. Now people are vibe coding and non technical. So things have changed a Little bit so quickly. But employee number five was actually our head of marketing. And so we had a brand very early. You know, she really came in and started with nothing and now is our VP of marketing and has been here almost two years. And so she has gone on to build a team since then. So it's been something that I handed off early, maybe earlier than most, but it allowed me to also go focus on the sales part, the product part, and then working closely on the rest of the business.
- [15:38]
Brad
That was one takeaway I had when I spent some time on your website earlier today is that it doesn't look like other accounting software. It looks like you've really taken brand seriously. I mean, even the name Campfire, like, how did you know that brand was going to be so important?
- [15:51]
John Glasgow
This is a category that has a lot of tired, outdated brands that all of the names are some variation of accounting intact. Just means Internet Accounting, NetSuite, Internet Suite, QuickBooks. So I really wanted to come in with something fresh because we were doing something fresh in a tired category. And so then it's like, how do we have a name that makes you smile but also like it really comes from all of the tooling sits around the erp, the general ledger. And so everything sits around the campfire. And so then it was, how do we actually, like bring this magical, almost call it front office brand experience, like CRM tool or something really kind of fun. And like sales and marketing tooling is known for, I would argue better branding. How do we bring that to a category that's been like starved of creativity and then how do we ensure the product kind of also executes on that as well? And so that is, to your point, one of the main reasons why we invested early. I will say the other thing I wanted to do was credibility was so important to our sale. I did want to look like a very professional company publicly very early. So even when we were a seed stage, it's like, how do we have an amazing website? We have amazing kind of visual identity because we have to build trust with the customer as a system of record. So that was another just very tactical decision I made early, was like, we're able to invest in marketing, invest in brand and invest in the customer experience to drive the level of credibility that we need to be successful.
- [17:16]
Brad
Does that also carry over to where you're calling in from today? So this is audio only, but you were telling me pre interview, like you're calling in from a studio. You guys went out and invested in and built out a studio that's not something that I see with a lot of companies. I try to convince a lot of companies to do that, but not many do talk to us about that decision.
- [17:33]
John Glasgow
We are huge on content here. So I'd say, look, I write a LinkedIn post every single day. We produce a ton of content, a ton of video. In the early days, I did a lot of one to one with prospective and current customers. This is how I'm able to do asynchronous one to many. And so I'll even like every Friday I screen share almost like Twitch and I like, you know, vibe code accounting software or I just kind of share my journey. I was the CFO at Campfire and so we're producing so much content that I think in an AI call it slop world that we live in, how do you have authenticity? And so for us that was really connecting with folks and building a relationship with them in an asynchronous way. And part of that was a lot of video content and a lot of audio content. And so that is why we have, yeah, this was not a cheap studio, but we did make the investment and we're recording something at least once a day, I think in here.
- [18:28]
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- [18:46]
Brad
Co, you said you do a daily LinkedIn post. Take us behind the scenes into that process.
- [18:52]
John Glasgow
When marketing said you gotta start doing daily and 80% of our customers are inbound, so it's clearly doing something right. But look, in the school play, that was mandatory. I did the lights because I did not want to be on stage and I was not a LinkedIn poster before I was a founder. You know, I will say you have to find your voice. And so for me it was like marketing said, you've got to find your voice. And I said, I don't have enough to say and nobody's going to care what I have to say. But it's been years now. We've been doing a post a day. Sometimes, you know, we'll take the weekend off about half the time, but then there's always a story to tell. And so when I'm in the car, I often will record content driving to the office or if I have a moment like I go to a CFO dinner when I'm walking to my Car. I'll record kind of. Here's the top five things I heard. And particularly in an AI transition era that we're in right now, folks are looking for guidance, folks are looking for some trail to follow and there's a lot of wandering in the wilderness. And so we've done a lot of brand building of just like authentically sharing our journey building, but also using AI internally at campfire in our own AI journey as an AI native company for customers and for ourselves. And for whatever reason, we've been fortunate that that's really resonated with folks.
- [20:11]
Brad
I was at a dinner with some founders last night and we were talking about posting on social and one of them is just crushing it right now. And the others were just saying like, it feels so cringy and painful. And that's consistently what I've heard from a lot of founders. For you, like on a cringe scale, 1 to 10, like, how hard was that for you to get past that idea of like posting and putting yourself out there and putting your story out there?
- [20:31]
John Glasgow
I'm generally a very private person. I would say in the early days it was very painful. You know, it's a muscle that I've developed and I think as a founder you need to find your voice, you know, even in our all hands, now that we're over a hundred employees, I'm not used to speaking to a hundred people regularly, but as we have added each hire from just the two of us in the very beginning to 100 now, I'm very comfortable on stage at events, I'm comfortable, you know, in more settings. It's the cringe has largely gone away. I think the harder part is like now I'll sometimes post about my family or I'll post personal things. It's, you know, more of a, call it public lifestyle. But it is important to build your brand and you're the face of the company. And so it's something that's really important, particularly in the current era where folks again are just looking for high quality content.
- [21:19]
Brad
How do you think about that balance? Because my daughter was born like two years ago. I did like a banger post and like got a lot of likes, but like, if I look through them, none of them were my icp. And then I'll do another post, I'll get like seven likes. But it's like seven people are my icp. So I have to constantly balance that between like the personal stuff that gets high engagement and the more business product stuff that you tend to not do as well. But it's the right people. How do you think about that mix and that ratio?
- [21:43]
John Glasgow
Yeah, it's like you can go viral but you know, if no one in your ICP is reading it, then to your point, it's like a tree falling in the forest or something. I do hear you and we actually do debate that internally or like, what are the content pillars that I should be writing about. But we try and bury it up a little bit. At least once a week we'll talk about like campfire building AI native internally. So we'll share of like how we drive AI adoption across the functions. Once a week I'll try and do a post about like a customer story. And so I'll kind of look through my calendar and I'll look for some magical moment that a customer had or conversation that I had and you know, typically anonymously share that or share with permission. So I think once you kind of have a couple, maybe there's five pillars for five days of the week. Some founders write everything on Sunday. They'll have like a two hour block. Mentally, I'm not, I don't have that much muscle to do it all at once. I'm not a marathon runner on content. I'm more of a sprinter. So I'll have like, oh, let me, I just remember this moment or just had this moment or thought, let me just kind of quickly record it. And then you do that enough times and you kind of build it into your routine of every time there's like a moment. But I mean, it takes to your point. It is so exhausting that like, you know, I don't post on Instagram anymore. I don't have a Snap or a TikTok or anything because it's kind of like all the social capital I have is kind of going into the campfire brand, into the founder brand build. And so there are sacrifices, you know, that you've got to make. At least I have had to because I don't have the muscle to do multiple platforms beyond LinkedIn.
- [23:08]
Brad
For you, what advice would you have to a founder that's listening in thinking kind of what I was just sharing at dinner, like, that's cringy. Like, I'm private. I don't want to put myself out there. Like, what could you tell them to get them across the line?
- [23:19]
John Glasgow
Yeah, I was talking to a fellow series B founder last week and he was like, you're my North Star for LinkedIn content. I was like, wow, I'm humbled. But my advice to him was just find a story from the day that and just share the story and you'll get like two likes and maybe people, someone will think it's lame, but that's okay. I think that's part of the journey. And then just share it again and then you'll start to see what resonates. You'll start to find things that work well. You'll get better at sharing it. It's like anything, it's literally just a muscle you're gonna have to build in the beginning. You're gonna be the worst golfer in the world missing the ball. But you've got to power through those moments.
- [23:59]
Brad
What's your most popular post to date? Do you know?
- [24:01]
John Glasgow
It's a good question. For whatever reason, people love to see faces. And so in January I had a post when they got promoted and because we're in office it was easy to kind of do a group photo. But I think that was one of the more popular ones of course. Funding series A, Series B. Those always do well. Big product launches always do well. But the ones that catch you off guard are probably the shorter posts that are just a little snappier and easier to drive. Engagement, a great hook and then like a face of somebody. And to your point earlier, they don't always land on the correct icp, but those are end up being the popular ones of just telling, talking about a win, sharing a very human. People love humanity, sharing a very human story. But I think the main thing is just be authentic. If it's salesy or if it's very clearly AI written, you know it's going to be hard. You can add negative value to the brand. So I think a lot of it is like ensuring it's high quality. Otherwise don't post. And that's a hard bar to hit in the early days, but you'll find it over time.
- [25:03]
Brad
I think the good thing too is like no one cares and no one's watching and no one's liking them anyways. Right. In those early posts I feel like that's for me, when I was getting used to posting I had to remind myself like no one cares. Like in my mind is like I'm going to post and like people I know are going to see. It's like no one cares. Just like a valuable lesson to remember.
- [25:21]
John Glasgow
I mean it does help as the team grows because you can ask the team to amplify.
- [25:25]
Brad
Yeah.
- [25:25]
John Glasgow
In the beginning and there's like two people on the team. Obviously it's not gonna have a lot of value asking friends and family to
- [25:32]
Brad
engage the Thanksgiving chat.
- [25:35]
John Glasgow
But what is fascinating is now I'll meet a lot of people for the first time and they'll be like, I've been following your journey for a year now. I feel like I know you.
- [25:42]
Brad
Yeah.
- [25:42]
John Glasgow
And I think you can really build a relationship again asynchronously with people in a very powerful way that I was not fully aware of until people I met with a CFO the other day and he referenced like six of my posts in the meeting of like the time you mentioned X and your customer that did X. And I think you end up pleasantly surprised about how much people end up consuming of your content. And it's a great way to of course drive pipeline but also engage with your existing customers as well.
- [26:12]
Brad
Final question. I know we're way over on time here. Let's talk about your big picture vision. So we can go out five years, 10 years, however far out you want to go, go. What's the big picture vision for everything that you're building?
- [26:21]
John Glasgow
Yeah, I mean we really want to be synonymous with the kind of global, you know, industry wide, best ERP in the market. I think we're incredibly focused on tech companies today, many us headquartered again the high growth AI natives like you know I mentioned a few earlier like replit and post Hog and others but ultimately it's had this, you know, 600 plus million dollar exit. Building a kind of long term durable public company is really my vision and mission. And I tell my wife this is the last job I'm ever going to have is campfire. And so I think an incredibly long time horizon here. It's not five years, it's probably 30 plus years. And so that's what I'm marching towards. But our mission here is to give superpowers to finance and accounting teams. And so how do we kind of deliver that at scale and that's going to mean moving into new product categories, new Geos, new industries, but everything kind of aligns around that.
- [27:15]
Brad
Amazing. Love the vision. Really had a fun conversation. We'll have to bring you back on every six months, 12 months to keep us updated. Thanks so much for taking the time.
- [27:22]
John Glasgow
Brad. Thanks so much for having me on today. Really enjoyed it.
- [27:27]
Brad
Well, that's all for today's episode of Builders brought to you by the Frontlines. If you want more amazing content like this, visit Frontlines IE where you'll find the library of more than 1500 interviews with founders, marketers and other GTM leaders where we unpack the tactical lessons from their journey. And of course, as always, if you do want to launch your own podcast, we'd love to have a conversation with you. Visit Frontlines IO Podcast as a service. Mention that you listen, mention you love the show, and we'll give you a 10% discount. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode.