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Run the Numbers
Taking Criticism Like a Pro: Airtable's Ambereen Toubassy on Investor Feedback and Curiosity
00:59:42
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- [00:00]
A
Just the other day I was in the car driving my now 16 year old home from school and she mentioned like, Person X, who she had just been doubles partners with in varsity tennis, was an awesome doubles partner. And in my head I was like, oh, she must be saying that because Person X is really good at tennis. They won most of their matches. Like, that's obviously what she means. But something made me say, oh, why do you say that? And her answer was so completely different than why I thought she had said it. She was like, oh, we had several matches in which I played really poorly, Mama. And I was really mad at myself. But she did not make me feel bad. Like, not once did she make me feel bad for missing those points. And it was so powerful having a partner who didn't make me feel bad. Like, that's why she's an amazing partner and I want to be more like her. And I was just so glad that I'd happened to say why, because I wouldn't have learned this really awesome lesson that my childhood learned about actual like, grace under pressure and how you treat a teammate and how that brings out the best in them in the future.
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B
That is powerful. Is this thing on?
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A
Yesterday's price is not today's price.
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B
Welcome back to the Run the Numbers podcast. I'm your host, CJ Gustafson, a guy who's very surprised that these impressive CFOs continue to take my phone calls. I'm joined by Ambreen Tabasi, the CFO of Airtable, to talk about navigating investor pushback, building the right advisory network, and what makes a work product truly exceptional. Hint the font Font matters. Guys, stop using Times New Roman. We're diving into investor feedback, how to take tough criticism without getting defensive, when to bring founders into the hot seat, and how Ambereen's time as both an investor and operator has shaped her approach. We also get into working with advisors, how to find the right bankers and consultants, red flags to watch for and why scaffolding your weaknesses with external expertise can be a game changer. And then there's Quibi, a moonshot that didn't land as planned. Ambreen shares what drew her to the company as cfo, the lessons learned from its high profile rise and fall, and how to balance fiduciary duty with the human side of leadership when things don't go as planned. Stick around. This one's packed with insight, a lot of candor, and a ton of lessons along the way. All this and much, much more after a short word from our sponsors Listen, being a cfo, it's, it's not always that glamorous. Sometimes I find myself watering the plants and taking out garbage in the office. And you know, the best CFOs I know are they're true business leaders. They know how to drive growth in heroic fashion. Unfortunately, the status quo of finance makes that really hard. Because day to day we're mostly up to our eyeballs and spreadsheets and receipts. Thankfully, there's a financial provider who has built a solution to match your ambition. Brex. 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For a limited time, Our audience gets $1,000 off vanta@v a n t a.com metrics that's v a n t a dot com metrics for $1,000 off. Here's a question. Do you feel like you're wasting time and energy on contract renewals or tracking shadow IT spend or oh, this is a bad one Explaining rising software costs to the board. Truth is, traditional spend management is broken. That's where Tropic comes in. Tropic is an intelligent spend management solution that consolidates your spend data and processes into one unified offering, enabling insights and decisive action. It doesn't just show you where the problems are, it helps you solve them, from spotting hidden optimization opportunities like duplicative spend to automating those painful procurement workflows to give you the best market data that turns every vendor negotiation in your favor. I'm a Tropic customer myself. I've been using them for over a year and I love their price checks. They allow me to see if I'm getting a fair market deal instantly. And I'm proud to say that I am no longer using my email as our company's contract repository. I've got every document and renewal neatly organized in my Tropic portal. Isn't it time to turn spend management into your competitive advantage? Visit TropicApp IO MostlyMetrics see what's possible when intelligence drives your decisions. TropicApp IO MostlyMetrics Amberine welcome to the pod.
- [06:22]
A
Thanks for having me, CJ. Really excited to be here.
- [06:24]
B
I feel like this is a long time coming because I've been planning all my podcasting publishing schedules with all the guests in airtable for a while now and it was about time that you came on the show.
- [06:35]
A
I wish you had mentioned that a long time ago. Absolutely love airtable fans. So thank you for being a user.
- [06:43]
B
So that's the key to cold outreach, guys. You gotta tell them that you use their product and they listen.
- [06:48]
A
Love your product.
- [06:49]
B
Love it. I love it, I love it. And I'm excited to get some lessons from you. You've had such a fascinating career and what I noticed going through your resumes, I actually think you've spent more time if there was a clock ticking on the other side of the table rather than being an operator. And I'm wondering if, you know, seeing that vantage point has given you a sense of empathy, you could call it for what others are trying to achieve in a negotiation.
- [07:13]
A
Yeah. So I started my career as a banker, sort of classic New York investment banking analyst. Went to business school, came Back into banking, was a portfolio manager at various hedge funds for more than a dozen years. So to your point, probably spent the most amount of time in that seat. And then roughly kind of eight to 10 years ago, I came on to the operating side. So I've been in all three seats. The advisor seat, the investor seat, the operator seat. And we all know theoretically negotiations go best and most successfully when everyone wins. And you want everyone to walk away with a win. It's much harder to do in practice. And I think the fact that I've physically been in all the seats means I do have, I think you use the word empathy. I do have that empathy of knowing what it feels like to be in the seat, like viscerally know what it feels like to be in the seat and what each person is looking to accomplish for themselves. And I do think it really helps in terms of getting deals done in terms of, you know, even negotiating terms on advisory agreements. And I'm trying to think of like specific, specific examples that would bring that to light. And I know in one of our fundraises actually at Airtable, one of our investors had asked for a couple of structural changes and I think like from a lawyer perspective, it was like, hey, we're giving them a six month ability to do X and it's a really easy give. This doesn't cost us anything. And in my head I was like, oh wait, as an investor, I very much valued having a call option and what would I have paid for a call option in this situation? I literally pulled up my Bloomberg screen, looked up ball, did the calculation of a six month call with these specific attributes and I was like, awesome, this is worth X million dollars to the other side. So we should absolutely give it to them. But we know we can get something back in return. It costs us nothing, gives them tangible value and therefore it'll help our negotiation in this way. And I don't think I would have known that if I hadn't physically been in that seat negotiating for that exact thing with evaluation attached to it.
- [09:35]
B
I'm so glad you brought that up. In particular, helping everybody get a win out of something. Because what a win is for you, it may not be the same thing for the person on the other side of the table. So having been in that seat, you're able to identify the levers that people look at in a more favorable fashion.
- [09:52]
A
Exactly. And in this case, a win for them cost us nothing. So it's not like a win for them was a loss for us. It was a perfect situation where it cost me. Nothing gives you something, and that's sort of like the perfect win, win.
- [10:03]
B
And it sounds like it also gives you a perspective that the pie can get bigger. It's not like it's this binary, I win, you lose, or I get this point and you get zero.
- [10:13]
A
Exactly. And on the pie point, I will say it's really fun being at a software company, being in the tech space, by definition, like software and tech, there's so much growth in the sector, in the industry that you can much more easily work on things where you're like, hey, the pie is getting bigger for everyone. In some legacy industries, like, the pie is definitively not getting bigger. And then it becomes harder because everyone's like, fighting for a bigger slice of a finite or maybe even shrinking pie. And negotiation is definitely harder in that situation.
- [10:48]
B
Yeah, negotiation does become more tense when you feel like the room is shrinking around everybody. Something that I'm realizing is investors give a lot of feedback. Sometimes it's warranted, sometimes it's like that meme, like, oh, so much advice. Thank you from Succession. But I'm curious how you over the years have maybe grown thicker skin or been able to deal with critiques and feedback differently. And I don't know if it's something that being on the other side of the table and having given out feedback before, it's easier to then receive it. But just you as a person, how do you deal with feedback from investors, I guess is the punchline.
- [11:24]
A
Yeah. And I will say, look, I'm currently at a private company. Being in a private company makes it much easier because just the quantity of meetings you're having and the cadence at which you're having them, and the fact that you don't have to do them every quarter for two days straight after earnings when you're at, like, your most tired and most stressed out makes it a lot easier. So everything I say is said from the vantage point of being in a kind of private company CFO seat. And I think it's much, much harder for my friends who are public company CFOs. I will say in my seat. I often think back to my investor days and the questions I asked, and I'm a little bit sort of sheepish or embarrassed. Like, the number of meetings I walked into with like a PNL of every comparable being. Like, why are you at 12% margins when all these eight companies are at 18? Like, shouldn't you at least get to 16? And it was so easy to be like 12 to 18. At least you can get to 16. And now I understand in the operating seat, like, all of the work it takes to make something like that happen. So on the one hand, I definitely look back fondly on my own sort of naiveness and when I made those asks, not realizing how big an ask that was. On the other hand, I do know that investors have a much bigger aperture than I do in my operational role. Like, I spend so much time thinking about airtable and our customers and our product and our people. And by definition, I have less time to think about the rest of the world, whether it be macro, whether it be all the other sectors of software, whether it be kind of geographic differences between our business, other businesses. And so I think of it as like a learning. I was going to say treat, but maybe treats a little too cute. But I think of it anytime I walk into a meeting with an investor. I'm like, okay, this is great. I get to learn from the fact that they have this, this broader aperture and they're doing work on a lot of companies, a lot of segments, a lot of sectors, and I can take advantage of that. I also think in particular I was a long, short investor, so there's no emotional charge for me. If I get the sense that an investor is looking at my sector, I would say as a short, because I've been there and I know, like, you can love a company, just think it's too highly valued and therefore maybe is a short opportunity then, but six months from then you may be long the same stock. So I know sort of like valuation is what determines long and short. And your understanding of a general industry or your evaluation of a management team or a company is not attached to that, like, value judgment, as it were. And so to me, it's all about making sure I'm in the mode of curiosity. So, for example, like, we're all humans, right? So anytime someone asks you a question or says something that implies that they are being critical, your immediate sort of, you can feel in your body, you like, tense up and you have the sense of like, whoa. Like, you know, you're about to sort of criticize me or my company. And I consciously kind of let go of that. Like, I consciously, I'm like, oh, my body just went into that emotional state. I'm going to dial that down, dial up the curiosity and like, lean in and really listen. And the value of that isn't to argue back in the moment or be like, oh, you just said that. But let me show you my chart on, you know, net dollar retention and show you why what you said is wrong. It's not about that. It's about just taking in the thoughts, the feedback, the analysis from the other side. And then we use that very actively. Like as we plan the next year, as we plan our three year strategy. I'm always keeping in mind, okay, here are the things people love about my product. Here are the things people love about this industry. Let me make sure we're doing more of what people love. And also here are the couple of things that people are dubious about. Let's make sure that our decisions will help obviate those concerns. I'll give you a quick example of that. In B2B SaaS specifically, we'll often have the ability to sell ahead. Let's say a customer is using 5,000 seats of airtable and we're making the decision of, hey, when we do the renewal, should we go to 10,000 seats and here are the ways in which the company could use it, or should we only go to 6,000 seats? And, and I will often be the voice in the room that says, let's only do a, you know, the 6,000 seat renewal. Let's have a very specific set of use cases that will take the customer from five to six. And even though that means less growth for this year, in this moment or at this renewal, what I know is we'll be able to turn those on very effectively. And either before the renewal or at the renewal, we'll be having a discussion of the 6,000 going to 8,000 or 10,000. And that means I'm protecting my future renewal rate, I'm protecting my future expansion rate, and I'm effectively making sure I'm not just prioritizing today's growth, I'm prioritizing tomorrow's NDR as well. And that's one example of making sure, like I know NDR is just as important as growth. And so in the specific deal negotiation, as I get like a CFO approval on a deal, I'll be kind of balancing those two things actively.
- [16:35]
B
That was brilliant. That was amazing. Something that stood out to me about what you just said is one of my least favorite sayings is when people are like, oh, feedback is a gift. I think that's so cringe worthy. But the sentiment totally rings true in the sense that if you're getting feedback from someone who has seen more data points than you, in a different context than you as an operator, you're kind of getting this cheat code. If you're willing to listen and to distill all of that, it's One succinct message I remember in high school if you didn't want to read a book, you'd get the Cliff Notes version. I always think about talking to an investor on getting the Cliff Notes version on what's going on in my sector.
- [17:09]
A
That's exactly right. And look like feedback. And now I know, you know, we use coaching because it's meant to sort of soften that it is difficult. Like I still remember the exact feedback I got as a 22 year old investment banking analyst in 85 Broad street in my first job on Wall street because that was the first time, you know, I had sort of, you know, as a student you don't actually get active feedback. You get grades but no one like sits you down and evaluates your human performance. And I still remember that because it was so difficult here. Now I invite feedback. I love feedback. I truly think of it as coaching because I know all the revs through which I have become better as like a cfo, as a leader, as a human. And I wouldn't have been able to do that without that coaching. And so I kind of actively invite it in and enjoy it for that reason because I know it's going to make me better.
- [18:06]
B
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- [19:25]
A
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- [19:29]
B
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- [23:16]
A
That is exactly what I do. So I do, I meditate. I believe in a lot of sort of like the soft kind of spiritual aspects of life. And so for me it really is recognizing in that moment again that like physical, like if your heart rate goes higher, if you get like a clenching in your stomach, like there are all these physical cues where your body's telling you it's tensing up and it's actively sort of reminding yourself from the rational side of your brain. If there's no reason to tense up. This isn't like, you know, I'm not being chased by a tiger. Like calm down and invite the, the curiosity. At other times I will even acknowledge like not in an investor meeting but in an internal meeting. I might acknowledge, like that's difficult to hear, but let's move through it and you know, do X, Y, Z and kind of actively remind the entire room that we want to be in that curiosity phase.
- [24:11]
B
I love that. Those are great tips. As cfo, sometimes we are, how do I say this? It's kind of like we're the receptors of feedback. Some would call it. You're the human shield at some points do you bring founders to meetings when you feel like there's going to be potentially some tough stuff to hear from investors or the market?
- [24:30]
A
Yeah, I mostly screen founder time more from a sense of where is it the best use of like, you know, Howie is our, one of our co founders, our CEO and his time is incredibly valuable and without a doubt his time is more valuable than my time. And so I use his time more in terms of whether it's an investor meeting or a different meeting, even a customer meeting. If it's a technical audience or a very forward thinking audience for whom like the vision or the technology is going to be the main point of differentiation, then it's really important to me that Howie is there because he can do justice to our 10 year vision, our vision on AI, our technical advantages and differentiation because he physically built this product over the last 10 plus years. So those are the meetings in which I prioritize having him. Whereas if it's more about metrics, competitive differentiation, how are deals going? Like questions where I know I can absolutely master the answers and have all the information that someone could possibly need to know in order to evaluate airtable, then I'll take those meetings myself.
- [25:41]
B
That totally makes sense. And I think CFOs in a lot of ways have to translate the macro to the micro. So it's like, okay, I can take that on and I can relay back what the real message from all that is.
- [25:52]
A
Exactly.
- [25:53]
B
I want to transition to talk about working with advisors a bit because as CFOs and as companies really who are trying to build something and get people to buy it, we all have blind spots in some way. Ambreen, how have you worked with advisors to scaffold your weaknesses?
- [26:07]
A
Yeah, and I like the fact that you use scaffold your weaknesses. And I don't know if that came from our free call or otherwise, but it's one of my favorite words and I learned it from a head of people who was at a couple of companies ago. He used that term and I absolutely loved it and I've been using it ever since.
- [26:28]
B
And I stole it from you within 24 hours.
- [26:30]
A
There we go. So we have to give credit to Jim o' Gorman. So if he ever listens to this, he'll know it came from him. It's we all know we're really good at certain things and not as good at others or we might really enjoy certain things and not enjoy others. And I think thinking of it in terms of like here's everything I'm amazing at. And here are the things I need to scaffold with other people's skill set. I think it's just like a really much easier way of describing it as opposed to saying, you know, you have strengths and weaknesses and like you have to somehow apologize for where you're weak. It's more celebrating where you're strong and scaffolding the areas that you're not. And I use it, I'll get to the advisor point of it, but I use it a lot internally as well. So I'd say in terms of teams, I often most of my teams end up taking like mbti, which is like a behavioral assessment. So it's not just about skills, it's also about preferences and behaviors. And then I personally, for example, in mbti, I am an infp, the I is introvert. And so I give myself allowances. Like if I've been in a full day off site and I know we then have a dinner, I'll give myself 30 minutes between the off site and the dinner to just go recharge. Because I know it's a lot for me to be in like fully on extrovert mode for that many hours. So I'll just give myself that time out. Like that's for me managing myself. I also the P of it means that I on my team have like a specific team called like Finance Operations, which is a group of project managers and program managers who are constantly like taking dates and doing the work life plans. Because I'm more of a wake up in the morning and figure out what that I'm most curious about and what I want to do. And so therefore I have a team who makes sure that we're doing all of the things that we need to be doing today to be prepared for fiscal 26, planning for Q1 results and doing that because I happen to know that that's not where I spike in terms of organization. So that's about me in terms of preferences and behaviors. As a on the skillset side, as someone who was a banker and an investor, I will not spike on technical accounting. And so I make sure when it comes to hiring a team, like I spend a lot of time on the accounting hires and I always want to have an incredible chief accounting officer, incredible controller, because I know that's where I want to delegate to someone who I can absolutely trust and who's the best at their game because I cannot up the game in that avenue. So it's a combination of like managing your own time, surrounding yourself with the Right. People on behavior axes as well as skill set axes. Moving to. When it comes to advisors, I think it's somewhat the same. For example, I joined airtable in 2021. We did two fundraisers like our Series E and our Series F. We did not use banks or advisors to do those fundraisers because I've done so many and I knew between myself and a few people on my team, we could absolutely do ourselves. On the other hand, we also were working through a pretty big overhaul of pricing and packaging because, you know, Airtable had been around at that point for 9ish years and had kind of, in a somewhat ad hoc way, layered in new products. And, you know, especially we had seen so much success from enterprise, where customers in enterprises were just using us and like going from the PLG engine to enterprise, and we were sort of like just kind of quickly cobbled together enterprise pricing. And we knew we needed to step back and do that in as that thoughtful way as possible. And for that, we actually brought in an advisor. We brought in Simon Kutcher, who are pricing advisors, and made sure we had exactly the right partner from that firm. And in that same year, you didn't use any bankers for fundraisers, but used Best in Class Pricing Advisor on the pricing and packaging redo.
- [30:32]
B
That's a great tactical example. And when I hear you go through that, it sounds like you can use advisors to further lean into your own strengths rather than trying to learn everything on the fly. Like, it's almost, almost accepting that I'm really great at this thing. I can be also great at realizing where my blind spots are and not try to actually, you know, become a tax expert or become a pricing expert. And that's okay.
- [30:57]
A
Exactly. Exactly 100%.
- [30:59]
B
I have this weird theory, and you can tell me if this sounds completely bonkers, but it came from my friend Brian. He was talking about that he's attracted to investing in funds that have the highest fees, actually. So, like the one we were using as an example was Rentech. The hedge fund had, I think 30% carry and 3% management fee, which is higher than most. And then we got to talking about advisors and saying, well, like this law firm charges actually like $200 more per hour for their partners and the other ones. And then what we were saying is sometimes you actually want to follow the higher fees. And as a CFO internally, I get like this visceral reaction like, I don't, I don't want to pay any more than I have to. But I'm curious, do you think you should be willing to pay more for great advisors. Like, or is that a place where people potentially, you know, fumble because they try to cut corners? What's your perspect perspective on that?
- [31:49]
A
Yeah, so I apply this to like everything, which is I want to measure the value I will get from something and then I want to pay less than the value than I will get from something because I can buy something really quote unquote cheap and get no value, in which case I ended up way overspending. Because yes, it was the cheapest, call it, you know, accounting firm we could find. But then we had to go hire two other people to correct the poor work they did. And so really like, yes, it was cheap in the moment, but it was a really poor use of time and money. And so for me it's all about sort of like the comparison of what am I paying and what am I getting. And in your hedge fund example, obviously I spent a lot of time in the kind of 2 and 20 world. I never had the fortune of being at a 3 and 30 world. But it's irrelevant whether you're paying 2 and 20 or 10 and 1. What really matters is what are your returns net of the fees. So if you are going to net of fees be up 30%, would you, would you not rather have that than net of lower fees being up 5%? So it's all about like, hey, what is the true upside? What will I get netting out all of the fees? So when it comes to making those decisions, like, that's always what I'm basing them on. Now obviously there are situations in which the value will be much higher in situations in which the value will be much lower. So for example, if, if a company's working to sell itself, you want the highest quality advisors you can find to make sure you maximize the valuation of your company. On the other hand, if you're working on like a really tiny tuck in where you're buying someone, like the value of the advisor probably isn't that great. You just need to make sure that documentation gets done and the agreements get signed. But you yourself have a really good sense of valuation. And like, you know, if it's an acqui hire like how much equity you want to give to various people. And so the need for the advisor is just much lower.
- [33:52]
B
And I think selling yourself as a company is the perfect example because there are certain costs and fees with advisors that you want to optimize for versus maximize for. And if you're selling a company like you only get one shot and if you're looking at the banker fee and it's 4% versus 5% or 6% with somebody else, that's probably not a place to get cute and be cheap. Amber in not all advisors are created equal. How do you identify which bankers or consultants excel at particular things?
- [34:19]
A
Yeah, I mean what I would say is the great thing about the CFO world is like it's a pretty tight network and we're all incredibly like available and helpful to each other. And usually I'll say this applies to me as well as others who ask questions like very seldom will someone say which firm do you guys use for xyz. It's more which partner do you use? And to me the person we work with is much more important than the firm. Whether that's an audit partner, whether that's a law partner. You want to work with the right partner and partners will sometimes change firms or the same firm will have really high quality partners and not as high quality partners. So I'm usually focused on the person we are going to work with as opposed to the firm we're going to work with.
- [35:09]
B
That makes sense because you can't have a relationship with a logo. Any red flags to watch out for when building those types of relationships. And maybe an example would be like the managing partner comes in and they sell you the world, but then when they leave, they staff you with like you know, the first year analyst after that.
- [35:26]
A
Hey, as I was a first year analyst and worked on a sales side where our client was incredibly happy because sometimes the first year analysts care so, so much more deeply about that one transaction.
- [35:36]
B
Okay, there we go.
- [35:37]
A
Their first sell side ever than a managing partner might. So no shade on seniority. But I will say I think it's about like fitting the right person and the right firm for the right application. Like I'll give you one example when I was at this was a couple of jobs ago where we were like, you know, effectively like doing private equity style M and A. And we had a large accounting firm that did most our diligence and most of our deals were relatively large and it made sense. And at one point we were looking at a fairly small business that we were buying. It was sort of like a tuck in for a portfolio company and one of these like big four accounting firms when they came in with their accounting diligence. I remember like it was like a two hour meeting. We were going through this packet and like way towards the end of the meeting and at the end of the packet we pulled up to like the Cash recon. And I remember looking at it and being like, like, wait, are you telling me that their bank account is showing more money than you can trace in the economics of the business? Like, isn't this a pretty big red flag? Like, do we think there could be something shady going on? And they were like, yes, that is what it's saying. And I'm like, why is it like at the end of this meeting, like buried here? And they were like, oh, cash recons are always item number 26 on our diligence Meadows. And I'm thinking like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. But it makes sense, right? If you're a large accounting firm, mostly working on large companies, mostly, maybe even public companies who have all the controls and processes in the world, that makes sense. But if you're working on like a tiny private company with unsophisticated accounting, like, suddenly you need to care about and ask questions that you would never need to care about or ask in a larger company, public company context. And so we immediately were like, okay, deals below the size, we use these, like boutique accounting firms who are used to working in this universe and deals above these sizes. We work with our standard RO of like, you know, the top four accounting firms. Again, it's not like they didn't do a great job. Like, it was a very, very thorough diligence. It was just their area of focus or their filter for what could become important in that case was very different. Another example, similarly, when we were structuring the, the structure for an incubation that I, that I worked on, based on the way we were raising money and who the strategic partners were, it made a lot of sense to structure it as a pass through partnership as opposed to a C Corp. And we were raising some money from VCs and had a very sort of VC oriented law firm. And the VCs and the VC oriented law firm were like, why would we ever use a partnership? Like, employees won't understand that they're not getting options in RSUs. Like, this is going to create all these issues. And at that point, you know, we had just seen a lot of private equity firms go public and upseat partnership structures and, and it generated like a tremendous amount of value for those private investors upfront through like the transfer, tax, valuation, et cetera. And so we brought in a private equity oriented law firm to help quantify and describe like why in this case, given the structure of how we were raising money, the pass through partnership made a lot of sense and exactly how much valuation upside we would have for all the initial investors based on a future UPSEA transaction. And so you just have to bring in the advisors and the people who are used to kind of playing the game that you are trying to play as opposed to a different game.
- [39:06]
B
That's such a good way to put it. You want to put the right players in the field for the right game. I want to transition a bit to talk about work products, something that me and you, I think are maybe nerds over. Let's just say we look at the color of the bullet points on the slides and you had sent me this amazing quote from James Joyce in the particular is contained the universal. I was hoping you could unpack that for us.
- [39:28]
A
Yeah, so there's obviously sort of like the literary power of specific individual examples that others can resonate with even though they're not written generally. And just the other day I was in the car driving, my now 16 year old, just turned 16 two days ago, home from school and we were talking about, she mentioned like, you know, person X, who she had just been doubles partners with in varsity tennis, was an awesome doubles partner. And in my head I was like, oh, she must be saying that because person X is really good at tennis. They won most of their matches. Like, that's obviously what she means. But something made me say, oh, why do you say that? And her answer was so completely different than why I thought she had said it. She was like, oh, we had several matches in which I played really poorly, Mama. And I was really mad at myself. Which she did not make me feel bad. Like, not once did she make me feel bad for missing those points. And I realized when I'm in that situation, I would make my partner feel bad. And it was so powerful having a partner who didn't make me feel bad. Like, that's why she's an amazing partner and I want to be more like her. And I was just so glad that I'd happened to say why, because my interpretation of she's a great doubles partner was completely kind of wrong. And I wouldn't have learned this really awesome lesson that my child had learned about actual like grace under pressure and how you treat a teammate and how that brings out the best in them in the future. And so I just thought like the abstract, she's a great tennis partner didn't capture the specificity of why she's a great tennis partner.
- [41:06]
B
That is powerful and that's real life within business. I feel like it rings true as well, because you could be going through a quarterly business review or a Board meeting and people are like, oh, you know, we're doing great with this new product launch. And it's like, well, why are you doing great with this new product launch? And we were talking about this yesterday and laughing. It's like, well, customers think we're great. Like, they're really happy. It's like, well, can you pinpoint anything within that that's more specific to actually, like, make me feel comfortable with that statement?
- [41:35]
A
No, it's exactly right. It's about, like, give me details, give me data, give me, you know, dates if we're going to do a launch, like, give me directions if we're telling our salespeople to sell, you know, how are we specifically directing them to sell it? And to your point, like, in that example we were talking about on a product launch, it turns out, like, yes, we are doing great, but when you delve into the details, it's because we're closing deals faster. Our ASP is higher on that. Like, we have these specific customer wins that are with flagship customers that we can create case studies around. And, like, just the specificity on why are we doing great and how can we, you know, Double click, double click, double click.
- [42:14]
B
We were talking to Naim Ishak, the CFO of Checker, and he was formerly one of the business leaders at Square, and he was talking about how from the outside, everyone thought that Square was doing so good for this reason, but it was really like three lefts made a right. And that can also happen in business. Maybe your average deal size isn't up, the velocity of transactions are, but if you just accept at face value, like, yeah, awesome, we're doing great. You never actually get to the root cause and then you can't accurately predict the business past that.
- [42:43]
A
That.
- [42:43]
B
How do you think the specific plays a role in your job as a finance leader?
- [42:48]
A
Yeah, I mean, right now we're in the middle of planning for the next fiscal year. And I'd say, I'm reminded, like, again and again, as we meet with the teams on the ground who build the actual business, make the numbers happen. Like, finance effectively. Like, we measure and report output metrics, but we need the actual teams to generate the business that. That sort of creates the input metrics. And the more specific we get, the more I think we're able to help the business be successful. And I'll try to kind of give you specificity around that. So we'll start the planning process with, like, a general sense of like, hey, we've done the analysis, we've looked at our cohorts you know, we're forecasting, you know, 35% growth for this business. That doesn't really help. Help the teams on the ground know what they should be doing differently or where they should be spending their energies. So we've got in the habit of being much more specific. Like if it's our enterprise business, it's saying, hey, this year we had, in, you know, this particular segment, we had this much gross acv. This was a renewal rate. This is how many reps we had. This was our productivity. This is where we ended up on net. Our forecast for next year is, is Exxon gross acv. It'll come from these four products. These are in the bag. Based on how we've already done. This is where we need you to exert kind of additional attention to make sure we get to the full gross ACV number. Or here's the embedded renewal rate in our net forecast. Here is like the layer cake of all our current customers by their activation levels. Here are the 10 customers where activation efforts need to be made in order to make sure that we actually have the renewal rate that we're forecasting. It's making it real. So we can go, for example, to post sales and walk them through the 10 specific customers where they need to put in effort over the next year, as opposed to just saying, hey, renewal rate should be 94%. Which again makes it harder for people to know what should I do differently? Where should I put a team? Where do I need to staff differently? The PLG side of our business, it's similar, right? Like we want to go down to like this specific upgrade rate has made these improvements this year. Let's think about what you guys did on the ground. What led to this improvement in upgrade rate and what are the four things we can do next year to inflect this more or less. And then obviously the usual thing of when I move this lever, it gives me this impact. This other lever gives me more impact. Which one is harder to move, which one's easier to move. And just getting into like the guts of the business with the team that will do the physical work to untie that.
- [45:22]
B
Something I'm always just so blown away by is really smart CFOs like yourself who are able to do back of the envelope math really quick and come up with something that's so close to the pin. And what I've realized is that they're not just like great estimators. It's because they've been in the guts of the business and gone and Seen the specifics at that level that they're able to do what seems like this magic trick up at the top.
- [45:46]
A
Yes. My favorite thing is when we're in a meeting and someone on my team does the same thing, because it's really difficult when you live in a giant Excel model full of cohorts and waterfalls because it takes so much effort to audit your waterfalls and your cohorts and your Excel that sometimes you get lost in there. But you have to put that aside and come back from the completely different altitude of, like, top down. And you just look at the numbers. You're like, wait, that doesn't make sense. Like, how come we're gonna have, you know, 200 million where we've never had more than 20 million? Like, some things off, like, it's just like a very different altitude, and you have to be able to almost put your model away, come back and look at it from the summary sheet as opposed to, like, the guts of the model. And the coolest thing is when I see people on the team who are also in the guts of the model doing it, it's much easier for me to do it because I'm not in the guidance guts of the model. So there's nothing to distract me but the big picture.
- [46:45]
B
I couldn't agree with you more. I want to transition a bit to talk about another point in your career. So you worked at Quibi, which was an incredibly audacious moonshot idea, and it didn't land as planned. But I'm curious what drew you to it in the first place? And maybe what you think is misunderstood about what the team accomplished.
- [47:03]
A
What drew me to it in the first place was, like, the audacity and scale of the idea. And Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was a founder of Quibi, like, his energy for the idea. Basically, he was like, I've spent my entire career in Hollywood. We tell these beautiful premium stories. The world has gone to short form video. Audiences do not have the patience for long form video. And I really want to bring this premium storytelling to this generation and package premium storytelling in a way that resonates with today's audience. And part of his pitch or his own kind of internal thinking was, we, as premium storytellers in Hollywood have always been ahead of the curve. We used to tell stories on radio, then we put pictures on them, and that became movies. Movies went to television, television within television. We went to sitcoms, we went to game shows, we went to reality. And, like, Hollywood made all this happen. And this incredible talent of storytelling was always ahead of the curve. And I think it was sort of like both heartbreaking to him that Hollywood wasn't ahead of the curve. And also he saw the huge opportunity to bring that premium storytelling to short form video and avenues and distribution. So just his passion and like the power of storytelling. And maybe it's because, like, personally, I love art, I love reading, I love the visual mode of communication, all of which I love as a consumer. Like, I have no ability to create those things. So if I could in some sort of like business finance sense, be a part of this creative endeavor, I was just so excited to do that. And just I loved the mission and the passion. It's the most fun three years I've had in the entirety of my life and career and I would not trade it in for anything. Now you did mention obviously that we. It was a moonshot idea, it wasn't successful. I think the fact that we always knew it was going to be difficult. Like, you know, even Jeffrey in meetings would say, hey, this is somewhere between impossible and improbable. The 300 people that attracted were very specific DNA of people. Like, we were all people who wanted to do more when people said we were doing something stupid and impossible. And that that type of person is really fun to be around. That environment of we're gonna do something and no one thinks we can do it just kind of elevates the level at which you show up every day and makes it incredibly fun and inspiring. Now, we all had to also acknowledge when we failed that we utterly failed. But it really didn't take away from the joy of trying to do something impossible. And that whole group of people, it's a really tight knit group. Like, I stay in touch with all of my peers, a lot of people who are on my team from Quibi and I know that's the case for like, it was a really small team that worked together really intensely. And I think it's like the relationships from that experience are really, really long lasting. I mentioned Jim o' Gorman at the top of this conversation. Like, him and I got to know each other at Quibi.
- [50:16]
B
I think that's so commendable. And to shoot for the moon and come up short, like, that's just the game we've signed up to play. And for you to speak about it so openly, I appreciate it because I feel like there are a lot of times where things don't go as planned, whether you're a CFO or any other part of the org and you kind of shrink back in to say, oh, you know, here are all the negative things about it, but there were a lot of positives as well. Like some great content still came out of it. And also you dealt with it in a really responsible way, which is probably understated. So Quibi failed fast but responsibly. Like I hit on, but like as a cfo, how do you balance the fiduciary responsibility that goes along with that?
- [50:53]
A
Yeah, it was really difficult. We had raised a lot of capital. We had created like 100amazing shows with really talented content makers. We had an amazing set of employees. As I mentioned, we had investors, strategic and financial, who had trusted us to like create something out of nothing. So I'd say like the entire like all the stakeholders were so high quality and so committed that we felt a huge sense of responsibility and obligation to 100% of those stakeholders. And the reason we failed fast as opposed to like pivot several times, was basically saying, hey, like we don't know if it was the timing with, you know, Covid hitting when we were trying to do something that was all about short form on the go content. But we don't know when Covid will end. We don't know exactly what we will need to change. And, and acknowledging that we had failed, while difficult, it felt like the most responsible thing to do was return money to investors. And we had a huge amount of capital left that we could return to investors. Make sure we transferred the content to a buyer who could still distribute it and therefore the content itself would see consumers and be enjoyed and continue to have value over time. And then we also wanted to treat employees fairly, especially given that it was Covid. And by failing fast, we were able to take care of all the stakeholders in a way that respected what they had done for the company. I will say for me personally and a lot of people who are on my team now, I discovered airtable at Quibi. We were customers of Airtable in general. Airtable really spikes in the media industry because we are, you know, we're an app building platform. Incredibly visual, like incredibly powerful in terms of being a relational database, but with a really user friendly, almost like creative aspect to it. And so we used Airtable at Quibi. It's what allowed us to create 100 shows and an app on an app ad platform all in the span of 18 months. So I discovered the business value of Airtable. I also something that I love about Airtable is that we're a B2B SaaS platform that adds enormous business value to our customers. We also have a human empowerment Angle and the best way I can sort of describe that is when we were shutting Quibi down, it was almost effectively one of the key men in the sale of our content, became a content strategy person who was an airtable champion who was like early in her career, but had built our entire sort of title tracker and how it connected to all of the content assets. And I remember like having a conversation in the deal mode of hey, unless you guys hire person X, like, your acquisition will not have the same amount of value because this is a person who knows all of the details. And I thought that was so cool. And I hear now stories all the time of our champions and builders within our enterprise customers where someone would be like, you made me look like a rock star. And so I, in front of my boss or people think I'm a magician based on how I can pull data together or make sure this project goes incredibly well or the value that I add in doing what I do. So I personally love that I get to be a part of like an amazing B2B SaaS platform that's also an amazing human empowerment platform in terms of like, our mission is to democratize software creation. And I wouldn't have discovered any of that had I not been at CUI either.
- [54:30]
B
That's awesome. I was just saying to someone on my team the other day, no matter what you're buying, if you're buying airtable, if you're buying even the service work of a lawyer, at the end of the day, there's the product, but then there's also, I'm buying it because I want you to make me look good. I want you to make me look really, really cool and awesome in front of my boss. And I think you just nailed it with that explanation. It's like you help people do these tasks to be done, but they came out of it with this, hey, this was freaking awesome. And you made me look like a rock star like that. That's the true value. I want to transition to what we call our long ass lightning round. So ask every successful person that comes on here, what's something that you've screwed up on the job before? It could be any role in the past.
- [55:12]
A
Yeah, I mean the most tangible one is that when I was a pm, there are certainly positions that went against me and a couple of the biggest ones, like I can like remember everything about the day of walking into the office and whether it was earnings or something else and. And kind of I can pretty much like like a movie replay that entire experience for myself.
- [55:31]
B
Were they Were they longs or shorts?
- [55:34]
A
In this case, there were a couple of longs.
- [55:36]
B
Okay.
- [55:37]
A
It's.
- [55:38]
B
It's funny though how, like, all those years later we'll remember the specific situation and that like, microsecond and how it made us feel like, I have a couple of those in my life as well. Next one I got for you. If you could tell your younger self something, knowing what you know today, what would you tell?
- [55:53]
A
I think I'd say, I mean, this is sort of like a, I guess, oxymoron. Like both time flies, I. E. I cannot believe how many experiences I've had and jobs I've had and how many years it's been since, like, you know, I graduated undergrad. So time flies. On the other hand, it's like never too late to go do something completely different. Like, I think I often speak to young people who think so exhaustively about the next move, move, and whether is it a good idea to go from strategy to being a pm like, as always, like a once in a lifetime thing. And if you make that shift, you can never go do anything else. And like, you know, we started the conversation by my saying, I've been in all of these different seats and I didn't become an operator until like, I was in my early 40s. And so I think it's just like never too late to do something different. So in my case, that means I don't overthink things. A lot of the way my career has unfolded has been serendipitous, and I enjoy following the serendipity.
- [56:53]
B
What's the saying? Like, the days are long, but the years are short?
- [56:55]
A
100%. I also have three kids, two of whom are in college, so I can attest to that from that lens as well.
- [57:01]
B
I have a one year old and a three year old and the days feel so damn long, especially weekends, like when they're not in daycare or something. But then I was looking at my daughter the other day, I was like, your face completely changed and you're using words that I had no idea that you knew. Okay, more of a technical one. Can you walk me through your finance software stack? What tools does your team use to get the job done today?
- [57:21]
A
Yeah, I'd say I think of the software stack sort of holistically across like, you know, finance and product and sales. But we use workday for HRIs as well as financials, and then obviously salesforce on the sales side and we use stripe on the PLG side. So in terms of workday grace with salesforce and Stripe for Revreck and the rest of it. We use Captivate IQ for commission. We use airtable in so many areas of, you know, finance, legal, IT data, which are all the teams that I'm responsible for. In fact, I'm really proud. We used to, like, at the, you know, heyday of like three years ago, I think we internally had 400 niche SaaS applications. We now have half as many. And I have an entire base where I have all of our internal airtable use cases and the exact software vendors that we replace internally and the software vendors that a customer could replace internally with airtable because the power of the platform is just enormous.
- [58:25]
B
That's badass. Last one I got for you. What's the craziest thing you've ever had someone try to expense?
- [58:30]
A
Oh wow. They were not successful in doing this. But the craziest thing was someone tried to expense a used car. And don't even ask me what the rationale was, but like, it did not go through.
- [58:42]
B
That's amazing. Did they try to expense it on Brex? I'm wearing their sweatshirt right now.
- [58:46]
A
No, of course not. Brex would never let that happen.
- [58:48]
B
Brechts would catch that. Wow, that's a crazy story. That's probably the most. That's at least physically the largest crazy expense. So thank you for sharing that, Ambreen. I really appreciate all your insights and I know you're so busy, so thanks for carving out time for us.
- [59:04]
A
No, thank you so much for inviting me. This was really fun.
- [59:08]
B
Run the Numbers is a mostly LLC production, yelling an intro by Fat Joe, artwork by some AI thingamajig podcast and video editing is done by cleancast@cleancast IO. Nothing said on this podcast is intended to be business or investment advice. It's the sole opinion of me. A guy who feeds his dog too much ice cream and has a history of net operating losses. Lol. If you like this podcast, please hit subscribe. It would mean a lot to me and also check out most of the Metrics dot com. That's my newsletter where I explore business models and financial metrics. Thanks for riding with me. Share this with your friends. Peace.