Ep. 456 - Altair COO, Stephanie Buckner

Summary

Episode Summary: Ep. 456 - Altair COO, Stephanie Buckner

Podcast Title: Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief
Host: Cameron Herold
Guest: Stephanie Buckner, COO of Altair
Release Date: March 11, 2025

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1. Introduction to Stephanie Buckner and Altair

Cameron Herold welcomes Stephanie Buckner, the Chief Operating Officer of Altair, highlighting her impressive track record of leading 35 acquisitions over her 14-year tenure at the company.

• Stephanie Buckner: "Altair was founded in 1985 and we went public actually in 2017. We're a software company that provides solutions for simulation, high performance computing, and data analytics, or AI." (02:55)

Stephanie provides a comprehensive overview of Altair, explaining its core focus on simulation technologies that enable industries like automotive and aerospace to design and test products virtually, significantly reducing costs and improving safety outcomes.

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2. Path to Leadership: Stephanie’s Journey at Altair

Stephanie details her progression within Altair, emphasizing her multifaceted roles before ascending to the COO position three and a half years ago.

• Stephanie Buckner: "I think the number one thing is execution. And so I built trust in my ability to execute." (12:24)

Starting in partner management, she expanded into corporate development and led major acquisitions. Her ability to implement large-scale reorganizations swiftly earned her the trust necessary to assume the COO role.

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3. Altair’s Transition to a Public Company

Discussing Altair’s decision to go public in 2017, Stephanie explains the necessity for capital in a consolidating market and how this move facilitated numerous strategic acquisitions.

• Stephanie Buckner: "When we went public, we weren't in the Data analytics and AI space. And then we made a large acquisition of a public data analytics company in 2018." (08:20)

This strategic move positioned Altair for sustained growth, allowing the company to acquire specialized technologies and integrate them effectively into their offerings.

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4. Strategic Acquisitions and Integration

Stephanie elaborates on Altair’s acquisition strategy, focusing on cultural fit and seamless integration without a dedicated integration team.

• Stephanie Buckner: "What makes an acquisition successful... is a culture fit." (23:51)

Altair ensures that newly acquired companies are immediately integrated into relevant departments, fostering excitement and collaboration across the organization.

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5. Managing Growth and Operational Complexity

With over 3,500 employees globally, Stephanie discusses her approach to managing diverse business segments without getting bogged down in daily operations.

• Stephanie Buckner: "I try not to dive deep on everything all the time. I need to give clear direction... and then pull back out and trust that my team is going to execute." (14:02)

Her focus remains on executing the CEO’s vision, optimizing operational efficiencies, and ensuring the right people are in the right roles to drive the company forward.

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6. Navigating the Pressures of a Public Company

Stephanie addresses the challenges of being a public entity, including quarterly performance pressures and maintaining employee focus amidst stock fluctuations.

• Stephanie Buckner: "The pressure is all about the numbers in the end." (26:57)

Despite these pressures, Altair’s strong performance and supportive culture mitigate distractions, keeping employees engaged and aligned with the company’s goals.

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7. Fostering a Collaborative and Inclusive Company Culture

A key aspect of Altair’s success, as highlighted by Stephanie, is its emphasis on a team-oriented culture where contributions from all departments are valued equally.

• Stephanie Buckner: "It's a team effort that shines through and kind of gets beaten down." (34:05)

This approach ensures that sales, technical teams, and support staff collaborate seamlessly, fostering a meritocratic environment focused on results rather than hierarchy.

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8. Talent Acquisition and Retention Strategies

Stephanie discusses Altair’s global presence and competitive yet balanced compensation strategies, emphasizing culture, flexibility, and employee appreciation as key retention tools.

• Stephanie Buckner: "People stay because they love the culture and the freedom and flexibility that Altair has provided." (30:28)

By offering remote work options and a flexible environment, Altair attracts diverse talent worldwide, ensuring high performance and loyalty without incurring the highest market salaries.

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9. Advice for Emerging Leaders

Reflecting on her career, Stephanie shares valuable advice for young professionals aiming for leadership roles.

• Stephanie Buckner: "Be confident... when somebody promotes you, you have earned and deserve the opportunity to showcase that you deserve to be there." (34:32)

She emphasizes the importance of confidence, continuous learning, and not fearing to ask questions as essential traits for professional growth and leadership success.

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10. Conclusion

Cameron Herold wraps up the episode by commending Stephanie’s insights and leadership at Altair. He reiterates the value of fostering confidence and competence in team members, echoing Stephanie’s advice for emerging leaders.

• Cameron Herold: "A leader's core job is to grow the connections, the confidence and the competence of our direct reports." (35:44)

Stephanie thanks Cameron for the opportunity, and listeners are encouraged to subscribe for more insights from top COOs.

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Notable Quotes:

• Stephanie Buckner: "Knowledge is power." (08:20)
• Stephanie Buckner: "It's a team effort that shines through and kind of gets beaten down." (34:05)
• Stephanie Buckner: "Be confident... you have earned and deserve the opportunity to showcase that you deserve to be there." (34:32)

Timestamp Key:

• 02:55 – Introduction to Altair’s core business
• 12:24 – Path to COO and importance of execution
• 08:20 – Going public and strategic acquisitions
• 23:51 – Successful acquisitions hinge on cultural fit
• 14:02 – Managing operational complexity without micromanaging
• 26:57 – Pressures of being a public company
• 30:28 – Talent acquisition and retention strategies
• 34:05 – Fostering a collaborative culture
• 34:32 – Advice to younger self
• 35:44 – Importance of leader’s role in team development

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This episode offers a deep dive into the strategic and operational leadership that Stephanie Buckner brings to Altair. From navigating the complexities of a public company to fostering a unified and motivated workforce, Stephanie's insights provide valuable lessons for aspiring COOs and leaders aiming to drive their organizations towards sustained success.

Transcript

[Cameron Herold]

Hey, it's Cameron Herald, the host of the Second in Command podcast. Before we dive in, there's something you need to know. If you're a coo, VP Operations, or you're in any role where you're the second in command to the CEO, the COO alliance is the place for you. If you're the integrator to the visionary, you're going to want to join us. The COO alliance is the world's leading community for the second in command. We've had over 500 members like you join from 17 countries to grow their skills, connections and confidence. You'll get the tools, friendships, and a 10x guarantee to ensure that you get your money's worth. Go to cooalliance.com to learn more and see if you qualify. You can even book a free call with our team to ask questions. Now, let's jump into this week's episode.

[Stephanie Buckner]

The reason people stay is because they love the culture, the freedom and flexibility that Altair has provided. So before COVID you were able to work from home and have. Flexibility was never this strict philosophy because the concept was always if you perform well and you do your job, you're actually going to do a better job if you're happier. Welcome to the Second in Command podcast produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold. In the second in command podcast, we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made them the chief behind the chief. And now here's your co host, former COO of a multi eight figure remote company and alumni member of the COO Alliance, Savannah Brewer.

[Cameron Herold]

Right. Our guest today is Stephanie Buckner, who is a wicked smart Engineer. As the COO of Altair, she has led 35 of the acquisitions for Altair, has been with the organization for 14 years, including when the company went public seven years ago. Incredible growth story, incredible leader. You're going to get some amazing insights as to what it's like to build a high performance team of 3,500 of individuals globally and also dealing with teams that are wicked smart. So we'll see you on the inside. This is an episode that you can watch on our second in command podcast YouTube channel and also listen to anywhere that you listen to podcasts. So, Stephanie, welcome to the Second Command podcast.

[Stephanie Buckner]

Thank you for having me.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah, I'm looking forward to this. Looking forward to learning from you and getting some exposure into the business that you're running and also to you as a leader. I know there's going to be some Stuff we're going to talk about, which has made you pretty unique as a CEO that we talked about just before we started. But why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about Altair, what the company is, what the company does, kind of give us that little helicopter tour. So if people haven't heard of it, they know what the business does.

[Stephanie Buckner]

Yeah, absolutely. Happy to. So Altair was founded in 1985 and we went public actually in 2017. We're a software company that provides solutions for what is called simulation, high performance computing and data analytics, or AI. And we really started on the simulation side. And when I say simulation, what I mean by that is it's about the physics analysis. So if you think a car, if you're going to design and build a car, you want to make sure that if it crashes, that all the occupants survive and have the lowest likelihood of injury. And so you want to design for that. So historically, the way you would test your design is you would build your car and you would literally crash it into a wall. And you can imagine that's pretty cost inefficient and is a bit of a challenge to repeat the designs and so forth to optimize. And so what Altair began around is really taking all of the different physics. So crash simulation is one example. But there's computational fluid dynamics, there's structural analysis, there's, you know, every type of physics you can imagine electromagnetics, and actually building a virtual model of the car on your computer and then taking the physics equation and calculating them as part of that model, you're trying to simulate and test. So it's all about verification and validation.

[Cameron Herold]

Wow. Crazy. All right, so this is pretty, I mean, as you clearly just outlined, pretty scientific work that you guys are doing as a company. Who do you sell to? Who are your typical customers? Is it any of the big manufacturing companies, Is it engineering, is it countries?

[Stephanie Buckner]

It is every single automotive OEM that you can think of, every single aerospace company in the world, almost every single bank, actually, because we play in a really significant way for data analytics and AI. So that's the third segment that we play in. So simulation is one, data analytics, AI is sort of the second. And then the third is high performance computing, where that I would say is more like, like weather systems or government contracts in that sense. So where you've got a very, very large computer, let's say that you need to optimize the throughput on and the job structure. So that is. That was fair. All right.

[Cameron Herold]

Wild. No, this is great. Why did the company decide to go public in 2017?

[Stephanie Buckner]

Yeah, so we are still led by our founder, who is our CEO still today. But in 2017, we felt like we couldn't compete in the market because there was quite a bit of market consolidation that was going on with acquisitions. And we needed capital really to be competitive there. And so we, by going public, we were able to get significant cash to then continue on. And I mean, since 2017, we've done a very significant number of mergers and acquisitions. And so that's been core to building out our technologies. We have sort of a reputation for doing smaller, very deep technical acquisitions where we find amazing founders and entrepreneurs that have designed something really fantastic from a technology standpoint. But they either haven't reached scale or they may not business oriented. And so by coming together with us, we're able to take that to the next level.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You guys are the marketing and sales arm, the operational arm for some of this tech too. How did they fund the company prior to going public? Was it all bootstrapped cash?

[Stephanie Buckner]

Was it VC financed or $1,500 originally? We are a rare unicorn that did not go get VC funding.

[Cameron Herold]

Incredible. What a great story. I love that he's still the founder and still passionate about the business. So then all of a sudden you come into the organization. How many employees were in the organization when you joined three years ago? Just over three years ago.

[Stephanie Buckner]

Well, so I actually joined the organization 14 years ago, but my role as COO just, you know, three and a half or so years ago. And so I've actually been with Altair and held many different roles before becoming the coo. But yeah, I can't even remember how many people there were at the time. We were much, much smaller though, and have grown really tremendously.

[Cameron Herold]

Okay, that's. I didn't know that. I missed that in the briefing document that you'd been there all that time, which is amazing because now I can ask a couple of other questions related to it. Then how did the company change when it went public? So when you were there and the company went public, what was some of the cultural shifts that happened through that? Can you speak to that? And what would you have done differently? Or what would the company have done differently knowing what they know now in going public?

[Stephanie Buckner]

So the first change, I would say around communication. A big part of Altair's culture is open, transparent communication. And it's been really part of our success that everybody is aware. Knowledge is power. And so the founder's belief is by communicating that knowledge out in an open and transparent way, you get fewer internal politics. And I really do believe that because people wield knowledge as power very often in large organizations. And one of the challenges as we went public is that there is more restriction on what you can and cannot share. And so we had to sort of figure out how do we find that balance line of still communicating enough so that you reduce all of those politics, but at the same time abiding by the regulations as a public company. So I think that's the biggest challenge. The one thing I think we learned as a company is to not care as much a little bit. When you first go public. I feel like you're wrapped up a little bit in what everybody else is thinking and how they're concerned about it. And when we went public, we weren't in the Data analytics and AI space in 2017. And then we made a large acquisition of a public data analytics company in 2018. They were a struggling public company, and we. We literally got tomatoes thrown at us on that day. When that happened, our stock plummeted 20%. And everybody thought we were crazy for going into Data analytics and AI. I mean, now hindsight 20 20, everybody can see where the vision and the direction was going, but at the time, AI was not a trendy concept. And, you know, people were disappointed, let's say. And I think the fact that our founder was the one leading the organization, taking that risk, making that decision, I don't think somebody who had just come in as a professional CEO would have ever made that move, if you will. But that is a move that has positioned us really for the entire future. And it's such a big, fundamental piece of who we are now as a company here in 2025, that if we hadn't done that, who knows where we would be? And so, yeah, you got to take the risk.

[Cameron Herold]

How many employees does Altair have now?

[Stephanie Buckner]

A little over 3,500.

[Cameron Herold]

Okay, so 3,500 employees. The complexity is pretty massive. What was your path to COO over the 14 years?

[Stephanie Buckner]

So when I joined, I started on the partnering side, helping to manage and onboard some of our partners. And then I added more responsibility on the partnering side. And I eventually took over corporate development for all of our mergers acquisitions. And I was leading that and have still been leading that for about eight years. And shortly thereafter, I added responsibility, taking on the technical organization where the support, the consulting, the pre sales, those teams all became part of my responsibility. And then just in the last three and a half Years or so now I've taken on the field sales organization in addition to that, and that's where I took on to become the coo.

[Cameron Herold]

What do you think gave you the capability to do that, the skill set to do that? What were some of the core things that allowed you to do that over the years? I need you to brag a little bit, I guess.

[Stephanie Buckner]

I think the number one thing is execution. And so I built trust in my ability to execute. So at each level, when I was given new responsibility, I really embraced it and was able to execute. To show that I deserved and earned that position, if you will, is one of the key things. It's not really a skill, if you will, but it's an important aspect that I sort of felt like I needed to prove I deserved that. And so, you know, whether it's successful acquisitions or when I took on the technical organization, we did a massive reorganization that our CEO imagined, but he wasn't able to implement. And so when he put me in that role, he tasked me with implementing it, and I was able to do it in months rather than years, which is what he was being told it would take. And so that earned trust, I would say. But if I'm honest, the reason I was able to be successful is that the people around me are just fantastic. Altair has a lot of employees that have been with the company for a long period of time and the team is just phenomenal. And so to me, it's one of the most important things as a leader that you need is fantastic people around you.

[Cameron Herold]

And how do you get kind of not sucked into the day to day of all these different business areas now? What do you, what do you tend to focus on day to day and week to week currently.

[Stephanie Buckner]

So day to day, I mean, I truly, because I have three different segments, if you will, under me, so I have to sort of compartmentalize because they don't really have a lot of overlap between them often. But the way that I think about it is I try not to dive deep on everything all the time. I need to figure out where I need to dive deep, spend the time to dive deep, to give clear direction on what I'm hoping to see change, and then pull back out and trust that my team is going to execute. And yes, I am checking in and making sure things are going okay, but I have to choose where I go more hands on in order to have a short impact and then sort of pull back in order to continue to see everything else and have the holistic picture.

[Cameron Herold]

What's your thought process or system for deciding where to dive deep? Is it just based on roi? Is it based on your skill set? Is it based on the most urgent thing facing the company? What do you focus on there?

[Stephanie Buckner]

It's a combination. I would say one of the key things, my role as the coo in my opinion, is to basically bring to life the vision of the CEO. So my job is to execute on that vision and that concept. And so I need to really understand what they're trying to accomplish. So where I dive deep is sometimes guided by that. Very often my CEO has opinions like the tech reorganization and things like that. But then I have obviously my own adventures that I choose, if you will. Where I am thinking about for us as Altair, we were not very profitable. And so it was one of the core aspects that I needed to focus on was okay, how do we get to that profitability? And the easiest way for us to do that is as we scale to reduce cost. And that then allows me to see, okay, how do I accomplish that? Well, if I create these global support teams, then I don't need to hire somebody in every single country. I can have somebody from a different country, from the U.S. support Canada and so forth. And so I'm trying to basically take a step back and look at the big picture of what are we looking to accomplish as an organization first and then what's the path we should take to get there. And I don't think of it as just an roi. I'm an engineer, so I love numbers, but I try not to just get out my Excel spreadsheet. And you know, I don't want to be the cfo. That's not my job. I need to be thinking about the operational aspect of the organization and where the inefficiencies are. And often it's about people. It's about having the right people in the right roles, hiring the right people. And so we're a big people first organization, I would say.

[Cameron Herold]

Interesting. And I was going to ask what your background was engineering, because it sounded like it probably was. I don't think it. Do you think it's possible for a non engineering background person to ever become a CEO of a bigger engineering company? You probably really need to have some kind of level of understanding to get the respect or to even know what to dig into.

[Stephanie Buckner]

I think it's harder. I mean, I think you can just like, you know, somebody who didn't get a computer science degree can be a coder. Anybody can be anything if they put the time and Energy into learning. It's. But I don't think you can come into a technology organization like an Altair. That's pretty technical if you aren't willing to dive deep. I mean, you have to have that background to understand what our technology really does. Otherwise, when you're talking to customers, they know more than you do, and they usually do anyways, but they like really know more than you do.

[Cameron Herold]

Or the people that are working and running the business area certainly do too. Can you, can you speak to the, the growth the organization, has it been organic growth? Has it been because of acquisitions? Is it, what, what percentage of your revenue growth over the last three or four years is because of acquisitions versus organic? And my guess is because it sounds like a lot of your small, you're doing smaller acquisitions that are more strategic. So my guess is that it's more organic post acquisition, where your growth comes from. Is that right?

[Stephanie Buckner]

That's exactly right. We're very much an organic growth company. I mean, the acquisition growth is very minimal. Actually, it's more about, as you said, taking that great technology and then scaling it. And a big part of that is our business model. We don't sell individual software applications to our customers. We sell our entire portfolio, if you will. And so that then allows for customers to take advantage of any of the products that we have. And when we add a new product from an acquisition, customers are excited. Now they have access to something new and amazing.

[Cameron Herold]

So is it a SaaS? Is it a SaaS model or is it a consulting model? What's your revenue? How's your revenue tie in?

[Stephanie Buckner]

Yeah, so it's not a SaaS model. I mean, it's a annual subscription model and we sell units. And so the best way to think about it is if you think about, like the Microsoft Suite, you've got Word, Excel, Outlook. If I were to sell you the Microsoft suite with the Altair model, I would sell you, say 100 units for you and your company to use. And then when you open Excel, it would draw 10 units. And if you open PowerPoint, it would draw 15 units. But when you close the application, the units return to the company's pool and can be used again by a different user across any of the different applications.

[Cameron Herold]

If you haven't already signed up for my online training where I cover the 12 essential leadership skills for anyone who manages people, go check out investinyourleaders.com ch and you can use promo code Cameron10 for 10% off before the end of the month. Close to 5,000 leaders are already Going through my content.

[Stephanie Buckner]

Applications.

[Cameron Herold]

Wow. So you're giving companies the functionality and the data, and they're only really paying for what they're using. Yes. Versus seat licenses. And they're not even using the seat licenses at all.

[Stephanie Buckner]

Exactly. They have so much flexibility with their license. Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

Kind of. Brilliant. All right. And then, yes, on the acquisition side, you're really acquiring a new product or a new service that doesn't do much in revenue. The growth is because you're taking that and putting it in, and then you're able to really amplify that, so it makes sense. Do the founders of these technologies stay on when you do an acquisition, or does that depend?

[Stephanie Buckner]

They very often do. And that's you. I mean, we have walked away from acquisitions because the founder is just looking to exit and not looking to be part of it. I mean, we have something like 50 founders that are still with us today because for us, they're such a. They not only are brilliant technologists, they've had to think about things from a business perspective, how to survive. And that brings a different point of view. When you're trying to decide how to prioritize on the roadmap and the challenges as a company, you bring a new perspective in that changes the dynamic in a really positive way.

[Cameron Herold]

And you were a part or really the lead on all these 50 acquisitions, or most of.

[Stephanie Buckner]

Not all of them. 35 of them.

[Cameron Herold]

35 is still a lot. Can you speak to what it's like to do? I mean, I did some. I've done a bunch over the years, back in the early days. Can you speak to what it's like doing an acquisition? What makes an acquisition successful, and then what makes the integration of the acquisition successful? Let's start with those two.

[Stephanie Buckner]

Okay, I'm going to go in reverse order.

[Cameron Herold]

Okay.

[Stephanie Buckner]

What makes an integration successful? For us, we don't have an integration team. So our entire corporate development team consists of me and one other individual. Now, and the reason for that is to have a successful integration, you need the organization to, we say, wrap your arms around the company and hug them. You need to really get everybody involved. And so when we do an acquisition immediately, when they come in on day zero, every piece is broken into the organization. So sales goes with the sales organization, finance goes with the finance organization, and so forth. And so everything is immediately broken into those different pieces. And then the key for us is really everybody getting excited about it. And I think because we've done so many of them, the culture within Altair is not just like, oh, there's another acquisition over there. Who cares that I don't really know what that is, but people are excited of what's this new thing I have to play with and to pitch my customers and you know, hey, how can we collaborate from a technology standpoint? And so it's sort of got like a.

[Cameron Herold]

That's really cool.

[Stephanie Buckner]

It's a different team feel and a different level of collaboration. And so for me, what makes an acquisition successful? I mean, of course it's great if you get revenue, but actually more important often is a culture fit. And so it's pretty rare for us when we're doing an acquisition to decide to move forward on an acquisition where there isn't a culture fit. Because it's so hard to integrate a company in even if they have fantastic technology, if they don't embrace the same culture that we have, the transparent communication, the collaboration, then it's just not going to work. They're not going to be happy, it's not going to, it's not going to fit. And therefore it ends up not driving revenue. So the integration aspect is super important to the success.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I completely agree with that. When we did acquisitions, we would focus on the integration of culture first and the people second and then the systems, like making sure they used our system. We even sometimes didn't even change over their brand right away. We didn't worry about that in the earlier days. It sounds like you're kind of like Cirque du Soleil where you have like these super high performing people, you're all really performing amazingly and then you have this one new artist who comes in, they're like, oh, we get to have you as a part of the Cirque du Soleil too. That's kind of cool. Which is really neat. Can you speak to the pressure of being public and the potential distractions of being public to the company and to the people? Can you speak to how you manage that and work around that?

[Stephanie Buckner]

Yeah, the stress is real. Quarter by quarter, making sure that we achieve our guidance. And we have since I've been in my role. But there have certainly been quarters where I'm. I'm very uncertain at the last five days of the quarter. If certain deals don't come in, we will not, you know, achieve. And so there's definitely a different dynamic of it must come in the quarter, in the year, so forth versus when you're private, you sort of have this flexibility of, oh, it's okay. They we delayed two weeks and that pushed it into the next quarter. But I think there's a positive piece to that pressure, which is that I do think it forces growth and revenue because you don't allow things to slip. And everybody in the organization feels it. And so I think at least for us, you know, there's a little more pressure and demand on achievement than there was as a private company. And it might be because we're an older organization, you know, 1985, we're 40 this year. And so there might be some of that that feeds in, but that's sort of my experience on the pressure side. The pressure is all about the numbers in the end.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah. Is there any distraction with the employees? You know, I remember back in the day when we were running an Internet company and we were acquired by a public company. Gosh, every, like every day at lunch, it's like, oh, the stock is up or the stock is down, like, who cares? Like just how do you. Is there any distraction around that kind of stuff at all? Or do most of the employees just so kind of focused on what they're working on that it. It doesn't really matter? Or are they just used to it now?

[Stephanie Buckner]

There's been a little bit of distraction. I mean, nobody likes when they see the stock draw. But we've been very fortunate because when we IPO, we IPO'd at $13 and change. And today we're over 110. And so we're talking, you know, six, seven years here. That's a pretty amazing growth. So, yeah, I think that distraction just hasn't been there. I think when you're performing, there's not as much distraction. And I also think because so many employees have been with the company before we went that it sort of settled things out and created a culture once we were public. As employee base changes over, over time, it's already sort of set the culture of we don't panic in the day to day. Our CEO is not worried about, you know, the swings in the stock and so forth. So why should we?

[Cameron Herold]

What happened with the employees that were a part of the company when you went public and then post going public? Was stock options part of the compensation at. And can you speak to that, the decision making of even making that a part of the compensation or not?

[Stephanie Buckner]

Yeah. So I would say we're probably a very unusual company. We had over 800 people with equity when we went public. So a lot of employees had equity at the time, which was really fantastic. They got to enjoy the benefit of the fruits of their labor, if you will. And then for Us, we do have some equity motivation plans around employee stock purchase plans, and we do give equity for performance. And so it has been a big motivating factor for our employee base. I think people are really excited by it, particularly because we have performed so well.

[Cameron Herold]

What about the competition for talent? I mean, you're, you're really in a space that you're competing for some of the highest priced talent out there. Where's your, where's your head office? Where are most of the employees based?

[Stephanie Buckner]

Well, we have offices truly around the world. We're really spread, so. But our headquarters is in Michigan. It's just outside Detroit in Troy. But that's not even our largest footprint, I would say. I mean, we really are very diverse. And a big part of that is our revenue is equally diverse. We're almost perfectly evenly split a third, A third, a third in the Americas, EMEA and then an apac and our employee base is very similar. So. But yeah, sorry.

[Cameron Herold]

No, that's interesting. So in terms of the global talent then for engineering, are you playing a little bit of labor arbitrage there where you're able to. And attracting a lot of the global engineering talent for a fraction of what people are paying in the Bay Area? Is that part of the model?

[Stephanie Buckner]

Certainly there is some of that. I mean, I think we get talent truly around the world, which really helps. But I would say the other piece for us is that, yes, we pay competitively, but we're not going to pay the highest dollar in the market. The reason people stay is because they love the culture and the freedom and flexibility that Altair has provided. So before COVID you were able to work from home and have flexibility. It was never this strict philosophy because the concept was always, if you perform well and you do your job, you're actually going to do a better job if you're happier. And so as long as somebody is dedicated to actually doing their job, if you give them that flexibility, they will perform better for you because of that. And we've really seen that the loyalty with the employee base has been really phenomenal. And I think that's built with true trust and loyalty to people and appreciation for the individuals who have performed. And it's not just a sales organization. There's no president's club. It's not just about the sales team performed. We're all going to celebrate them. They're not the only amazing people that are out there. And I, I've got lots of salespeople under me, but there's an appreciation for technical talent as well. And so I think that that's one of the biggest differences is that, you know, it's not a sales versus the technical team kind of aspect.

[Cameron Herold]

Well, I love that we just had a discussion around that on a. I run an organization called the COO alliance, and we have a large network of global COOs from 17 countries that meet online via Zoom, you know, every month, twice a month now and then in person twice a year. Once at MIT and once in Vancouver. And on one of our prior calls, we were talking about building out a meritocracy and building out this environment where it was about focusing on results and focusing on collaboration and focusing on not caring about the hours people were showing up and on the results that they were getting. But I've never heard of anyone really kind of articulate it the way you just did, around the fact that it isn't just about sales. And I love that you kind of called that out. Was that something that had to happen cognizantly at Altair where you kind of called it out and said, hey, it isn't just about sales. Like we have all these other smart people too? Or do you think that's just always been the culture because it wasn't engineering focus that. Does that make sense? My question makes sense.

[Stephanie Buckner]

It makes perfect sense. So, I mean, let me say it like this. It was inherently part of the culture, but it's always crept in every couple of years even.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephanie Buckner]

And CEO has this view that is unshakable. And so it's sort of. It doesn't matter that other people have the president's club and so forth. We're a team. And you can't sell unless the development team delivers and the pre sales technical team or the support team, you know, really performs. And so it's such a team effort that that's what shines through and it kind of gets beaten down.

[Cameron Herold]

I love that. I think it's great because I think too often the sales organizations get the ego and they get the strokes, whereas the rest of the organization feel like the ugly stepchild. And it's really, it's amazing, the focus and how that has kind of permeated the organization. I want you to go back and give yourself some advice. If you were the 21 year old, Stephanie, starting out in your career, what advice would you give the younger you that you know to be true today?

[Stephanie Buckner]

I think the best advice I would give myself would be to be confident. So, you know, I. I've been in a lot of roles throughout my time here at Altair. That I felt like I was under qualified for or you know, wasn't I? I didn't know all the information and would be hesitant to ask questions because I didn't want to look stupid in front of somebody. And I realize now that that is how you get better. And so if you just have confidence in the fact that one, when somebody promotes you, you have earned and deserve the opportunity to showcase that you deserve to be there. But then really to, you know, you just gotta kind of suck it up when you don't know and ask the question because you're 10 times smarter when you come back the next time. And now you've got that information and you know it. So that's what I would say.

[Cameron Herold]

I love it. I've always said that a leader's core job is to grow the connections, the confidence and the competence of our direct reports. And, and yeah, it's amazing to have that confidence. Stephanie Buckner, the COO for Altair thanks very much for sharing with us on the Second Command podcast. Very appreciative of your time and expertise today. It was great.

[Stephanie Buckner]

Thank you so much for having me. It's been great speaking with you. You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO alliance founder Cameron Herald. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, share and subscribe to us on Apple, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit COOAlliance.com.