Speaker 1: 0:00

I know this is really important.

Speaker 2: 0:01

I am probably embarrassed to admit this a tiny bit.

Speaker 1: 0:04

And businesses have failed because of that. How many pieces of software on average companies use?

Speaker 2: 0:16

Welcome to Sell Me this Podcast. I'm Keith, and today we're talking with Blaine Birch, co-founder of Dry Run, a cashflow management tool revolutionizing financial forecasting. From designer to entrepreneur, blaine built and sold his first business before creating Dry Run. Inspired by his experiences during the 2008 financial crisis, his platform helps businesses simplify cash flow management and move beyond spreadsheets. We'll explore what makes Dry run unique in financial management, discuss AI's role in SaaS and share Blaine's insight on tool selection and team relationships. Whether you're interested in SaaS, business or financial innovation, there is something here for you. Let's explore dry run and the future of cash flow management. So, blaine, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate having you on the podcast and really excited for the conversation in front of us. Let's dive right into things and would love to hear a little bit about your journey as an entrepreneur and what led you to starting.

Speaker 1: 1:16

Dry Run. Oh, that's an interesting one for the journey. As an entrepreneur I was. I'm a designer by trade. I have a couple of different degrees in design and started my first business in 1999. Suddenly, a few years later, you turn around and look and I got a whole room full of people and a partner and a giant office and everything else and it sneaks up on you.

Speaker 1: 1:35

The real pivotal moment for me was 2008, 2009, when the economy came to a grinding halt and that had a big impact on us. 70% of our client base were government agencies up in Canada and the 30% were corporate. And it was this weird transition because the government dollars stuck around a tiny bit longer, which was good, but when they closed those budgets, they closed for years and we knew it was coming. So we had this rapid shift on all of our biz dev to get corporate clients coming in.

Speaker 1: 2:09

Now, during this time, cashflow was absolutely essential to track. Right Can we make payroll? Because, right or wrong, we didn't want to lay anybody off. We wanted to keep everybody, and cashflow became a really critical point for us and also our sales funnel and our sales forecast as we do this big transition. And so I was buried in spreadsheets, but those spreadsheets, I think, had a big hand in us bouncing back really quickly and getting our feet under us really quickly. Fast forward a few years I sold that business and kept coming back to this idea that eventually became dry run, where I'm like this is a problem that businesses face and maybe I can help and get people out of a spreadsheet and get them into something that's much faster, much more intuitive but also something really visual, being a designer.

Speaker 2: 2:58

Right, and I totally understand what you're saying. Where there's these? First of all, on the COVID side. I think that COVID blew up a lot of businesses and I think that the challenges that existed were different. For some right. Some ran into big customer problems, some ran into scaling issues, some ran into identity issues during COVID staffing issues. I think that the stories there are endless, but I think that they all tie back to cashflow a tiny bit, and I totally empathize with what you're saying where there's these spreadsheets that can continue to grow and they can get grosser and more complex. And so what is the exact problem then that dry run solves, and what was the first kind of kick in the can you took when you were trying to solve that specific problem and launching the business?

Speaker 1: 3:40

Yeah, like when we specifically there. There's two things that really were. Important to me was visualizing our cash flow and modeling scenarios to understand all of the what ifs. When you're tight on cash flow, that's what you're looking at. Do we take in money? What if we land this client? What if we don't? What if we land this big job and have to expand rapidly? How do we do it? All these questions came up and have to expand rapidly, how do we do it? All these questions came up, and so when we rolled out dry run, I thought we were rolling it out to other business owners small business owners, I'm embarrassed to say this I remember when when saying to my co-founder early on, like first year, where we were just getting out of the gate and I'm like, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 4:21

I think accountants might laugh at us, but I know this is really important because in my mind accountants were all about reporting and taxes and to a large degree that's a big part of it is compliance and taxes and all that. But then we rolled out and almost immediately guess who comes knocking at our door? We were picked a top 10 new app by Intuit. Aicpa invited us into their accelerator and within the first couple of years out in the wild, we realized oh, it turns out the pros want us and business owners really struggle.

Speaker 1: 4:54

There's a lot of business owners that weren't like me that get under the hood and figure this stuff out.

Speaker 1: 4:59

And we also found out that there's a level of complexity where it becomes a real pain. Like you said, it's those spreadsheets that grow into a friend of complexity where it becomes a real pain. Like you said, it's those spreadsheets that grow into a friend of mine called a frankenstein, because I some stuff I'll do in a spreadsheet really quick and I love it, it's so fast and easy and then you'll see that there's that point where it's like uh-oh, now I've got two tabs, three tabs four, and also you're like I'm the only one that knows it's like a house of cards any little mistake. Another embarrassing thing I gotta mention was one time I actually drove over to my accountant's office to sit down and say what is going on here, and and I had a spreadsheet and he said it's a broken equation that's an expensive drive there it's an expensive drive all the way there for him to tell me I have a broken equation and I was so sure I had all my equations Absolute sort of silliness, but it's so that's.

Speaker 1: 5:51

We set out to help businesses, but what we realized is equipping the pros to help businesses might be the best way so that they could work together, collaborate, and so we've got these two sort of pillars that we always stand on. Number one is make it easy for a business owner management team and I'm talking management teams in the hundreds of millions also want something that's simple, high level, easy to understand. So they're talking about the problems and how to, where they're headed, not explain the spreadsheet. It's the same problem, right? And the other one is giving the control and flexibility to the finance team, without the complexity of a spreadsheet, the broken equations, everything else, because you can have a large team all with their hands in this forecast and you need it approachable and easy, to easy to use.

Speaker 2: 6:40

I think that from a spreadsheet standpoint, I am probably embarrassed to admit this a tiny bit, but I'm someone that I love Excel. I love some of the models in there. I love what you can do. I also used Excel to some point as like a thinking tool. Sometimes I'll start to plot things out and I'll morph into these giant spreadsheets, but I totally understand where they just morph out of control sometimes more vote of control sometimes and it's an interesting time where you can combine some of those business specific challenges with the ability to now create some of these platforms that can solve a very specific business challenge. And I think that's really where I'd love to lead.

Speaker 2: 7:16

A little bit of the conversation today is specifically around your very unique perspective and A being the founder or co-founder of a platform that solves a very specific business challenge and are helping to your point the pros solve that with ease and a really cool solution but also as a business owner that has to consume some of these same niche technologies yourself, and so I think there's a really interesting balance there If we start off from your perspective in terms of and this is a big question what makes a great SaaS platform From your perspective and finding that product market fit and bringing this to market. What actually makes a great SaaS platform? And if you were talking to your customers, how can they identify the right SaaS platforms for their needs?

Speaker 1: 8:04

What makes a great SaaS platform there's? Obviously it solves a really fundamental pain, a really fundamental problem. Of course, what makes it great, you hit the nail on the head, it's product market fit, which is the buzzword in the industry. It's more than the buzzword, of course, but if you, it's a real struggle, like even for us. Like I said, we started thinking we were solving a problem for small businesses and turns out it was more of the pros.

Speaker 1: 8:29

And then when we started to get exposure further up market, that's where people were almost kicking down our door and we realized they just have a lot bigger pain point, a lot bigger problem because there's more data, there's more systems, it just gets more complicated. And so, finding the true pain point who do you solve a massive pain for? But then the next step is really understanding that pain point and building something that's going to be the solution. The biggest tool tactics, strategy, whatever that. We've used that and we continue to use every single day as talking to customers. We thought we did that early, we didn't do enough of it. We are absolutely like just frantic to talk with customers and learn from them and, yeah, to understand the problem and how we can better solve it.

Speaker 2: 9:21

So, when I'm talking to your customers, you have a very specific audience, which are finance people which, without applying too many stereotypes, are usually focused on cash, focused on tangible components, and so, when they're evaluating some of these platforms, what are some of the areas that you're having conversations in that will allow them to really quantify the value of that spend and make sure that they're providing value along with that SaaS platform they've chosen?

Speaker 1: 9:50

Yeah, I think there's some insight on how we deal with customers that I think is also very useful from the flip side, and it's just sort of born out of hundreds and hundreds of conversations. The first thing we do when I'm talking like I'm talking with CFOs every single day, and the first thing I do when I talk with a CFO is I don't tell them a dry run. The first thing I do is say tell me about your business, tell me about your challenges, tell me about your clients or tell me about the problem you solve. You know and and I want to learn as much about them as possible so that I can put the solution in context. But there's also plenty of times where, after they've told me that I have literally said to them I'm not sure we can help you. I don't think that.

Speaker 1: 10:32

Let me tell you what we do. I don't think it sounds like we're necessarily a fit and I think there's that level of transparency and honesty that you'll want to see from a vendor when you're trying to solve a very specific problem. Let me show you. It was the opposite. Let me show all the stuff we do. And then it was like playing whack-a-mole to try and answer all the questions because the questions were related to nothing.

Speaker 1: 10:53

It was a mismatch, right? Even if the product might've really helped, there was a mismatch in them us understanding or what they needed, and vice versa. And so that's an approach we take it's just all about the client, it's all about their problem. And then I can say, hey, we, I think we might be able to help, maybe we can't. The interesting thing is there's been several times where I said, based on what you told me, I don't think we're the right tool for you, but just let me show you what we do, just so you know, and then I'll show them what we do and they're like yeah, you're right, you can't help over here, but, holy cow, we need this and I didn't even know.

Speaker 1: 11:27

So it's this clarity, and very, very narrow, very narrow clarity is what, what helps, I think, on both sides, to really truly understand if you're solving the problem.

Speaker 2: 11:38

Do most of the people when you're engaging them, with them off the bat. Do they understand the problem they have? Or are they out searching for, maybe, an antidote for some other symptoms and they arrive at the fact that it's cashflow? Or are they really clear that this is the problem that they need to solve when they're searching you out?

Speaker 1: 11:58

We actually, honestly, we get a little bit of a mix of both the ones that are obviously that are. Much smoother is when they know the problem they have and they come walking in the door and I'm like, yeah, we have four locations and three currencies and five finance staff and it's just hours a week. Like the thing is, what they're doing tends to work, but they understand. It's like I had one. I had a cfo not too long ago, just exasperated, said we did 30 hours of work to get to this and I'm like, oh my god, I think we could do that in about two minutes, but there was no easy way for them to do what we do. So some of them, when they know they have the a problem, it we can be very it's just very focused on the solution.

Speaker 1: 12:47

But you do sometimes have people that come in and I got five different problems and a cashflow sort of one of them and it's this big weaved web of stuff. That's a little bit more of a challenge. But it's also the conversations, I think, also help give them clarity on what parts they might be able to really solve with the solution and what parts they're going to have to maybe work through on their own or it's likely a multi-task Point solution. Right, it's oh boy, okay, we're going to have to do what we thought. Just get a new ERP in. It helps them get that clarity that sometimes to get to a true solution it's not a quick fix.

Speaker 2: 13:23

Yeah, and I agree with you. A lot of the executives that I talk to they'll have this idea. They have a problem to solve, but especially with out of the hype, the first point sometimes is technology, and so they'll search out the technology that solves it. But they'll realize they have an underlying process problem, or they have an underlying people problem, or maybe the problem is much broader. As they start to define it, do you run into scenarios often where people come to you and maybe these are the customers you're talking about that aren't a good fit, yet that they come to you and they're just technology isn't the answer for them.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Yeah, I think technology may, like you said, be the answer. Down the road, there's a lot of steps in between. So sometimes people come to us and they're ready to go, or they're 99 there. But there are a lot of times they'll come in with a problem and it's first of all you have to truly understand the people in your organization, right down to the like everybody, and what are the problems that each one is facing, and it's you almost have to really understand that and map it all out and work your way up and then look for the first step in the solution. It's amazing how many cfos that we talk with, especially when there's an interim one, and they come in and they're like yeah, the number one problem we is, the systems and processes are so broken that the data is so out of date, it's so messy, it's so wrong, and that's a really big lift, but on the other hand, at least there's someone coming in, going. Okay, first step is we have to take control of this data and these processes before we can do anything else.

Speaker 2: 14:53

Yeah, and I think that a lot of leaders sometimes they'll look at the end state or the solution and be like, oh man, I can't wait until we get here. But there's this whole body of work that's the data cleanup, all the non-sexy stuff that no one really wants to do. It's not the stuff that's incredibly rewarding, but I'm sure that from your perspective, it creates such a better output at the end of it.

Speaker 1: 15:13

Oh yeah, and when. Sometimes we'll talk with people and they know down to some real detail. I was talking with a CFO not long ago and they're talking about multiple locations and they said, part of the problem, we don't even have the same systems like accounting systems and ERPs at each location, but we also don't have the data structure the same way. They're named differently, they're categorized differently there. So as they try and do some consolidation or roll up and they they want to be able to compare apples to apples and this we can't even. We can't do that. There's a lot of thoughtfulness that has to go into it and when you're working across all these different locations, that can be a real challenge. But they can see at the end, man, when we get this all set up, we will have visibility across a business that we've never had before and that's just power for them. That's so essential.

Speaker 2: 16:05

Fantastic. So when you think about some of these different buyers, if you were to flip roles with them and you were to wave some sort of magic wand and all of a sudden you wake up in a Freaky Friday scenario and you're one of these CFOs, what's the advice that you would give yourself, or what are the things that you wish you knew when entering one of these transactions? And I think you can maybe apply this from a dry run perspective, but also from a broader SaaS perspective.

Speaker 1: 16:30

Yeah, I'll take a fairly broad perspective because over the last few years, we've started to take a much closer look at the technology that we're using and we found that we had myself, or even some of the team members we were into different contracts that we didn't really pay that much attention to and I started to get really frustrated with what they were delivering but also how the contracts were structured, and I really like some of the tools that we used I really felt were taking advantage of us, that they weren't very transparent. Instead of coming back every year before we would sign for the next year and say, let's just see if this is still fitting you and everything, it was almost like if I don't say anything, it'll renew. Okay, that's not great, and we actually changed over a fair bit of our technology over the last maybe three or four years and we're being a lot more thoughtful about how it works for the team, talking with the team and figuring out how we want to do this, and it's a very. It's a slow. There's no snap judge. It's a slow move, but I feel like the technology and the partners of SaaS companies that we're using today. I think I feel like we just have a better grasp on how it all fits together, how it all works and cost-wise, has actually been a lot more effective for us, and so it's businesses today.

Speaker 1: 17:45

I think there there are so many pieces of software that you use. I actually think you and I might've been talking about this one time how many pieces of software on average companies use, and I, if memory serves me right, I think you were saying something like 30 to 40 pieces of software on average, and I went, oh my God, that's so many. And then I started to look at what we use and I'm like, oh yeah, there is a lot of tools there, and boy, it's not just even one at a time. What's the whole picture?

Speaker 2: 18:16

costing us. It's crazy, and I think that I was remembering that conversation as well. I feel like the number of money would be higher. It's bonkers how many different platforms, subscriptions I'd like that these that organizations have. And then when you think about the complexity that gets added on the cost, like it, it definitely can spiral out of control pretty quickly.

Speaker 2: 18:37

It's a really interesting connection to cash flow as well when I think about almost like the netflix, like the tv dilemma, where everyone used to have their cable tv and then as soon as netflix came out for nine dollars a month or whatever it was, everyone was, oh my gosh, this is so much better and cheaper. And all of of a sudden, fast forward 15 years and people have their Netflix, their Disney, their Amazon Plus and they're spending far in excess of $150 for these agreements. To your point that ought to renew, that don't have a ton of visibility. I don't know if anyone's ever read the T's and C's on their Netflix agreement and they're just this kind of mountain that keeps building and building. Are you seeing any data or any trends from the customers you're working with from a cashflow perspective around some of these subscription?

Speaker 1: 19:27

models. I don't know if we're like we can't see behind the curtain, so I don't know, unless they're actually sharing with us, like telling us directly. We don't know that much maybe about how they're doing it, but I do know that, like, even when we started to look at our own did a full audit. We have spreadsheets now that have all of our software on there and the interesting thing to me is there's some of the software that is actually quite essential to us and we use daily, and everything isn't even the most expensive right, like it's sometimes the price and value.

Speaker 1: 19:59

I don't know if it totally matches, but I know even with dry run, we've been like we've done a bit of a transition as we've pivoted and moved more up market with a much higher focus on the success of our customers, because I think early on we had a lot of customers come in and we just, oh yeah, great, good to go. They came in and they bought from us with the aspiration maybe to use it with their clients or whatever, and we found that some of them are just like not using it and that obviously was an impact on that is a real impact on us as well, and so from our perspective we're trying to be, but transition much more to it's almost. Let's slow the client down a bit. Let's make sure this is working for them, that they're actually making great use of it, because I know the customers that do that are with us for years, like they. Just they are with us long-term. And so we've changed our approach with a real focus on success of the customer.

Speaker 1: 20:54

And so I think, even when you're out buying software, that's where are they concerned with your success, or are they concerned with you signing on a dotted line?

Speaker 2: 21:02

That makes complete sense. What advice would you give, outside of just this body sense side of things, to a buyer of a SaaS platforms? Are there red flags, are there alarm bells that they should be watching out for? Specific to the onboarding process that customers should be aware out for specific to the onboarding process that customers should be aware of.

Speaker 1: 21:17

I think, yeah, pressure to sign deals, pressure to sign long-term deals not a lot of attention maybe to your problem. It's that you have to dovetail into our systems and our models, and those things to me are a little bit of the alarm bells because we know we have some of the tools that we we use, we can. There's an approach of there. It feels like they care more about us and the problem we're solving and it makes sense and it works. And it's like we have one tool I'm using and I almost it feels like they're in there probably newer business, but it's almost like they're going over, bending over backwards for us at times and I feel you guys are doing something really awesome here. This is super handy. Like you guys don't get it. And then there's other ones that I'll say some of the ones that we've had the most struggles with are the ones that have scaled and they're large. And now you're dealing with the sales teams and you can just feel when it turns from success, bottom line dollars, net profit for them, you can just feel it.

Speaker 1: 22:16

And we have moved away from pieces of software. There was one, it'll remain nameless, but we used it for probably six or seven years and then basically woke up one day and went you guys are, you've changed everything you do to feel like you're grinding every last nickel out of me. The one, and I will say this is a warning, for what we saw here is when they changed their, the way they priced to usage and the way they did usage didn't seem to really make a lot of sense to us. But boy, the prices scale up so incredibly fast and it didn't match the value. We went to a different system. Now that is probably more than matching for a fraction of the price, because it matched our business and what we're doing.

Speaker 1: 23:00

You can wake up one day, and a friend of mine mentioned to me one time he literally woke up one day and looked and found out they were using a piece of software that had crept up, and I think he said they were oh man, he thought they were paying tidbits a month and it was thousands a month. And then he found out the reason it slid under the radar is because none of his team were really using it anymore, and I think he maybe found it on his financial statement or something and went oh, this does not make sense. So some of those things I would be really cautious of when it's a usage, whatever it is, that could ramp up really quickly and it could be something you could slip by you or you don't have control over. It could be a real big alarm bell.

Speaker 2: 23:37

And I think that's one thing a lot of these organizations have got really good at too is finding those costing models that get started and add this use case, add this use case and add this use case. And if that value doesn't scale at an equivalent ratio to the cost, then you can find yourself in some pretty weird scenarios, especially, it sounds I've seen this before the story of your friend where someone leaves an organization, someone turns over. The person that originally made this investment might've left and all of a sudden the ticker keeps going and creeping up and all of a sudden you've spent thousands of dollars on something that no one has used in two and a half years.

Speaker 1: 24:17

Yeah, and honestly, we've done that. We got caught on a contract that flipped over that we didn't. I never got any notification. It had been a staff member previously that had got the, signed the contract, everything. The big learning lesson for me. And then, when I stumbled across it and reached out to the company, it's you have 10 more months spending a horrific amount of money every month for something we weren't even using. And, of course, like I get it. It can certainly happen. It's just, I guess, what, I, what, and it's not like they were being malicious either, right, but yeah, this is not working for business. And I guess the biggest thing is it's really important for businesses to have a full audit regularly of what they're using and understand when the contracts start, when they end, and that's a big task. If nothing else, it's useful to have a spreadsheet here's all of our software, here's the renewal date, here's what we're paying for, and so that you can actually try and stay on top of it Comes back to the spreadsheet blend.

Speaker 2: 25:19

But I would imagine as well, if people are monitoring their cashflow and they'll see some of those spikes differently, and if something goes from a dollar to a hundred dollars or a hundred dollars to a thousand, they'll notice some of those things differently and some of those anomalies will be less easily swept under the rug if they're keeping it closer on.

Speaker 1: 25:33

Yeah, truthfully, the one that costs us way too much money. That's where I I'm not tooting your own horn, but I picked that up in dry run and that's not really necessarily what dry run. But you're forecasting and everything. But I can glance down and look at all my chart of accounts and my expenses and go, why is that one, why is that account so high? And then I go look and go, oh, my God, it's like pulling on a string, right, it's like you're also, you're, you're looking, and so, yeah, that's where these things come out.

Speaker 1: 26:03

It's just visualizing these things helps, because if you're looking at a massive spreadsheet of data, stuff gets hidden, like I've heard people, it's like ants walking across the screen. One person, like you said, one person built it and one person understands it. Or it's a data dump and you're like, okay, it dumped this data out in a CSV and it's the columns are all. And I have to expand all the columns. I can't even find what I'm looking for. It's amazing when you have something that can visualize it and you can just look at it and go, oh, looking for. It's amazing when you have something that can visualize it and you can just look at it and go. Oh that's, I can see that plane this day as a problem.

Speaker 1: 26:36

So, yeah, there, there are massive advantages in in in like from our perspective for dry run. But I know there's other tools that kind of do something similar in some way that can bring massive efficiency, saving hours and hours every week, sometimes every day, but then helping people visualize things, and that's I know we're. I don't necessarily want to go totally down this path, but I know we're in a world of AI and there's a lot of tools that can help. But to me that still comes down to you're helping. You're equipping people to make decisions. Yeah, you're not letting the bot make critical decisions. You're trying to communicate with the stakeholders, with the management team, whoever it is, to help them make decisions based on where they're headed, not what happened last year.

Speaker 2: 27:22

Yeah, and I think that also brings it back to a point you mentioned earlier around that foundation in place. Ai is powerful, as some of those AI platforms and tools are in place. Ai is powerful, as some of those AI platforms and tools are. You still need to have a foundation of data that you can trust, that's reliable, that's correct, because otherwise you were just going to exasperate problems that you already had, or you're going to just use a map that brings you to the exact wrong place.

Speaker 1: 27:45

Yeah, I had a CFO literally last week asked me about showing him something dry running. He said are you using ai to do this? And I, literally I just said I'm like no, because you guys are so much smarter than ai. Basically I said, look, if we used ai, what it'll do is it's going to analyze past records, but we all know over the last five years how much every year has changed when historics are useful.

Speaker 1: 28:11

But you can't. It can't say, based on last year, you're going to grow 10%. You're like inflation just went up by X, like that's not going to happen. And or you look at these massive, giant data sets in the industry and go, yeah, but it doesn't know some of the specific problems or challenges that you have in your business, whether it's local, whether it's with a supplier, whether it's with clients that you're. You are either going to potentially land or lose one of your largest clients. We're. We're here to to give you a starting point, but the CFO knows infinitely more than AI on what's where they're headed right or what they have to do to try and move in that direction. So you can get bits of information that can be really helpful and really insightful, but we still believe we're equipping the CFO to make decisions, not trying to replace the CFO.

Speaker 2: 28:59

And I think that's a really important distinction as well, because there's such an appetite, I feel, right now to implement some of these technologies, to be the first in line to make sure you have AI, x, y and Z, and I think that it is a powerful tool, just like the. Some of these SaaS applications are very powerful tools, and the ability for leaders and business owners to be able to say, here's where I use this tool, here's where a hammer makes sense, here's where a screwdriver makes sense, here's where a jackhammer makes sense, is very important to selecting the right tool for the job yeah exactly to selecting the right tool for the job.

Speaker 1: 29:33

Yeah, exactly, and sometimes the spreadsheets are the right tool Sometimes a piece of paper, but there's this point where it's like I always say spreadsheets like riding a bike, you can go anywhere, um, you're not limited to a road or tracks or you have more flexibility, but there's points where you just can't compete with a car. So it's the point where it just becomes an absolute, essential addition to your business to have a SaaS product that's going to help you.

Speaker 2: 30:03

Amazing. So if you're looking at that value side of things and the right tool for the right job, are there recommendations that you have to ensure that businesses are getting maximum value from those investments in platforms like Dry Run?

Speaker 1: 30:16

I think that from our point of view and we're still, I guess, smaller and nimble the number one thing is we want to talk with customers, we want to implement it, get them using the software, make sure it actually is doing the job, taking a lot of that feedback and working with them for a solution.

Speaker 1: 30:34

It's simple solutions like are out of the box because there are SaaS tools like that that are very plug and play. But when you start getting into these more complex business situations that you need a lot of back and forth with the team and you need to make sure that it's actually set up right and solving the problem and there is going to be more of a lift, but likely the payoff is going to be infinitely more than sometimes what you'll get from a little plug and play system to businesses still done people to people Right, and you want to be able to talk with and trust and work with the people that you're buying the tool or a solution from, because if it's just simply coming down to a checklist and price, that likely won't work for anything. That's more sophisticated than a little plug and play tool.

Speaker 2: 31:26

No, I could not agree more with you. So, if we zoom out a little bit, I'd like to talk about the SaaS industry in general. You have a unique perspective as someone that leads a business that also has built out a SaaS platform. When you look across the community, when you talk to other founders, are there trends that you're seeing that businesses and business leaders should be aware of when it comes to the SaaS marketplace overall?

Speaker 1: 31:51

I think that it's flip side, where it's getting more and more crowded, there's more solutions for everything, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Speaker 1: 32:00

Because the market is growing so incredibly fast, businesses are seeing the value and jumping on board as well. But I think what's happening is the more niche and focused you are, the more you can help a segment of these businesses really well, and so, even though there's a lot of competition out there in a really crowded space, a lot of times, when it really comes down to it, if you've looked through all the different SaaS tools, there probably isn't that much competition. You probably just have a handful of potential tools that could actually solve your specific problem really well, because you just don't see generally in a lot of business to business sort of applications, a single tool that just does everything. Great, it's no, I need this and it's going to do something really well. So it's challenging because there's more businesses and people that are looking for solutions, and then there's so many solutions to pick from. I guess the one bit of advice is don't leap too fast. Do your homework, because if you haven't found what you think is a perfect solution, there probably is one out there.

Speaker 2: 33:02

Yeah, I think that's sage advice to not just click the button. I know it's very easy to buy some of these things sometimes. I feel like sometimes you hear these stories of organizations that enroll in platforms or tools without even knowing that they're signing up for it. But I think one of the other trends that we talked about briefly but I want to dive into a little bit more, is the role of AI in the future of some of these SaaS platforms, and so, from your perspective, what impact do you think AI is going to have on that SaaS market and what do you think it's going to be able to do to empower some of these platforms to do more or less?

Speaker 1: 33:36

I think we were early on, but we're already seeing there's, I think, some massive efficiencies in some areas where it's just really good and it likely isn't going to replace people, but it's going to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Instead of hours, you're into seconds or minutes, but still there's this end point where there's still a person that's doing something, that they're not the bottleneck but the ultimate client. The other side we've we're using AI in some of our areas and in dry run, we're experimenting a lot in the background. We're very careful and we'll be very conscious of how and when we roll things out, because people are relying on the information to be accurate, and that's an area where it's. I think AI has a massive potential to offer insights that can give a broader view and another alternate perspective, and ones that you may have missed. But you also have to be very careful because it could also be, even if it's technically accurate, it could actually be somewhat misleading and cloud maybe cloud some judgment calls, because the success of a business isn't just on dollars and cents, it isn't just on increasing sales.

Speaker 1: 34:44

Like we've all seen, businesses that have risen and fallen because they lost sight of the market. They've lost sight of the true value they're bringing customers. They lost sight of their brand and it came down to dollars and cents. That's something that I don't think AI is going to be really good at is what did we do to make the business suddenly not cool? And businesses have failed because of that.

Speaker 1: 35:06

And there's businesses out there right now that you probably know some of the biggest consumer brands are struggling and they've lost the love of the consumer. So I think there's the two areas where I see a lot of advantages, obviously in a massive efficiency at times and also offering insights and alternate views, but I think it's still there's so many factors that I don't think it's going to be very good, at least for a long time, that people are going to have to balance out these other factors. It reminds me of sports, when they were talking about sports analytics right, and they always talk about the eye test. You know it's like you can look at all the data in the world, but it's what's the feeling you get?

Speaker 1: 35:46

Yeah, people watch it and go in like, and they always talk about intangibles. The analytics nuts will probably make fun of that. But there are these things that can't just be numbers on paper to make things really work.

Speaker 2: 35:57

Yeah, and I agree, as long as it's people dealing with people, then we're always going to have that. I think that if we have our AI overlords transition to them making decisions for us, I think maybe it changes, but until that point in time, I agree with you completely. I want to ask a fairly pointed question around dry run specifically and you'd alluded to the fact that there are a couple other players in this market but what makes dry run really stand out in this field of financial management tools?

Speaker 1: 36:24

Yeah, I think that the biggest thing for us is we are quite different from a lot of the tools out there and virtually every single person that comes to us is doing cashflow in a spreadsheet. We are very much going to give you a weekly, sometimes daily, view of your cashflow, allow you to model scenarios and get you out of a spreadsheet, and the times where we really pick up and run is when there's real complications and complexity in the cashflow, whether it's multiple location, multiple currency, multiple people, or sometimes it's one location, one person, but it's really lumpy cashflow happen. That just is an area that we're really good at and, rightly or wrongly, smartly or not, we're taking on the spreadsheet because we see it. As as much as we love spreadsheets for some things, we see where it starts to become that house of cards, where it starts to cost hours and hours every week and it's a impediment to a management team to make smart decisions. So that's, if you're in a spreadsheet and you're complaining at all about cashflow, you need to come and talk with us.

Speaker 2: 37:29

I love it If you had to leave our audience with one key piece of advice about either managing cashflow or managing some of their SaaS investments. What would that be?

Speaker 1: 37:38

I think that the talk, talk to your team Like again, we've come down to people talk with your team, truly understand that the problems that you're dealing with, the problems that your team is dealing with and not just a checklist but the sort of the true issues that they're facing and then talk with people at the businesses that you're either working with or plan to work with. Conversations and relationships are going to help you truly get an effective solution.

Speaker 2: 38:05

Blayne, thank you so much for sharing your insights today.

Speaker 1: 38:08

You can come visit us. It's just dry runcom. You can contact us there. We've got a chat chat bubble right there. You can also sign up. There's links all over our website. Sign up to talk with one of our team and you can also find me on LinkedIn. I'd love to have you come and connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm always happy to chat with anybody, so you can book a time with me and I'd love to talk.

Speaker 2: 38:28

Thank you so much for your time today. This was a fantastic conversation and really appreciated you having me on the show.

Speaker 1: 38:33

Thank you so much, Keith. This was a lot of fun.