Everyone is Selling to the CFO

Pete Thornton 00:06
Welcome back, The SaaS Ramp Podcast. I’m your host podcast Pete. Introduce you today to the co-founder and CEO of Abacum. This is Julio Martinez. Excellent guest today, Julio Martinez, wonderful to have on the show, he speaks about selling to the CFO selling to the CFO, this is the new ideal customer profile persona of everyone who’s trying to sell software. Now, anything really doesn’t have to be software, but he breaks it down and talks about efficient growth. And why is this such a hot topic right now. Well, there’s two things, there’s chat GPT, obviously, and then there’s efficient growth. So we’re filling in efficient growth today, and how that role of Reb ops and Strategic Finance has kind of pivoted, kind of pivoted, really pivoted over the last few quarters, maybe five or six quarters, honestly, but it’s been slow. And now it’s just here, the new normal as they used to say in COVID. So I think you’ll enjoy this one outward from the sponsor rampant gong.io. services partner ramping is a gong certified services firm driving revenue enablement automation. The fit is for sales or enablement leaders and high growth tech leveraging gong for revenue intelligence slash sales engagement. So if you’re seeking Gong lead enablement strategy to achieve measurable increases in deal size, deal velocity and or win rates, then ramping offers a 16 week revenue ramp Bootcamp for a limited number of Golang customers. The next available cohort kicks off May 1. That’s May 1 2023. If you’re listening later. And if you’re interested to learn more, connect with Pete at rampant DOT cloud, loosely affiliated, of course with podcast Pete now on your regularly scheduled program. Welcome back rampants to the SaaS Ramp Podcast. I’m your host podcast Pete welcoming Julio Martinez to the show today. Julio is co-founder and CEO at Abacum. Welcome to the show. Julio,

Julio Martinez 02:12
Thank you so much for having me here. It’s a blast. Thank you, Bill. I’m super thrilled to be having this conversation with you today.

Pete Thornton 02:19
Wonderful to have you on really excited myself, I got a big question for you. Because the timing, you guys are in the financial space, the biggest challenge you’ve seen over the last six months?

Julio Martinez 02:32
That’s a great question. Right? So the biggest challenge we are seeing in the market these days is this transition from growing very fast, adult gods to efficient growth. And it’s my privilege to talk to many CEOs and CFOs and CEOs and Rebs themes. And, you know, I get very consistent feedback about their top priorities right, I emphasize what’s your top priority? And, you know, the consistent answer is efficient growth, right? This is the name of the new mantra, the name of the game. And hey, this is happening at a time where companies have really changed their finals, their metrics, their baselines. So all that is very blurry these days, right? So what used to hold through your commercial metrics, oftentimes, is no longer the case. So now, you know, themes are failing, oh, I know, I need to square the circle, right? And it looks like an impossible problem to solve. So this is a tough, the toughest challenge I’m seeing and how we approach it, and what the questions I ask to myself, honestly, but also to other companies are three questions, right? The word, the why, and the words next, and we find this framework, very simple, very classic, that is helping us to sort that out.

Pete Thornton 03:56
Yeah, that’s very interesting. I’m not surprised at all to hear of your efficient growth, because it’s so ubiquitous. I saw on LinkedIn yesterday, today could have been one of them. It could have been today. It was a slide decK, somebody was sharing the slide decK and literally being like, hey, if you’d like to speak to your customers, this is what they’re going to be. This is what everybody’s interested in right now. And then I have a personal insight, whereas we were doing, we were doing like fractional sales enablement. And all of the use cases were hyper growth. They were all tripling headcount. And then overnight, it feels like it was probably a quarter like three weeks though, all of the sales leaders went to their board meetings. And they came back to like, hey, bad news for us. And maybe you too, we’re not tripling headcount anymore. We are and everybody’s a little bewildered. And that was the beginning of you know, like, this is going to turn a corner we’re looking for efficient growth. So, you know, I was looking at it from a sales lens, but you mentioned Strategic Finance. You mentioned rev ops. I mean, everybody says they are associated together, but it feels like everybody was absolutely feeling that. Was this any different previous day? Like, did you feel a time like that when everything made that modification?

Julio Martinez 05:11
What do you mean? Like,

Pete Thornton 05:13
like, was there a? Was it q4 of 2022? Was it like on January 30? Or any particular time? Or is it like something you sensed for a period?

Julio Martinez 05:22
I think we’ve been feeling this very noticeable for at least nine quarters now. So I think that things changed completely in Q2 last year. And, you know, people embracing that mantra and trying to understand and figure out what was going on in the market really became really good as of q3 last year. So definitely last summer, you know, we’d be having these conversations many times consistently. Yeah.

Pete Thornton 05:49
Okay. Okay. That sounds right. And you’re in that space, you know, okay, then your co-founder and CEO as well, though, so. So you look at it from both lenses, like looking outward speaking to customers, looking inward at your own organization. So if you had to pick one, it’s an impossible task. Of course, it’s just an exercise here. But if you had to pick one thing that you had to get right for your organization applicant to grow, what might that be?

Julio Martinez 06:15
The nature of my company, and our product is that we sell to CFOs. Right? And, and this may be more difficult in these times. Right? So these are themes that are charged today to manage and run the business dialer. This is our person, right? We send it to CFOs. We have other influencers, the CEO is a critical HR rebab. CRO, so we also sell Rob’s theme. So, but in any case, the CFO is a key component in our strategy. And I see many companies, right struggling, and also coping these days with the reality of Wow, the CFO is now my stakeholder as well. So maybe, obviously, they sell to CMO, right, Marc marketing tech solution, or maybe I sell to the CRO or, but now they found that in these times, they also need to sell to CFOs and be able to convince them they have to manage the CFO office as a newer stakeholders in a stakeholder in their buying process. And we see this guy struggling. And several months ago already, I published a small LinkedIn post. And it really resonated. So you know, it was widely shared. And a couple of articles were written as a result. And he told me, you know, companies are trying to figure out how to deal with this situation, because maybe I’m very used to my personal CMOS, but now I have these folks. So the way we think of it is, you know, how can we approach CFOs? In a smart way, right. And I think we need to maybe because of my finance background, but we need to start looking past archetypes and cliches so CFOs are the best CFOs I know are obviously not you know, these are these guys with sea sores in their hands. Like Edward Scissorhands, right? Yeah, yeah. These are real business leaders that are there to deliver value, right. And I always like to use it. I’m a big fan of Frank salad man, right? The CEO of AT Snowflake, previously ServiceNow. And yeah, he’s just amazing, right? And I’m very well, no, this this is

Pete Thornton 08:27
the one who wrote the book, like recently, like, What’s the name again? I’m the dab. Emperor. Yeah, that’s right. Okay. And I feel bad. I have downloaded the book on Audible. I’ve yet to listen to it, but I have downloaded it. And I was like, why is the name familiar? Okay, okay.

Julio Martinez 08:43
Yeah, I highly recommend an amazing book he’s written. I think a couple more in the past that definitely this one is very compelling. And actually, I think it’s in this walk or somewhere else that he explains his relationship with his CFO. So, you know, Frank is an amazing CEO. He’s built and delivered a lot of value across many companies consistently, but, you know, the player he brings with him in every new adventure is his long term, and trusted partner, CFO. Right. So you know, how he bosses that? I think it is, you know, Frank, I play offense, and my CFO plays defense and stuff like that. Yeah. So this is a top talent in the market. So we need to start thinking smartly about how to sell to these folks that are really, you know, there to build business value. And obviously, there are different strategies. So for me, we spend time thinking about mission critical right? So mission critical is key for these guys. So it’s in this will be a simple message right in this will be increasing revenues, reducing cost, or actually mitigating risks. So you know, it needs to be a very compelling message to be targeted there. Secondly, we also spend time thinking about ROI. And that’s a fundamental right, so the bar is becoming higher. And as you know, CFOs, with the right business case in front of them, are very ready to make exceptions, to circumvent flexing a little bit, because we have the right ROI in front of them, you know, they are business leaders, right? So they’re willing to commit to that. So, framing the conversation around ROI is obviously, for them, you know, more relevant than ever before. Sometimes, we found some tactics, they’re also helpful. So if we see companies doing that, and I think it’s relevant, maybe you need to get value ahead of time to prove and strengthen your business case. Right. So POC, right, the POC guard, or like, deliver some value so that you can start, you know, having that conversation with the CFO office in a more meaningful way. And then I also think, when it comes to the sales process, I see that as companies now, you know, thinking along the lines, if I, if I don’t talk to the CFO office early on, then I don’t have a champion. Right. So this is new, you need to impose them very early on in the process. And then if you’re selling to a CRO Okay, that’s all good. But we need to bring it up. And it’s not only Oh, you know, do you have budgeted and all that is okay, we want to show the value to these guys, because you know, they will need to approve in the end.

Pete Thornton 11:37
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, it’s great. That LinkedIn post, see if we can make its way into show notes. I’m looking at it right now. And like, just, it’s for Thanks for Thanks for being very targeted, and very, like, I’m thinking of scenarios, as you’re telling me in the past and current that these things make sense for. So yeah, right on one thing to get right for organization. That certainly seems mission critical. Speaking of. So you’ll have to tell me like, your co-founder and CEO, this is not everybody’s role. And they’re not like college courses that you went to in your undergrad to become this. So there’s, the path looks different for everybody. Tell me about yourself. What are the personal professional experiences that brought you to be CEO, co-founder of Abu cron.

Julio Martinez 12:26
I’ve been in finance. And in tech, actually, all of my career, right. So I spent my time in investment banking. And that’s a classic mistake. Oh, I think everybody was young and crazy at some point, I guess. So I spend my time there. It’s an amazing school, then I became a FinTech entrepreneur. So I had the awesome opportunity to start leading a very ambitious FinTech initiative, launch for companies and product products to market from scratch and Glue them. Very importantly, that plays a very connected role to me with the opportunity that we are solving in the company, right, I’d have a command. Are you lucky in building these companies in building these products or launching them to market but also with my previous background? It was very clear that there was a massive opportunity in Strategic Finance and revenue operations and Reb ops in the mid market, right. So companies from Hey, 50 to 500 employees, so that mid market, there are a lot of manual tasks that are still done. We see amazing professionals, ambitious, that want to thrive in the organization, but still are working with software that is not, you know, up to date. So I was using the product I’m building. And you see, I know, like thigma notion like this, charge up this of three years ago, or four years ago. And it was you know, the gap was unbelievable. So yeah, I decided to join the airforce with my co-founder, George. He’s amazing. He’s been CFO, he’s an engineer. And then he gives you a foreword. And for many years of unicorn companies, very fast growing companies, and he lived through those pains himself as well. So I think that we feel as a founding team, we are in this opportunity. So this opportunity, this market was meant for us, because I think we understand the problem space in a very unique way and what you will find in this company, and we’ve grown a lot since we started, right, but from the beginning, a very mission driven team, right, we have a purpose, we have been in those trenches. And we are building that product we wish we had when we were under that pain, and you know, not very well positioned to really shine in organizations. So yeah, this is our story.

Pete Thornton 14:53
That’s very cool. Yeah, very neat. Really good to be in the trenches and understand what the challenges are and then then scratch your own itch, you know, like build something for yourself that you can then offer to others, co founding team as well, because both, you know, have the finance background, which is helpful, but then kind of come in from two different sides of it as well. So they’re a little bit more of those puzzle pieces fitting together. This is becoming a strength. Absolutely. Fantastic. That makes sense to me. So tell me, then, what about Abaco? What does abacus do?

Julio Martinez 15:27
So we are a Strategic Finance solution for companies in the mid market. What we essentially do is super finance and Reb ops teams to better predict revenue, and actually get a grip on their cost base. So what we find is that, you know, without that data without the proper sales capacity model, without the proper business plan, it’s very difficult to run your business in any smart way, especially in this current environment where, hey, what do you need to deliver this efficient growth, as we spoke about, we still see companies struggling a lot with manual tasks with you know, many spreadsheets, difficult connections in systems, so you cannot share that you cannot work collaborative with the rest of your company. So what we feel is the solution where we connect all the data with all the tech stacks of Salesforce Looker, Tableau Snowflake, we pull all this data into the platform, you can analyze it very easily, slice and dice. And then also share and share with you know, the CMO, the CRO, whoever worked with them, and then look into what’s next. Look into your planning. Okay, you can stress test your assumptions and think okay, my sales capacity model, what about, you know, my assumptions, my ramp assumptions for a context? Do I need to revisit quarters? What about my ACB? Is that holding true? So you have here at least we switch as always 18 months of data so you can see those strengths? What’s coming next? How do I look better into the future? How do I offer my leadership team? better visibility about the top line, right? Everybody’s obsessed about it?

Pete Thornton 17:13
Yes. Okay. It’s very interesting, super helpful for b2b. However, like, I’m like, it’s about tax season. So if you can just come to my house and help me with that, too. That’d be excellent. Like, I just took that whole thing. I thought about it from a business standpoint, and then I just personalized it. I was like, well, good, because I’m going to need some cost efficiency structures around here. And the family got these children.

Julio Martinez 17:37
I have three children myself. So yeah, that’s expensive.

Pete Thornton 17:40
Yeah, yes. Yeah, that’s right. With a three. Okay, totally get it. Very necessary tool. Really interesting. I really kind of like that. It’s kind of like the current state, but also has this future state with this planning aspect to it. And that is, because once you get everything settled, like, Okay, now, what can we do? How can we make a better plan, because sometimes in hypergrowth, you’re just trying to manage what’s flying around. But that’s not the plan. That’s just kind of what happens. So if that can become settled in the next one can come into, you know, where are we going? How can we, you know, properly stairstep this for the next year, two years, three years. Now, moving forward. Love that. Okay, so then, and that might have been the explanation for it. I don’t know. Let me ask, though. What is the context for hyper growth because Abacum as a company is also scaling very rapidly.

Julio Martinez 18:33
I think the key piece here is to be solving a very real problem, right? And this is what we do. And that has been the case forever, since I’ve been in finance. But honestly, this current market environment makes the pains we solve even more acute, right? So companies these days, finance leaders, CEOs, revenue leaders need to run their business more tightly. Right. So having agreed on their performance metrics, understanding performance analysis, budget versus actuals, is critical these days, more than ever before. So, this is in our context here. So this is what we solve, like FBLA. And Strategic Finance was always a market in the mid market, that was an untapped category. So usually, you had enterprise solutions, but you know, the mid market was, you know, very much underserved. So with a good platform to plan for the meat market, you can really unlock a lot of value for these teams that are under a lot of pressure these days, right? To support the Board of Directors asking many questions. What If analysis should be closed on this market? Should we hire faster? Or should we hire slower? What happens with ACB? What is the plan? Like they get bombarded? And then you wonder why I asked my that wasn’t to my Reb ops team or to my finance team, and yet it took three days to come back with an answer. Yeah, I mean, they are very smart, it’s just that they don’t work with the right solutions. So this is to me, this is to me the right, you know, been solving the right pain point in the current market. And a little bit like what you saw, I know with Zoom during COVID, right, or some of these, or middle or these guys, right? So, obviously, they were booming and crushing it. So we are feeling a little bit the same.

Pete Thornton 20:26
Okay, okay, it’s so funny. To summarize, you have this business pain, you’re solving for this meeting a white space in the market. And, you know, yeah, when the two shall meet, that’s always a beautiful thing for a business owner, CEO, or co-founder. And then when you mentioned zoom, and Miro is just too funny, I have a friend who went out in the live and moved from East Coast to West Coast, moved to Mountain View, and became associated with a little organization called CrowdStrike. And he got the Zoom account as one of his earliest accounts right before COVID. And he had to hold on to that account for his dear life, because everybody was coming for him at that point. And he got to hold on to it. And he has done exceptionally well, ever since. So you see that thing? And you watch it, just go wild? And then you mentioned outages? I don’t want to throw anybody out of the bus because I love the software, because I use it because obviously I was upset today when it wasn’t my mirror platform wasn’t spinning. And so I’m just like, Yeah, but it’s painful, because so many people are coming towards it, like so fast, and they need to grow so fast. So it’s a good problem to have, like, you know, it’s one you want to have to solve. So good examples, anyway. Okay, then. So we have these best companies that are planning and executing for efficient growth? Like, how are they meant to do that? What are the steps? I feel like? I’ve heard some of it from you today. But to kind of just clarify how did the best companies plan and execute for this efficient

Julio Martinez 21:54
growth. So I actually at the beginning, on a small framework that we follow, which is the what the why, and the what’s next, right. And I think this is the fundamental basis to build upon, then you have some of the tactics, but what we mean about the word is, get right your metrics, understand deeply what’s going on in your business. And you will be surprised that many companies certainly are customers before us in the market, they are still, you know, doing a lot of data wrangling and spending half of their time doing manual tasks and struggling with the data. And instead of, you know, doing deep work, to analyze, to challenge and to partner. So, first of all, what’s going on in the business, understand your trends very well, that is critical, read at least 18 months of tracking data, and slice and dice it, analyze it in many ways, then it’s the why right? And going deeper and understanding it better once you know why things are happening in that way. And, and you can follow in any framework, there are obviously five why’s or whatever. But the key here is to get your team’s first thinking principles, right? And think in terms of first principles. And why are we challenging themes here, when we get asked this question is how much time are you spending in partnering with your stakeholders in the company? Are you a strong business partner that is, you know, in Strategic Finance and in Reb ops? Are you really, you know, that thought leadership person inside the company that is working hand in hand with the CFO or the CMO with the leadership team, right? Are you getting close to the business to understand and uncover the whys and help these leaders to uncover the why. And oftentimes, we see you know, these themes chasing for a number because I need to complete my model, instead of that trusted partner. And then they know what’s next, and we touch briefly on the planning side of things. What’s next is critical, right? How do you work with the rest of the organization to understand better, you know, how to plan ahead and that means forecasting or budgeting. And here, maybe we can share a few tactics that we see very successful, that are very applicable, right? Agile forecasting, we believe, is critical these days. So having a way to shorten your planning cycles, and do it in a very agile manner in a very collaborative manner is very relevant. So you really need to have a strong FPN, a team revenue operations team on top of, you know, the forecast on top and you can make it rolling right so you can make it rolling. At least it needs to be monthly. We see best companies doing even shorter and With a, you know, with the right planning tools can really accelerate that. So agile forecasting or rolling forecasts are critical to understand this market because, you know, what we see is that past metrics are not helping too much to predict the future. In many cases, for good or bad, so get the faster grip into the market understanding for instance, how your Salesforce and HubSpot and Luger data is tracking to understand how I close in the month and how am I close in the quarter that is critical. And then more eyeballs here: an exercise that some companies decide to do and that we sometimes recommend, depending on your circumstances, is zero based budgeting. And zero

Pete Thornton 25:50
based budgeting. Okay, zero based budgeting. All right, this is me outside of the finance realm going like?

Julio Martinez 25:58
Absolutely. And it’s a more geeky term, but I think it’s useful, depending on your circumstances. That essentially means that your budget, when you start the budgeting season, every line item is zero. Okay. Oh, you know, usually you have a budget, and then for next year, you sort of defend that budget. And hopefully you hope for a small incremental that budgets or sort of a smart budget is more for wartime. It’s obviously more time consuming. But basically anybody has any budget in the company. So now you need to start justifying any expense from scratch. And this is, of course, more time consuming, but it’s very successful, right? So companies tend to save like 25% after this exercise. And obviously, for technology, when it comes to you know, salaries are 70-75%. And that also means reviewing a little bit, you know, the headcount position like anybody, many companies have done in this market. And it’s a useful ledger size, because at least you are having meaningful conversations around what’s essential. Because we don’t stop right. So you continue going, and oftentimes you do Oh, no, let’s reduce OPEX 10%. And find like, you know, I got some seats here, some seats there. And depending on your margins, for instance, depending on your runway and your situation, it’s a very useful exercise because it really focuses you on doing less and focuses you on doing what really matters. And we’ve seen some companies IN emerging very strongly and very refreshed, very refocused after, after the scatter arcade exercise. And by the way, some companies just decided to operate that way. Always. Yeah, it’s, which is, I’m not sure if it’s an overkill or not. So it’s not up to me to judge. But definitely, it’s a good exercise that some companies embraced and was very successful.

Pete Thornton 27:58
It’s interesting. Like, it’s like a very minimal movement. And it’s like, you know, remember the tiny home movement or something like that, or like that was very much ongoing, or like just people going in and like, Alright, that’s it five shirts, I only need five shirts, like they just get down to brass tacks, like, what is it that I wear in this closet or something? Like just comparing it to kind of consumer,

Julio Martinez 28:20
but either way, I have five shirts, by the way, so that you do that you do that?

Pete Thornton 28:26
All right, I got weird, I got a weird little aside, we’ve crossed 30 minutes. And so it always gets weird, right? I had a box that I created called a pizza box. This is what my wife called her anyway. And she says she ended up and then her friends also asked her like, is he still doing the box and I’m not we’ve moved to get away from it. I had in this box everything I was gonna wear for the quarter, for the quarter. So everything would fit in this little. And I would just always like to have it. Just so my favorite things for that season. And it included everything, the shoes, the belt, that everything that was going to be worn by P and it was so strikingly easy to do, because I knew like, Oh, it’ll get cold. It’ll get warm. And it was very refreshing. I was like, Oh, got my box here. It was a satisfying feeling. So we might share that. Oh, if you saw the papers around here, you know how far I come from that. But again, we started a business so I could probably use your services. Fantastic. Love that. All right. Your leader, your co founder, your CEO, and I’m again, I’m not sure whether it would come from internal or external likes. Maybe there’s a leader that you admire, like the leader from Snowflake you’ve referenced or something that has happened that has just been like a great moment for you. So what is your favorite leadership moment? Just to take a little left turn?

Julio Martinez 29:44
Yep. So I think of leadership as a consequence of your values, right? Your personal values, and I’m a big, I’m a big believer in this racism. And when I reflect on leadership moments Time honestly doesn’t matter. We said Greek and Roman philosophy that focuses on what you control and what you know, releases your focus from what you don’t really control so that you are more effective. And you know, it’s a very practical and pragmatic philosophy.

Pete Thornton 30:15
This is something this is like maybe like, Marcus Aurelius was famous for high reset

Julio Martinez 30:20
Marcus Aurelius, big debtors. Seneca are three main guys.

Pete Thornton 30:25
That’s the one too Yeah, yeah. Seneca, Tim Ferriss references this frequently. Ryan Holiday has a book that was very popular. I did not read it. popular was recommended to me a few times. Yeah, it had the word discipline on the first page. And I think it was like, not more discipline. I haven’t, it’s too much. Yeah. Okay. So I actually

Julio Martinez 30:43
is, has popularized, be part of this philosophy. And I really think it’s very relevant for entrepreneurs and business executives, right? And some of the key aspects, there is obviously a win-win in business and in sales, you really focus on the outcome, you really focus on the result. And then it’s very easy to blaze there, all your happiness. Switching that to not what I do control is my input, where they do control, like at a personal level, is, you know, the effort, I’m bringing my best to work every day, and getting sharper and getting smarter, and then the results will show but even if they don’t show, I’m not going to lose my temper and my happiness. So, and I learned that, you know, through the years, and I’m hoping to bring this approach to leadership to the company, and to the team, right. So we place a lot of emphasis, obviously, on results focused on outcomes, but we really make an effort to invest in people to grow people to you know, oftentimes hire people that are, you know, that we see the next potential we come in, they come in green, honestly. So, you know, at the beginning of surveyed, sometimes rougher, but we see an exponential growth, and then really shining in the company through, you know, these very intentionally investment that we making people, because we focus on the process, we focus on getting it right, day in day out, right, which is what you really control. So, this is very relevant, and actually, to the credit of our former boss that they had, which was highly inspirational to me, and it was like, you know, I think life gives you some masters that guide you in the way and I learned a big deal about him and his leadership style. And I’m just trying to, you know, incorporate that in our day to day.

Pete Thornton 32:41
That’s cool. Okay, very neat. I like philosophy. It’s, it’s, I’ve heard of it before, and it resonates, because there’s something else that I was listening to, that I got so into, and then juxtaposed against my personal beliefs that I gave a TED talk. And the TED talk was a slightly the same, it was like, hey, when you’re trying to do something that’s so hard, and you’re like saving your happiness for later, then like, what if you could feel that happiness earlier from that result, and just have it now, and then get it later. Because, you know, when you’re trying to get to a goal, you’ve almost made an agreement with yourself to be unhappy until you reach it, and then they are starting to prove that you reach it more slowly. When you’re unhappy until that point, you think it’s the thing that’s helping you get there, but it’s actually hindering you. And you don’t have happiness along the way. So I wouldn’t call it stoicism per se, but it has a lot of the same tenants. It’s very interesting. That’s cool.

Julio Martinez 33:39
I think it may be common wisdom, right? So But definitely, as Susan was, you know, very opinionated on this, and I cannot recommend that enough. And it has some other very pragmatic aspects to it. But this one is particularly relevant for business, I think.

Pete Thornton 33:54
Yeah, yeah. In this space, especially high growth, hyper growth, software, economic transitions, it is very helpful to have things like that. Well, silly last question, then, because I have kept you too long. But it’s been exciting. My little podcast here, SaaS, rent podcast. So the fake question is, I’m saying fate because it’s like, there’s no right answer to this one. But it’d be interesting to get your take anyway. It always is. And there’s, these answers are more varied than I would have ever thought it would have been. What does SaaS ramp mean to you?

Julio Martinez 34:26
And I love the question, because the way you ramped it this ramp, and you have the parentheses, which is how we write a formula in our platform. So in the platform, if you want the sales capacity model, like you will literally have the formula with parentheses. So I find it super funny to have this question. And to see, you know, in the name of your podcast, you know, one of our most important formulas and that our customers use the most and but to the core of your question, so what it makes We think of is, you know, Ram being super fast SaaS company in the right way. Right? Maybe this connection with the formula, but, you know, do you have assuming you’re in hyper growth? Or maybe, you know, just more modest growth these days, right. So we see everything in the market. But in any case, do you have your SAS business under control? Are you running these the way you want to do it efficiently? Are you doing it tightly? And it’s been very tempting to forget about this in the past, but these days, as we spoke about efficient growth is the mantra. So ramping your SaaS business growing? Like crazy. It also comes with discipline to your earlier question, it comes with a deep understanding of your business, the levers, and yeah, so this is the thing.

Pete Thornton 35:58
Yeah. Okay. Okay. It makes complete sense to me. And that’s like, that’s a little bit behind when we’re putting it together. That’s the idea. But there’s always nuance to it. There’s just a nuance to it that everybody looks at a slightly different lens, and as unique as I was, I thought it might be as well. So I love that it came into the formula piece like that formulaic bit. Who knew we were going to need those formulas? from way back when I still haven’t used calculus yet. I’ll apply that calculus could still have stayed in high school, and I’d been fine. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Julio, thank you on behalf of our audience, and learn so much today and can’t wait to have you on again some time in the future, and then find out where you’ve made it to how many customers you’ve helped. And if that definition of SaaS ramp has remained the same or changed, you know, he’s going to have you back.

Julio Martinez 36:47
Thank you so much. It was an honor to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Cheers.