00:48:31 · Seema Amble, Praveer Melwani
[00:48:31] S1: lot of people overthink that with AI. And, you know, Ivan and I have been hosting these CFO and controller dinners for, I don't know, a couple years now. And we saw this real market change, I'd say, maybe nine months ago when it went from people saying, Oh, yeah. I'm generating this tax memo or this onboarding doc with AI to saying, Okay. Yeah. I can actually... I'm doing the core, the data reconciliation, and automating many of the workflows. And it's really been a step function change. And if anything, the leaders are saying, I'm... I need to do this. Otherwise, I'll be perceived within my organization as behind everyone else. This goes back to your point around you winning the hackathons. Like, finance was never the one that was gonna be winning the automation hackathons, you know, I don't know, a couple of years ago. And it's pretty cool to see that's totally changed. [00:49:19] S0: Yeah. I love this part of it. And I would... We have, like, an internal maker week. We... And it's our internally branded, like, hackathon. And, you know, I I would always sit there early days and not really know how to participate. And now I'm like, if I had, like, a spare minute, I think I have a million different ideas, and I'm sure my team has... Feels very similarly. [00:49:37] S1: Well, Praveer, thank you so much for joining us. This was really fun to talk about and, understand directly from someone who's gone through this journey of automation over over your career. And thanks, Ivan, and, this was a really fun conversation. [00:49:50] S0: Yeah. Thanks for having
00:49:50 · Praveer Melwani, Ivan Makarov, Erik Torenberg
[00:49:50] S0: Yeah. Thanks for having [00:49:51] S2: me. Yeah. [00:49:54] S3: Thanks for listening to this episode of the a16z podcast. If you like this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or a review, and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcast, and Spotify. Follow us on x at a sixteen z, and subscribe to our Substack at a16z.substack.com. Thanks again for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a sixteen z fund. Please note that a sixteen z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see a16z.com/disclosures.