00:05:43 · Shensi Ding, Molly O'Shea
[00:05:43] S2: Yeah. You know, back then, like, mostly our engineers were like, oh, like, I'm gonna input this code snippet into ChatGPT and, like, ask a few questions about, like, how to fix something. But after that, it was like, saw what was possible. Everything was different. We were like, you need to be building completely zero to one with AI. [00:05:58] S1: How do you keep your team up to date on everything? Obviously, like, that is an example. But, some founders have really pushed their teams to actually use and embrace AI. And then also with your new hires, do you test them? What is the experience? [00:06:14] S2: It's cultural. Like our whole team is really encouraged to do it. If you don't do it, it does it is a part of your performance. So everyone will share tricks that they learned. Also feature people who are really AI forward, it's not just R and D. So our accounting team is really AI forward, same with our recruiting and finance teams and our marketing team too. So everyone is in Cloud Code. Everyone is generating things and making it automated as much as possible. And we just really try to highlight it as like a positive part of like the merge experience.
00:06:14 · Shensi Ding, Gil Feig
[00:06:14] S2: It's cultural. Like our whole team is really encouraged to do it. If you don't do it, it does it is a part of your performance. So everyone will share tricks that they learned. Also feature people who are really AI forward, it's not just R and D. So our accounting team is really AI forward, same with our recruiting and finance teams and our marketing team too. So everyone is in Cloud Code. Everyone is generating things and making it automated as much as possible. And we just really try to highlight it as like a positive part of like the merge experience. [00:06:42] S0: We also have, yeah, we have brown bag lunches, training sessions. We just started a recurring session on merge skills. So just skills that you've built and how to use them. We ask about it in the interview process. So what we're not looking for is I use the latest cutting edge, but we're looking for, you know, hey, I use it to code sometimes, my company doesn't let me use it to do all these things, but I really want to. That's what we're looking for is just the desire. And I think we've brought in the right people for it now. [00:07:08] S2: Yeah, but I think it has to just be cultural.
00:07:08 · Shensi Ding, Molly O'Shea
[00:07:08] S2: Yeah, but I think it has to just be cultural. [00:07:11] S1: Yeah, it's so interesting. More of the conversations I've had recently when I'm talking with either public companies, CEOs, or really high growth companies, when they're hiring out, they're trying to hire for founders or previous founders, people that went through YC, like that kind of thing that like high agency self, what's it called? Self development. It's an autodidact type of DNA within talent. And I've just been seeing this over and over again where there is a clear bifurcation in people who just, like, think you can still just, like, apply to get a job. By the way, the the bar is always very low or high. I don't know what it is. It's one of it's one of those types where it's as you've taken on and you've used adoption with AI more and more internally, and the models are developing faster and they're more they're just more efficient. Have you noticed the company build faster? Are you seeing the direct correlation there? [00:08:09] S2: Yeah, I mean, last year, we didn't increase headcount that much, but our revenue accelerated pretty significantly. And so it's had like meaningful leverage on our business.
00:08:09 · Shensi Ding, Gil Feig, Molly O'Shea
[00:08:09] S2: Yeah, I mean, last year, we didn't increase headcount that much, but our revenue accelerated pretty significantly. And so it's had like meaningful leverage on our business. [00:08:17] S0: And yeah, think one thing Shuncie actually brings up a lot of the company is Keith Rabois barrels versus ammunition, you know, sort of sort of view where you have some employees that are ammunition, they're really good at specific tasks and just knocking that out. And then you have barrels who basically just knock down doors and will do anything to get things done. And it used to be that, you know, a team that had a barrel of a PM or a manager and a bunch of ammunition could get a lot done. But now that you kind of can have one person just go use, you know, Codex, Cloud Code, whatever, to go build something, you really just need a lot of barrels to just go get things done. So that also has shifted how we're hiring. [00:08:52] S1: How do you do you like Codex? How's that going? [00:08:54] S0: We we love it. Yeah. We we like we like Codex and Cloud Code. We use both. We're we're big fans of them. [00:08:59] S2: Yeah. We we allow just like a budget, so you can choose whatever tools you prefer. Some of our team members prefer Codex, some of our team members prefer Clot. It's really just dependent on like, some people prefer like other things. It's really just up to their preference. [00:09:09] S0: Yeah, the only, we just have security reviews, obviously. Can have people going wild on every tool, but otherwise, yeah.
00:09:09 · Gil Feig, Molly O'Shea, Shensi Ding
[00:09:09] S0: Yeah, the only, we just have security reviews, obviously. Can have people going wild on every tool, but otherwise, yeah. [00:09:14] S1: Yeah. So let's talk about the growth. So what are the current metrics of the company? How many customers do you have now? [00:09:22] S2: Yes. So we have over, I think over like 20,000 self serve organizations on the platform, might be 25 now, I probably need to check, and over 400 enterprise customers on the platform too. [00:09:32] S1: I think Brex is one of your customers. [00:09:34] S2: They are. We love Brex. [00:09:36] S0: They're good customer [00:09:36] S2: of Michael Tanenbaum, actually helped bring us in, like, a long time ago. [00:09:40] S1: Oh my gosh. I know. [00:09:42] S2: I know. I love him. I really love him. Yeah. He's, yeah, he's like the GOAT. [00:09:46] S1: What are the main categories of customers that you bring in and what are their use cases? [00:09:52] S2: Yeah. So there's a couple different categories like traditional SaaS platforms, which can include something like AI. So like our first customer ever was Drata. And then we, of course, sell to [00:10:00] S1: lot of [00:10:00] S2: the SOC two platforms like Drata, Vanta, [00:10:03] S0: Sprintero. [00:10:03] S2: Yeah. You name it. Then also No. You know, sadly, they didn't sadly, they didn't onboard onto George. [00:10:11] S0: Next topic on this one. And then
00:10:11 · Gil Feig, Shensi Ding, Molly O'Shea
[00:10:11] S0: Next topic on this one. And then [00:10:14] S2: expense management platforms. So, yeah, like Brax, Ramp, and like a few I have a few others as well. And then also large financial services. We have customers like JPMorgan, US Bank. Yeah. And that's been really awesome for us. Then of course, like the large AI companies, and that's been like a newer segment that we actively invested in early last year. So we do serve some of the largest AI companies in the world powering their AI search functionality and also connectivity in their products. [00:10:38] S0: Yeah, that would be large LLMs as well as some of the largest, you know, AI, I'm not going to say wrapper, but you know, AI SaaS ish platforms. [00:10:45] S1: Yeah. What is the difference in selling to these different because that's a lot of different categories there and also stages of company. [00:10:52] S2: The types of products that they're probably purchasing defer a little bit. And so we're able to, we're able to have a, like, a guess on, like, what what products they'll be mostly interested in. So for, large financial services, usually, it's probably, like, our unified API for deterministic use cases. Or if they're building some kind of, like, agentic product, then they'll need our merge agent handler, product as well and maybe merge gateway. For like large AI companies, it's usually like the connectivity that we're really, really a part of. Yeah. And then for SaaS platforms, to be honest, like it could be all three.