Our Future Podcast
00:04:14 · Michael Sikand
[00:04:14] S0: Yeah, dude. I mean, just think about how much a B2B business might depend on just one single client. Yeah. It's so hard. I mean, remember when we were building our agency, you know, there were a few of, you know, major clients and, you know, the invoice had to come in on time, you know, otherwise, you know, things wouldn't be able to make payroll. And I think that happens for, like, a lot of companies. I think you really need to understand, like working in a B2B environment to know that these invoices are large and make or break. You know, you're not operating with a ton of clients, you're focusing on a few. So, you know, there's also an element, it's just hard to get paid, Like it's just hard to get that money in the bank. You know, you have to often hound like invoicing teams, there's lots of email threads and chains. It's again, a lot of like PDF invoices over email and, you know, some bill.com stuff, but really, it's quite scattered. And another interesting thing about this company is they built tooling for these more traditional businesses, kind of like think like we talked about with owner.com. This is very verticalized software. Yeah. So, you know, whether that was being able to pay by check or being able to send orders via fax machine were two things that they added on for these more traditional businesses.
00:05:18 · Simran Sandhu
[00:05:18] S1: Well, I think it goes back to just how much of a nightmare it is for big businesses when it comes to their procurement teams. Like, it doesn't matter if it's a blue chip Fortune 500 company, like trying to get something done with them, whether it's a contract or trying to enable some payment process, it's a nightmare. Like you have to use their portal. It's like really not a fun process. And we've seen a little bit of that on the agency side. But like, think about just, you have people who are building this financing for specific industries, but what if it wasn't just curated to that, right? Like, it's like any business you want to go to where maybe you're spending tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars. Yeah. And the solution is, you know, you don't necessarily need a customized solution. You can use the same format that you're using. I think it brings a level of standardization to your process. And for someone who is maybe allocating my spend for this year and I'm trying to track it out, having like maybe three options that I can always bet on, which is we're going to spend this much with this vendor across this year. And we know that we can get net 60 terms out of them. So that gives me a sense of release, right? As the customer to know or just as the customer for this vendor to know that I can essentially better plan out my finances for this year and where I need to budget my spend. Yeah. So tons of value for sure.
00:06:45 · Michael Sikand, Simran Sandhu
[00:06:45] S0: I mean, it's really difficult, right? Because like, you know, if you're doing like net 90 and then, you know, you have to purchase inventory from a supplier Yeah. Then go sell out to consumers. [00:06:56] S1: Totally. [00:06:56] S0: Just think about the sales cycle there. It's very difficult to recoup cash and stay cash rich in these retail businesses, right? So it's a challenging process. And I think what's interesting about what Alice said is she was quoted in this Forbes article by saying, you know, these kind of big players who've dominated in the category, ERP companies, think SAP and Oracle. She said like a great validating moment for this business was that people are leaving their tech stacks with Oracle and SAP for Slope. And that was just like a huge validator for her because if you're you know, the pain has to be real is what she said for you to leave, you know, a company that entrenched and established. And, know, as we know, soft education costs and software are very high. Switching costs are very a lot of friction there. So, you know, if people are adopting this framework for payments, it's probably a big signal that they can take a big chunk of this category and build many, many features into it.
00:07:53 · Simran Sandhu
[00:07:53] S1: Yeah, totally. And I think what's great is like the flexibility you have with the integrations as well, right? So I get a little bit of a Stripe like feeling from this, right? Like the ability to embed it. It's fully integrated within your payment process, right? On your website. But you can choose, you can do no code, you can do low code, an API integration, or like actually go all the way. And so this is really good for maybe a B2B business who is on the fence, right? For them to change their entire financing process or for them to change their entire payment process, that's a big initiative, right? And that comes with huge risk. So this is a great way for you to be able to kind of dip your toes in the water, right? Where it's, Hey, let's just help you use offline payment links, right? That's the no code play, right? And you just get kind of used to using slope and it kind of makes you comfortable, right? And then once you feel like you have a good grasp there, your customers feel good about using it. Now you move to the next level. Now you move to the level after that. And then before you know it, Slope is like fully integrated with your entire payment workflow.
00:08:58 · Michael Sikand, Simran Sandhu
[00:08:58] S0: Right, right. I love so I mean, we've talked about this before. Yeah. Right? In software, you have to build a ton of different features to add value to really kind of own this very particular part of the business cycle with your software. If you look at Oracle and SAP, they do so much. I mean, there's a reason why Seamus became a millionaire at 23. Right? It's because he was training companies on how to use this ubiquitous software, Salesforce or HubSpot, that you would think would be, like, quite intuitive and easy to use. I mean, it's sales. Track your prospects and send them messages. But there's just so much that goes into this. There's actually just so much bloat with these big enterprise companies. I really like how Slope started with this beachhead market of the invoicing process and buy now, pay later. That's a really, really strong pain point for businesses. It focuses on a very the most integral part of the business, which is cash management and, you know, getting paid on time, right? [00:09:50] S1: Yeah. Yeah. [00:09:51] S0: So that's the most that's priority number one, right? So when I think about building software, I think of go for massive need priority number one, and then build in the other features to truly carve out a diversified platform that can have a greater market share in comparison to the giants.
00:10:06 · Simran Sandhu
[00:10:06] S1: You have to get the beachhead right, though. Right? It's the equivalent of, like, how important it is to pick the right market. Right? It's the same kind of thing. You have to pick the right problem to solve within the market. And I feel like you can really hurt yourself if you're not very intentional. Like when this is a big initiative, right? The ability to like be able to provide these terms, right? Let's say you're building a B2C style software of some kind, right? So you want to get single player right before you jump into multiplayer, right? And you start thinking about like, how can the team collaborate and use this function and all that stuff? Like get the first thing right before you move on to the other things. And I wish there was like a specific metric or like framework you could use to say, okay, now it's time to move on to the next thing. But I think that's kind of an innate feeling in the same way that like product market fit is. Like, you'll just know when you have it. Yeah. And like churn is starting to get lower. People aren't complaining about it as much. People are actually saying like, Wow, where were you guys ten years ago? I think when you start hearing those kinds of things, you know you've probably done a good job at what you started out with.