Financial Modeler's Corner
00:37:32 · Ian Schnoor, Peter Fuller
[00:37:32] S3: Is that... Would that be going down all [00:37:34] S1: That that that... You know, it's it's it's it's plausible. It's plausible that that could happen. I think you have seen vertical startups build their own models. I I say it like... It's like quite unquote build their own models. It's like do a lot of post training on on kind of open source basis. And I think I think the cursor guys did a did a really, really good job at that. Right? I think composer is a is a really strong model series. I like... If I look at our internal, like, coding model usage, I think there there was quite a lot of composer. I think that's actually now mostly been replaced by grok. So, you know, people get fable to do the kind of like big hard planning and thinking and then they use Grok to to do the work. But I think the Harvey guys are training their own model. I think usually when people do that, the first reason is is actually cost. Right? So your your job is to get your customers the very best ROI on on every token that they use with you. Right? And I I think it's extremely unlikely that you're going to train a model that is gonna be you know, at the frontier in terms of pure capability. Right? I think that that is the that is the lab's job. But it is possible, right, with enough data and enough expertise that you can, you know, train a model that is on the on the Pareto frontier. Right? And even if, you know... But but it's, like, much more efficient. I, you know, I won't commit firmly to it, but I think there's a there's a there's a world to do that.
00:39:09 · Ian Schnoor, Paul Barnhurst, Giles Male
[00:39:09] S3: Cool. No. No. I can't expect anyone in this space to commit firmly about anything beyond dinner tonight. So, I mean, I... Even even that's a stretch. Right, Giles? But I, I, you know, I have no idea. That's hours away. Anything could happen before then for me. [00:39:24] S2: Yeah. Was gonna say if you did commit, we would have been wondering. [00:39:26] S3: Yeah. Right. I... Well, no. That would be helpful to think about that. I'm... I I know you must have been thinking about it because, of course, as a responsible company, you're thinking about all the potential future, permutations and what the potential risks are and what does that mean and where do we allocate our resources. I mean, you'd be no different than anybody else. So I'm sure you are. But, anyway, I just was curious to know what the major bottlenecks would be. Anyway, you've given a great answer. I appreciate it. And it's been fascinating to have a small window into your world, and your lens right now. So, Paul [00:40:00] S4: I remembered my second question. [00:40:01] S3: No. You did. Come on. You did. Wow. [00:40:04] S4: I remembered it. [00:40:04] S3: See, just takes a few minutes sometimes.
00:40:04 · Ian Schnoor, Giles Male, Peter Fuller, Paul Barnhurst
[00:40:04] S3: See, just takes a few minutes sometimes. [00:40:06] S4: Yeah. This happens too many too many times in my daily life now. So it was just, again, interesting, like, hearing you talk about the... When you get into an enterprise, and I don't think this is revolutionary what I'm saying, that the journey starts once you kind of agree that deal. And and actually, it's... It feels like a really unique environment where you probably see what we're seeing as trainers, people are genuinely like, we will give you... Like, there... We want we want to spend money on AI, and we don't know what we wanna do with it. And I I I struggle to think of any other topic or category where it's been so strong, like, we are ready, we've got FOMO, take our money, but what do you want? We don't know. And I don't know if you're seeing that. It must be quite a nice environment if you are to be like, okay, we've got the tool, we can now help you figure out how to use it. [00:40:58] S1: Well, I'm not sure our enterprise customers are saying take our money. Sometimes they really negotiate. Really annoying. But no. Now the way I think about it is, you know, our end markets are historically, like, very, very bad end markets for software, actually. Right? I think it's hard to think of true category winners in software that have been built selling initially into, I'm gonna say, high finance and management consulting. I think there are some parts of high finance, like, on the data side, but that's not true. But selling into, you know, the way that we have been. [00:41:42] S2: And I think probably
00:41:42 · Paul Barnhurst, Peter Fuller, Giles Male
[00:41:42] S2: And I think probably [00:41:45] S1: about the time that you guys first tried Tracelight, that changed, and the world just changed. And after we launched, the amount of inbound from every single institutional brand name that you can think of was insane. And and most of our funnel to this day is inbound. Right? And Amazing. [00:42:10] S2: And Wish I had that problem. Right, Giles? Exactly. [00:42:13] S4: But that's what I mean. It's it's so interesting [00:42:15] S2: to me.
00:42:15 · Paul Barnhurst, Peter Fuller, Ian Schnoor
[00:42:15] S2: to me. [00:42:16] S1: No. But you're right. So you're you're exactly right. All of these organizations woke up and they all put together task forces. And, you know, I was initially very skeptical. Was like, don't sell to the task force. You know? Sell to the managing director. You know? But actually these task forces were real and they really bought stuff and their people are really motivated. So it's it's been... It's actually been amazing to watch that, watch this kind of category change in the last in the last year or so. So, yeah, I think now the challenge they have is there's a lot of vendors out there and they need to figure out which one is which one is best. And obviously, I think that's Tracelight, but so there's a lot of trials going on. There's a lot of pilots and then there's a lot of change management on their side as well. Right? And then you get the, you know, the the real worry that a lot of them have is is they will just buy the wrong thing. That's the thing that they're that they're most worried about. Right? Because then, you know, eight months from now, they'll have to do a whole change management program again, and that's not really what they wanna be doing. So your... Our job is, you know, we'll have our foot in the door, but our job is to prove to them that we are the long term partner. [00:43:35] S3: Nice. Fun... Must be a fun time to be alive and running a business. I I love it. We can we can live vicariously through you.
00:43:35 · Ian Schnoor, Giles Male
[00:43:35] S3: Nice. Fun... Must be a fun time to be alive and running a business. I I love it. We can we can live vicariously through you. [00:43:48] S4: Well, it's interesting when you compare... Again, I'm not gonna say too many nasty things about Microsoft because they'll... They will kick me out of the MVP program eventually. But Microsoft are so lucky in the sense that they are the stickiest company, and and I agree with you, like, year... Especially a year ago or even more. Copilot was awful. I mean, I I... I'm now in a position where I can train it because it's good enough in lots of areas. It's certainly not perfect. But my god, I don't... I'm not sure any other company other than Microsoft would have gotten away with how bad it was and how overhyped it was by them for so long, which is crazy. So if you're going in and from day one, like you say, you're focused on, like, give the customer a good experience. It's doing what we said it would. That's... Yeah. That's awesome.