March 4, 2025 • 42 mins
Dan Balcauski speaks with Matt Lhoumeau, Co-founder and CEO of Concord, about the journey of building a leading contract management platform. Matt shares his experiences from moving to the US with limited resources to creating a successful SaaS business. They discuss pivotal moments, such as dropping out of high school and entering prestigious French institutions, the importance of simplicity in product design, and the challenges of maintaining focus in a dynamic industry. The episode also touches on navigating board expectations, dealing with Covid-related setbacks, and future-proofing products in the context of AI advancements.
00:53 Meet Matt Lhoumeau: From France to Austin
05:05 The Birth of Concord: Solving Contract Management
08:42 Challenges and Focus: Lessons from the Pandemic
18:02 Navigating Boardroom Conflicts and Strategic Decisions
23:39 The Importance of Simplicity in Product Management
26:20 Learning from Past Mistakes
28:19 Innovating Ahead of the Market
30:33 Adapting to AI and Future Technologies
Guest Links
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dan Balcauski (00:20):
Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets, the podcast
that brings you the insidestories from the leaders of the
best scale up, B2B SaaScompanies.
I'm your host, Dan Balcauski,founder of Product Tranquility.
Today I'm excited to speak withMatt Lhoumeau, co-founder and
CEO of Concord, a platformrevolutionizing contract
management for thousands of SMBsand mid-market businesses.
After overcoming earlyadversity, Matt graduated with
four Master's degrees from someof Europe's top academic
(00:41):
institutions and workedalongside iconic leaders like
former French President NicholasSarcozi.
Over the last decade, Matt hasbuilt Concord into a sustainable
business after moving to the USwith just a few thousand
dollars.
Let's dive in.
Welcome Matt to SaaS ScalingSecrets.
Matt Lhoumeau (00:55):
Hi, Dan.
Nice to be you.
Dan Balcauski (00:57):
I am very excited that I get to talk to another
entrepreneur located in ourbeautiful city of Austin.
Although folks might notrecognize that as you start to
speak and realize the accent.
Guess maybe we'll just startwith that.
What brought you to leave thebeautiful continent and come try
your luck here in Texas of allplaces.
Matt Lhoumeau (01:15):
I think France is an amazing country.
It's very beautiful.
It.
Probably the best country whenit comes to, I would say cheese,
soccer and wine.
But if you want to build amarket leader in software, it's
not in France.
You wanna do this, it's in theus And so that's why I moved to
the US 10 years ago to buildConcord.
And you would've just a betterchance to build something
(01:36):
meaningful here.
Dan Balcauski (01:37):
Well we welcome you with open arms and feel free
to bring on some wine and cheeseas well and educate us.
We are very much open to that as
Matt Lhoumeau (01:46):
Well, the, so studio is not that bad actually,
so that part is already covered.
Dan Balcauski (01:51):
I, I know nothing about soccer, so but the wine
and cheese I'm all there for.
But well look, we all havemoments in our lives.
I like to think of them as asuperhero transformation moment
where our lives change.
Our perspectives change almostovernight or an instance, and I
call it superhero transformationmoment, like your Peter Parker
normal high school student.
(02:12):
You get bit by a radioactivespider the next day.
You wake up and you'reSpider-Man.
What moment has that been foryou and your journey, Matt?
Matt Lhoumeau (02:19):
I think for me it wasn't really the moment I
transformed into a superhero.
It was more about the moment Irealized that these powers were
already in me.
And I think the moment for mewas probably when I got into
Shpo.
So that's one of the schoolsthat I went to in France.
Shpo, is we the Frenchequivalent of Harvard.
It's the top school forpolitical science and all of
(02:39):
other things, if any presidentor minister in France went to
that school.
So it's a very prestigiousschool and I, have a bit of a
complicated background.
Before I got into that school, Iactually had to drop out of high
school after high school.
I was 17 at that time.
Some issues in my family.
And so I just had to figure outmy life on my own.
And so I.
(03:00):
Didn't study anything until Iwas 20 years old.
Started doing night classes atthe university to learn
Japanese, did other things, andI ended up at, when I was
already 25, so definitely laterthan most people.
And what was interesting at thattime for me is that when I got
into that school, people startedtaking mysteriously.
(03:20):
I had, I was the same person.
I had the same ambition beforeentering that school and after
beginning to that school.
But finally people were startedto actually listen to me because
I had that stamp of that school.
And for me that was veryproblematic because I realized
how messed up this you are.
You can be extremely smart, butif you just do not have the
right.
(03:40):
The right background, the rightcontext to get into these type
of schools or other places, thenyou're kind of stuck.
And that's really what the, whathelped, it helped me realize is
I really, I could buildcompanies, I could do all of
this.
It was already in me, but nowpeople will listen to me and I
think, this is a problem that Ithink is particularly linked to
the way France is, and I thinkAmerica as is very different
(04:03):
when it comes to this.
What was interesting for me, asI mentioned I moved to America
10 years ago.
I got here and no one reallyknew me.
I had no money, no Visa.
I just had to figure it out.
No one knew the schools that Iwent to.
People barely knew who NicoAdvocacy was, honestly.
And it didn't matter.
No one really cared.
What people wanted to hear is,what am I trying to build?
(04:25):
What is the ambition that wehave?
And took us seriously for that.
And so that's something that.
Was that moment for me in Francerealizing that I was already
that person.
I didn't have to go to thatschool to be able to do this.
And when I got very lucky iswhen I moved to the US 10 years
ago and I didn't have to rely onthis anymore, and that was
(04:46):
great.
Dan Balcauski (04:46):
There's so many different threads in that story.
I overall uplifting.
I wouldn't say that US iscompletely alleviated from that
disease.
We do have our own.
Breed of credentialism here, butI think, compared to Europe,
yes, there is I think it, it'sprobably better here overall but
not all, not, no society isperfect.
Well, okay, so how do you gofrom studying Japanese and
(05:09):
political science to bring me toConcord?
Like how does contractmanagement, lifecycle management
enter the picture?
Matt Lhoumeau (05:15):
Yeah, I mean, the thing is, like I, in my life I
wanted to become a diplomat.
At some point I wanted to becomea poet until I realized that
wasn't a job and you wouldn'tpay for my bills.
Dan Balcauski (05:25):
It is very French though.
Matt Lhoumeau (05:26):
it.
It is very French, absolutelydiplomat poets.
I wanted to do politicsobviously at some point, and
that's why I ended up workingfor Nicola Sarid in the campaign
in 2 0 0 6, 2 0 0 7.
So I just was always a bit allover the place.
For me, it was more about.
Seeing an opportunity and tryingto go for it.
And the reason we build Concordand we work on contract
management is because betweentwo of my schools in France, I
(05:48):
spent a year working for the CEOof the second biggest telecom
company in France Company calledFree, amazing Company.
The founder is basically theFrench Jeff Bezos.
I learned a lot over there.
And so I was working with theCEO on different topics and one
day he asked me to renegotiate500 contracts we had.
We founded vendors, we needed tosave money.
(06:08):
And they told me, just find thecontracts and tell me what we
can do.
And I was young at that time.
That was back in 20 0 9, 20 0 102010.
And I was very proud of thatmission for the first five
minutes because I.
It was a lot of money at stake,several hundred million dollars
until I realized that he justgave me the worst job of my
life.
(06:28):
I basically spent six monthsdoing this, just finding the
contracts in the file cabinetsof the company.
This is before the cloud andeverything, right?
And then I had to spend monthsreading the contracts plan by
one to understand what we agreedat the time, and build an Excel
spreadsheet with 52 columns and500, 500 lines.
And then I had to renegotiatethe terms of the contract,
sending hundreds of Worddocuments.
(06:49):
And so, I was coming home everysingle night asking myself like,
what the hell?
Why are we managing contractsmanually in what was already at
the time?
I think a$5 billion revenuecompany when we asked software
for everything else.
And so that's how I ended updoing contract management, is
because I hated my life.
I thought there would probablybe a better way to do this.
And we built Concord this way.
Dan Balcauski (07:12):
And so obviously you've hinted at it, and I
broadly stated that Concord isin the contract management
space, but for folks who aren'taware of Concord, like how would
you describe the company today?
What's the kind of 32nd overviewof what you guys do for your
customers?
Matt Lhoumeau (07:25):
Yeah, we basically help companies manage
their contracts entirely online.
So you know today, what does itlook like when you do a
contract?
You do your contracts on work,you send it through an email for
the revision, and then you useDocuSign, maybe.
To do the signature, but that'sbasically it.
What we help companies do istaking care of not only the
e-signature, but what comesbefore and after.
(07:45):
So no more documents throughWord documents back and forth
to, to get a revision of acontract.
You can do it directly onConcord like you would do on
Google Docs.
You cannot automatically createcon documents from templates.
All of this is entirely managedonline for you.
And then you sign your document.
But once you sign your document,there is so much.
It's so many thing that you needto do with it.
(08:06):
You have deadlines on therenewal, you do some reporting,
and so all of this is manageddirectly on Concord.
So today we serve, we focusmostly on small and medium
businesses, and we havethousands of customers in the US
but also in Europe and otherplaces in the world.
And really the approach thatwe're taking is we're trying to
just let companies take legalout of the contracts.
(08:28):
Because that's, when it comes tothis, a contract is not really a
legal matter.
It is just about studying arelationship.
It's about getting businessdone.
And so we're trying to helpthese companies spend less time
on reviewing contracts and justmore time doing business
directly.
Dan Balcauski (08:42):
Well, appreciate that overview and well this is,
SaaS Scaling Secrets, and so Ido wanna shift and kind of talk
about, challenges that you facedalong the way because, it's, I'm
sure obviously Concord's verysuccessful now but it always
hasn't, probably hasn't alwaysbeen that way.
And any, every CEOI talked to onthis show there's just daily
challenges that you go through.
Some more memorable than othersif you know, year review or
(09:04):
decade review.
But you come from France, youmoved to the us, but you have a
problem with one of the pillarsof the American society.
Why do you hate the CheesecakeFactory?
Matt Lhoumeau (09:19):
Well, it is so that I hate the Cheesecake
Factory.
I think it's more about.
What do you want to eat and howdo you want to do that?
But I think maybe here, just toexplain why you were even
mentioning this is we had aconversation earlier and, when
it comes to building a company,I think there is different
things you can do.
You can decide to build aCheesecake Factory where you
(09:39):
have, I think still as today,like the biggest menu I've ever
seen in my life.
But the problem about this isthat you can't be good at
everything.
So I.
We probably assume that it's notthat great.
I haven't been to the CheesecakeFactory in nine years, so maybe
they did better now.
But that's one way to build acompany.
Or the other way is to go morefor, the local pop shop, the PDA
(10:01):
shop that you have next door andthat, and they do one thing and
they do it very well.
And you know exactly what you'regetting.
You're getting that, thatpersonalized service.
It's just a differentexperience.
And I think when it comes tobuilding a startup, at least,
especially in the beginning, youshould choose between the two.
And I think there is one thatyou can do.
And the other one is rr a bitcomplicated.
So that's why but yeah.
Dan Balcauski (10:23):
Well, I wouldn't place too much bets that they've
improved significantly in thenine years since your last
visit.
But I am not there very ofteneither, so I can't say one way
or the other.
If they wanna come sponsor thepodcast, I'm open to bribery for
future episodes.
But, well, I mean, you did hintat it wouldn't be the first time
on this show that we've,entrepreneurs have brought up a
focus and the importance of itin growing a company, I guess.
(10:45):
As you look at Concord's,journey, is there a critical
moment that stands out to youwhere you kind of realize like,
okay, we're spread too thin, wereally need to narrow our focus?
Matt Lhoumeau (10:57):
Absolutely.
I think for us it was rightafter Covid.
So if you look at Concord, sowe've been around for 10 years,
right?
So we started in 2014 in the USand what was interesting with
Concord is we probably wentthrough all the different stages
a company can get to in 10years.
We at the beginning for, from2014 to 2017.
We were just building theplatform.
(11:18):
Think about it, Concorde isbasically Google Docs meets
DocuSign meets author system.
So it's a very complex system tobuild.
So it took us two to three yearsand we were in pure
evangelization phase.
No one really knew what contractmanagement was at the time.
People knew about electricnature, but that's it.
And so we, we had to do this,which was on its own, like a
interesting phase after it.
(11:39):
We had the very quick growththat we saw.
Between 2018 and 2020 and thenCovid hits.
And we were spread too thin.
We were burning too much cash tobe able to grow, and we
basically had to restructure thecompany and start asking ourself
the right questions when itcomes to our business.
And when it come, you justmentioned that the question of
focus, what I think for me, Irealized at that time, in 2020
(12:02):
when you have to make cuts inyour company, you have to let go
of people at a very difficulttime on top of this.
You really start rethinking alittle bit about the decision
that you made and trying to makea purely better decision in the
future.
And one thing that I Yeah.
That I understood when it comesto Concord is we were not very
clear about who we were sellingto because the problem that we
(12:26):
had at Concord when it comes tocontracts is literally every
single company in the world hascontracts to manage.
Every single one.
So your market is basedpotentially any company.
And as a matter of fact, as whenyou start a company, especially
in the evangelization phase andfast growth, you sign any
company that comes to you, youwill sign any customer.
(12:48):
It's a dollar, I'll take it.
And so we started looking at ourcustomer base and we realized
that about a third of thecompanies we were working with
were SMBs.
A third was the mid market and athird was enterprise.
And so.
Who should we target?
The three of them are basicallythe same size.
And so we try to just keep goingafter all of them.
(13:10):
That's basically what we did atthe time.
And obviously that's notsomething you can do.
You have to pick a lane, youhave to focus on one type of
customer and just focus on this.
We were the Cheesecake Factoryat that moment, and we decided
to downsize to a more local mopastore, and I think that's
honestly what saved the company.
And let us now grow again theright way because we can serve
(13:35):
some customers very well insteadof trying to serve everyone in a
terrible way.
Dan Balcauski (13:41):
So this.
Hey, we've got multipledifferent customer segments.
They have different needs.
They're, exp expect they haveneeds that aren't necessarily
synergistic with each other.
Like I've gotta do thingspotentially multiple times or in
different ways in eithermarketing or sales, et cetera.
And look, this is a problemthat, is really at the core of a
lot of company struggles.
(14:03):
I guess walk me through like,okay, you've got.
It sounded like almost an evensplit between SMB, mid-market
enterprise of, dollars orcustomers, however you wanted to
frame it.
But like, how do you go aboutevaluating, okay, there's needs
here, which, where do we go?
Like what was your process?
What steps did you go through?
Matt Lhoumeau (14:21):
Yep.
I think, what we did at the timeis and this is, all of this is
before Covid, and so I think themindset on the market has
changed a little bit.
But you have to remember onething is back in in 20 15, 20 18
in the Silicon Valley worldthere was not that many ways to
actually get to the big billiondollar valuation company.
You had to go enterprise at thattime.
(14:43):
That was the playbook.
All the companies that were iPodwere enterprise focus.
And so what was interesting isthat.
We had with our board forinstance, we had different
investors that had differentpool of view on this.
Some of them would tell us like,Hey, you can stay focused on SMB
mid market.
It's a viable play.
Or some other that were, no, youhave to go enterprise.
(15:04):
That's the only way.
And so to answer your questionabout how do we evaluate that,
yes, the numbers, everything wasbasically one third, one third
one firm.
So numbers would not help.
And then we had more theperspective of future growth.
And that's one of the reason wetry to actually.
Focus on enterprise when my DNAwas against it to your point, I
(15:24):
think you cannot build the samecompany whether you focus on SMB
or enterprise and to, to yourpoint, it is absolutely.
And Omic, you cannot do one andthe other.
If you do one, you will mess upthe other because enterprise
companies obviously want verysophisticated feature of
configuration, et cetera.
Whereas on NSMB, if you startadding this, it makes the whole
system more complex and lessadoption.
(15:47):
And so what was very hard forme, and that's why we didn't
really pick a lane, is becausemy DNA was more on the SMB and
mid-market and wanted somethingsimple that people can
understand immediately.
We had numbers that would nothelp us choose, and then we had
at the time, I think a playbookin Silicon Valley that was
mostly focused on enterprise.
That has changed.
However, I think just beforeCovid, people were calling that
(16:09):
the Postmate effect, which wasthe idea that you can still be
number two or number three.
In one industry and still beworth a billion dollar.
And so I think things havechanged since then.
You see amazing companies doingextremely well in the assembly
market.
Obviously, HubSpot companieslike Penoc, for instance, but
this is relatively new.
And so I wish I would've knownthat earlier because I think we
(16:32):
would've made the choice on ourlane.
Sooner.
And that's what we did.
And so that's why Post Covid, wereally went through that
process.
And at the end of, at the end ofthe day when you look at all the
data and everything, thequestion that I got back to was,
what do I want to do?
And what was interesting, Ithink over the first years of
Concord is I kind of forgot thatat the end of the day, this is
(16:53):
my company with my co-founder.
This is our company, and webuilt it because we had
something in mind.
And we wanted to do some thingsin a specific way.
And so we ended up just, ifthere's different path in front
of you, at least pick the onethat you have fun doing.
And that's how we decided toreally refocus again, the
company.
Dan Balcauski (17:12):
I love how you tied that in of like, your DNA
and ultimately, if you're gonnarun a company that you hate
showing up to, I guess what'sthe point of running a company?
So that's very appropriate.
But, I probably, a lot of peoplewould sweep that under the rug
pressure from other people whosound like they know better,
have been there before.
Um,
Matt Lhoumeau (17:30):
I did that and and it's also, I think it's a
good thing for a CEO for afounder to actually try to not
put their personal desires aheadof the company.
I think you have responsibilityand so you should try to do
what's best for the company andwhat's best for you.
But what I discovered is theydon't have to be against one,
one or the other.
You can probably actually dowhat's best for you and it's
best for the company too.
Dan Balcauski (17:50):
Well, it sounded like within this multi parties
of, advice, right?
Everyone's got an opinion.
The numbers don't tell a clearstory.
I guess how did you sort ofnavigate these conflicting
points of view?
Because, I mean, it sounded likemaybe some, you had different,
very conflicting points of vieweven on your board level or
investors.
I guess anything that youlearned and how to sort of get,
(18:12):
I mean, obviously everyone'sprobably trying to do what's.
What is they think is in thebest interest of the company,
right?
Everyone's trying to, assumegood intent.
No one's trying to lead you downa bad path.
But probably also very strongopinions.
I guess having gone through thatprocess, was there anything that
you found successful in sort ofbeing able to really, like,
okay, hey, like I've heardeveryone and now we're gonna
sort of move this direction.
Matt Lhoumeau (18:32):
I mean, literally what you just said I think what
I've learned over time, evenwith your board is that you can
just say, okay, I hear you, butthis is what we're going to do
and this is why.
And I was at the time, oncesecond, a young entrepreneur and
I had to.
To figure out my relationshipwith my board.
You want from the boarddifferent opinions.
If you have only one opinion inthe board, that's not a good
board.
So it's a good thing to havedifferent opinion and different
(18:54):
point of views.
That's how you get better.
But the thing is, at some pointyou cannot try to please
everyone.
And that's what I did.
I tried to please too many gods,so I would build a feature for
the enterprise that someone toldus about.
And the other thing on the SMBand that was just a mistake.
It was just a.
Basic mistake.
And so what I've learned overtime is that whether it's with
(19:14):
your board, with your teams VPs,ize, at the end of the day,
someone has to make a decision.
And it's okay to disagree.
And, it's easy to say that nowfor me, but once again, seven,
eight years ago just fresh offriends coming here to America,
that was a harder conversationfor me to have with the board.
And now I'm having theseconversations and it's going
(19:35):
very well.
And we, I think we actuallyhave.
Healthier debate because I'mless hiding sometimes.
Be behind trying to pleaseeveryone and giving more
directly what I think about whatwould be good for the business
and why.
Dan Balcauski (19:47):
Well, so you've make this, well, you get you
build the alignment or heareveryone out and you say, okay,
this is the direction we'regoing.
And so I'm curious, as soon asyou make that decision, you're
like, all right we're, we don'twanna be the enterprise company.
We're gonna, we're gonna gotowards this particular market
segment.
I guess what were sort of thepractical steps?
Like, did you like last year ormaybe it was two years ago now,
but you know, Airtable made abig, like.
(20:09):
Pricing and packaging changethat, that tick, they decided to
go the other direction.
Go enterprise, tick off alltheir s and b mid-market users.
Is it, do you proactively fireyour enterprise customers?
The strategic comms being like,Hey, we're, yeah, we're not
gonna build these, all theseintegrations, et cetera, that
these enterprise customers want.
What kind of happens next?
And like anything that you'velearned kinda going through that
process.
Matt Lhoumeau (20:29):
Yeah, I think when you do such as change, you
have to take it step by step andyou have to look at what is the
most impactful right now andwhat's gonna have to be managed
later.
And so what we did, the firstthing is, you just actually
mentioned it, is it's pricing.
At the end of the day, it'schanging your website to be able
to adapt your pricing and justthe customer path to your
(20:49):
company.
To your target?
What does that mean here?
If you target enterprise,typically what do you see on the
website?
Not much exactly.
You don't see pricing.
You can't do a free trial.
You don't have any of this.
You have to go through theclassic path, which usually
will.
You will talk to an SDR, andthen you will talk to someone
else and maybe on the fourthcall you get a demo and maybe on
(21:11):
the fifth call you get
Dan Balcauski (21:12):
it is like the nucle, it is like the nuclear
codes.
Right?
We can't God forbid we tell youwhat the pricing is before we
have four, four conversations.
Matt Lhoumeau (21:19):
It's a horrible experience.
I mean, that's one of thereasons I don't wanna work in
enterprise because I don't wantto get through this.
I don't want people to givethrough this either.
But that's what you do inenterprise.
And I understand there isreasons behind this obviously,
but when you, for target moreSMB in market, you have to adapt
to this.
Pricing has to be transparent.
So our pricing is on ourwebsite.
Our platform is extremely open.
(21:40):
You can, we can give you freetrials to it.
All the videos are online.
We're not hiding anything.
And so people already knowexactly what they're getting
into before they even talk to usmost of the time.
So we did just a massive changeon the website to just adapt to
this.
So that, that's the first part.
Then obviously what comes afterthis product, obviously if you
build for SMB not building forEnterprise, and so we actually
(22:03):
had to change a lot of things onour roadmap to realign with our
target of SMB, and so we killed.
A number of development that wehad in mind that were more
focused on the enterprise.
And we even killed some featurethat were already developed, but
that we knew were not justuseful for our target.
So we didn't touch that forexisting customers, but for new
customers, we would actuallyjust turn off some of the
(22:24):
features to just simplify theexperience.
And so that's on the productside.
And then you have the existingcustomers.
And indeed, when we did havevery nice enterprise customers,
we still have some today and.
We had sometimes to have toughconversation with them.
When they would ask fordevelopments, we would have
basically to tell them that wewon't do them and explain why
(22:46):
and explain that this is whatthe direction we are heading
toward.
And basically telling them thatif that's not something that
they align with, well we'regonna help them find someone
else.
And we did actually, we did helpsome customers.
Transition to some of ourcompetitors more focused on the
enterprise.
What was interesting for medoing this is that I was very
(23:06):
surprised by the number of.
Enterprise customers when itcomes to the size of their
companies, their revenue, thatactually didn't want to have an
enterprise grade software.
Because in their mindsetenterprise means one, it's very
expensive.
Two, it's probably six months ofimplementation.
It's a complex UI typically.
And so we actually had manyenterprise customers that.
(23:28):
Decided to stay with us becausewe told them about the path that
we had more focused onsimplicity on automation.
And that really resonated withthem.
So sometimes you never know.
Dan Balcauski (23:38):
Yeah.
There's so many good things yousaid there, so, I spent all my
time in the pricing andpackaging world, and so like
absolutely core of the way Iapproach pricing and packaging
is all around segments.
You price to customer segmentsand, you change who you're going
after, like of course you'regonna change that.
I've loved that part.
And then.
I spent a lot of my career inthe product management world.
(24:01):
And so I loved what you saidthere about, we had features
built and we decided to hidethem.
And I can just imagine a chorusof cheers coming up from a bunch
of product management people,but then everyone else being
very confused about like, well,you had it built.
Like, especially if you're onthe.
I pick up, I'm gonna pick up mysales friends right now.
Be like, well, you had it there,like we could sell it.
(24:21):
Why help, help unpack thatsituation.
I could give a long answer, butI want to hear your analysis of
that.
Matt Lhoumeau (24:27):
Less is more.
It's just this, it's at somepoint, you, the more you put on
a system, you have morefeatures.
That's quite, it means that youhave.
More access points, you havemore problems.
It don't communicate between oneand the other.
It's more maintenance.
It's a mess.
And when you start reallylooking into why people use your
system, you start realizing thatin the end, 90% of the users are
(24:49):
using what, 20% of yourfeatures.
So should you really try tobuild another feature or to
maintain a feature that is usedby 1% of your customer base?
Probably not.
And and especially nowadays, Imean, companies that have been
around, we've been around for 10years, technical debt is a real
thing.
Maintaining code that is barelyused by anyone is, will cost you
(25:11):
months of development.
So it's just better to remove,remove, remove, remove, remove.
And it's funny because, nowConcord is working pretty well,
things are running.
I have management in place, etcetera.
But.
My job, honestly is 80% of thetime just removing things from
the, either the roadmap that wehave removing.
(25:31):
When I look sometime, I'm stillvery involved in product and
design, and so I'm just askingto remove things that I think
are not useful.
How can you just trim it down towhat's the most important thing?
And that means, for everyonethere is less things to learn.
It is less things to develop,less things to design, it's less
things to maintain.
It's just better.
Dan Balcauski (25:49):
Yeah.
Well, every garden needstending, right?
Otherwise it's just a jungle.
And so we need to constantlytrim and, uh, tend to.
Matt Lhoumeau (25:57):
decide.
Yeah, exactly.
Dan Balcauski (25:58):
and hey, it's just 10 lines of code.
The engineers could write it inan afternoon is never the right
answer.
And you're gonna live with that,for the rest of your life.
As someone has to maintain it,someone has to fix bugs around
it.
It doesn't do what some customerexpected, and so they want an
extension to it, and you'relike, we should never, should
have built that first part inthe first place.
So I applaud everything that youjust said there.
(26:20):
I guess as you kind of thinkabout anything else that you had
on that particular,
Matt Lhoumeau (26:23):
The funny that you just said that I think my
developers right now would belaughing very hard because.
I was that person probably,five, six years ago that wanted
at all costs, that 10 more linesof code and eh, we'll handle it.
And now I see what we paybecause of this.
And so, yeah, a lot of thedecisions that I made at the
time were mystic and now we'redoing way better.
And I now, I'm probably theperson in the company that is
(26:44):
trying to push more and morepeople to just keep it with what
the framework that we use out ofthe box.
We don't do any customization,just make it work this way.
So yeah, I learned the hard
Dan Balcauski (26:53):
look none of us came fully formed perfection.
We've all grown and makemistakes, and that's what this
show is about, is like, Hey wemade these mistakes.
This is what we learned.
I guess just to wrap up thiskind of area of strategic focus.
I guess kind of looking back onthat time now, is there any,
anything that you would've donedifferently?
As, you're talking about, Heywe're spread across too many
segments.
Like if you had to go back andadvise yourself, anything you'd
(27:16):
have done to make that processsmoother.
Matt Lhoumeau (27:18):
I think what I would've done is probably I
think at the beginning of whenwe built the company with my
co-founder, I think we shouldhave sat down and we should have
put in writing why.
We were building this companyand how we wanted to build it.
No we talk about this all thetime.
Look, the manifesto fromfounders and things like this,
and we had something, but wenever really spent the time to
(27:38):
really, truly try to put it inwriting and stick to it.
And I regret this because allthe work we did past covid and
we had to do a lot of soulsearching.
We could have just gone back inthe end to that initial
manifesto, why we were doingthis.
And that would've worked.
And I think losing that fromsite, I think is the biggest
mistake that we made.
Dan Balcauski (27:59):
I love it.
It's beautiful in itssimplicity.
And I'm sure that would be,yeah, it's, I mean, it's so easy
to overlook, right?
When there's so much code to bewritten you're like, oh, like,
yeah.
And especially, probably'causeit's something that's just in
the shared air between you andthe co-founders.
Right.
It's not explicitly writtendown, but then, you're five
years later and you've drifted.
'cause you've got, it's beenpushed to the back of the mind.
Well, well look I kind oftalking about product in
(28:23):
general, you were talkingearlier about, you guys built
the equivalent of.
Of Google Docs before there wasGoogle Docs and I can imagine
there's, any number of thosesort of types of investments
that you need to make.
Right?
And you need to sort ofunderstand where the market is
going or the old Wayne Gretzkyskate to where the puck is
going, right?
But also you don't wanna skateso far ahead that like nobody
(28:45):
understands like what you'vebuilt.
I guess has there beensituations like.
With Concord in, in the last 10years where, you were convinced
like, Hey, this is what themarket needs, but the market
just wasn't ready for it.
I mean, and maybe that was thewhole idea of contract lifecycle
management.
You mentioned earlier, maybe itwas something else.
Matt Lhoumeau (29:04):
Oh yes.
So many times, and I think, youjust mentioned this we decided
with Concord back in 2014 to letpeople edit their contracts.
Not on Word, but directly in oursystem.
Like, like they would do inGoogle Docs.
And Google Docs at the time wasalready there, but no one was
really using it yet.
Post Covid.
Now everyone is using GoogleDocs.
It's not a question anymore, butthat wasn't the case back in 20
(29:26):
14, 20 15.
But from the get go I was like,why are we using work?
This is ridiculous.
This it's off offline document.
We should all be working ononline documents to collaborate
on them.
That seems pretty abuse today.
So that's what we built in thefirst place and we really wanted
to just focus on this instead ofbuilding good add-ons for Word
so people can still work inward.
(29:48):
That was a mistake.
Why DID was the right one.
And nowadays, if I were to builda company, do today, that's what
I would do immediately.
But at the time, the market wasnot there yet.
The truth is people working oncontracts at the time would
still wanted to work on word.
And so we had a few years whenwe were trying to sell a
technology that I think was verypleasing to people on the idea,
(30:11):
but on an everyday basis it justwould not work.
And so we had to change a littlebit our strategy here and
realize that we were just tooearly with this idea.
And we did this of so many ofthe things on the platform.
And that's kind of like thetrouble of.
Big, innovative without beingjust out of your market.
And that's a fine line right nowthat we're trying to still to
(30:31):
still work.
And I think that's the samething for any company today,
especially when it comes to ai.
The behaviors of people today ischanging so much because of ai.
And so you want to anticipatewhat people are going to do in
three, five years from nowwithout really knowing what will
that be, and so do you, you haveto find that cursor right now,
(30:52):
which makes our job veryinteresting.
But that's also why you havesome risk and you make some
mistakes sometimes.
Dan Balcauski (30:57):
Well, I, it's such an interesting problem
because, plenty, there's plentyof entrepreneurs out there with
the reframe of like, well,people just don't know what
they're missing, and if onlythey understood how good our,
solution is.
Right.
So I, this is, has so manydifferent flavors of the same
kind of core problem, I guess.
How do you sort ofdifferentiate, hey, we're, the
(31:20):
timing truly isn't right,versus, this is actually a
really innovative idea and we'rejust kind of encountering normal
resistance to an innovativeidea.
Right.
And like, it's, I know it's a,it's all nearly an impossible
question, but like having sortof navigated that, how do you
think about that type of tradeoff?
Matt Lhoumeau (31:36):
The way I present this now when I work with the
product teams here at Concord,is the first thing that I always
ask them is, do you really thinkwe're still gonna do this in
five years?
That's the one question that Iask them is, do you think we are
still gonna do this in fiveyears?
You are showing me something newright now that you're building
this way, that, typicallysomething that we other
(31:57):
companies have done for fiveyears in a different industry
and.
Just trying to adapt this to oursystem.
And the first question I'masking every time is, are we
still gonna do this in fiveyears?
Think about it.
When it comes to contracts, forinstance are you still gonna try
to build a report about yourdeadlines?
What's coming in five years?
Are you still gonna have to likeselect one by one your contracts
(32:20):
to build a report?
I don't think so.
I think in five years from now,you'll just ask a question to
your system through AI and itwill just build a report for
you.
And so I think that's how westart with this type of problems
is just trying to anticipatewhat we think is gonna be done
in five years from now.
But that's in five years, right?
Doesn't mean that it's somethingthat we should build right away.
(32:41):
But what we do in that case iswe think about the different
steps to get there.
So if that's what we want to doin five years, can we build some
intermediary steps?
Where we can already get thereon some specific use cases.
Just want to prove that what ourID is actually good because
sometimes you're just plentywrong.
And two, to try to maybe educateslowly your customers to that.
(33:05):
So you validate your idea, youget some early feedback.
And then when time comes, youcan make the full switch.
So that's the way we're takingit now.
Just make sure we are notjumping too soon, too fast in a
new technology.
So, yeah, so it's a step bystep.
It's obviously very complicatedonce again with AI today because
the way you're gonna interactwith software is going to
(33:26):
change.
And so how fast no one reallyknows.
And so where do you put thecursor on what you do
temporarily right now versus isit for the next two years?
You don't really know yet?
Dan Balcauski (33:37):
Yeah, it's it's such a, it's such a challenge,
but I like that idea of, okay,we, are we building something
that we're not gonna immediatelywant to obsolete?
An immediate could be threeyears from now in the software
world and or two years even.
Right?
So having that five yearoutlook, but also not.
Understanding that userbehaviors are inherently a lot
more sticky.
I mean, it's even something assimple as, on I'm a PC guy.
(34:01):
I don't know what the Mac lookslike these days, but we still
have folders and files that Iput I sort into folders.
Right?
And there's no need for that inthe world of a computer.
It's a behavior.
We took from the physical world,it seems to work, even the idea
of having a desktop right?
To mimic a physical desk atwork.
But those things are, thoseconcepts are sticky, right?
And humans are,
Matt Lhoumeau (34:22):
They are, but it's, it is okay.
And it's our job, I think asproduct leaders to be able to
keep that in mind.
I think at the end of the day.
What our job is to make surewhat we, whatever we build, is
going to be usable very easilyby anyone.
And so if that's the type ofmindset that they have, the
folder, when then build folders,why the hell are you trying to
(34:42):
revolutionize something thatworks very well?
I think the example that I takeall the time is the keyboard.
You have, you are in the us youhave a query keyboard.
In France it would be.
But this, all of this isbasically from when, from
typewriters.
Um, it's, yeah, it's absolutelyefficient.
And so what is a better way to,to type, it's the BRAC keyboard
(35:03):
of things like this, but haveyou ever tried to learn the BRAC
keyboard?
I did.
It was a nightmare.
And I decided to stop and I'msticking with the query keyboard
and it works just fine.
And so that's sometimes,innovation is not always better.
We just have to find the right,right things for this.
But I think.
What's interesting, I thinkwhat's happening once again
right now is you are going tosee a lot of change in behaviors
(35:25):
thanks to ai, thanks to the waypeople interact with software.
And I think for us, the peoplethat are focused on product,
that gives us a massive lever onthe future.
Like we are literally kind ofinventing the way people
interact on this.
And so I think at the end of theday, it's just about trying
something and figuring it out.
No one has.
The right solution here.
(35:46):
And we're really trying to buildit and create it.
And that's the cool thing aboutit.
And once again, because of whatwe do, because we focus more on
SMBM in market, one of thebiggest thing for me is all
about simplicity.
If you have to go throughtraining to use my software, I'm
not doing my job properly.
So you have to be able to useit, by the way.
But what I always tell peopleis, you don't invent simplicity.
You craft it.
(36:08):
And so how do you get to extremesimplicity?
Well, if you have a first personthat you improve because you're
removing things, you'resimplifying things, and you do
this over and over and overagain.
And that's why, Concord in oursmall industry is known for its
simplicity because we have donethis, because we're removing
things sometimes.
And so it's a craft.
So take your time, keep ititerating, and you'll get there.
(36:29):
And like.
You mentioned you're a PC guy.
I'm an Apple guy.
I'm sorry.
But if you look at an iPhone,what's
Dan Balcauski (36:35):
I'm sorry for you two.
Matt Lhoumeau (36:36):
it, it, that's okay.
But I mean, you're probably myage.
I grew up with a no Catalystthree 10.
I remember the 50 pages manualthat you had to go through just
to understand how it worked.
My grandmother is using aniPhone.
She doesn't have a manual.
She doesn't need one, and Applewas able to get there, not on
day one, even though it's one ofthe biggest companies in the
world with some of the.
(36:56):
Best design teams, they keep itrating.
They're on iOS version 67.
I don't know where they are now,but it's just what you have to
do.
So you have to make a choice anditerating on this, and that's
what makes our job fun onceagain.
Dan Balcauski (37:09):
Yeah.
Well, and I've got Steve Jobsbiography on my desk or back,
bookshelf back there.
And yeah, he was a maniac for doit again.
Not simpler.
Do it again.
Do it again.
Right.
And look it's very.
Hard to make things simple.
It's very easy to make themcomplex, right?
You can get a lot, you get awaywith a lot if you're building
enterprise software, you couldbuild a three arm sweater that
(37:31):
nobody understands becauseyou've got a sales team that
can, ram it through and helppeople like, get it over the
line.
But in, yeah, in SB in yourworld, you, we have to find out
how we make things simple forfolks.
I loved your.
Grandma using iPhone example.
That's perfect.
Well just in terms of ai, likeit is interesting.
I'm curious kind of yourthoughts in general because, I
(37:52):
dunno Davos is going on thisweek and you've got all the AI
companies being like be off at.
Satya being, oh, all the workersare gonna get replaced with AI
agents in two years.
Right.
But I don't know, I mean, we'rethree years into chat, GBT yeah,
probably 60%.
I think probably US populationis, has heard it or tried it,
but on a daily basis, only 10%.
I mean, it seems like we'restill incredibly early.
(38:15):
I guess how do you sort of viewlike.
What are people in the AI worldgetting wrong?
Like, I guess, and how have, howis your sort of view of like,
how is that affecting?
It is, it does seem to bechanging rapidly, but I think
we're still at like this verybleeding edge of people who are
kind of using it on a dailybasis.
Matt Lhoumeau (38:31):
I mean, I think you're right, but I would say
the speed of the change rightnow and how people are using AI
is incredible compared to othertechnology.
If I just look at, once again,we do contract management.
Look at actually signature,actually signature became legal
in the year 2000 in the US andin Europe.
That's 25 years ago when waselectronic signature really
(38:52):
fully adopted by companies.
Dan Balcauski (38:54):
Covid.
Matt Lhoumeau (38:54):
Covid.
Exactly.
It took 20 years Right tosignature, which is a very
obvious technology when youthink about it.
Why we're still sendingdocuments by the Post for our
contract.
It makes no sense when you havetechnology to change that and
look, it took 20 years.
So the fact that it only took,what, two to three years right
now to see Chad GPT behindanother system being adopted
(39:14):
widely by.
By companies.
I think there's still a problemwhen it comes to the OI right
now, but the adoption I think isthere and I think instead of
taking 20 years, like it took Xelectric signature, it might
take us 10 years.
So yeah, it will probably takeanother five years to really get
there, but I do believe it'sreally transformational with the
way people work in general.
And when, once again, going backto contract management, what's
(39:37):
interesting here is I'm tellingyou right away, within in 10
years from now in 2035,companies are less than 500
employees.
We'll not have legal peoplewhatsoever in their companies.
We already see it today withcompanies that are a hundred,
200 number of employees.
They outsource legal forspecific important topics, but
(39:57):
everything else now, thanks toAI and other things, can be
entirely managed internally bypeople would not, without a
legal background.
So this is the type of thingwe're going to change.
We're going to see people morefocused on what really matters
to them instead of having to gothrough.
Three or four differentintermediates to get something
done.
And that's AI that we're doingthis today.
Dan Balcauski (40:17):
Well, Matt, I could talk to you all day, but I
wanna be respectful of your timeand this has been a fantastic
conversation.
I wanna close out with a coupleof rapid fire questions.
You ready?
Matt Lhoumeau (40:26):
Let's go,
Dan Balcauski (40:27):
What has been a purchase you've made of less
than a hundred dollars that'ssignificantly improved your
life?
Matt Lhoumeau (40:35):
huh?
A very good pillow.
Dan Balcauski (40:38):
Very good pillow.
Matt Lhoumeau (40:39):
Yeah, I, sleep way better and this is the most
important thing in my health.
Now I'm planning to understandthis.
Sleep.
Dan Balcauski (40:45):
If we have the chance to eliminate the
mosquito, should we.
Matt Lhoumeau (40:49):
No, I don't think we should mess with this type of
things.
Let's let the word decide foritself.
Dan Balcauski (40:54):
A man who has read his share of Michael Creon
we did not mess with naturenature biked back.
When you think about all thespectacular people you've had a
chance to learn from be coachedor advised by over the years,
has there been anyone who justpops to mind and had a
disproportionate effect onbuilding you as a leader to you
are today?
Matt Lhoumeau (41:11):
Yeah, I would probably say Max and Xavier were
the CEO and the founder of thattelecom company in France.
It's amazing people, amazingbackground, but also just gave
me a chance, I was what, 25, 26at the time.
And being able to just be aroundthem to see how they were making
decisions and what they wereable to do, change everything in
(41:32):
my pers my own perspective aboutwhat I could build myself.
So I would say both of them.
Dan Balcauski (41:38):
Well, it seems like it's been a theme, right?
Of being able to see what otherscould do, but then also have
that reflected back, and I'msure them, you being around them
helped boost that confidence aswell in your own skillset.
If I gave you a billboard, youcould put anything on there for
other B2B Sass CEOs trying toscale their companies, what
would your billboard say?
Matt Lhoumeau (41:55):
Trust your gut and write that manifesto down
right now.
Dan Balcauski (42:00):
Write your manifesto down.
Love it.
Well, Matt I really enjoyed thisconversation.
If listeners wanna connect withyou, learn more about Concord,
how can they do that?
Matt Lhoumeau (42:07):
Concur app and on LinkedIn.
Happy to answer your message.
Dan Balcauski (42:11):
I will put those links in the show notes for
listeners, everyone that wrapsup this episode of SaaS Scaling
Secrets.
Thank you to Matt for sharinghis journey, insights and
valuable tips for listeners.
If you found this conversationas lightning as ied, remember,
subscribe so you don't miss outon future episodes.
I.
Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets, the podcast
that brings you the insidestories from the leaders of the
best scale up, B2B SaaScompanies.
I'm your host, Dan Balcauski,founder of Product Tranquility.
Today I'm excited to speak withMatt Lhoumeau, co-founder and
CEO of Concord, a platformrevolutionizing contract
management for thousands of SMBsand mid-market businesses.
After overcoming earlyadversity, Matt graduated with
four Master's degrees from someof Europe's top academic
(00:41):
institutions and workedalongside iconic leaders like
former French President NicholasSarcozi.
Over the last decade, Matt hasbuilt Concord into a sustainable
business after moving to the USwith just a few thousand
dollars.
Let's dive in.
Welcome Matt to SaaS ScalingSecrets.
Matt Lhoumeau (00:55):
Hi, Dan.
Nice to be you.
Dan Balcauski (00:57):
I am very excited that I get to talk to another
entrepreneur located in ourbeautiful city of Austin.
Although folks might notrecognize that as you start to
speak and realize the accent.
Guess maybe we'll just startwith that.
What brought you to leave thebeautiful continent and come try
your luck here in Texas of allplaces.
Matt Lhoumeau (01:15):
I think France is an amazing country.
It's very beautiful.
It.
Probably the best country whenit comes to, I would say cheese,
soccer and wine.
But if you want to build amarket leader in software, it's
not in France.
You wanna do this, it's in theus And so that's why I moved to
the US 10 years ago to buildConcord.
And you would've just a betterchance to build something
(01:36):
meaningful here.
Dan Balcauski (01:37):
Well we welcome you with open arms and feel free
to bring on some wine and cheeseas well and educate us.
We are very much open to that as
Matt Lhoumeau (01:46):
Well, the, so studio is not that bad actually,
so that part is already covered.
Dan Balcauski (01:51):
I, I know nothing about soccer, so but the wine
and cheese I'm all there for.
But well look, we all havemoments in our lives.
I like to think of them as asuperhero transformation moment
where our lives change.
Our perspectives change almostovernight or an instance, and I
call it superhero transformationmoment, like your Peter Parker
normal high school student.
(02:12):
You get bit by a radioactivespider the next day.
You wake up and you'reSpider-Man.
What moment has that been foryou and your journey, Matt?
Matt Lhoumeau (02:19):
I think for me it wasn't really the moment I
transformed into a superhero.
It was more about the moment Irealized that these powers were
already in me.
And I think the moment for mewas probably when I got into
Shpo.
So that's one of the schoolsthat I went to in France.
Shpo, is we the Frenchequivalent of Harvard.
It's the top school forpolitical science and all of
(02:39):
other things, if any presidentor minister in France went to
that school.
So it's a very prestigiousschool and I, have a bit of a
complicated background.
Before I got into that school, Iactually had to drop out of high
school after high school.
I was 17 at that time.
Some issues in my family.
And so I just had to figure outmy life on my own.
And so I.
(03:00):
Didn't study anything until Iwas 20 years old.
Started doing night classes atthe university to learn
Japanese, did other things, andI ended up at, when I was
already 25, so definitely laterthan most people.
And what was interesting at thattime for me is that when I got
into that school, people startedtaking mysteriously.
(03:20):
I had, I was the same person.
I had the same ambition beforeentering that school and after
beginning to that school.
But finally people were startedto actually listen to me because
I had that stamp of that school.
And for me that was veryproblematic because I realized
how messed up this you are.
You can be extremely smart, butif you just do not have the
right.
(03:40):
The right background, the rightcontext to get into these type
of schools or other places, thenyou're kind of stuck.
And that's really what the, whathelped, it helped me realize is
I really, I could buildcompanies, I could do all of
this.
It was already in me, but nowpeople will listen to me and I
think, this is a problem that Ithink is particularly linked to
the way France is, and I thinkAmerica as is very different
(04:03):
when it comes to this.
What was interesting for me, asI mentioned I moved to America
10 years ago.
I got here and no one reallyknew me.
I had no money, no Visa.
I just had to figure it out.
No one knew the schools that Iwent to.
People barely knew who NicoAdvocacy was, honestly.
And it didn't matter.
No one really cared.
What people wanted to hear is,what am I trying to build?
(04:25):
What is the ambition that wehave?
And took us seriously for that.
And so that's something that.
Was that moment for me in Francerealizing that I was already
that person.
I didn't have to go to thatschool to be able to do this.
And when I got very lucky iswhen I moved to the US 10 years
ago and I didn't have to rely onthis anymore, and that was
(04:46):
great.
Dan Balcauski (04:46):
There's so many different threads in that story.
I overall uplifting.
I wouldn't say that US iscompletely alleviated from that
disease.
We do have our own.
Breed of credentialism here, butI think, compared to Europe,
yes, there is I think it, it'sprobably better here overall but
not all, not, no society isperfect.
Well, okay, so how do you gofrom studying Japanese and
(05:09):
political science to bring me toConcord?
Like how does contractmanagement, lifecycle management
enter the picture?
Matt Lhoumeau (05:15):
Yeah, I mean, the thing is, like I, in my life I
wanted to become a diplomat.
At some point I wanted to becomea poet until I realized that
wasn't a job and you wouldn'tpay for my bills.
Dan Balcauski (05:25):
It is very French though.
Matt Lhoumeau (05:26):
it.
It is very French, absolutelydiplomat poets.
I wanted to do politicsobviously at some point, and
that's why I ended up workingfor Nicola Sarid in the campaign
in 2 0 0 6, 2 0 0 7.
So I just was always a bit allover the place.
For me, it was more about.
Seeing an opportunity and tryingto go for it.
And the reason we build Concordand we work on contract
management is because betweentwo of my schools in France, I
(05:48):
spent a year working for the CEOof the second biggest telecom
company in France Company calledFree, amazing Company.
The founder is basically theFrench Jeff Bezos.
I learned a lot over there.
And so I was working with theCEO on different topics and one
day he asked me to renegotiate500 contracts we had.
We founded vendors, we needed tosave money.
(06:08):
And they told me, just find thecontracts and tell me what we
can do.
And I was young at that time.
That was back in 20 0 9, 20 0 102010.
And I was very proud of thatmission for the first five
minutes because I.
It was a lot of money at stake,several hundred million dollars
until I realized that he justgave me the worst job of my
life.
(06:28):
I basically spent six monthsdoing this, just finding the
contracts in the file cabinetsof the company.
This is before the cloud andeverything, right?
And then I had to spend monthsreading the contracts plan by
one to understand what we agreedat the time, and build an Excel
spreadsheet with 52 columns and500, 500 lines.
And then I had to renegotiatethe terms of the contract,
sending hundreds of Worddocuments.
(06:49):
And so, I was coming home everysingle night asking myself like,
what the hell?
Why are we managing contractsmanually in what was already at
the time?
I think a$5 billion revenuecompany when we asked software
for everything else.
And so that's how I ended updoing contract management, is
because I hated my life.
I thought there would probablybe a better way to do this.
And we built Concord this way.
Dan Balcauski (07:12):
And so obviously you've hinted at it, and I
broadly stated that Concord isin the contract management
space, but for folks who aren'taware of Concord, like how would
you describe the company today?
What's the kind of 32nd overviewof what you guys do for your
customers?
Matt Lhoumeau (07:25):
Yeah, we basically help companies manage
their contracts entirely online.
So you know today, what does itlook like when you do a
contract?
You do your contracts on work,you send it through an email for
the revision, and then you useDocuSign, maybe.
To do the signature, but that'sbasically it.
What we help companies do istaking care of not only the
e-signature, but what comesbefore and after.
(07:45):
So no more documents throughWord documents back and forth
to, to get a revision of acontract.
You can do it directly onConcord like you would do on
Google Docs.
You cannot automatically createcon documents from templates.
All of this is entirely managedonline for you.
And then you sign your document.
But once you sign your document,there is so much.
It's so many thing that you needto do with it.
(08:06):
You have deadlines on therenewal, you do some reporting,
and so all of this is manageddirectly on Concord.
So today we serve, we focusmostly on small and medium
businesses, and we havethousands of customers in the US
but also in Europe and otherplaces in the world.
And really the approach thatwe're taking is we're trying to
just let companies take legalout of the contracts.
(08:28):
Because that's, when it comes tothis, a contract is not really a
legal matter.
It is just about studying arelationship.
It's about getting businessdone.
And so we're trying to helpthese companies spend less time
on reviewing contracts and justmore time doing business
directly.
Dan Balcauski (08:42):
Well, appreciate that overview and well this is,
SaaS Scaling Secrets, and so Ido wanna shift and kind of talk
about, challenges that you facedalong the way because, it's, I'm
sure obviously Concord's verysuccessful now but it always
hasn't, probably hasn't alwaysbeen that way.
And any, every CEOI talked to onthis show there's just daily
challenges that you go through.
Some more memorable than othersif you know, year review or
(09:04):
decade review.
But you come from France, youmoved to the us, but you have a
problem with one of the pillarsof the American society.
Why do you hate the CheesecakeFactory?
Matt Lhoumeau (09:19):
Well, it is so that I hate the Cheesecake
Factory.
I think it's more about.
What do you want to eat and howdo you want to do that?
But I think maybe here, just toexplain why you were even
mentioning this is we had aconversation earlier and, when
it comes to building a company,I think there is different
things you can do.
You can decide to build aCheesecake Factory where you
(09:39):
have, I think still as today,like the biggest menu I've ever
seen in my life.
But the problem about this isthat you can't be good at
everything.
So I.
We probably assume that it's notthat great.
I haven't been to the CheesecakeFactory in nine years, so maybe
they did better now.
But that's one way to build acompany.
Or the other way is to go morefor, the local pop shop, the PDA
(10:01):
shop that you have next door andthat, and they do one thing and
they do it very well.
And you know exactly what you'regetting.
You're getting that, thatpersonalized service.
It's just a differentexperience.
And I think when it comes tobuilding a startup, at least,
especially in the beginning, youshould choose between the two.
And I think there is one thatyou can do.
And the other one is rr a bitcomplicated.
So that's why but yeah.
Dan Balcauski (10:23):
Well, I wouldn't place too much bets that they've
improved significantly in thenine years since your last
visit.
But I am not there very ofteneither, so I can't say one way
or the other.
If they wanna come sponsor thepodcast, I'm open to bribery for
future episodes.
But, well, I mean, you did hintat it wouldn't be the first time
on this show that we've,entrepreneurs have brought up a
focus and the importance of itin growing a company, I guess.
(10:45):
As you look at Concord's,journey, is there a critical
moment that stands out to youwhere you kind of realize like,
okay, we're spread too thin, wereally need to narrow our focus?
Matt Lhoumeau (10:57):
Absolutely.
I think for us it was rightafter Covid.
So if you look at Concord, sowe've been around for 10 years,
right?
So we started in 2014 in the USand what was interesting with
Concord is we probably wentthrough all the different stages
a company can get to in 10years.
We at the beginning for, from2014 to 2017.
We were just building theplatform.
(11:18):
Think about it, Concorde isbasically Google Docs meets
DocuSign meets author system.
So it's a very complex system tobuild.
So it took us two to three yearsand we were in pure
evangelization phase.
No one really knew what contractmanagement was at the time.
People knew about electricnature, but that's it.
And so we, we had to do this,which was on its own, like a
interesting phase after it.
(11:39):
We had the very quick growththat we saw.
Between 2018 and 2020 and thenCovid hits.
And we were spread too thin.
We were burning too much cash tobe able to grow, and we
basically had to restructure thecompany and start asking ourself
the right questions when itcomes to our business.
And when it come, you justmentioned that the question of
focus, what I think for me, Irealized at that time, in 2020
(12:02):
when you have to make cuts inyour company, you have to let go
of people at a very difficulttime on top of this.
You really start rethinking alittle bit about the decision
that you made and trying to makea purely better decision in the
future.
And one thing that I Yeah.
That I understood when it comesto Concord is we were not very
clear about who we were sellingto because the problem that we
(12:26):
had at Concord when it comes tocontracts is literally every
single company in the world hascontracts to manage.
Every single one.
So your market is basedpotentially any company.
And as a matter of fact, as whenyou start a company, especially
in the evangelization phase andfast growth, you sign any
company that comes to you, youwill sign any customer.
(12:48):
It's a dollar, I'll take it.
And so we started looking at ourcustomer base and we realized
that about a third of thecompanies we were working with
were SMBs.
A third was the mid market and athird was enterprise.
And so.
Who should we target?
The three of them are basicallythe same size.
And so we try to just keep goingafter all of them.
(13:10):
That's basically what we did atthe time.
And obviously that's notsomething you can do.
You have to pick a lane, youhave to focus on one type of
customer and just focus on this.
We were the Cheesecake Factoryat that moment, and we decided
to downsize to a more local mopastore, and I think that's
honestly what saved the company.
And let us now grow again theright way because we can serve
(13:35):
some customers very well insteadof trying to serve everyone in a
terrible way.
Dan Balcauski (13:41):
So this.
Hey, we've got multipledifferent customer segments.
They have different needs.
They're, exp expect they haveneeds that aren't necessarily
synergistic with each other.
Like I've gotta do thingspotentially multiple times or in
different ways in eithermarketing or sales, et cetera.
And look, this is a problemthat, is really at the core of a
lot of company struggles.
(14:03):
I guess walk me through like,okay, you've got.
It sounded like almost an evensplit between SMB, mid-market
enterprise of, dollars orcustomers, however you wanted to
frame it.
But like, how do you go aboutevaluating, okay, there's needs
here, which, where do we go?
Like what was your process?
What steps did you go through?
Matt Lhoumeau (14:21):
Yep.
I think, what we did at the timeis and this is, all of this is
before Covid, and so I think themindset on the market has
changed a little bit.
But you have to remember onething is back in in 20 15, 20 18
in the Silicon Valley worldthere was not that many ways to
actually get to the big billiondollar valuation company.
You had to go enterprise at thattime.
(14:43):
That was the playbook.
All the companies that were iPodwere enterprise focus.
And so what was interesting isthat.
We had with our board forinstance, we had different
investors that had differentpool of view on this.
Some of them would tell us like,Hey, you can stay focused on SMB
mid market.
It's a viable play.
Or some other that were, no, youhave to go enterprise.
(15:04):
That's the only way.
And so to answer your questionabout how do we evaluate that,
yes, the numbers, everything wasbasically one third, one third
one firm.
So numbers would not help.
And then we had more theperspective of future growth.
And that's one of the reason wetry to actually.
Focus on enterprise when my DNAwas against it to your point, I
(15:24):
think you cannot build the samecompany whether you focus on SMB
or enterprise and to, to yourpoint, it is absolutely.
And Omic, you cannot do one andthe other.
If you do one, you will mess upthe other because enterprise
companies obviously want verysophisticated feature of
configuration, et cetera.
Whereas on NSMB, if you startadding this, it makes the whole
system more complex and lessadoption.
(15:47):
And so what was very hard forme, and that's why we didn't
really pick a lane, is becausemy DNA was more on the SMB and
mid-market and wanted somethingsimple that people can
understand immediately.
We had numbers that would nothelp us choose, and then we had
at the time, I think a playbookin Silicon Valley that was
mostly focused on enterprise.
That has changed.
However, I think just beforeCovid, people were calling that
(16:09):
the Postmate effect, which wasthe idea that you can still be
number two or number three.
In one industry and still beworth a billion dollar.
And so I think things havechanged since then.
You see amazing companies doingextremely well in the assembly
market.
Obviously, HubSpot companieslike Penoc, for instance, but
this is relatively new.
And so I wish I would've knownthat earlier because I think we
(16:32):
would've made the choice on ourlane.
Sooner.
And that's what we did.
And so that's why Post Covid, wereally went through that
process.
And at the end of, at the end ofthe day when you look at all the
data and everything, thequestion that I got back to was,
what do I want to do?
And what was interesting, Ithink over the first years of
Concord is I kind of forgot thatat the end of the day, this is
(16:53):
my company with my co-founder.
This is our company, and webuilt it because we had
something in mind.
And we wanted to do some thingsin a specific way.
And so we ended up just, ifthere's different path in front
of you, at least pick the onethat you have fun doing.
And that's how we decided toreally refocus again, the
company.
Dan Balcauski (17:12):
I love how you tied that in of like, your DNA
and ultimately, if you're gonnarun a company that you hate
showing up to, I guess what'sthe point of running a company?
So that's very appropriate.
But, I probably, a lot of peoplewould sweep that under the rug
pressure from other people whosound like they know better,
have been there before.
Um,
Matt Lhoumeau (17:30):
I did that and and it's also, I think it's a
good thing for a CEO for afounder to actually try to not
put their personal desires aheadof the company.
I think you have responsibilityand so you should try to do
what's best for the company andwhat's best for you.
But what I discovered is theydon't have to be against one,
one or the other.
You can probably actually dowhat's best for you and it's
best for the company too.
Dan Balcauski (17:50):
Well, it sounded like within this multi parties
of, advice, right?
Everyone's got an opinion.
The numbers don't tell a clearstory.
I guess how did you sort ofnavigate these conflicting
points of view?
Because, I mean, it sounded likemaybe some, you had different,
very conflicting points of vieweven on your board level or
investors.
I guess anything that youlearned and how to sort of get,
(18:12):
I mean, obviously everyone'sprobably trying to do what's.
What is they think is in thebest interest of the company,
right?
Everyone's trying to, assumegood intent.
No one's trying to lead you downa bad path.
But probably also very strongopinions.
I guess having gone through thatprocess, was there anything that
you found successful in sort ofbeing able to really, like,
okay, hey, like I've heardeveryone and now we're gonna
sort of move this direction.
Matt Lhoumeau (18:32):
I mean, literally what you just said I think what
I've learned over time, evenwith your board is that you can
just say, okay, I hear you, butthis is what we're going to do
and this is why.
And I was at the time, oncesecond, a young entrepreneur and
I had to.
To figure out my relationshipwith my board.
You want from the boarddifferent opinions.
If you have only one opinion inthe board, that's not a good
board.
So it's a good thing to havedifferent opinion and different
(18:54):
point of views.
That's how you get better.
But the thing is, at some pointyou cannot try to please
everyone.
And that's what I did.
I tried to please too many gods,so I would build a feature for
the enterprise that someone toldus about.
And the other thing on the SMBand that was just a mistake.
It was just a.
Basic mistake.
And so what I've learned overtime is that whether it's with
(19:14):
your board, with your teams VPs,ize, at the end of the day,
someone has to make a decision.
And it's okay to disagree.
And, it's easy to say that nowfor me, but once again, seven,
eight years ago just fresh offriends coming here to America,
that was a harder conversationfor me to have with the board.
And now I'm having theseconversations and it's going
(19:35):
very well.
And we, I think we actuallyhave.
Healthier debate because I'mless hiding sometimes.
Be behind trying to pleaseeveryone and giving more
directly what I think about whatwould be good for the business
and why.
Dan Balcauski (19:47):
Well, so you've make this, well, you get you
build the alignment or heareveryone out and you say, okay,
this is the direction we'regoing.
And so I'm curious, as soon asyou make that decision, you're
like, all right we're, we don'twanna be the enterprise company.
We're gonna, we're gonna gotowards this particular market
segment.
I guess what were sort of thepractical steps?
Like, did you like last year ormaybe it was two years ago now,
but you know, Airtable made abig, like.
(20:09):
Pricing and packaging changethat, that tick, they decided to
go the other direction.
Go enterprise, tick off alltheir s and b mid-market users.
Is it, do you proactively fireyour enterprise customers?
The strategic comms being like,Hey, we're, yeah, we're not
gonna build these, all theseintegrations, et cetera, that
these enterprise customers want.
What kind of happens next?
And like anything that you'velearned kinda going through that
process.
Matt Lhoumeau (20:29):
Yeah, I think when you do such as change, you
have to take it step by step andyou have to look at what is the
most impactful right now andwhat's gonna have to be managed
later.
And so what we did, the firstthing is, you just actually
mentioned it, is it's pricing.
At the end of the day, it'schanging your website to be able
to adapt your pricing and justthe customer path to your
(20:49):
company.
To your target?
What does that mean here?
If you target enterprise,typically what do you see on the
website?
Not much exactly.
You don't see pricing.
You can't do a free trial.
You don't have any of this.
You have to go through theclassic path, which usually
will.
You will talk to an SDR, andthen you will talk to someone
else and maybe on the fourthcall you get a demo and maybe on
(21:11):
the fifth call you get
Dan Balcauski (21:12):
it is like the nucle, it is like the nuclear
codes.
Right?
We can't God forbid we tell youwhat the pricing is before we
have four, four conversations.
Matt Lhoumeau (21:19):
It's a horrible experience.
I mean, that's one of thereasons I don't wanna work in
enterprise because I don't wantto get through this.
I don't want people to givethrough this either.
But that's what you do inenterprise.
And I understand there isreasons behind this obviously,
but when you, for target moreSMB in market, you have to adapt
to this.
Pricing has to be transparent.
So our pricing is on ourwebsite.
Our platform is extremely open.
(21:40):
You can, we can give you freetrials to it.
All the videos are online.
We're not hiding anything.
And so people already knowexactly what they're getting
into before they even talk to usmost of the time.
So we did just a massive changeon the website to just adapt to
this.
So that, that's the first part.
Then obviously what comes afterthis product, obviously if you
build for SMB not building forEnterprise, and so we actually
(22:03):
had to change a lot of things onour roadmap to realign with our
target of SMB, and so we killed.
A number of development that wehad in mind that were more
focused on the enterprise.
And we even killed some featurethat were already developed, but
that we knew were not justuseful for our target.
So we didn't touch that forexisting customers, but for new
customers, we would actuallyjust turn off some of the
(22:24):
features to just simplify theexperience.
And so that's on the productside.
And then you have the existingcustomers.
And indeed, when we did havevery nice enterprise customers,
we still have some today and.
We had sometimes to have toughconversation with them.
When they would ask fordevelopments, we would have
basically to tell them that wewon't do them and explain why
(22:46):
and explain that this is whatthe direction we are heading
toward.
And basically telling them thatif that's not something that
they align with, well we'regonna help them find someone
else.
And we did actually, we did helpsome customers.
Transition to some of ourcompetitors more focused on the
enterprise.
What was interesting for medoing this is that I was very
(23:06):
surprised by the number of.
Enterprise customers when itcomes to the size of their
companies, their revenue, thatactually didn't want to have an
enterprise grade software.
Because in their mindsetenterprise means one, it's very
expensive.
Two, it's probably six months ofimplementation.
It's a complex UI typically.
And so we actually had manyenterprise customers that.
(23:28):
Decided to stay with us becausewe told them about the path that
we had more focused onsimplicity on automation.
And that really resonated withthem.
So sometimes you never know.
Dan Balcauski (23:38):
Yeah.
There's so many good things yousaid there, so, I spent all my
time in the pricing andpackaging world, and so like
absolutely core of the way Iapproach pricing and packaging
is all around segments.
You price to customer segmentsand, you change who you're going
after, like of course you'regonna change that.
I've loved that part.
And then.
I spent a lot of my career inthe product management world.
(24:01):
And so I loved what you saidthere about, we had features
built and we decided to hidethem.
And I can just imagine a chorusof cheers coming up from a bunch
of product management people,but then everyone else being
very confused about like, well,you had it built.
Like, especially if you're onthe.
I pick up, I'm gonna pick up mysales friends right now.
Be like, well, you had it there,like we could sell it.
(24:21):
Why help, help unpack thatsituation.
I could give a long answer, butI want to hear your analysis of
that.
Matt Lhoumeau (24:27):
Less is more.
It's just this, it's at somepoint, you, the more you put on
a system, you have morefeatures.
That's quite, it means that youhave.
More access points, you havemore problems.
It don't communicate between oneand the other.
It's more maintenance.
It's a mess.
And when you start reallylooking into why people use your
system, you start realizing thatin the end, 90% of the users are
(24:49):
using what, 20% of yourfeatures.
So should you really try tobuild another feature or to
maintain a feature that is usedby 1% of your customer base?
Probably not.
And and especially nowadays, Imean, companies that have been
around, we've been around for 10years, technical debt is a real
thing.
Maintaining code that is barelyused by anyone is, will cost you
(25:11):
months of development.
So it's just better to remove,remove, remove, remove, remove.
And it's funny because, nowConcord is working pretty well,
things are running.
I have management in place, etcetera.
But.
My job, honestly is 80% of thetime just removing things from
the, either the roadmap that wehave removing.
(25:31):
When I look sometime, I'm stillvery involved in product and
design, and so I'm just askingto remove things that I think
are not useful.
How can you just trim it down towhat's the most important thing?
And that means, for everyonethere is less things to learn.
It is less things to develop,less things to design, it's less
things to maintain.
It's just better.
Dan Balcauski (25:49):
Yeah.
Well, every garden needstending, right?
Otherwise it's just a jungle.
And so we need to constantlytrim and, uh, tend to.
Matt Lhoumeau (25:57):
decide.
Yeah, exactly.
Dan Balcauski (25:58):
and hey, it's just 10 lines of code.
The engineers could write it inan afternoon is never the right
answer.
And you're gonna live with that,for the rest of your life.
As someone has to maintain it,someone has to fix bugs around
it.
It doesn't do what some customerexpected, and so they want an
extension to it, and you'relike, we should never, should
have built that first part inthe first place.
So I applaud everything that youjust said there.
(26:20):
I guess as you kind of thinkabout anything else that you had
on that particular,
Matt Lhoumeau (26:23):
The funny that you just said that I think my
developers right now would belaughing very hard because.
I was that person probably,five, six years ago that wanted
at all costs, that 10 more linesof code and eh, we'll handle it.
And now I see what we paybecause of this.
And so, yeah, a lot of thedecisions that I made at the
time were mystic and now we'redoing way better.
And I now, I'm probably theperson in the company that is
(26:44):
trying to push more and morepeople to just keep it with what
the framework that we use out ofthe box.
We don't do any customization,just make it work this way.
So yeah, I learned the hard
Dan Balcauski (26:53):
look none of us came fully formed perfection.
We've all grown and makemistakes, and that's what this
show is about, is like, Hey wemade these mistakes.
This is what we learned.
I guess just to wrap up thiskind of area of strategic focus.
I guess kind of looking back onthat time now, is there any,
anything that you would've donedifferently?
As, you're talking about, Heywe're spread across too many
segments.
Like if you had to go back andadvise yourself, anything you'd
(27:16):
have done to make that processsmoother.
Matt Lhoumeau (27:18):
I think what I would've done is probably I
think at the beginning of whenwe built the company with my
co-founder, I think we shouldhave sat down and we should have
put in writing why.
We were building this companyand how we wanted to build it.
No we talk about this all thetime.
Look, the manifesto fromfounders and things like this,
and we had something, but wenever really spent the time to
(27:38):
really, truly try to put it inwriting and stick to it.
And I regret this because allthe work we did past covid and
we had to do a lot of soulsearching.
We could have just gone back inthe end to that initial
manifesto, why we were doingthis.
And that would've worked.
And I think losing that fromsite, I think is the biggest
mistake that we made.
Dan Balcauski (27:59):
I love it.
It's beautiful in itssimplicity.
And I'm sure that would be,yeah, it's, I mean, it's so easy
to overlook, right?
When there's so much code to bewritten you're like, oh, like,
yeah.
And especially, probably'causeit's something that's just in
the shared air between you andthe co-founders.
Right.
It's not explicitly writtendown, but then, you're five
years later and you've drifted.
'cause you've got, it's beenpushed to the back of the mind.
Well, well look I kind oftalking about product in
(28:23):
general, you were talkingearlier about, you guys built
the equivalent of.
Of Google Docs before there wasGoogle Docs and I can imagine
there's, any number of thosesort of types of investments
that you need to make.
Right?
And you need to sort ofunderstand where the market is
going or the old Wayne Gretzkyskate to where the puck is
going, right?
But also you don't wanna skateso far ahead that like nobody
(28:45):
understands like what you'vebuilt.
I guess has there beensituations like.
With Concord in, in the last 10years where, you were convinced
like, Hey, this is what themarket needs, but the market
just wasn't ready for it.
I mean, and maybe that was thewhole idea of contract lifecycle
management.
You mentioned earlier, maybe itwas something else.
Matt Lhoumeau (29:04):
Oh yes.
So many times, and I think, youjust mentioned this we decided
with Concord back in 2014 to letpeople edit their contracts.
Not on Word, but directly in oursystem.
Like, like they would do inGoogle Docs.
And Google Docs at the time wasalready there, but no one was
really using it yet.
Post Covid.
Now everyone is using GoogleDocs.
It's not a question anymore, butthat wasn't the case back in 20
(29:26):
14, 20 15.
But from the get go I was like,why are we using work?
This is ridiculous.
This it's off offline document.
We should all be working ononline documents to collaborate
on them.
That seems pretty abuse today.
So that's what we built in thefirst place and we really wanted
to just focus on this instead ofbuilding good add-ons for Word
so people can still work inward.
(29:48):
That was a mistake.
Why DID was the right one.
And nowadays, if I were to builda company, do today, that's what
I would do immediately.
But at the time, the market wasnot there yet.
The truth is people working oncontracts at the time would
still wanted to work on word.
And so we had a few years whenwe were trying to sell a
technology that I think was verypleasing to people on the idea,
(30:11):
but on an everyday basis it justwould not work.
And so we had to change a littlebit our strategy here and
realize that we were just tooearly with this idea.
And we did this of so many ofthe things on the platform.
And that's kind of like thetrouble of.
Big, innovative without beingjust out of your market.
And that's a fine line right nowthat we're trying to still to
(30:31):
still work.
And I think that's the samething for any company today,
especially when it comes to ai.
The behaviors of people today ischanging so much because of ai.
And so you want to anticipatewhat people are going to do in
three, five years from nowwithout really knowing what will
that be, and so do you, you haveto find that cursor right now,
(30:52):
which makes our job veryinteresting.
But that's also why you havesome risk and you make some
mistakes sometimes.
Dan Balcauski (30:57):
Well, I, it's such an interesting problem
because, plenty, there's plentyof entrepreneurs out there with
the reframe of like, well,people just don't know what
they're missing, and if onlythey understood how good our,
solution is.
Right.
So I, this is, has so manydifferent flavors of the same
kind of core problem, I guess.
How do you sort ofdifferentiate, hey, we're, the
(31:20):
timing truly isn't right,versus, this is actually a
really innovative idea and we'rejust kind of encountering normal
resistance to an innovativeidea.
Right.
And like, it's, I know it's a,it's all nearly an impossible
question, but like having sortof navigated that, how do you
think about that type of tradeoff?
Matt Lhoumeau (31:36):
The way I present this now when I work with the
product teams here at Concord,is the first thing that I always
ask them is, do you really thinkwe're still gonna do this in
five years?
That's the one question that Iask them is, do you think we are
still gonna do this in fiveyears?
You are showing me something newright now that you're building
this way, that, typicallysomething that we other
(31:57):
companies have done for fiveyears in a different industry
and.
Just trying to adapt this to oursystem.
And the first question I'masking every time is, are we
still gonna do this in fiveyears?
Think about it.
When it comes to contracts, forinstance are you still gonna try
to build a report about yourdeadlines?
What's coming in five years?
Are you still gonna have to likeselect one by one your contracts
(32:20):
to build a report?
I don't think so.
I think in five years from now,you'll just ask a question to
your system through AI and itwill just build a report for
you.
And so I think that's how westart with this type of problems
is just trying to anticipatewhat we think is gonna be done
in five years from now.
But that's in five years, right?
Doesn't mean that it's somethingthat we should build right away.
(32:41):
But what we do in that case iswe think about the different
steps to get there.
So if that's what we want to doin five years, can we build some
intermediary steps?
Where we can already get thereon some specific use cases.
Just want to prove that what ourID is actually good because
sometimes you're just plentywrong.
And two, to try to maybe educateslowly your customers to that.
(33:05):
So you validate your idea, youget some early feedback.
And then when time comes, youcan make the full switch.
So that's the way we're takingit now.
Just make sure we are notjumping too soon, too fast in a
new technology.
So, yeah, so it's a step bystep.
It's obviously very complicatedonce again with AI today because
the way you're gonna interactwith software is going to
(33:26):
change.
And so how fast no one reallyknows.
And so where do you put thecursor on what you do
temporarily right now versus isit for the next two years?
You don't really know yet?
Dan Balcauski (33:37):
Yeah, it's it's such a, it's such a challenge,
but I like that idea of, okay,we, are we building something
that we're not gonna immediatelywant to obsolete?
An immediate could be threeyears from now in the software
world and or two years even.
Right?
So having that five yearoutlook, but also not.
Understanding that userbehaviors are inherently a lot
more sticky.
I mean, it's even something assimple as, on I'm a PC guy.
(34:01):
I don't know what the Mac lookslike these days, but we still
have folders and files that Iput I sort into folders.
Right?
And there's no need for that inthe world of a computer.
It's a behavior.
We took from the physical world,it seems to work, even the idea
of having a desktop right?
To mimic a physical desk atwork.
But those things are, thoseconcepts are sticky, right?
And humans are,
Matt Lhoumeau (34:22):
They are, but it's, it is okay.
And it's our job, I think asproduct leaders to be able to
keep that in mind.
I think at the end of the day.
What our job is to make surewhat we, whatever we build, is
going to be usable very easilyby anyone.
And so if that's the type ofmindset that they have, the
folder, when then build folders,why the hell are you trying to
(34:42):
revolutionize something thatworks very well?
I think the example that I takeall the time is the keyboard.
You have, you are in the us youhave a query keyboard.
In France it would be.
But this, all of this isbasically from when, from
typewriters.
Um, it's, yeah, it's absolutelyefficient.
And so what is a better way to,to type, it's the BRAC keyboard
(35:03):
of things like this, but haveyou ever tried to learn the BRAC
keyboard?
I did.
It was a nightmare.
And I decided to stop and I'msticking with the query keyboard
and it works just fine.
And so that's sometimes,innovation is not always better.
We just have to find the right,right things for this.
But I think.
What's interesting, I thinkwhat's happening once again
right now is you are going tosee a lot of change in behaviors
(35:25):
thanks to ai, thanks to the waypeople interact with software.
And I think for us, the peoplethat are focused on product,
that gives us a massive lever onthe future.
Like we are literally kind ofinventing the way people
interact on this.
And so I think at the end of theday, it's just about trying
something and figuring it out.
No one has.
The right solution here.
(35:46):
And we're really trying to buildit and create it.
And that's the cool thing aboutit.
And once again, because of whatwe do, because we focus more on
SMBM in market, one of thebiggest thing for me is all
about simplicity.
If you have to go throughtraining to use my software, I'm
not doing my job properly.
So you have to be able to useit, by the way.
But what I always tell peopleis, you don't invent simplicity.
You craft it.
(36:08):
And so how do you get to extremesimplicity?
Well, if you have a first personthat you improve because you're
removing things, you'resimplifying things, and you do
this over and over and overagain.
And that's why, Concord in oursmall industry is known for its
simplicity because we have donethis, because we're removing
things sometimes.
And so it's a craft.
So take your time, keep ititerating, and you'll get there.
(36:29):
And like.
You mentioned you're a PC guy.
I'm an Apple guy.
I'm sorry.
But if you look at an iPhone,what's
Dan Balcauski (36:35):
I'm sorry for you two.
Matt Lhoumeau (36:36):
it, it, that's okay.
But I mean, you're probably myage.
I grew up with a no Catalystthree 10.
I remember the 50 pages manualthat you had to go through just
to understand how it worked.
My grandmother is using aniPhone.
She doesn't have a manual.
She doesn't need one, and Applewas able to get there, not on
day one, even though it's one ofthe biggest companies in the
world with some of the.
(36:56):
Best design teams, they keep itrating.
They're on iOS version 67.
I don't know where they are now,but it's just what you have to
do.
So you have to make a choice anditerating on this, and that's
what makes our job fun onceagain.
Dan Balcauski (37:09):
Yeah.
Well, and I've got Steve Jobsbiography on my desk or back,
bookshelf back there.
And yeah, he was a maniac for doit again.
Not simpler.
Do it again.
Do it again.
Right.
And look it's very.
Hard to make things simple.
It's very easy to make themcomplex, right?
You can get a lot, you get awaywith a lot if you're building
enterprise software, you couldbuild a three arm sweater that
(37:31):
nobody understands becauseyou've got a sales team that
can, ram it through and helppeople like, get it over the
line.
But in, yeah, in SB in yourworld, you, we have to find out
how we make things simple forfolks.
I loved your.
Grandma using iPhone example.
That's perfect.
Well just in terms of ai, likeit is interesting.
I'm curious kind of yourthoughts in general because, I
(37:52):
dunno Davos is going on thisweek and you've got all the AI
companies being like be off at.
Satya being, oh, all the workersare gonna get replaced with AI
agents in two years.
Right.
But I don't know, I mean, we'rethree years into chat, GBT yeah,
probably 60%.
I think probably US populationis, has heard it or tried it,
but on a daily basis, only 10%.
I mean, it seems like we'restill incredibly early.
(38:15):
I guess how do you sort of viewlike.
What are people in the AI worldgetting wrong?
Like, I guess, and how have, howis your sort of view of like,
how is that affecting?
It is, it does seem to bechanging rapidly, but I think
we're still at like this verybleeding edge of people who are
kind of using it on a dailybasis.
Matt Lhoumeau (38:31):
I mean, I think you're right, but I would say
the speed of the change rightnow and how people are using AI
is incredible compared to othertechnology.
If I just look at, once again,we do contract management.
Look at actually signature,actually signature became legal
in the year 2000 in the US andin Europe.
That's 25 years ago when waselectronic signature really
(38:52):
fully adopted by companies.
Dan Balcauski (38:54):
Covid.
Matt Lhoumeau (38:54):
Covid.
Exactly.
It took 20 years Right tosignature, which is a very
obvious technology when youthink about it.
Why we're still sendingdocuments by the Post for our
contract.
It makes no sense when you havetechnology to change that and
look, it took 20 years.
So the fact that it only took,what, two to three years right
now to see Chad GPT behindanother system being adopted
(39:14):
widely by.
By companies.
I think there's still a problemwhen it comes to the OI right
now, but the adoption I think isthere and I think instead of
taking 20 years, like it took Xelectric signature, it might
take us 10 years.
So yeah, it will probably takeanother five years to really get
there, but I do believe it'sreally transformational with the
way people work in general.
And when, once again, going backto contract management, what's
(39:37):
interesting here is I'm tellingyou right away, within in 10
years from now in 2035,companies are less than 500
employees.
We'll not have legal peoplewhatsoever in their companies.
We already see it today withcompanies that are a hundred,
200 number of employees.
They outsource legal forspecific important topics, but
(39:57):
everything else now, thanks toAI and other things, can be
entirely managed internally bypeople would not, without a
legal background.
So this is the type of thingwe're going to change.
We're going to see people morefocused on what really matters
to them instead of having to gothrough.
Three or four differentintermediates to get something
done.
And that's AI that we're doingthis today.
Dan Balcauski (40:17):
Well, Matt, I could talk to you all day, but I
wanna be respectful of your timeand this has been a fantastic
conversation.
I wanna close out with a coupleof rapid fire questions.
You ready?
Matt Lhoumeau (40:26):
Let's go,
Dan Balcauski (40:27):
What has been a purchase you've made of less
than a hundred dollars that'ssignificantly improved your
life?
Matt Lhoumeau (40:35):
huh?
A very good pillow.
Dan Balcauski (40:38):
Very good pillow.
Matt Lhoumeau (40:39):
Yeah, I, sleep way better and this is the most
important thing in my health.
Now I'm planning to understandthis.
Sleep.
Dan Balcauski (40:45):
If we have the chance to eliminate the
mosquito, should we.
Matt Lhoumeau (40:49):
No, I don't think we should mess with this type of
things.
Let's let the word decide foritself.
Dan Balcauski (40:54):
A man who has read his share of Michael Creon
we did not mess with naturenature biked back.
When you think about all thespectacular people you've had a
chance to learn from be coachedor advised by over the years,
has there been anyone who justpops to mind and had a
disproportionate effect onbuilding you as a leader to you
are today?
Matt Lhoumeau (41:11):
Yeah, I would probably say Max and Xavier were
the CEO and the founder of thattelecom company in France.
It's amazing people, amazingbackground, but also just gave
me a chance, I was what, 25, 26at the time.
And being able to just be aroundthem to see how they were making
decisions and what they wereable to do, change everything in
(41:32):
my pers my own perspective aboutwhat I could build myself.
So I would say both of them.
Dan Balcauski (41:38):
Well, it seems like it's been a theme, right?
Of being able to see what otherscould do, but then also have
that reflected back, and I'msure them, you being around them
helped boost that confidence aswell in your own skillset.
If I gave you a billboard, youcould put anything on there for
other B2B Sass CEOs trying toscale their companies, what
would your billboard say?
Matt Lhoumeau (41:55):
Trust your gut and write that manifesto down
right now.
Dan Balcauski (42:00):
Write your manifesto down.
Love it.
Well, Matt I really enjoyed thisconversation.
If listeners wanna connect withyou, learn more about Concord,
how can they do that?
Matt Lhoumeau (42:07):
Concur app and on LinkedIn.
Happy to answer your message.
Dan Balcauski (42:11):
I will put those links in the show notes for
listeners, everyone that wrapsup this episode of SaaS Scaling
Secrets.
Thank you to Matt for sharinghis journey, insights and
valuable tips for listeners.
If you found this conversationas lightning as ied, remember,
subscribe so you don't miss outon future episodes.
I.
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