Episode Transcript
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Stephen McLain (00:05):
This week, I am
sharing an interview with Matt
lamou, CEO of Concord worldwide,which is a global contract
management system. Matt is aserial entrepreneur who started
three companies in his career.
Matt also served as a speechwriter in the 2007 French
presidential campaign forNicholas Sarkozy. During our
(00:26):
discussion, Matt describes thestate of contract management
with a great vision for thefuture, along with excellent
finance leadership tips forstartup companies. Please enjoy
the episode. Welcome to thefinance leader podcast where
leadership is bigger than thenumbers. I'm your host. Stephen
McLain. This is the podcast fordeveloping leaders in finance,
(00:48):
in accounting. Please considerfollowing me on Twitter,
Facebook, Instagram andLinkedIn. My usernames and the
links are in this episode's shownotes. Thank you. This is
episode number 136, now let'sget right to the discussion with
Matt. It's amazing. Pleaseenjoy. I want to welcome Matt
Lemo to the finance leaderpodcast. Matt is the co founder
(01:11):
and CEO of Concord, a leadingcontract management platform
used by over 100,000 companiesworldwide. He founded his first
company at 17 an online gamingcommunity later acquired by
orange. Matt is a recognizedindustry leader, frequently
speaking at events likeStanford's Codex and the sea
(01:34):
lock conference. Matt, thank youso much for joining me today. We
want to hear more about you, soplease tell us about yourself.
Matt Lhoumeau (01:44):
Hey, there. Very
nice to be here to tell you.
What about myself? Well, whatshould I start with? I am
French. I guess everyone wouldget to my accent very quickly.
I've been in the US now forabout 10 years. As you
mentioned, I actually built myfirst company as a young
teenager. I was 17 when I built.
We thought about video games atthe time, and, you know, that's
(02:07):
kind of where I got the bug ofbuilding companies. I ended up
after this company, studying alot of different things. I
studied Japanese internationalaffairs, political science, went
to a business school. You know,at that time, I was searching
myself, visiting betweenbecoming a diplomat, a poet or
an entrepreneur. I realized thatpoet was not a job, and so I
(02:30):
should probably find somethingelse, and that diplomacy was
great, but I was probably notpatient enough to work in
administration. Okay, so Isettled for entrepreneurship.
And so I had the chance to worksome with for some amazing
people back in France, I spent,I spent a year working for the
former French President NicolasSarkozy. Yes, I was part of the
10 people team who wrote allthese speeches and policies when
(02:52):
he got elected in 2007 workingdirectly with the chief of
staff. And then I spent a yearworking for the CEO and for the
founder, the second biggesttelecom company in France, and
that's actually when I kind ofended up working with contracts.
At that time, we just bought acompetitor. The competitor was
using a lot of money, so I wastasked to renegotiate the
(03:15):
contracts we had with some ofthe vendors. And I quickly
realized at that time thateverything was done manually. We
were back in 2009 at the time,yeah, $6 billion revenue
company, and contracts being inpaper in cabinet, right? And you
know how it is, you end upspending a month just looking
(03:35):
for the contracts in the filecabinets of the company, and
then you spend another month forus reading them one by one, and
then you spend four monthssending word documents back and
forth to hundreds of people torenegotiate the terms of these
contracts, right? And that'sbasically how I ended up
building Concord, with that ideaof trying to make sure no one
will have to go through what Iwent through about 15 years ago.
(03:56):
Yeah,
Stephen McLain (03:58):
exactly. Hey,
please describe more about
Concord, your premium service,and how it benefits your
customers? Yeah,
Matt Lhoumeau (04:05):
absolutely. So
Concord is so Concord dot app is
basically a contract managementplatform. Really focus on the
SMB and min market. Sotypically, if you have you know,
between 100 to 1000 employees,you typically are the right
people to use Concorde, ourplatform is really focused on
what I would describe as the CLMContract Lifecycle Management
(04:28):
for the post legal world. Whatdo I mean by this? What's been
very interesting about the lastfew years is we've seen a
massive shift in companies,especially in SMB market, about
the way they manage theircontracts. Back in the days, if
I tell you contracts, youimmediately think about legal.
This is going to be the lawyersof the company managing this, et
(04:48):
cetera. What we've seen over thepast few years, and it's
accelerating right now,significantly, with AI, is that
smaller, medium sized companies,lower enterprise companies,
actually. Will not manage theircontracts through legal teams.
Who is managing the contractstoday in these companies
operations, finance and legal isquite often not even involved
(05:12):
anymore whatsoever, and quiteoften we actually see these
companies that don't even havelegal teams at all. I was last
week with a customer here inTexas. We're based in Austin,
Texas. We we have a we have acustomer. There's a 300 people
company. They've been around for70 years. Very traditional
company in the construction, inconstruction, and they don't
(05:33):
have a legal team anymore.
They've outsourced everything.
And so what's interesting iswe've seen that trend coming for
the past few years now, and sowe built Concord with that idea
that this is not a CLM platformfor legal teams. This is a CLM
platform for everyone else.
Obviously, legal teams also useConcorde, but they're less and
less involved with these inthese contract management
processes, which is a goodthing, because, you know, they
(05:55):
have other things to do quiteoften. Legal teams are, you
know, very underfunded in acompany, they have very low
resources, and we ask them toomuch. And so the idea is, let's
take over. Let's take away fromthem. The Contract Management
Administration approving for the50th time the same contract is
probably not someone, somethingthat someone should be spending
(06:18):
time on, and let's just makesure they can focus on the real
topics when it comes to theirskill set, which is the legality
of an agreement of things likethis,
Stephen McLain (06:29):
right? So, so it
sounds like the legal teams
aren't really your typicalcustomer using the service,
because so, so how does it? Howdoes this service really benefit
the CFOs out there? Well,
Matt Lhoumeau (06:45):
it's all comes
down to what, what a contract
really is about. At the end ofthe day, if you look at a
contract today, about what weseen in numbers on Concord, dot
app, what we see is that morethan 90% of contracts today are
signed without any revisionsfrom your third party. And so it
(07:07):
kind of makes sense when youthink about it, because what are
the three main types ofcontracts you're going to find
right? HR documents, sales andprocurement, vendors agreement.
That's that's very good. About80% of the agreements are
companies, scientifically. Well,you're not going to negotiate,
really, your your offer letter,right? You're going to modify,
maybe the, obviously, the amountthat on that, based on the,
(07:27):
based on the person you hire.
But you don't really have thatkind of power when you get when
you get hired, when it comes toyour sales agreement, if you
sell something to yourcustomers, I assume you probably
have a template, yeah. And soyou probably should not have to
spend, you know, a lot of moneyto renegotiate your agreements
one by one, and then when itcomes to your vendor agreements,
well, quite often you don'treally have that kind of power
(07:47):
to negotiate the terms ofservices that you're you're
working with. If tomorrow I sellyou a contract with Salesforce,
I don't think I can reallymodify the contract that I have
with them the same way that youdon't when you approve the table
services on Apple Music. Youcan't really tell Apple to
change that for you. What'sinteresting is that we've seen,
we've seen basically contractstoday, most of them are signed
(08:07):
without any revisions, really.
And so what does that mean? Itmeans that at the end of the
day, I think people start torealize that what's in your
contract is not as importanttrying to negotiate things that,
in the end, might never happen,given the amount of the
contract, is probably not reallyworth their time at the end of
the day, you know, if you sell aservice for, let's call it
(08:29):
$5,000 and your customer doesn'tpay you, what are you going to
do? Sue them? Probably not worththe money, right? And so people
started to realize that it'sprobably not as important
compared to the past. And theystarted to realize that what
contracts are really about ismaking sure you're getting them
done. It's a it's a businessprocess document, right? When
you hire someone, you sellsomething to a customer, you
(08:50):
want to put in place a newsystem from a vendor. You just
want it to be done, and you wantto be done, obviously, with some
controls about who has approvedthis, this contract, making sure
that what's in the contract isstill okay. And that's where,
basically, we can help theright? Yeah, the finances are
(09:11):
going to be able to do this veryquickly. Have all the applause
in one place. They can checkwith AI, the content of the
contract, and they can just moveforward. So it's just about
making these teams risk moreefficient and getting things
done.
Stephen McLain (09:24):
Yeah, exactly
because, because we've all dealt
with contracts. Contracts go onfor pages and they have all
these requirements, requirementsthat the that the vendor has to
do, the one who's buying theservice or the supplies have to
do. So you have to make sureyou're tracking all of the due
dates. When is what is due?
When? When does it have to payyour net 30, or whatever the
terms you have to and so yourservice comes in and helps you
(09:46):
track and manage all those typeof requirements that are in the
contract that you may very wellmiss. Does that sound right?
Matt Lhoumeau (09:54):
Absolutely,
absolutely. And I think that's
the beauty of I think you knowwhat's happening today,
especially when you. Comes toAI. So we use AI on Concord dot
app to basically make sure thatall your due dates, your life
cycle, or your payment terms areactually automatically extracted
by the platform, and so youreceive automatically your
deadlines by email. You canwe're building a new type of
(10:19):
reporting right now to actuallylet you as a finance leader,
you'll be able, thanks toConcord, to actually get a
forecast based on your contractsof your cash flows. You'll be
able to tell you exactly monthafter month, how much money is
coming in and out of yourcontract based on your real
contractual commitment. Which isinteresting, because, you know,
(10:39):
when we work on cash flows, Imean, but do this every day in
my own company as a CEO, right?
Quite often. How do you reallyevaluate that? Well, you kind of
look at what you did last yearand you kind of make a
projection for the followingyear, right? But you don't
necessarily have a place totrack your real commitments
here, and that's something thatyou can do with Concord. So I
think the idea at the end of theday for specifically for a CFO,
(11:01):
right? If you're a financeleader, what does that mean for
you? You can want to get thingsdone faster with less resources.
I think at the end of the day,that's the most important
Unknown (11:11):
thing for us, exactly,
exactly that's you hit it right
there. It's
Matt Lhoumeau (11:15):
efficiency. It's
efficiency and and I think the
second thing is really aboutbeing able to get a better
control of your cost, yourcommitments, in general, and
making sure you're not missingsomething that I've never, never
heard in my life, a CFO tellingme that they never lost money
because they missed a renewal.
It has happened to literallyeveryone, right? And so that's
(11:36):
the type of thing that we justalso remove as a rescue.
Stephen McLain (11:43):
Yeah, you know
what? I wish that I had had this
service when I was serving inthe in the army. I had, I was an
auditor in Iraq for the US Army,and we had to pour over. We not
only had to review, do audits ofalready completed contracts,
(12:04):
which was pages and pages ofrequirements, and you're having
to pour over it manually, butalso looking at the various
communications and documentsthat were going forth between
the very high level commands andagencies that were in Iraq
trying to support the trying tosupport the mission that we had
over there. I literally weregoing over using Control F and
(12:28):
trying to look for all variouskeywords, funding, money,
support for maintenance,building things. So like, I
really wish that I had had thisservice when I was serving over
there, and then in my also a lotof my follow on assignments
because you, because you have todo a lot of that manually. And I
(12:48):
wish I would have to be able touse Concord as a as a way to
feed through these documents andthe control
Matt Lhoumeau (12:56):
f you are
actually able to do certain but
I didn't even have this 15 yearsago, right? So, yeah, it's
really but I think, I think whatyou're describing is what I've
seen over and over myself in myprevious roles, or when I what I
hear from our customers. Andit's fascinating. You know, even
today, when you look at thepenetration rate of contract
management system withincompanies, today, about 90% of
(13:21):
companies, nine, zero, 90% ofcompanies have nothing in place.
And so what do typically,typically, companies have today
in place? They have some kind ofan E signature platform. So they
will use DocuSign, or somethinglike this, and that's it. They
still send the documents throughword, through word, or sometimes
slightly better, Google Docs,and they will store that
(13:42):
somewhere on SharePoint, on orBox or Dropbox. And so this is
absolutely not efficient at all.
It's also, you know, not verycost efficient either, because
you have three or four differentsubscriptions to do this. And
the idea for us was to justbring everything in one single
platform so people don't have toswitch on and on and so, so,
yeah, so it's a it's a commonproblem. It's happening to more
(14:04):
companies and what people think.
I'm always surprised sometimes,but to to see some, we have some
very, very famous customers. I'mnot going to give any names
here, but you'll be surprised tosee that they have nothing in
place before starting withConcord, yeah,
Unknown (14:20):
I think they're listed
on your website. Yes,
absolutely, yeah, yeah,absolutely.
Stephen McLain (14:26):
So hey, please
tell us about, if someone wants
to obviously learn more aboutthis service. I think you have a
number of free resources on yourwebsite. Please tell us about,
about those free resources?
Yeah,
Matt Lhoumeau (14:39):
absolutely. I
mean, you can typically go to
Concord that app, so it's c o n,c o r, d, dot app, A, P, P, and
basically from there, you'll beable to get in touch with your
degree with us. You'll be ableto see a full demo of the
platform directly on thewebsite. We're very much of a
transparent company. Our pricesare on the web. Site, you have
(15:01):
the ability to talk to someonethe same day, and you will get a
demo and a quote. We can alsogive people access to free
trials. So we're trying to workthe way everyone should be
working nowadays. I think thetime of having to go through
four or five calls with an SDRand a salesperson just to get a
(15:21):
demo and a pricing last century.
And so we're trying to do a bitdifferent here,
Stephen McLain (15:28):
right?
Absolutely. And you have a youguys have a blog, and you've got
some guides and some webinars onthe website that someone can get
continue to get more comfortablewith the service, and also build
a help and guide while you'reusing the service, so especially
Matt Lhoumeau (15:44):
for your
audience, right? Because, as I
mentioned, a lot of our usersnowadays are actually people
that are like CFOs financeleaders in general, and so we
have a lot of content on howefficient contract management
can really help their teams andtheir their goals at the end of
the
Stephen McLain (16:00):
day, right?
Absolutely. Hey, one of thethings I wanted to ask you about
today is you have, obviouslyhave taken a few organizations
from the startup phase, and Ireally want to, really want to
talk about and ask you a coupleof questions around your startup
leadership, like describe whatit takes to lead a successful
startup, you know, from forminga team, communicating a vision,
(16:25):
and really trying to lay downwhat kind of those expectations,
it's a totally differentenvironment than from what an
organization that's already beenbeen around for a little while,
Matt Lhoumeau (16:39):
and it's the best
question, I think you know, so
I've been doing this for now, sothat's my third company, and so
I've done this for one mostwould say maybe 20 years now.
Yeah, I think at the end of theday, what it really takes is
intense resilience andcommitment. You know, before
(17:03):
what's interesting about Concordso we created Concorde about 10
years ago now, and right beforeConcorde, my co founder and I
had a previous company contractmanagement space also in France
at the time, and we failed thatcompany. We crashed, you know,
we were bootstrapped entirely atthat time we released the first
platform. Had a few customers,but we started to sell out of
(17:26):
churn very quickly. So we felt,and you know, what's interesting
about this is that we felt forthree or four years or and then
after four years, we started tounderstand why, really we
failed. The answer wasn't alwaysthat obvious, but that's because
we work on that first startup,and that we fell there, that we
started to understand what weshould be doing. Yeah, we've
(17:49):
Concord, and that's why we builtConcord, the way it is today,
versus what people were doing atthat time, you know, 1015, years
ago. So what I mean, but what Imean by physics example, is you
have to be okay to fail sometimefor three or four years in a
row, right to be able to get tothat light bulb moment when
you're going to realize what youreally need to solve for and you
(18:11):
know that makes sense, becauseif just having an idea like this
was sufficient to build acompany and to be successful
with it, well, there will be alot of companies out there, not
a very successful people. And,you know, sometimes I think the
problem with the wayentrepreneurs are successful,
entrepreneurs are telling theirstories. I kind of tend to
forget about this first fewyears of struggle and go
(18:35):
straight to the result. And Ithink that's, that's a that's
not what happened to us.
Clearly, we, fell on that firstcompany, and then we were able
to do this. And you know,whenever, even when it comes to
Concord, that app, right, youdon't, it's not been a straight
line. It's been some crazyacceleration and some plateaus,
sometimes some problems. And youjust have to keep going and keep
going. And I think at the end ofthe day, it's really a question
(18:56):
of commitment to your mission. Ithink, you know, when I see
people that are just want todedicate one year to a project,
if it doesn't work, they want tomove on. It's this is not
enough. I've committed 10 yearsof my life to Concord. That's
probably another 10 or 20 infront of us. So you just have to
be okay with this. It takestime. It takes a lot of work,
and it takes up, I would saythat sort of humidity. There is
(19:19):
so many things you don't know.
And when you are a CEO, when youare a founder, you are literally
facing problems every day thatyou've never been confronted to.
And so you have to be okaylearning, be okay, making
mistakes and growing from that.
So Right? It's not for everyone.
(19:39):
It's a bit of a drug. Onceyou've tested it and you liked
it, it's very hard to get awayfrom but it's not for everyone,
right?
Stephen McLain (19:46):
So so that in
that initial phase when you're
you may be failing or you may beplateauing, how do you stay
focused? How do you get yourteam aligned when you're going
through those initial troubles?
Matt Lhoumeau (20:01):
Uh, it's this is,
this is a very good question. I
think I especially because, youknow, I worked in politics for
Nicola Sarkozy, had the chanceto see what someone who was
running for president had to doto just mobilize people right
and get them to vote for you. Orso. What's interesting is, I
(20:23):
think at the end of the day,it's as the CEO. I think it all
comes down to the vision thatyou have, and if people are
aligned with this, I thinkthat's really what matters at
the end of the day. I think ifyou are, you know, creating a
picture of a service, aplatform, whatever you're
(20:44):
studying, right? That reallymakes sense to people, that
really connects with them, andalso doing it probably in a way
that can be different from whatyou see in the market. Then in
that case, I think people willkeep following you, even if
things are complicated. I thinkthat's really what it comes down
to, right? Because, you know, Iwork in tech, right? So they
(21:05):
live in a world in tech there,it's pretty easy to find a job,
or case it was until recently.
And so, you know, my developers,my sales people, they could
probably find another job prettyquickly anywhere else. And so
why are they staying? Is becausethey believe in the mission that
we have and the way we'rebuilding the company. And so
what's interesting, I think,here is, you know, personally,
like, I've had moments ofintense doubt, you know, I'd
(21:27):
say, like, I have a clear visionand commitment, but there are
days where I'm waking up and I'mlike, we've been failing for X
number of months, for time fouryears. What am I doing with my
life? Why should I continue? Butthe good news is, like when you
have a team behind you that youare responsible for, well you
just keep pushing. You do yourwork, and usually after a few
(21:48):
weeks or a few months, it getsbetter. I sometimes describe the
role of a CEO, I guess on thestartup side, a little bit like
what I would say. I think a lotof single mothers experience
every day. Okay, well, you youprobably have to work two jobs.
You have to take care of yourkids. On top of this, it's very
complicated. Finances arecomplicated. But at the end of
(22:10):
the day, while your kids arehere, they count on you, and so
you're gonna have to smile whenthey're here and take care of
them, and then when they go tobed, you probably cry a little
bit in your kitchen. And thenext day you do this again. And
that's, that's okay. That's justpart of life. I think it's true
of anyone in general, but that'swhy I would describe it. So you
keep pushing right, the teamcomes on you, and then it's
(22:31):
fine,
Stephen McLain (22:32):
absolutely. I
think that's the heart of
leadership. I think you nailedit right there. It's, it's about
giving that vision to your team,rallying them together with with
that with that common vision,setting, that expectations, and
then, and then you're showingthat strength during the day to
get them going over the nextgoal and then coming back the
next day and keep going. It'snot absolutely
Matt Lhoumeau (22:54):
and it's nothing
different. I mean, you know, the
military is exactly this at theend of the day, you're asking
people to put their lives on theline here, right? And the only
way you're going to be able todo this is by making sure that
they share the vision whatyou're trying to achieve, and
that they're going to believe intheir leader, if you know, and
that the person is going to bethere for them, and making sure
(23:16):
that they will have their backat the end of the day, that's
really what matters,
Stephen McLain (23:21):
absolutely. So
I'm also curious about your
relationship with your CFO, orthe person that was responsible
for your finance and accountingin the early stage. What was
your CFO doing in that earlyphase when you're trying to get
this off the ground?
Matt Lhoumeau (23:38):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think at the beginning, firstof all, when you're really
starting, you don't really havea CFO, right? When you start to
have a CFO, when you have it'squite a few million dollars in
revenue. But the truth is, Ihave, now, now I have an amazing
CFO. She has been transformativefor the company. She's been with
(23:58):
us for probably about two yearsnow, and we had, we had CFOs in
the past before that, but youknow, so let me know, startup,
you don't necessarily understandwhat a CFO should be doing for
you really. It's obviously waymore than accounting when you're
studying. It's not somethingthat you necessarily have in
mind, especially, you know, weraise money with, with a
different VCs, and so you're notreally looking into every single
(24:21):
dollar right away. I realize nowthat this was a massive mistake.
I wish I had hired a great CFOlike we have today, way earlier
in the company, because, yeah,and you know, that's with pain
that I that I learned all ofthis. I think at the end of the
day where even when you are ahigh growth company, even when
(24:44):
you have VC money behind you,you should still be managing
your company extremely seriouslywhen it comes to your cost, when
it comes to your projection andthings like this. I you know
every single company, when you.
Start being a bit moresuccessful, you probably don't
look as much into your margins,and then eventually that will
(25:07):
creep up on you. And so, youknow, it's a small things, but
if you don't make an a bit ofrenegotiating every single deal
that you have with your vendors,if you don't measure at the end
of the month that you're reallygetting what you're paying for,
then very quickly, you're goingto see this 10, 20% margin
disappear, and that will hurtyou very, very hard, long time.
So I think for me, for astartup, I would say, get a CFO
(25:31):
the minute you probably are inthe two or 3 million Arr, it's
absolutely needed. There is acost obviously behind the CFO,
but you will recover that costso fast. I mean, I think my CFO,
when we hired her, she probablypays for salary in just two or
three months of right,
Stephen McLain (25:51):
running the
business, right, exactly. So
you, you were you doing most ofthe finance functions at the
beginning, you're doing ityourself. I
Matt Lhoumeau (25:58):
was, absolutely.
I was, and then quickly, weobviously had accountants, so,
you know, external parties tohelp us with all of this. But
the truth is, you will never getfrom a third party the type of
service that you would expectfrom a CFO internally. And I
think it also here comes down,really, to the type of CFO yet
to hire. I think you need, atleast for, I see work very well
is you need someone that's goingto be negotiating every single
(26:22):
dollar. I think $1 is $1 it'sjust a principle of this. You
have to be behind this. And thisis extremely key as a startup,
because, once again, you canraise money, but you never know
when the next round is going tohappen. You never know if you're
going to face like a pandemic,like we did during COVID. And so
(26:43):
you should have a very strictcontrol on these finances. And
so that's, that's, I think, themost important part for a CFO at
a startup level is making sureyour cost doesn't creep on you.
And the second thing, obviously,is about the projections we have
the ability nowadays, especiallywith the way we use Concord for
ourselves, really have a clearunderstanding of what's coming
forward, and that is helping usjust make faster decision, be
(27:06):
just more agile.
Stephen McLain (27:09):
Awesome. I love
that. Hey. I also want to ask
you a couple of questions.
You've mentioned your CFO a fewtimes. I do want to hear a
little bit about how your Whatare you looking for? You already
mentioned about the negotiation,negotiating for every dollar for
all the services that you arereceiving, what are some of the
other things that you're doing?
(27:31):
Or what are you using from yourfinance teams to help you make
better decisions?
Matt Lhoumeau (27:38):
Obviously, aside
from the accounting and the
negotiation part. It all comesdown to, I would say, ratios and
different KPIs that help youexactly know if you're
performing or not. So a simplething here. But you know, as
many companies, we are focusingon getting more customers,
that's just what everyone does,and marketing as a cost, right?
(27:59):
And so the real question is, howdo you know if your initiative
in marketing are really payingoff? It's a very complicated
thing to do, when you thinkabout it, marketing cannot
attribute properly what comesfrom the different channels they
have, and so you basically willrely, at the end of the day, in
part, on your CFO to reallyunderstand your metrics here. So
(28:19):
whether it's you know, the salesand sales and marketing
efficiency metric part, forexample, this is the type of
thing that we use to clearly seeif we should invest more on a
channel or in general, likewe've heard, the different
initiative that we have versusjust stopping. And that's the
kind of thing that you can donowadays, because, you know,
(28:39):
thanks to online advertising,you will clearly see your
numbers very quickly. If youhave a very good understanding,
thanks to your CFO, forinstance, of your numbers
regarding pipeline andconversion, then you can make
decision faster based on leadingindicators instead of lagging
indicators right. And one thingthat I would actually probably
say about this is that I believethat a CFO is also here to bring
(29:07):
you, as a CEO, data that you cantrust. And what's interesting
about our the way we built outthe finance function at Concord,
is that our CFO is also directlylooking into the numbers coming
from sales, coming frommarketing. And I think this is
important, because at the end ofthe day, you probably want to
avoid people self reportingtheir own metrics, because
(29:32):
that's how problems start tohappen. Because sometimes you
know, but sometimes you justdon't know how to do it very
well. Sometimes you forget aboutit. Sometimes you only want to
show the metrics that lookbetter to your boss versus the
other ones. So I think that theimportant tag of the CFO here is
you have these numbers, you cantrust them, and that makes all
(29:52):
conversation after that veryeasy. It is just about math. Are
the numbers working or not? Andlet's make a decision, right
exactly
Stephen McLain (29:59):
so you hit on a.
Very good point. We what wetypically call the finance and
accounting teams, your trustedadvisor. So the ones that are
going to bring in that truth tonumbers of what's actually
happening around in yourcompany, so that you can make
better decisions you know goingforward. So I think you hit it
right on. Really perfect. Sowhat types of conversations do
(30:19):
you have with your CFO? What
Matt Lhoumeau (30:26):
type of Do I not
have with my CFO? I think at the
end of the day, my CFO is partof the leadership team. So first
of all, she's involved in everysingle decision of the company.
We tend to be very transparentand horizontal at that level. So
she is literally part of everysingle conversation. But when I
what I will talk about most ofthe time with her at the end of
(30:49):
the day is really aboutprojections. How are we doing in
the different initiative? Youknow when, when you have, you
know, your your accounting, yourcost control, etc, the processes
in place. Things are kind ofrunning by themselves. So it's
really more about, how do we putout the company moving forward,
and how do we mix makes thingshappen faster, typically. So
that's really the type ofconversation that we have on a
(31:12):
regular
Stephen McLain (31:12):
basis. Awesome.
Very good. So I'm curious, fromyour perspective as CEO, what
specific skills would you liketo see finance professionals
develop? What are you lookingfor in someone coming into your
company with the specific skillset? I can
Matt Lhoumeau (31:29):
only obviously
speak for myself here, in the
context of tech startup, etc, Iwould be a fortune 500 CEO.
Probably have a very differenttype of answer for you. But I
think you know, if I look overthe over the last 10 years of
the finance professional thatI've worked with us, what I
think has been important to besuccessful in our company is,
(31:51):
once again, that desire to fightfor every dollar. I think this
is key. And I think, you know,this is a something that I would
expect from a customer successhealer. You fight for every
single customer. You try. Youdon't accept someone to churn
without fighting for it. I thinkit's the same thing for a CFO.
(32:11):
You have to want to fight forevery single dollar. That's the
first thing. I think the secondthing is trying to be a bit the
guardian of the processes of thecompany, you know, especially at
a startup, yes, startup, youwant to move fast. You don't
want to have too many processes,because they will slow you down.
I hate processes. I thinkthey're the they're needed, but
(32:33):
they're evil, right? Ifeverything were to work by them,
by itself, you don't needprocesses. It just works. But
you do need them, right? I thinka CFO is here for that. It helps
you realize that, yeah, we cando this this way, but this is
what we're going to probablyface very quickly if we don't
make it a bit more smarter onthe on the processes. So yeah, I
(32:54):
would say the guardian of theprocesses and fighting for every
dollar.
Stephen McLain (32:56):
Okay, awesome,
Matt, you just mentioned really
talking about your processes.
I'm very curious about yourmonthly close process. How long
does it take when you close themonth, when you're at the end of
the month, how long does it takefor your finance and accounting
team to close the books and getyou some get you the results for
the month? How long does thattake? Usually,
Matt Lhoumeau (33:19):
that's right now,
about two weeks. Okay, yeah,
about two weeks right now.
What's interesting here isreally, once again, where we're
coming from and where we areright now and where we're going
next. So we used to not domonthly closing whatsoever. As a
startup. You don't necessarilyneed it as much. So we used to
do more quality closing here,and the quality closing would
(33:41):
take us a month or two to getclose. It was complicated. So
that was, you know, what ourinvestors required. It was fine.
It was working well enough. Butour new CFO, who joined us two
years ago, was Richie fully,rightfully so, saying that,
well, this is not okay. Wecannot wait five months to know
exactly how we're doing. Weshould know right away, right?
And so she moved us to a monthlyclosing. Thank God. That was
(34:04):
really needed. And as of rightnow, we are on two weeks window
here, okay? And the idea thisyear is actually to cut this
down more to three or four days.
Currently working forward. Thegreat thing about this is
technology is getting better andbetter. There's a lot of things
that can be automated now. And Ithink the ultimate goal on SV is
(34:27):
that there won't be any moreclothing in the future. You're
right. It will be done live. Theconcept of a closing is kind of
wrong. Why did you need aclosing? Every month you could
do a closing, usually every day,at the end of the day,
absolutely,
Stephen McLain (34:38):
you hit you hit
it right there, because the
industry is trying to move to aday zero close, and the
technology is getting better andbetter every day, especially
with AI being able to get thosebooks closed, get those
temporary accounts to wherethey're supposed to be, and get
it closed to get you financialstatements and a little faster,
(34:58):
and the information that youneed is. CEO a little faster, so
I think you hit it right there.
It's perfect. Hey, I've gotanother couple of questions for
you. Particularly early in thisconversation you were talking
about the startup, as far as youknow, you're going to have to
fail a little bit. I wanted toask you about success. Now. What
does it take? What does it takefor a leader to become
(35:22):
successful? Just walk me throughthat a little bit
Matt Lhoumeau (35:29):
is a very tough
question, because I think
success is very different foreveryone, right? I think it
depends at one level. I think asa founder, success is going to
look different from yourleadership team. So it depends
on the type of success that youlike. What are the type of
(35:49):
success that I've seentypically, overall? Well, there
are people that are motivated bya mission. That's my case. For
instance, I believe in contractmanagement. Or personally, I
think contract management sucks,and I think it should be done
better. So that's the missionthat I have. That's why, which
is our second company in thisspace, hopefully the last one.
But that's the mission. It isnot about the money. It is not
(36:12):
about, I mean, you know, thepower or recognition. It is
really just making sure that weare solving that problem. But
you know, success for people isvery different everywhere. So
you could sometimes people aregoing to be motivated by by the
power, by the money, by helpingpeople in their team grow. And
(36:33):
so I think the biggest problemthat I see here, quite often, is
not the type of success peopleare looking for, but more the
misalignment between whatthey're looking for and what
really is important for them.
And I think, you know, sometimespeople tend to chase the wrong
thing. Some money is a goodexample of this or career. We
work crazy hours until we'remiddle aged, like like I am now,
(36:58):
and at some point you end up ina midlife crisis, because you
realize that you'd be chasingthe wrong thing, right so I
think the right way to besuccessful is just really
understand what is important toyou and then really try to go
after that.
Stephen McLain (37:12):
Right now, I
like that. I like that you were
telling me earlier about aninteresting hobby that you have,
so please tell me about afavorite hobby that you have of
yours?
Matt Lhoumeau (37:23):
Yeah, absolutely.
So when you don't find me in mycompany working every day, you
will find me several week duringthe year doing white water
rafting. So I, you know, I'm atech CEO, but interesting
enough, I actually kind of hatetechnology. I think it's very
useful, but I think it's verynice to be able to disconnect
(37:43):
from it entirely, sure. And so Itypically spend anywhere between
four to six weeks a year justgoing down rivers in the US or
other places in the world andcamping on the side of the river
for a couple of weeks. So I waslast year in between the Yukon
Canada and, oh, nice Alaska onthe tachinic Chi River. It was a
(38:06):
great trip. I had the chance todo the Grand Canyon in the US. I
was a couple of years ago. I wasin in Chile, in Patagonia over
there. So that's, that's how Itypically recharge my batteries
is by being very far away fromthe internet and my cell phone
and my computer and just beingin nature. Awesome.
Stephen McLain (38:27):
Very good. So
again, like to hear what's next
for Concord? What's What do youhave on the horizons for the for
the service?
Matt Lhoumeau (38:37):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think probably 2025. For usis, I would say the one of the
most exciting years that I'veseen for a long time in the
company. It kind of felt likethe early days. The reason
behind this is obviously all theprogress that you see right now
with ai, ai has changedliterally everything in our
industry and other industriestoo. But it means that what used
to require a lot of work frompeople entering data manually.
(39:00):
There was no other trust in thepast. This is over, so you can
get your contracts done andimmediately you have all the
information that you need fromthat. And so what's very
exciting at Concord is thatwe've been working on this for
quite a while now, and we arereleasing this here, basically a
new version of the app that isjust entirely AI first, the idea
(39:20):
of the future of contractmanagement is not about giving
you more ability to put fieldseverywhere in your documents, is
to actually remove things fromyour plate. And so you know,
when it comes to like a let'stake a little bit of a contract.
For instance. You know when youwant to sign a contract today?
Well, you're gonna you put yourdata of your customer, how much
(39:40):
person is going to have to pay,and you're going to have to
maybe format your document, etcetera. This is over with AI. I
don't think anyone movingforward is going to format a
document. Why are you spendingtime choosing if it's to be bold
or italic or a different font? Ithink the AI should be doing
this for you. Yeah. Why are you.
Entering fields. I think the AIcan probably put the fields in
(40:03):
there for you too. Why are youreviewing the document? The AI
should be able to do that andflag the thing that are really
important for you, instead of itto do it article by article. And
that's basically what we'rebuilding right now. I believe
the future of contractmanagement is not this complex
user experience with you know, alot of data everywhere it's to
be able to get you that power,but with the simplicity and so
(40:29):
the Concord, moving forward isgoing to look more and more like
chatgpt. Basically, you canreally have a conversation with
with an AI to get you the resultthat you have. So you don't have
to build reporting yourself. Byselecting every single field
that you want to appear inthere, you'll be able to just
ask the AI and get yourreporting done. Awesome.
Stephen McLain (40:50):
Hey, please
share the website address again.
Concord, dot app. Concord. Dotapp, awesome. Matt, thank you so
much for joining me today on thefinance leader podcast. I really
appreciate your time. I thinkyou've shared some amazing some
amazing information and Nuggetswith the audience today, and
thank you, and I wish you thebest of luck with you and your
(41:11):
company going forward. Thankyou. That's my pleasure. Thank
you so much. Now, wow, that wasa wonderful discussion with
Matt. There are three lessons Iwant to highlight before I
close. Number one, I have workedwith contracts for decades, but
I learned so much listening toMatt explain the contract
process. The use of AI is goingto change how we manage contract
(41:35):
requirements, due dates, terms,everything. It will be exciting
to see where Concord goes inthis industry, and since
business is essentiallycontracts, how we track and
conduct our business with AIwill be important to monitor.
Pay attention to contractmanagement. Number two, Matt's
thoughts on startup leadershipare critical. He talked about
(41:56):
the need for a CFO and startupphase and when to bring them on.
He told us to fight for everydollar and for accuracy in order
to make better decisions,continue to analyze and
negotiate your costs. Andfinally, number three, regarding
monthly close. I really likedMatt's thoughts on monthly close
by using AI to eventuallyestablish a day zero close, the
(42:19):
idea is to work through closeduring the month with the
expectation that accuratefinancial statements will be
available today after the monthends. The quicker we deliver
accurate financial informationto decision makers like Matt,
who is the CEO, the betterposition your company will be
now. Please visit Concord dotapp for more information about
(42:40):
Concord, the link will be inthis episode show notes, along
with Matt's link to hisLinkedIn. Thank you again to
Matt for joining me on thepodcast today. I hope you
enjoyed the finance leaderpodcast. You can find this
episode wherever you listen topodcasts. If this episode helped
you today, please share with acolleague until next time you
can check out more resources atfinanceleader academy.com and
(43:03):
sign up for my weekly updates soyou don't miss an episode of the
podcast and now go lead yourteam and I'll see you next time.
Thank you. You.