Ep. 24- Building & Selling Companies: Lessons Every SaaS Founder Needs with Stan Markuze

Most founders know how to build a product.

Far fewer know how to build a company that can actually scale and eventually be acquired.

On the next episode of PreSales Unplugged: The Leadership Playbook, I'm joined by Stan Markuze, CEO of Balance.

Stan has built and successfully sold two technology companies, invested in real estate for over a decade, and is now leading a fast-growing SaaS company helping businesses better manage their cash.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

✅ Building companies with long-term value in mind

✅ Lessons learned from multiple exits

✅ Founder-led sales and knowing when it's time to build a sales team

✅ How customer feedback led to a major product pivot

✅ Practical ways founders can think differently about cash flow and operational efficiency

✅ Hiring lessons from scaling an early-stage startup

Whether you're building your first startup or scaling your next one, this conversation is full of practical lessons you can apply immediately.

Elite Talent Recruiting helps B2B SaaS leaders hire high performing Pre Sales and Post Sales talent when speed and quality actually matter. 

We are on a mission to prove Pre Sales and Post Sales teams are just as crucial to revenue as offensive linemen are to quarterbacks. 

They accelerate sales, fuel growth, and help SaaS companies win bigger deals faster. 

We build SaaS GTM teams by headhunting top Pre Sales and Post Sales talent and delivering hires in 35 days or less, including Sales Engineers, Solutions Consultants, Solutions Architects, Customer Success, and Technical Account Managers. 

If your team is stretched thin, specialized roles are sitting open too long, or you are scaling fast and need reliable recruiting support that actually moves the needle, we help you hire the kind of talent that drives growth, innovation, and customer success without wasting months in interview chaos.

Check out our website: https://elitetalentrecruiting.io/

Connect with Arvi directly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arvi-carkanji/ 

All other resources: https://linktr.ee/elitetalentrecruiting

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

All right. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Presales Unplug, the Leadership Playbook. I'm Arvi Karkanji, the founder of Elite Talent, and obviously I work with SaaS companies to hire top-tier presales and full sales talent. But today isn't about me, as I always like to say. The show is really about the leaders, the founders, uh the teams building the go-to-market strategies and just building companies that really work in today's market. As we all know, the market has changed so much in just the last two years alone. So I think that having true stories and true strategies that of people that are doing it right now, it's more helpful than ever. If this is your first time joining us, welcome. One quick note before we jump in these conversations are live and intentionally unedited. So what you hear here today is completely how it happened. We stream it live, but you can also catch a replay on our podcast across Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever your favorite platform is. And I always like to say if you get value from the conversation, just make sure to follow, subscribe, or leave us a review. I personally read every single one of them. And I also make sure that if you have questions for the guests, that we I can tag them or at least get the answer for you to make sure they get your answers or your questions answered. With that being said, I'm super excited today. I'm joined by Stan Marcuzi. Um and I I know we talked a little bit uh previously in terms of your last name, so hopefully I got that one right. Uh, but I'm really excited to have you on today. You have a very strong rack track record in the space. I'm really to dive into your story and honestly just have you share. You've been a founder multiple times. Um, so yeah, I'm honestly super excited to have you on and just uh kind of dive into your story and share as much value as possible.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Absolutely. Um, St. I'd love to like get our listeners to get to know you a little bit. So tell me a little bit about your story. Obviously, you've built two companies so far. What even pushed you into into entrepreneurship to begin with?

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Sure. So my story started in, you know, I grew up in Sacramento, California. And um, I went to high school there. I ended up going to Stanford Undergrad, Stanford Business School uh after that. I always knew I wanted to get involved in business. And so going in in that direction was uh was an easy decision for me. And as far as what pushed me into entrepreneurship, I uh since I was a kid, I had always been starting small businesses and I just loved the creative process, the process of providing value to people. Um and so uh when I graduated from business from business school, I went to work in a conventional finance job. And I was working in finance uh, you know, Monday through Friday, and then on the weekends, I started buying foreclosed houses during the foreclosure crisis. And it was just, I had so it was so exhilarating to do that that I knew I knew that that was sort of the uh the career for me, the path for me.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

How I I love that you said that. And I think uh, and I think you were mentioning in terms of like 2008, right? When like the foreclosure crisis really happened in real estate in literally one of the most uncertain markets in the US history. Um, how did that experience really shape the way you think about building businesses?

SPEAKER_02 3:15

Yeah, I mean, I mean, it uh that was an interesting business because it was only myself and my partner. And so we did everything. So we learned everything from scratch, right? From incorporating the company to um, you know, building the models to making offers on we were buying single family homes foreclosed, uh, getting those homes repaired, so negotiating with contractors, um, property managers, finding tenants, collecting rents, making sure that the rents exceeded all the expenses of the properties. Of course, the first property that we started with, we learned a lot. We, you know, it didn't go as planned. And so um kind of course correcting after one experience to make sure subsequent experiences were more uh, you know, were easier and more more lucrative. So um, so that really laid the foundation of like, hey, you know, um, there are all these, there are all these small things that need to be done to start a business. And we did all those things in the course of that enterprise.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Yeah, um, I don't know if you remember, Sam, but when we talked a little bit outside, I told you that I had a similar kind of way into entrepreneurship with, you know, flipping houses. And uh, you mentioned like your first one does did not go the way it expected to. I mean, mine was anything but from what I expected it to be. Uh, but in a cool way, I mean, you learn everything what not to do in like one crash course. And then it's in a way it kind of starts getting better. Um, but I I will say I agree with you in the sense that like real estate, especially that type of business, kind of makes you do everything on your own. So you do learn a lot. It's not like a huge, kind of in a way like a SaaS product where you you start it and then you know have like a big boom per se for most people at least. Um, so it does really teach you to be scrappy for sure. So yeah, that's cool. And then you um you had a second exit in 2022, right? What what made you kind of jump back into business instead of taking a break and saying, you know, I'm done?

SPEAKER_02 5:15

That's a great question. So after the exit in 2022, I actually intended to uh I intended to take some time off, but um, you know, it's uh there's this part of me that's every time you start something new, you learn a little bit along the way. And and and I was thinking like, well, I'd learned so much in the previous businesses that I'd started before that. I'm like, I gotta put this to use, but I also have to incorporate all the lessons that I learned in all the previous things I'd worked on. So it was a matter of like, hey, you know, these are the lessons I've learned. And I distilled it down to like three lessons. These are the lessons I learned. Let me start something where I can put these into practice and see where that business goes with this, these new, you know, discoveries that I had made in my previous career moves.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Yeah. I think one of the uh most uh like miscommon misconceptions about entrepreneurs is like our goal is to basically either sell a business or you know go public or whatever, and then you think you're gonna retire after that because you're like, I did it, that's what I've been working towards. But it's I mean, you're so used to doing and building and solving problems that it's so hard to do that. I mean, I I don't know what would be next in terms of retiring, what you can even do with your time.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, like sometimes when you're very busy as an entrepreneur, you're like, oh man, I wish I had a break. But then you talk to people who have done it and they're and they're like restless to because they need they need they need something to work on, they need something to think about.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Yeah, yeah. Um, I'd love to ask you a little bit about the current company that you're building, and you combined, in a way, your real estate experience with software. Uh, tell me a little bit how that came about. Obviously, tell us the name of the company as well, just so we can understand a little bit more what that looks like right now.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

Sure. So my current company is called Balance. Uh the URL is balancecash.io. And the purpose of the company is really to help businesses uh who use multiple bank accounts or who don't. Uh helps them see all their cash in one place, have analytical tools to analyze their cash movements across their banks and their accounts, and most importantly, to put that cash to work when they're not using it. So hypothetically, you could have a business with an operating reserve of a million dollars. Well, typically an operating reserve would sit in a uh in a checking account, a business checking account that would be earning 0.07% on average, right? So basically nothing. And so what our what balance does is we connect to that bank or to the banks, and you could say, hey, I have a million dollars in this, you name it bank account, right? I have a million dollars, and I really only want to keep $100,000 in that account. Uh, and the the remaining 900, I want to sweep that into government money market funds, right? And so our our company does that, right? So you would connect your bank account to balance. You would say, My target balance for my checking account is $100,000, and then once a week, I want you to sweep money out if there's over $100,000. And if I dip below $100,000, I want you to sweep money in. And so that's what we do. And we do that for all types of businesses, but a disproportionate focus for us is invest private investment funds, especially real estate funds. So um, so I had this problem when I was uh syndicating real estate investments back during the financial crisis, where you, depending on who the lender was and where the property was located, you might be working with a handful of different banks across all of your entities that own the real estate, right? And so you have to log into every single bank portal to find out how much cash there is and see all the transactions. So I'm like, all right, well, number one, let's create a unified dashboard where you could see everything in one place. And another problem you have is okay, I have an extra $100,000 in my Wallace Fargo account for as an example, right? Well, I want to earn market rates on that, right? I want to earn three and a half, four percent on that money. How do I do that? Right. And it's actually very difficult. And so we built a platform where you can put that money to work with a 15-minute onboarding, and within 24 to 48 hours, that money could be invested in in a a Tebow fund, like a Vanguard Tebow fund or something similar.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Yeah, that's very true because I think a lot of businesses obviously always try to have you know savings or some sort of like rainy day fund. And it's true. I mean, it could just kind of sit there, it doesn't really do much. Um, so the fact that you're able to take that and invest it, how does it work if they're like, oh, you know, I kind of want to pull it back in because I need to use it or whatever for whatever reason.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

So we we don't actually invest in in T-bills or in CDs, right? Because these things have a maturity, and of course, yeah, there's a penalty for excuse me, there's a there's a penalty for withdrawing early. So everything that we invest in is a liquid fund investment fund, and we have funds where you can access the money same day. So if you need it, if an emergency comes about, you can get the money back in your bank account the same day. Most uh money market funds they settle within uh 48 hours or so. So a typical fund, you'd get it in two business days. However, we do have an option for same day, uh same day funds where you can access the cash very quickly.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Very cool. I wanted to ask a little bit on the founder's perspective. What is like, maybe on your perspective, one mistake that you see them making early that in a way becomes very expensive later?

SPEAKER_02 10:49

Well, on the cash management side, you know, like if you raise, if you're a tech founder and you raise 2 million bucks and you're really you're really busy, you're building a product, you're fundraising, you're talking to investors, you're managing engineers, um, two million dollars can earn about six to eight thousand dollars per month in passive income, right? And if you think about six to eight thousand dollars a month, well, that can pay for like uh, you know, concretely it could pay for several overseas engineers, for example. Um it could cover a number of different things, right? It could pay for your office if you have one. So so really setting up a uh a system that passively generates income on your pot of cash is uh is you know, it's once you set it up, it's it's it's done, it's going. Uh you're making money, and that money can offset a lot of the expenses of running a startup.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Yeah, I love that. Um, I guess kind of last question on this is there like a minimum in terms of the amount of money you need in order to either use your platform or invested?

SPEAKER_02 11:53

Sure. So we we look for entities that uh either sweep about $500,000 in aggregate uh through our platform. So it could be one entity or it could be, you know, like in a real estate context, you might have like four different entities.

SPEAKER_03 12:07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

So it's either you're sweeping 500 or you're sweeping less, but you have a reasonable path to get to 500.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Yeah, yeah. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Uh, thank you for sharing all that. I wanted to shift your focus a little bit on the technical or tactical founders' advice, and obviously you build multiple companies. What in your like from your experience, what changes between building your first company versus like your second or your third?

SPEAKER_02 12:38

Oh man, it's it's gonna be different from uh for for every single person, but um I think uh so so I'll I'll I'll provide my own kind of answer to that question. I'd say before you build a company, I have three different uh criteria that I came up with after um after selling my second tech company. Um and the criteria are they're pretty simple. So uh number one, when you build a company, you want to uh sell a product or service to people who who have money and are willing to pay for that product or service. So it can't be something that people expect to receive for free, or it can't be something where you're selling to someone who just doesn't have the money to pay for it or they don't have the budget to pay for it. So make sure that if you build something and you're providing value, there's a way for you to be successful and get compensated for your time, right? Yeah, the second uh criteria is criterion is work with people who you like because in uh in a startup journey, uh the destination is really uncertain, right? So um I think with startups, rarely is it, you know, rarely does the founder of the startup actually know how it's gonna end up, right? Obviously, everybody hopes that they're gonna go public and they're gonna be very successful, etc. But there are a lot of twists and turns along the road. You don't know where that road's gonna lead to, but you can control the types of people who you work with and whether on a day-to-day basis you enjoy spending time and interacting with those people. Uh, the third and final um criterion is uh always be learning something that you actually are interested in and care about. So uh if if you're starting a business in whatever industry or whatever topic is is hot, just because you think it's easier to raise money or uh you know you you you want to be part of the action, it's not a good idea unless you actually care about that thing and you're interested in learning about it. Because uh if you're starting an AI company today, for example, because AI is the top the hot topic, right? There are people who've been working on AI for the last 15 years who care deeply about it. So you can't, as an entrepreneur, you can't compete against people who truly are passionate about what they're doing, right? So you have to care about it, you have to want to learn about it, and you have to uh make an investment in your learning that will serve you in the future for future endeavors that you work on.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Yeah, that is very true. I've actually, in my opinion, some of the best founders, and of course, you know, it's not just black and white, there's gray in between, but some of the best founders are the ones that were genuinely dealing with the problem and they started a company to fix that problem because either they saw it happening over and over and over again, or they were dealing with it internally, and they just again deeply believed in solving that problem. So, and I agree with you, like when times are tough, the idea of solving a problem, you know, that you deeply care about is sometimes what keeps you going. Because again, like you said, startups can be can have can have really good highs, but also really bad lows, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:50

And you another another thing I'll add is like conviction, like you have to, whatever you're building, you have to love it and believe in it, and yeah, you can use it yourself, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Yeah, I love that. With that being said, do you feel like, or I mean, based on your experience, that like founders should build in a way with like an acquisition in mind, uh, from you know day one, or simply just focusing on solving a real problem?

SPEAKER_02 16:17

Yeah, so uh so it's funny, there's like this saying where um success has a hundred like a thousand fathers, but uh failure is an orphan, right? And the way that that saying relates to the that question is like if you're successful, like if you're solving a problem, if people are paying for your solution, and if your solution is growing in the market, then then you know you have all the options open to you, right? Like you can continue to operate your business uh independently. There are probably gonna be financial investors like private equities that are gonna go after a company. There might be strategic investors in the space who find value in your product, or yeah, um or maybe you can have an IPO, right? So, but but the the common threat across all of these exits is you have to have a solution that you believe in that customers that solves a problem that customers pay for and it's growing, right? So on a day-to-day basis, I don't I don't think it's I mean it's it's it's never been my intention to like build a company thinking, oh, there are like three other other bigger companies in the market, and I'm gonna build this thing so one of these other companies is gonna buy it, right? So you just gotta you just gotta believe in it and make it successful and make customers uh really like what you're doing, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

I agree. And I think one thing I found interesting when we were talking offline was that you told me that balance wasn't really originally the product that it is today. Um, and you mentioned how customer feedback has been really crucial in shaping the company. Can you talk a little bit more about that in terms of like um, you know, how when should you decide to listen to customer feedback? And, you know, the product deserves a pivot versus like it's just noise. Like, how do you evaluate that as a founder?

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Sure. So as far as the product journey, when we started balance, the idea was just to uh unify visibility of bank accounts, right? So in 2023, we started building a dashboard where you could connect any number of different banks and accounts and you could see everything in one place and organize it in a meaningful way, right? So it was basically a financial aggregator for banking feeds. We started signing up enterprise customers at the end of 2023. In the middle of 2024, one of our customers came to us and he said, he was a controller at a real estate development firm on the East Coast. And he said, one of my goals for this quarter or this year or something is I need to earn 1% more on our cash reserves. And so that's where, like, hey, instead of just aggregating the the funds and selling this service as a SaaS, why don't we why don't we help people actually earn money on their idle funds, right? Nobody else, nobody else really does this in the way that we do it now. And so that that was the um that was the product journey from the original idea to releasing the idea to the customer feedback that brought us to where we are today.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Yeah, I love that. I love how customers, I mean, like you said, as a founder, you're just trying to solve one specific problem, but then customer feedback can literally be crucial into shaping where the product goes.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Yep. And then there was a second question there.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

Yes, is how do you decide when customer feedback is like good and it deserves a product pivot versus you know, it's just noise. And how do you filter that as a founder?

SPEAKER_02 19:43

Sure. So, so really in two ways. Um, the most simple way is oftentimes multiple, if you when you have enough customers, multiple customers will ask you the same question or have the same feedback. Yeah. So, like, that's really the easiest way where you hear the same thing from maybe three of your customers or five of your customers, and you say, Okay, this is something that needs to be modified in some way. Uh, the other way that that you see feedback is like you you you release a new product or feature or update, and then somebody emails you and they're like, Hey, I don't understand it for the following reasons, and then it's just so obvious that it's unclear that so that's like kind of those those are the two uh the two ways that you know that the cut that the feedback is more universal than just one customer specific use case.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Yeah, no, that's that's true, that's really good. And if the founder's listening today, what's one thing you think they should focus on if they want to build a company that's scalable and not just profitable?

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Yeah, so look, I mean, I think there are there are cases for building companies that are profitable for a short term, and there are cases for building companies that are like gonna last for a long time, right? Um, if you're looking for a company that's gonna endure and last a long time, then I would say, you know, it's really about the, you know, at any given point in time, there are anomalies in the world, such as COVID or such as the AI boom, right? And so you got to think about well, once COVID is over, is this company gonna work? Is it gonna be successful? Is there gonna be demand for my product or my service? Or like if the AI boom, AI is not going away, right? It's it's it provides tremendous value, right? But if something else emerges that attracts a lot of attention and a lot of capital, is there still gonna be is there still gonna be a problem that I'm solving that people will pay for? Um so that's how I would think about the long time endurance of a company.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Yeah, that's really good. I wanted to ask, and it, you know, every founder starts off this way, right? Like you start off with founder led sales. Um, of course, you know, there comes a point where it's not enough anymore and you need to start building a sales team. How did you personally know when it was time? Build a sales team.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Sure. So there were kind of uh two things that happened that signaled to me that it was time to start building the team. The first thing was uh one of our investors called and I was I mentioned the idea to him and I asked him, I asked him, Well, what do you think is the right time? What's the signal? And he says, Yeah, he told me when you start dropping balls, that's when you have to hire the sales team. So that kind of planted the seed in my mind. And then the second thing that happened was I had like a personal uh a personal emergency at the beginning of actually like end of 2025, beginning of 2026, and I was very distracted. And it, you know, to have sales, you gotta have kind of like a rhythm and um consistency, there's really an art to it, truly. Yeah, um, and so that and then and then that's what finally did it for me, where I'm like, okay, this is this is it because the company can't suffer because of my distraction due to the personal crisis I was experiencing at the time.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

Yeah, yeah, very true. I think we all hid that at some point, and it's like, yeah, it's time now. Um, because you and I mean, like you said, at the end of the day, you build a company not to be involved in everything, right? Like you want to evolve and start firing yourself uh from all positions. Um, I wanted to ask, I mean, what um do you think that I and I hear this argument online a lot where you know the founder should always be close to sales, no matter how big the company, you know, once it gets to a certain point eventually, yes, but um, you know, they always need to somehow be involved in sales overall, and then others are like, well, I need to hire experts in order to do that. Do you have an opinion on that overall, in terms of like where where should the founder sit eventually?

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Yeah, both. I mean, look, in the beginning, uh the founder is actually doing the sales, right? Yeah, uh, then the next stage after that, which is the stage we're at, where you have the founder and then you have a couple of account executives, right? So uh in that case, I'm still very involved. It's where I spend most of my time, right? But then uh the next stage after that is at some point, um, there are people out there who are much more experienced than I am at hiring, managing, measuring uh salespeople, training. And so when the company is big enough, I completely agree that instead of instead of me participating in all the sales meetings and and uh you know there's there are people who are better than that, right? And so when the company's big enough, when there's enough of need, there's enough uh capital for it, I think that role needs to be transitioned to somebody who's a uh a domain specialist.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Yeah, no, I agree. And I mean, as founders, you get pulled in all kinds of different directions. And as hard as we say, like, oh, we're gonna organize our schedule and you know deal with fires at this specific point in time, etc., it it's kind of impossible to follow that to the T. Like you're gonna have to be lenient. And I think especially with sales, like we talked about, it's a lot about consistency. And if you kind of get off of that or you can't don't have time to meet with the sales team, et cetera, then obviously you know it starts hurting your sales overall and just your team. Um to agree that there's always points where you know you just kind of graduate and there's just no more need to do that personally as a founder.

SPEAKER_03 25:20

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Um, what was harder than you expected in terms of transitioning from being like the primary person to hiring others?

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Yeah, I mean, look, I I think the the hardest part of that transition was uh finding good people, right? Because uh again, uh there are people who have hired who we work with who have hired dozens, if not hundreds, of uh you know, salespeople essentially, right? Yeah, and I haven't hired dozens or hundreds of salespeople. So for me, I knew I I I know that I I know that I don't have the pattern recognition of someone who's done it before. So that was really the hardest part, but that could be mitigated through advisors or consultants, right? But that that caused me quite a bit of heartburn. It's like, well, I've never been a chief revenue officer. How do I know? How do I know who the right person is? How do I know if they're going to be compatible with this particular product and this type of customer, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Yeah, very true. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think hiring in general is definitely one of the hardest things. Well, then there's always hard things within business, but hiring is definitely because it can be very subjective, like you said. It's it's hard to recognize patterns, and you know, you're dealing with human beings and all kinds of different personalities.

unknown 26:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Um, what do you think? Uh obviously, you worked with a ton of companies, you've built your own. Is there anything that you think like what operational habits in a way separate the healthiest companies from like everybody else?

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Um that's a that's a tough question. Um, I would say in in short, it my summary on that would just be um transparent metrics and clear goals, right? So um yeah, so so everyone needs to know what the so for our for our company, the most important metric is AUM. And um and every month we have a goal for how much AUM we'd like to achieve. And so having that single goal in mind, you know, you can break that goal down, right? Because AUM is really how many customers do you have, how much capital are they deploying, how much of that capital, how are we is the capital growing? Are we retaining it? Is it declining? Right. So you can break it down, and different people on the team are responsible for different parts of that of that funnel, right? But um just just uh having a metric and and being transparent about that metric with uh with the team, I think is good. Um yeah, yeah. And and and also it there's a clear there should also be a clear connection between what the metric is and the financial health and viability of the company, right? Yeah. Yeah. So like if you have a bunch of users but you're not monetizing the users, it's like, all right, well, that's why is that a meaningful metric? Unless you're gonna monetize them use them sometime in the future, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Yeah. Yeah, I was literally just gonna add that if but you already said it. I was gonna say, you know, I agree the metrics should be tracked, but I think that especially when you're a small company and you're just starting to grow, you have to pick and choose, you know, what are your most important metrics that are leading to a sale. Because at the end of the day, that's always what it is about. Um, you can't just track everything and then not know what to do with half of the metrics that you're even seeing. Um, that can get obviously very overwhelming for a founder or business owner and then still lead to nothing. Um yeah, and I kind of along with that is um one of the things that obviously you're solving is how companies think about like idle cash or you know, cash management. Why do you think that's like such an overlooked part of like running a business?

SPEAKER_02 28:57

Um well, you know, like cash is the lifeblood of a company, right? So um so cash management is like, you know, no, if you're doing sales but your expense and you have accounts receivable, but you're not getting your accounts receivable fast enough to make your to like make your payroll, even if your company is very successful, it's gonna you're not gonna make it. Or if you if you're if you're earning, let's say your business are so I think businesses in the US, the average mark like operating margin for a mature business is like seven percent, right? So if you're earning seven percent on your business, but then you have a million dollars in the bank that is earning zero, that could be earning four percent, like you're missing a huge profit opportunity for your business by just letting that money sit. So um, so so I think you know, there are a lot of things to worry about in running a company, right? You have sh uh stakeholders like investors, you have uh customers, you have the product, etc. But at the end of the day, none of these things, you know, like the the blood inside the company is the money. And so if if the money stops, then nothing else really matters. And so you have to have like a really as a manager, you have to have a really good grasp on uh how much do we have, what are we earning on it, where's it coming from, and where's it going?

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Yeah, that's very true. I think uh cash flow for the business is obviously, like you said, the lifeblood. Like if you don't have that, I mean, no matter how good of a product you are or you have or a team or you know, wanting to have a good business is just gonna put you in a chokehold, and there's just no way out of it. Um, and obviously what you're solving is very interesting um in terms of how you do it as well. If you can give founders like one piece of advice about managing the financial side, uh whether it's scaling overall, not just like growing revenue, what would you what would you say to that?

SPEAKER_02 30:50

Yeah, with the financial side, I would say um number number one, you should be looking at your bank account like well it depends on how close you are to to the empty, but right, right. But like you should be you should be looking at your bank account or accounts at least on a weekly basis. Number one. Uh number two, I would hire an external if you're managing the money yourself. I would hire an external uh accounting company that specializes in startups or small businesses. It's not very expensive, and they'll create not only is it good from a compliance perspective, which is important for fundraising, but they'll they'll tell you like what's your burn, how much runway do you have? Um, they'll prepare your cash flow statement, but like things that would take you hours and hours and hours to do yourself. They'll do it for you because they have scale, they'll do it at a pretty reasonable cost. And number three, if you raise money or you have operating reserves, don't just let it sit there because um, you know, people are there's this uh there's this principle that people are very averse to loss, more so than they are like you the aversion to loss is more than uh euphoria from gain. And so if you think about you have a million dollars and you're losing three thousand dollars a month, think about it like would you if someone just tried to sell you something that you like for three thousand dollars a month, would you sign up for it? And you would think really hard about that because like three thousand dollars a month is significant, right? Yeah, so but that's if you have a million dollars sitting in a deposit account, not earning interest, you're paying three thousand dollars a month for nothing, potentially. So um, so so that that and that's where balance comes in. That's our that's the problem that we solve.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

Yeah, I love that. And I'll I'll just like to add that I think sometimes founders will go keep like QuickBooks for financial planning, and that's not it. And feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_02 32:41

You need both. You need both.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Yeah, you need both.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

Yeah, and usually these uh these kind of like back office uh companies, they you'll have QuickBooks as well, but they're they're the ones who you know they're the ones who are gonna keep everything organized and make sure things are categorized accurately, and they'll produce clean financial statements for you, things that you need uh when you fundraise, for example, or when you sell your company, right? And think think about as a founder, if you're fundraising, they say, okay, well, give me give me your trailing 12-month monthly income statement, right? Like that would be a really hard challenge as a founder if you haven't already been meticulously keeping track of it.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, I love that. I'm I'm really glad you came on because obviously this is such an interesting conversation. We don't always talk about finances, especially in the SaaS world, they're kind of hidden in a way and or done behind closed doors. So I love that we're having like, you know, this for just access to people and you know, learning how to do it right. Um, I want to shift your focus to a rapid fire section. Um they don't have to be fast answers, but they're just fast questions. Uh, what is one tool right now that you can't live without?

SPEAKER_02 33:52

So I thought about this question, and uh, there are actually three tools that I'm constantly using. Uh Google Meets, right? So yeah, that's my that's my favorite uh video conferencing software. Number two, Calendly. Uh at scale, very easy to book meetings with customers, with um teammates, with investors, etc. Um, and uh number three, I really like uh uh it's called linear. It's uh it's uh so yeah, linear is for like um issue tracking, right? Kind of um like uh what's it called? Anyway, there's another one out there, but you know, for example, if I if I find a bug or an opportunity or a place of improvement somewhere in the platform, I can file a ticket, I can assign it to an engineer, and then so that's what it is, right? It's kind of kind of like an issue tracking software.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

So those okay, that's pretty cool for founders, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Okay, what about biggest growth lever for SaaS in 2026?

SPEAKER_02 34:50

The biggest growth lever I would say is well, I could talk about what it has been for us. Again, different for every company, but I would just say having experienced account executives has been pretty critical. Just people who are experienced and focused on that uh piece of the business.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Yeah, I I agree with that, especially in the startup environment. You need very experienced account executives on that end. Um, okay, what is one belief you have that most people would disagree with?

SPEAKER_02 35:21

Oh man, I I I I have that's a hard one for me because I don't know what people would agree or disagree with, but um uh I you know I I'm I'm sort of like a contrarian and I tend to not be always chasing like the the newest hype item. And um and that's because I number one, you have to be really to succeed, I think when there's a new topic that people are very excited about, there are always people who are more knowledgeable about than others, right? Again, let's use AI as an example. There have been people who have been working on AI for a really, really long time, right? And so if you just jump in and you start working on it without any experience and you don't care about it, you're not passionate about it, then I think it's like really hard to be successful. So um, so I guess my belief is like do what you think, solve a problem that you know about that you care about, rather than chasing what the latest hype thing is, right? Yeah, so using AI as an example, you could still use AI, we use it every day, and we integrate it into our product, but we're not like an AI company, right? So so I guess that's I don't know if that answers your question, but yeah, that's that's the best I got.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

Yeah, no, and I mean I'll I'll give an example and then because I totally agree with you. I don't think you should just chase hype for the heck of it because it's happening right now. I mean, all the um when the e-commerce like stores boomed like a couple of years ago, everybody was like, Oh, start an e-commerce store and this and that, you'll make so much money. And then I don't know, I feel like 90% of those people are not even having an e-commerce store or the um uh what was that hype with the online art? I forgot the name of it.

SPEAKER_02 37:08

Oh, um Open C was it Open C is that it?

SPEAKER_01 37:13

I can't no. Um, I don't I can't think of it, but everybody was like, Oh my gosh, you're gonna be the next, you know, Bitcoin, and clearly they all disappeared.

SPEAKER_02 37:23

There was like a people, I remember was this like an artist. I I know what you're talking about. I know what you mean.

SPEAKER_01 37:29

Yes, yes. I well, I think the audience get catches the memo, but yeah, so I agree. I mean, you can't just fit like just go after you know everybody else just because something is hype, right? Like you have to solve a real problem. Um, so that's cool. All right, and then a last rapid fire question is what is the biggest hiring mistake you've made so far and what did it teach you?

SPEAKER_02 37:51

Yeah, so the biggest mistakes I've made, I think, in hiring are um hiring hiring the wrong people to like save money to get a good deal. Yeah, right. And um, I just think that time is so important uh in a startup journey that if you hire the wrong person because you're trying to save a save a few bucks, um, the cost of that. So, first of all, that person uh that per it takes a lot of time to find just even to find that person, and then that person will work for some period of time where they're not going to be producing the results that you expect, and then you have to offboard them, and so the cost actually ends up being higher, both in terms of time, because you've lost all that time that you had that person, and in terms of money, because you've paid a bunch of money for without getting the results that you needed from that position. So I think that's that's my biggest mistake, I think.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

Yeah, and I'll add the mental overload to that, right? Like you just in a way feel defeated for going through all of that, and you know, your expectations were so high, and you're like, finally, I'm gonna get this, this, and then you know, it kind of flops. So um totally agree with that. And on that hiring side or on the hiring note, obviously uh we always like to end with some hiring questions. Um, what do you specifically look for in like earliest hires, right? As a new founder, or not a new founder, but as a founder of a company, obviously you're making your first critical few hires. What do you look for in those earliest hires for a company?

SPEAKER_02 39:20

Yeah, so I think uh when I when I'm looking at account executives, for example, I look for some degree of domain domain uh expertise, right?

SPEAKER_03 39:29

Right.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

I look for uh responsiveness uh just just during the interview process. Um uh I look for people who haven't jumped around too much because because like if like let's say let's say you're in an account executive role and you you've got you've been in a bunch of positions for like less than a year. If I think if that person was you know succeeding in any of those positions, they'd probably stick around a little longer. Um then and then of course, uh to my the what we started with was I want to hire people who I like who I think are gonna be a good fit for the culture of the company, right? Because um, because you're gonna be interacting with them a lot, and so you have to like them for that to be an you know like a pleasant experience.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

Yeah. When you're looking and obviously you're hiring going through interview process, are there like maybe some red flags that are like immediate no for you?

SPEAKER_02 40:25

Yeah, I mean the the many many job tenures of under a year is kind of is is a pretty clear red flag.

SPEAKER_01 40:32

Um I wanna uh if you don't mind, real quick, since you're on that note, because I think that salespeople do, especially for sales, right? But they do get a bed rep when it comes to like you know quick jumps. Um is there certain aspects, and I'd love to speak on it too if you need me to, but in terms of like when you're lenient versus you're not?

SPEAKER_02 40:54

Yeah, I mean, uh typically I I want to see at least a year and a half, I mean a month between you know, and it's it's okay if like like let's say hypothetically you have four jobs that you've had, right? And they're two years, two years, eight months, and a year and a half. Like that's okay, right? But then if you have like six months, eight months, ten months, seven months, then I'm starting to think like what's six months, you know, that that's like a that's a red flag for me.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

Yeah, absolutely. That's why I wanted you to dive deeper because I think it's important to make that distinction. Um, because I know some maybe some salespeople are listening and they're like, Well, you know, it just something happened for one year, what can I do? Um, so yeah, I'm I'm glad that you mentioned that because I think that oh, go ahead. No, no, finish it off.

SPEAKER_02 41:39

One other thing that that is has become a red flag is if you're interviewing someone and they, you know, they've they've had some quick jumps, and you you ask them, like, well, why did you leave this company to go to the gut go to this company in eight months? And it's like, well, and they blame it on like a person or something at the other company, and yeah, multiple times, then it's like, all right, well, if the previous your three previous managers were like bad people and mean to you, that makes me wonder, you know, that makes me wonder, like, well, what's really at the core of the issue, right?

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Yeah, I I agree. I think it's you know, it happens once in a while, but especially if it happens in a row, then obviously you know there's a pattern there. Right. Um on that note, I actually wanted to ask, because I think every hiring manager has a different perspective on this. How important is updated LinkedIn profile for you?

SPEAKER_02 42:30

It's pretty important, right? Because it's one of those things that is relatively low effort. Um, you know, and it's low effort, and I I feel like it's just like professional etiquette to have a nice updated profile with a photo. That's another red flag, is why would you not put a photo? Um or why would you not put like three, you like you left your previous job, right? Why not put like three bullet points of things that you did at that job that you think are worth mentioning? Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 43:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:01

I'm not saying you have to, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

No, I was just gonna say it's um, at least on my perspective, it still takes a lot of educating for candidates to do that. And sometimes they just, I guess, don't understand the importance. So that's why I always also like to ask these questions because when they hear from a hiring manager's perspective, and you know, it's not just me saying it to them, I would hope that people, you know, understand that importance of it, and it's not just like for fun that you want to have it. Plus, not to mention, like me as a recruiter or you as a hiring manager, there's keywords that you can search on LinkedIn. And if I'm searching certain keywords and you pop up, then obviously, you know, that works in your favor.

SPEAKER_03 43:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

Um, and I wanted to ask in terms of like skill set perspective, and we can talk just sales related since I know a lot of our conversation has been about that. Is there like one specific skill set that you're looking outside of um domain expertise in terms of candidates, like personality more than anything? And um, is there any ways that you test for it, you know, during the interview process?

SPEAKER_02 44:00

Yeah, so I'd say there are actually like three things that I care about. So the first one is airport test, right? So the airport test is if you got stuck sitting next to this candidate uh in an airport or on an airplane for an hour, could is there is there enough there to like have a conversation that's like enjoyable and not and not always.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

Very interesting, yes.

SPEAKER_02 44:20

So and that's important because like sales is a relationship, it's a relationship position. Um the second one is activity. So I look for candidates that you know, in an early stage environment, you have to sort of generate your own pipeline. And so um, you know, there there are sales jobs where the leads come in to the to the account executive or whatever, and then the account executive kind of like closes those leads. And that's that's awesome from a business perspective that you could just generate inbounds, right? But in a in a startup environment, typically you're not getting that. You have to like call people, you have to email people, you have to send them LinkedIn messages. And so I want to see that people have done that in the past and are comfortable continuing to do that. Number three, I would say, is familiarity with modern CRMs, uh, data, you know, like Apollo for HubSpot, Apollo, right? Which is a data enrichment. And it doesn't have to be HubSpot, it could be Salesforce, it could be, you know, one of the other ones. It doesn't have to be Apollo, it could be Zoom info, right? But yeah, but the fact that they've used those tools means that they have a mental model for like, you know, I get the leads from one place, I it's which is integrated with my CRM, and then I use, you know, so it just shows that those processes are established in uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:38

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it definitely showcases, you know, they can they can adapt quickly or they can figure things out, especially if they use certain different ones, etc. So yeah, that's a really good one. Um, on that note, by the way, is that kind of like the same things? Sorry about that, that make that person like an A player in your eyes, or is that something good in a way that separates, you know, somebody that's just good versus an A player?

SPEAKER_02 46:02

Yeah, I mean, I think an A player would have to have all those things, right? Yeah. And also, you know, there it'd be great if they had domain expertise. It'd be great if they had like track record of achievement, right? Which comes from LinkedIn because if you're in the presence cloud for 2024, 2025, 2026, you should really put that on your LinkedIn because it's uh it's an impressive achievement. And so when you put those things I listed, plus you have domain expertise, plus you have a history of achievement and it's in your LinkedIn, then that's a very strong candidate.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

Absolutely. No, I agree with all of those things. And uh thank you so much for coming on, Stan. Uh, I want to be respectful of your time as well. But I appreciate being super transparent and just diving deep into all these topics that we went on today. Um, so much notes, honestly, to take from this episode. Uh, if you're listening live, feel free to comment even afterwards. I'll make sure to read those comments and get back to you. And if you're listening, you know, afterwards, just make sure that if you didn't take notes, you go back and take your note taker on with you to just take everything that Stan said and uh start applying it. Um but yeah, I appreciate you, Stan. Thank you again for tuning in.

SPEAKER_02 47:07

Of course, thank you for having me.