#41: Adam Compain Founder & CEO of ClearMetal

Adam Compain is the Founder & CEO of ClearMetal. Prior to ClearMetal, Adam spent 5 years at Google launching their geoCommerce technology and 19 years as the Executive Director of SEND, the nonprofit he founded. Adam holds five technology patents, two degrees from the University of Michigan, and an MBA from Stanford.

ClearMetal, Inc., based in San Francisco, CA (USA), is a leader in the Continuous Delivery Experience (CDX), enabling supply chain organizations to optimize logistics and provide their customers with easy access to trusted, live information about their shipments and a customer experience that is a differentiator and revenue accelerant. The ClearMetal CDX Platform uses proprietary machine learning to break free from static-visibility paradigms and turn supply chains from a cost center to a competitive advantage.  ClearMetal was founded by top software engineers, data scientists, and operations researchers from Stanford University, Google, and Silicon Valley and is funded by Eclipse Ventures, Prelude Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, NEA, SAP.io, Prologis Ventures, PSA Unboxed, DCLI, and the founders of GT Nexus, Navis, and Uber Freight.

Discover more details here.

Some of the highlights of the episode:

• [05:48] How organizations in the industry solve problems using technology
• [07:40] 80% of companies believe they’re delivering a superior experience when in fact only 8% of customers agree.
• [11:02] The CDX (Continuous Delivery Experience)  framework – continuous, live, clean and trusted information
• [15:30] Georgia Pacific case study – how they improved their personnel operational efficiency by 30%.
• [25:39] How sales teams from the client-side leverage their customer portal to drive more revenue.
• [30:05] Having an extremely high Say to Do ratio – how does this shape the culture of the company.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, and welcome to the leaders in tech and eCommerce podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Paula and I am the APEC director for ELCA global executive search. Our mission is to connect the tech and supply chain and e-commerce ecosystem in Asia and globally by bringing forward some of the most interesting stories about success and failure from leaders in the industry. It is great to have with us today. Adam campaign, Adam is the founder and CEO of clear methods prior to clear metal ed and spent five years at Google launching their GeoCommerce technology. And 19 years as executive director of Sen, a nonprofit coupon, Adam holds five technology patents, two degrees from the university of Michigan and an MBA from STEM clear method is based in San Francisco and is a leader in the continuous delivery experience, enabling supply chain organizations to optimize logistics and provide their customers with easy access to trusted live information about their shipments and the customer experience that is a differentiator and a revenue, et cetera. The theme of clear metal is 50 equal plus, and they have clients globally all over the world from Hong Kong and late and to zoom. And a few of the clients that you can mention are fortune 500 clients like Coke industries, a British American tobacco McDonald's global notion Creek council, and many others. And just to give you a perspective on their growth, they are at the 400% year on year growth last year high at them. It's great to have you on the podcast today.

Speaker 2: 1:38

Thanks Andre. Nice to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:41

And as we were talking just before this, it would be great to set the scene. I'm sure quite a few people know about clear metal now and then about yourself, but it would be great to know from the speaker, if you could introduce yourself shortly and maybe cover some of the main milestones of your career. And then what is the most exciting part of being the CEO of clear metrics?

Speaker 2: 2:04

Sure. Happy to. So Adam, the campaign, one of the founders and CEO of clear metal, my background is in technology largely I've spent time professionally at Google, both on the East coast of the United States over in Singapore, where you are, and then out in the California headquarters. And I transitioned through a variety of roles from advertising and the media platform they have through mobile technology as mobile and smartphones were proliferating around the world. And then finally new product incubation related to geo commerce, which was quite interesting at the time, after a little over five years there, I actually went back to school. I went to Stanford to get my MBA, and it was during that time, that pure interest and curiosity brought me over to Hong Kong where by choice, I decided to spend some time in the logistics industry, working at OCL, which was one of the major ocean carriers in the space. And this came again, as I said, from a long time fascination and curiosity of supply chain. And what I really started to understand there was of course, how big this, this industry has is a backbone of a global economy. But I think moreover, how, how important and how challenging the problems and supply chain work particular for the large corporates, big shippers and how they both physically move their product and materials around the world, but also how they gain the experience and information from their suppliers and out to their customers. And that was really kind of a striking realization, seeing that firsthand under the tutelage of the executive team at OCL and from the vantage point of the carriers in the industry, what challenges really play shippers. And so that kind of leads from my career path into the founding of clear metal, which I know we'll talk more about.

Speaker 3: 4:00

It's great. Then it's quite fascinating too. I mean, you've been in Singapore working with Google men in California, and then you set up to go to Hong Kong. How, how did you make this decision? What, what triggered you?

Speaker 2: 4:15

Well, I think what it really was is I saw from the first step of my career, how powerful technology and cloud based technology can be for enterprise, right. And working in various realms of Google and seeing how some of the biggest companies in the world would leverage these kinds of systems, especially when industries were undergoing massive transformational shifts like the world did in, you know, call it 2006, seven, eight as smartphones came about and large corporations started to ask themselves the question of how do I make use of this new kind of technology and this new form factor. How will it change the way my customers buy and perceive me, how will it change the way customers interact with my brand and my products? And so I think that was an early lesson that really, you know, was very interesting and powerful to see. I think what I had paired with that was just kind of a innate curiosity about how big industrial things move and operate. And so that's really that curiosity and technology backing or background, I should say, you know, is what drove me over to Hong Kong. You know, I had the opportunity fortunately to be invited there by the CEO of OCL and that so a fantastic company, they were very generous and showing me the different ways in which container shipping as an industry works. And so, yeah, that that's really what prompted it. It was, it was curiosity with how do companies in this space at supply chain logistics use technology to solve some of their biggest problems or as I quickly found out, you know, maybe don't yet use the latest and greatest technology to solve big industrial problems. That's a good way to put

Speaker 3: 5:58

It and tell them, coming back to what's happening now in, in the world, I wanted to ask you about the trends that you see, because I imagine you work with clients all over the globe. You've seen the situation from Asia to the U S and Europe and other other regions. What's your impression of the current trends, maybe short term and also long term, because we are still dealing with the crisis, uh, the pandemic, but slowly and surely, people are getting used to it and adapting to it. I'm curious to get your take on it.

Speaker 2: 6:34

Yeah, I believe there were really two key trends that have rippled through through supply chain. I think the first is how e-commerce has created a, um, a, a level of expectations from customers that has gone from the consumer realm, a lot Amazon and the Amazon effect of how we demand packages and parcels on our doorstep, you know, quick with high certainty and high transparency of how those things arrive. That kind of expectation as a customer has now become the expectation of the, of the business customer. And that's a trend that I think has exposed the fact that supply chains aren't actually set up to meet today's modern customer demands. And that has created a huge gap in expectations between how, you know, companies believe they're delivering and delighting customers and actually how those customers are experiencing that, that brand. The Qualtrics did a big study on this. And I think they said, um, you know, uh, 80% of companies believe they're delivering a superior experience when in fact only 8% of customers agree. And so I think that is indicative of that trend going on, et cetera. There's a very high bar as a customer and the consumer. And now the corporate context that demands pretty high delivery and experience from their, from their, um, from, from the brands they need product or material from. And, and that's, yeah. Uh, I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but that's really, I think the biggest trend. And I think it, it actually mirrors what I saw when working at Google and speaking with companies about mobile technology very quickly, mobile went from an idea to, you know, of, of, Oh, we have to get on board with mobile and we need to build a mobile website and should we build a mobile app? And you know, maybe one day it'll change commerce to basically overnight companies saying, you know, I'm now behind. And I am not delivering my content and my information to someone's pocket in their smartphone. That's same things happen in supply chain, right? The expectations have risen and supply chains are unfortunately finding themselves in a new game and unable to keep up with those expectations. So that's trend one, I think troubles too is, you know, this is sort of a long, been a long time, one around big data. And we sort of like to say it, there's not really a big data problem. There's a big data problem. And what we see worldwide is companies and teams and frontline operators are professionals spending an awful amount of time manually trying to cleanse and make sense of, and play around with data. And this is a task that is pretty low leverage. It's a, you know, working with data is a task that a computer can do quite well, in fact, exceptionally better than, than a human. And this is the opportunity for the latest and greatest technology, whether it's machine learning or other things to take care of that problem of unclean, unstructured, nonsensical data, clean it, structure it and put it in a framework and a context that a professional and supply chain can then be very upleveled to perform the kind of efforts that they should, which is high leverage, high power, intelligent, strategic decision making. So that's the biggest trend where we're supply chain is, is very far behind most other industries. I think most executives know this, but it's rooted in the data. People are spending way too much time playing around with data when they should be up-leveled by having the right information in their hands at the right time.

Speaker 3: 10:20

It's two very interesting things that you mentioned. And one is the 80% to eight. So 80% of companies think they are delivering a superior experience and only eight of the customers agree that I didn't know that, but it sounds about right. And there is no big data problem, but a big data problem. That's, that's a good way to put it how now taking back to going back to clear, mattered, right? And I know that you are very focused on customer experience, and I think there is a term that you're using CDX continuous delivery experience. I'm wondering how is clear matter being different compared to the other players and what is the CDX.

Speaker 2: 11:02

Yeah, yeah, sure. I'll start off with the CDX framework. So we didn't really invent this. If you read Gartner's research about continuous intelligence, you look at the way Amazon operates. You know, what they're really providing is what's called a continuous delivery experience. And I think Amazon is a great way to contextualize that as a consumer of, of Amazon as I'm sure everyone else is two things are fantastic about them. Right? First they figured out how to physically get a product from wherever it is in the world to your doorstep with pretty high efficiency and reliability. So on one hand, they deliver physically deliver the product in a great way. And secondly, what they do is they give you the consumer a fantastic experience with regard to the transparency of information and the status of your order as that product is coming to you. Those are two halves of what makes Amazon so powerful in the consumer mind and underlying both that delivery credibility. And the experience that they provide is of course, data and a whole bunch of AI and machine learning type techniques to ensure the most efficient route of getting product to you and giving you the most up to date, transparent, realtime information. So that's kind of where we see supply chain going. It actually is going there. And that's where criminal has centered itself and building software applications on both sides of that coin. First, we give software to large shippers manufacturers, retailers, et cetera, that helps them first plan for how products should move internationally and globally, and also get visibility into how those products are moving. That's all the delivery side. At the same time, we provide these companies with the ability to both get a better experience from their suppliers and also give a better experience to their customers downstream. So that's really what we do in a nutshell, and the kinds of software we build for the purpose of a delivery experience on a continuous basis, which means continuous live, updating clean, trusted information. So that's kind of how, how we sit. Does that make sense and guiding how you okay.

Speaker 3: 13:14

Maybe it will help if we go into an example, I know I was doing a bit of homework. I know you had some case studies on the way on the website, but we can talk of any case studies you would like. And I, I imagine that there is a company out there that was struggling with, with some of the decisions, and then you guys stepped in and at the end of the process, they saw those results. I'm wondering if it's any specific numbers or, or clear story that we can

Speaker 2: 13:41

Yeah, sure. Yeah. I'll, I'll speak quite concretely. So again, you know, clear metal is exclusive. Customers are large shippers, right? Retailers, manufacturers, and suppliers. Some of our customers include companies like Unilever, like Koch industries, Georgia Pacific Lenzing fibers out of Austria, et cetera, McDonald's and some others. And as you can hear it, you know, multiple continents, we have a global reach, the verticals we're quite agnostic to that. And I'll, I'll describe the ways these kinds of companies use us and I'll use specific stats. Although I may not tie them to a particular company I mentioned. So first and foremost, we are helping the procurement team, the raw material procurement teams at these companies get better visibility of raw material supply. That's coming inbound into their manufacturing facilities. We do that by helping connect both that supplier to that manufacturer, and we're helping them, the company we serve go from zero visibility of inbound supply to a pretty strong sense of supply. I don't have any exact figures on that that obviously allows them to produce a manufacturer with more reliability. It allows them to reduce their inventory levels, which we've seen overall around, you know, anywhere in particular cases, up to 20% of taking some of that Slack out of the system and also increase the adherence and compliance of their supplier network. So that's kind of part one where we most often play is within the supply chain and logistics team. So what we're doing is a couple of things we're putting a application set that has both planning functionality, so they can answer questions like what is the right lead time that needed to plan around what is the right mode of transportation I should use as I move my freight internationally? And what is the right carrier to select, to ensure on time delivery to my customers in this realm, we've, we've done two things and I'll give you statistics. We've, there's a Georgia Pacific case study out there. Co-written about how we improved their personnel, operational efficiency by about 30%. This is helping their teams Uplevel from spending time in the data to actually being more proactive rather than reactive. So by putting trusted information in their hands, they can not only gain visibility, but actually manage those exceptions like a miss trends shipment, or seeing a particular lane that might have a high incidence of roll rate. They can actually avoid those or, or managers exceptions better and spend more of their day problem solving proactively than trying to be reactive with issues around data. The other statistic I'll give you here is we've seen up to 50% improvements in on time delivery. And that comes from the company's ability to pick the mode, pick the carrier and pick the routing that has a much higher performance rate, and then work with that carrier or a three PL to ensure that that deliver deliveries on time. The third and last piece I'll give you is around the customer experience side, which we've actually seen a ton of traction, even amidst all of the core operational problems that companies have experienced through through COVID. What we're talking about here is equipping our customers with a customer portal that enables them to give their end customers real time trusted view at the click of a button of what, what is coming at them. And what we've heard, these companies site is actually in surveys with their customer base and improvement in C-SAT and NPS score and a reduction in customer service costs because this customer can, now self-serve like you and I can go on Amazon or Domino's and see, you know, the pizza or in the package on its way to us. So those are the kinds of use cases, the first being procurement and getting inbound visibility from suppliers, the second being the core logistics, planning, and visibility functions and the third being customer experience through a portal. And of course there's ripple effects of buffer, stock and reduction in invoice to payment cycles and all that. But I don't want to be too long winded here.

Speaker 1: 17:46

No, but that's great. And when it comes the on delivery

Speaker 3: 17:50

Times that this sticks that's some great examples. And then I was wondering because when we implement and any kind of new system has that part of change management and implementation time when it comes to clean metal, I know it varies a lot and it depends on the client and their current systems, but what are some of the main challenges in implementation that you've spotted and maybe how have you overcome them?

Speaker 2: 18:18

Yeah. Good, good question. You know, I think the first thing that we're proud of I'd say is we have truly built a lot of automation into, into our technology. So when we think about just a core visibility application, right, everyone's looking at these kinds of solutions, the core IP and the value, and the real value we provide is how we're able to clean and make sense of the data. So well, we've uniquely, I think, I don't think there's anyone else in the world that can do what we do with the data, with regard to global international freight, we've figured out how to an automated way. I mean, truly automated take in the pseudo standards and the different dialects of a global transportation and freight data and on the fly, clean, it make sense of it and create context. And what I mean by context is, you know, taking a sales or purchase order and associating that properly with a transport event or a milestone, all of this information or all this technology we build is very automated. The reason that's so important is most implementation of supply chain. Software takes many months in our case. It takes, you know, on the order of weeks because we're not having troves of people manually create custom and brittle maps that have if then based rules. It really is the use of machine learning developed by some of the top AI experts out of Stanford, you know, the co founders of the company. And that's really provided a lot of benefit to the customers. We serve for two reasons. First and foremost, the product actually works and they trust it. But secondly, as you're alluding to Andre, the implementation time is not only quick because of the automation and the standardization, but it's also lightweight. So over and over, we hear companies say, well, Hey, I don't have the it resources to do this. And then they find out I actually don't really need many because our processes with our global network, we can provide the data. We just need a onetime dump of the purchase order information. And then if you want our data back into your TMS or your ERP or a CRM, we have a set of APIs that we can help integrate pretty quickly again, weeks, and maybe a few short months, but we're not talking multi-multi multi-month and multi-year deployments. So that's, that's, I think what we're proud of, there was a second part of your question, but remind me,

Speaker 3: 20:36

No, I think that's the main idea. And I was wondering, because we have such a varied array of type of clients and they are using so many different types of systems. Um, but you pretty much touch upon that and explain that it's all about the algorithm and the machine learning capacity and capabilities that you build in that can adapt from what I understand. Two different, two different circumstances. And you said, so the science and what's happening in the industry, as long as you kind of map out most of the variables, then I imagine the automation can happen in a more easy way. So taking from a few months to a few weeks, it's quite a big leap forward.

Speaker 2: 21:17

Yeah. Thanks. I think I, you know, you also mentioned something earlier that I thought was important around, you know, was it a differentiation or something like, Oh, it was change management. And what's been interesting is recently we've actually been asked quite a bit to do consulting, particularly around the change management. They say, you know, we tried these projects in the past, they haven't worked, you know, our global teams are actually using this stuff and they're actually getting better. They're actually unified on it. And it was the ch besides the technology you brought us, it was the change management that you were able to affect. That that was pretty impressive. I say that because we're proud of it as a company, but also because I think it speaks to how technology needs to be used in this industry today. I think what makes us good at this is we listen very, very well to the customer problem. We know very intricately due to our focus as a company and due to our tenure here, the intricate like workflow and dynamics of the problem. And I think because we understand that so well and build our products in such an agile and iterative way that the products actually work for people may trust them. I think that's so overlooked. And I think it's hard for larger companies to do because they have things that are quite off the shelf. But what we've seen is when you, when you are able to take information and clean it into a form that people actually do trust, and there is a period of time where they double check it with their old methods, but once they do trust it, it's quite addictive to them. If you provided a trusted source of information as a single source of truth. And then the second thing we found is that structuring it in a user interface that makes sense and fits in with their workflow instead of being, get another set of tasks they have to do has been really, really powerful. I mean, it's a very simple concept by, by building software. That is what people want to use. We found that it's not so challenging and absolutely doesn't take a heavy hand to get them to use it. I mean, right. They're asking for tools that allow them to do better, more interesting, more strategic things. And if you just, you know, follow that path and, and I'm speaking in generalities, but solve their problems, the change management, you know, yeah.

Speaker 3: 23:35

The process happens naturally. And it's interesting because this is where it comes in. The customer focus that you have, and you were mentioning if you're listening and you're observing, then it's much easier to create an experience that actually makes sense for the client or the customer. And then you don't need to push hard on making sure they change their behavior to, to implement the new technology or to work with it. That's an interesting perspective. I think it's quite straightforward, but in the same time, not a lot of people follow it because it requires energy and time. So

Speaker 2: 24:13

For your audiences, you know, we often find there, there is often a big disconnect between the, what the executives want in our solution and what the frontline professionals want. And we've always taken the approach of building for that frontline user first, and then thereafter rolling that information up to an executive level of what they want to see, you know, through a dashboard or something like this. So that's also been the, I think the way and the way I would encourage a lot of the executives that might be listening to approach these problems, right? Because we've seen other companies try this kind of stuff and fail because they built, you know, just the map or just the dashboard and the blue blinking dots, you know, moving across the world. And then when they try to put that in the, in the hands of their frontline team, it's, it's rejected cause it's actually not helping them do their job better. And I think building it in the reverse order has done wonders for us.

Speaker 3: 25:04

Hm that's another good point. And like you said, different stakeholders have very different requirements or interests and you really need to follow them in order to make sense. Now, Adam going to the future, I'm going to the next steps for clear metal. What are some of the exciting next milestone that you see in the main development of the company? I know, I imagine there's a lot of work around making the funding work I know already, or you're in a good, in a good point there, what are some expansion plans? And we can talk a little bit more about it.

Speaker 2: 25:39

Yeah, sure, sure. So, you know, we're, we, I think we're different. A lot of companies, we started very, very, very deep in the innards of the data and very, very focused on just the core global visibility problem for the logistics teams. And I think what that allowed us to do is then sort of earn the right with our trusted product and trust information to expand from there. So as we look forward, a lot of our investment is going toward highly dynamic and advanced planning capabilities that allow companies to start to plan for freight movements and delivery to customers on a more dynamic basis. That's a big area of investment. I think the second big area like the trend I talked about is a further investment in customer experience. We've noticed fantastic kind of pickup of interest in our customer portal from sales teams. And we're seeing some of the most commoditized industries and you know, what you would imagine to be least progressive start to actually get a very revenue driving focus and a progressive mindset around customer experience, which in environments may not boost revenue from the traditional sense, but it does actually a creep as protected share and productive margin of contracts. I think what's also interesting that we speak with executives a lot about is, you know, in most of these industries, sales are a zero sum game, you know, and most of the differentiation that's coming today in commoditize environments is through technology. And so they're absolute advantages to the companies that take that step forward first and take advantage of this because when they steal share, they're stealing share from someone, and that's why there's so much benefit to being progressive in the sales realm in supply chain. So that's the second area. And then the third is, you know, again, I think off of the back of a trusted single source globally of where products are in transit, we sort of earned the right to now invest further in connecting suppliers into their customers. And so that's a big area of investment for us that is really doubling down on that experience side of the continuous delivery experience.

Speaker 3: 27:50

And when you're thinking about this part of connecting suppliers and the customers, it's the double sided coin that you were mentioning. One is the apps that you're building on the supplier side and the others on your customer side and making sure you have a good integration on, on both of these sides I imagined. And is it a game where you're thinking, okay, now we have to expand to different regions or is it more okay now we go on different industries. How do you think about this?

Speaker 2: 28:18

Yeah, we, you know, I think because of where we started as a company on global and international ocean freight, every customer is using us on a global basis. So re the regional region by region strategies and as applicable to us. I think what we are doing though is really, really trying to help within unified value chain, right? I mean, supply chain is literally a chain and what we found a lot of success in is, you know, helping folks within a single industry, you know, connect to one another and make sure that they are being good partners, being good customers and being good suppliers of the next one on the chain.

Speaker 3: 28:56

I'm good, Adam. I wanted to go to a different section of our discussion and talk more about teams and leadership. And, um, I know that culture is on the top of mind of CEOs and I'm sure it is on your mind a lot. So I wanted to ask how do you define a good company culture and what are you most proud of when it comes to the culture of clear metal?

Speaker 2: 29:20

Sure. You know, I think I've been, uh, I've been fortunate to be, to professionally be involved with, I think some pretty strong cultures that I've tried my best to, to emulate and emulate naturally. I think if you look at the Google culture, it is built on meritocracy. It's built on transparency and it's built a lot around kind what higher level, vision and goal are we all marching toward? I was amazed, you know, listening to Eric Schmidt at the time he was the CEO. One of his VC VC funds is actually now an investor in our company, clear metal. But the amazing part of hearing him as a leader is how open and transparent he is with even the frontline junior ranks, you know, down to the 21 year old out of college with where the company is going and how, what they're trying to do fits in with that. So I think that level of transparency is, was hugely informative for me and in big contrast to other companies that work just as well think of Apple, but have a much different relationship with access to information and transparency. Apple is sort of the opposite culturally in that regard as Google, if you don't know. So I think that was kind of, you know, one thing and I think Stanford also mimicked that kind of mental model of kind of open innovation, iterative, flexible, humble, you know, transparency. So I think those were really good guiding lights. I think what we're most proud of is just a few fold. First our say to do ratio is extremely high. We're very, almost conservative as a company on what we promise because we guarantee to our customers that everything we promise we deliver and we deliver well. So that's first, we're very proud of it. I think secondly is the humility. And I think that ties in with the listening aspect and empathy. I talked about where we are, you know, we've become supply chain, expert experts, but we started off much more as technology experts. And I think we were smart enough to know that we didn't know the problems and curiosity drove us to really understand and really get a sense of what people are dealing with and what their pain is on the frontline and supply chain. So I think that has been a second thing that we're very proud of that kind of humility and empathy. And then the third I think is we're pretty well aligned as a culture for solving true business problems. And I'm afraid that if you look at supply chain software as an industry today, there's so much noise and there's so much over prompt. There's so many over promises and there are so many softwares out there that, you know, solve don't really solve the problem, but topically look like they will. And I think that that's a big disservice to an industry that's changing this much right now and, and a disservice to an industry that's so important in the world right now. But I would, I would focus on those three things.

Speaker 3: 32:06

And I think the last one with the noise strength, that's how important that comes to the say tool to do ratio for you because we talk with a lot of clients and they do mention that the, the star losing trust, especially when, when they see so many different types of solution providers. And then, so that ratio of say to do is quite low. So it's refreshing to see you focusing a lot on that. Now I'm sure it is connected to the first question, but because our business is connected to recruitment and I was wondering, how do you interview when it comes to your leadership team? And then I know I was reading in the news that you have to recruit an interview and bring in team in the team. A lot of people who maybe have much more experience in the domain than then the core team, how do you go about it? And what's your philosophy on that?

Speaker 2: 32:58

Yeah. You know, I think we, so this executive team, and also otherwise we're typically looking for people whose profile mirrors, the kinds of companies we ideally want to work with. And that profile is a strong mix of understanding of how technology can be applied to solve real business problems. And at the same time under understanding the nuances and the dynamics of the industry we're in, I think it's as simple as that our best customers, I think mirror the same thing. They know the industry extremely well. They admit that they are not technologists, but I think they're smart enough and humble enough to realize they need to partner with a technology company like clear metal. So that's the same kind of profile we look for. It's that humility, it's that understanding of both sides, but having a spike or an expertise in one. Yeah. I think that's kind of how we think about it at the highest level. Well, the thing is we, we prioritize, I think the person's orientation much more than experience, so are they creative? Are they flexible? Are they intelligent? And can they adapt more than has the resume showed, you know, 15 years of exactly this role? I think we've seen in, yeah, in our short tenure as a company, um, those who've raised very fast through our ranks and gotten onto the executive team. You know, it may not have come from that role or that exact background, but kind of have what it takes and that it factor to get there.

Speaker 3: 34:34

Good. Um, as we are getting closer to the last few questions, I wanted to ask you a bit of a more general one, but, um, I'm curious about it. So there are two things and I know that the life of an entrepreneur is definitely not easy and it's like a roller coaster. And this question is addressed that. So if you would think what keeps you up at night when thinking about what's next for clear metal, this is the first one. And the second one, what gets you going in the morning? Maybe they're connected in a way, but I'm curious how what's your perspective.

Speaker 2: 35:12

Yeah, I think, yeah, I think they are connected. I I'd say what keeps me up at night when we, yeah. When we're building our business is whether we're striking the right balance of depth versus breadth. I think what's true, especially in supply chain, is there are so many problems to solve and technology and our kind of our capability can solve so many of them, but prioritization, ruthless, prioritization and focus is just so important. And so it keeps me up at night is making sure that we focus more and more and we prioritize more and more, but at the very same time, balance that with the opportunity that's out there. I think what gets me going in the morning is yeah, probably the same thing. The fact that there really is so much to solve and we can't go and solve, you know, the next level of problems until we solve the ones today. So that's a big, you know, that that definitely acts as fuel we're, we're in a, as focused as we are. And as patient, as we are, we're in a rush to make sure we can deliver more value to customers quicker.

Speaker 3: 36:16

It's great change. And the last thing I wanted to ask, because as I mentioned, we do have quite a varied audience from already senior executives to maybe people early in their career. And some, both of these categories might think that becoming or starting their own business or joining a business is the best next step for them. Now I want you to ask, what is your advice or what would be your best piece of advice for a successful career? Maybe you can connect it to being successful as an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2: 36:45

Uh, sure. I, you know, I would, the advice I often give to aspiring entrepreneurs is, is that yes, it is. It is a challenging job. And I think I would only suggest they start a company if they can't not start a company. That's my one word of advice. I think the other thing, you know, maybe less cheeky is, you know, I think a lot of people feel like starting a company may be the only way they can, you know, hit a goal of effecting change or solving a problem. I think there are plenty of other roles and contexts that you can, you can solve some pretty big business problems in the context of a larger company. And I think what, what some of those people might be overlooking is that there's so much work to setting up the operations and the culture and the funding and the growth and all these things. And really what they want to actually do is, you know, solve a problem that a current company is addressing. So you don't always have to pick the entrepreneurial route that, but that's, that's your lifestyle blend.

Speaker 3: 37:50

Hmm. Like, like we talked to it's definitely, I can only imagine it's a, it's a lot of ups and downs and then yeah, it depends a lot on what's the fire within even the fire is the soul. Something maybe find the best way to do that. And sometimes the best way it could be different than starting the business. And thank you very much for sharing. I really appreciate it. And it was very honest and from the heart and I wish a clear method and the Dean all the best, I'm sure there's a lot of good news coming down the line and already seeing it in the news, in our circus. So, yeah. Good lagging conventionally.

Speaker 2: 38:26

No, thanks Andre. My pleasure. Appreciate it.

Speaker 3: 38:28

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