FinTech Founder & CEO
XLerant, Inc.
Market Opportunity
As a thought leader in FP&A at Deloitte I recognized a substantial market opportunity for a conversational user experience (UX) to help non-finance trained professionals develop well-conceived, tightly coordinated plans, budgets & forecasts. These were the professionals and workers closest to the business who could provide real insight into the business and drive performance. They just needed the right tools (hint: they hate Excel and budget tools that mimic Excel).
The Results
After initially bootstrapping the development, launch, and acquisition of the first dozen clients; I raised $5 million, recruited the former CEO of Hyperion (after that company was acquired by Oracle) as our board Chairman and drove hyper-growth in sales. XLerant was one of the most successful newcomers to the Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) marketplace in more than a decade. Clients included organizations as wildly diverse as The Dallas Cowboys, International Flavors & Fragrances, BAE Systems and Tufts University.
XLerant was sold for a substantial multiple to Jonas Software.
I guided many companies in the journey achieve world class EPM
I was the CEO and Founder of XLerant, a company we grew rapidly and then successfully sold to Jonas Software. The inspiration came from my consulting clients that lamented that people outside of Finance -- those who were closest to the business -- were reluctant participants in the planning/forecasting process, which significantly reduced its overall efficacy.
One huge stumbling block was Finance’s software tool of choice for enabling the process was often a spreadsheet. Yet, people in Marketing or Operations or Human Resources (or really anyone else) did not find spreadsheets easy to use or intuitive.
From my experience working with hundreds of companies I found more similarities than differences between how organizations developed their budgets (a basic part of EPM). I began to wonder, Why not give business users something that felt as easy and intuitive as TurboTax to help them develop their budgets and forecasts?
In technology terms, I was looking for what developers call a Guided User Experience (GUEx). This type of interface allows people to easily interact with the system on human terms. Without going into detail here, the software offered a dramatic alternative to all the other EPM systems in the market. It’s the reason why once it was built, XLerant experienced hypergrowth.
Customer Retention
Sold to Jonas Software
My role as Founder was to create the vision for the company and drive execution.
I created mockups of each screen, the navigation between them, and crucial functionality -- detailing the complete user experience that I then handed over to our brilliant development team to turn into a reality. I worked with the developers side-by-side (literally) to ensure the final product was just as I had envisioned.
We wanted to bootstrap the “seed stage” of the company, so we delayed hiring people, and as a consequence I demoed the product and made all the initial sales. This was no easy task – selling a brand new product from a company without any track record – but the experience turned out to be invaluable. It was much easier to train and build a sales team of a dozen A-Players with my experience in the trenches.
When we turned our sites to Series A fund raising…
I developed and led all of our investor presentations. Realizing this would all be made easier if we had some well-known executives on our Board of Directors, I recruited the former CEO of Hyperion as a Chairman (this was after his company had been bought out by Oracle).
We raised the full amount we were looking for, and with that investment grew the company rapidly. The entire experience was the most enriching of my career. But if I had to put my finger on what aspect got me the most excited of all of it, I would have to say Sales. Maybe that because it’s because for a start up it’s all about Revenue Growth, or as a Founder it’s because Sales is the truest test of your vision. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t ready to retire (the sale of the company was a good outcome but not so good I could play golf every day) and Sales is where I wanted to spend my time.