Matt Talbot

CEO & Co-Founder of Cast

[Dan Caruso @DanCaruso]

I was shocked, and pleased, to learn that the Denver Post Editorial Board is recommending a no vote on Amendment 87.

To put it simply, they fear 87 will do more harm than good for Colorado.

Learn why they’re recommending against 87 in today’s Engage Colorado newsletter, linked in the first comment ↓

[tobi lutke @tobi]

It’s feeling really magical inside of Shopify right now. It’s clearly the greatest time in the history of tech industry right now. I hope it feels similar everywhere else.

[The Secret CFO @SecretCFO]

On the a16z piece on the rise of the engineering / builder CFO.

There are some great ideas there. But some points are viewed through a stunningly narrow lens. I find that a little unambitious given the size of the opportunity in front of us.

First, two things they definitely get right:

1) AI’s ability to make sense of messy data is a HUGE inflection moment for finance. Every bit of finance transformation advice always starts with “sort out your data”. Any idea how fucking hard that is? Teams have been grinding away on transformation and data hygiene projects for years. They often move slower than the businesses they’re supposed to support. AI unlocks the potential to destroy the biggest barrier to modernization of the CFO’s office.

2) Finance engineering is real, and should be thoughts of as a new core capability any ambitious finance team needs. The days of the systems accountants being the most tech-savvy people in the finance team, are thankfully ending. Real builders at the intersection of finance and engineering are worth their weight in gold and about to get more valuable. This is exciting, especially for smart young ambitious pros.

Beyond that, much of the rest of the piece only makes sense through a software industry lens.

It has the energy of tech people talking to other tech people about tech companies who sell to other tech companies. (Note - for the record, I’ve worked with some of the a16z portfolio companies mentioned in the piece, who definitely have the capability and appetite to serve outside tech.)

For example, the piece talks about finance going from 5% of company headcount as standard, to 2%. In my last role, we had 1.5% of headcount in finance. We weren't especially efficient, it's just a function of the headcount dynamic for the industry I was in.

So, unfortunately this falls into the trap that so much commentary on finance from the software industry does. It forgets that most companies are not tech companies. And therefore, most CFOs are not tech CFOs.

Software finance is characterized by being scalable with a supersonically simple P&L structure (which goes to the finance capability you need.)

I think it was Ben Horowitz himself who said that the biggest difference with hardware is "you need a much better CFO than in software."

Yeah ... that’s because the economics of a hardware business looks more like conventional manufacturing than it does software.

Now some of this has changed lately of course, as software consumes more AI, it takes on more of AI’s economics too; token costs, compute versus human decisions, usage-based pricing. More complicated margins and planning dynamics than before.

But take a petrochemicals manufacturer, as example. They are dealing with feedstock prices, energy costs, production yields, plant utilization and selling prices moving together, by the day. And always has done.

Now imagine doing that across a few hundred or a few thousand SKUs. Think about the dimensional complexity that brings.

That makes the story much harder to find, to tell, and then ultimately to fund. Imagine what they could do with better tooling.

So when the piece says (for example) finance can look forward to a "bigger mandate”, including pricing, capital allocation and people-versus-software decisions ... I’m a bit stunned. Any half-capable CFO I know would either be in the room when decisions of that financial magnitude were made. Or beating down the door to get in.

And then there’s the framing of successive CFO eras: accounting, fundraising, FP&A / business planning, and now building. They acknowledge that the dimensions of a great CFO have endured. But the framing still jars.
These aren’t things that most businesses have had the luxury of choosing between. I worked for CFOs twenty years ago who were incredible at controls, fundraising and business planning all at the same time.

So, when I read things like that, I don’t see an evolution… it feels more like catching up?!

Now … where plenty of finance teams outside tech ARE lagging is in the software available to them.

Take that multisite petrochemicals business. Give it four different legacy ERP systems and years of workarounds holding everything together.

The finance team is still delivering what the business needs despite poor, inflexible software. Impossible implementation conditions. So it's much slower and more manual than they need and would like.

This is where AI’s ability to work with messy data gets really exciting. Helping bridge those systems and workarounds could finally let teams make progress on problems that have defeated successive generations of transformation programs.

There is a world of businesses out there hostage to the legacy ERP industrial complex. I hope the investors and builders powering the next generation of CFO Tech have those businesses front of mind.

Because the TAM is far bigger than the one on their doorstep.

[Matt Talbot @MattTalbot]

Specialization still matters.

Diffusion of innovation still exists.

Plan accordingly.

[Matt Talbot @MattTalbot]

You can have all the answers but still not understand.

AI will give everyone access to all the answers, but understanding will still be rare, valuable, and defensible.

[Matt Talbot @MattTalbot]

SaaS incumbents are workflow systems for humans that bolt on AI features and call themselves AI powered.

AI native SORs are a fundamentally different systems, built for agentic usage from day one.

The only real question will be which approach ends up creating more value for customers. I’m betting on the second.

[Fletcher Richman @fletchrichman]

It's actually crazy watching everyone pivot in the complete wrong direction from what companies want.

Having an army of agents/bots is counterproductive. It's a vanity metric.

What teams want is a shared workspace where they can:
- work with any model
- build a "company brain" of skills, integrations, and context/memory mapped to their permissions
- build and host custom apps
- interact from slack, email, or wherever they work

[Paul Graham @paulg]

There's a pervasive myth that "tax policy changes" are the reason economic inequality is growing. Actually it's because technology makes it increasingly easy to start companies, and makes them grow faster once you do.

https://t.co/ggPKu1hkY2

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

Under @RoKhanna’s plan, if the company fails, the founder has debt forgiveness income (DFI) which is taxable at ordinary rates.

Where will the founder find the cash to pay the taxes on DFI after his company fails?

So the penalty for a failed startup is insolvency and the government garnishes your wages for life.

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

Ro, I like you. You know that. But you need to read the state of the state.

The number of Deca Unicorns in Cali is growing by the day as investors chase amazing startups.

A unique feature of these 10b startups is that even if they raise a billion, little, if any of that money goes to the founders, who are now worth billions of dollars over night. They are the definition of cash poor, stock rich

How are you going to tax them ? Make them borrow money against their shares, if they can? They just raised money to grow their company and a bank will come along and loan them money ? A company that has been in business maybe less than a year ? lol

Will you take their stock if they can’t ?

Do you really think each of multiple founders, who started an amazing company in Cali and is now a billionaire, can each just pull out $250m per billion of net worth from their raise ? You know they can’t.

If this passes , and it doesn’t directly impact me at all, I won’t be a cali resident, but you can bet if I’m investing in a multi billion dollar startup, I’m asking them to move from California first.

IMO, if this passes, only idiot startup founders stay in Cali.

I’ve done it before and will do it again. Dallas. Pittsburgh. Indiana. I will make NOT being in California a pre requisite for an investment

Ideology is not a strategy Ro.

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

Ro, that’s insane.

You want the state to loan money to the founder, who will then immediately give it back to the state as a wealth tax ?

Meaning the state has not received any incremental receipts? What’s the point of that ?

Unless of course you want the gov to own shares (something I thought you criticized) and possibly have control, of companies who underperformed, (or the funding market changed), and couldn’t pay back their loans over those 10 years ?

And I’m sure the investors in those companies will be thrilled about their new partners. That will make for interesting board meetings. “Today’s first topic is trying to figure out how to motivate the founder(s). They just lost $250m of their shares in the company they founded, to the state of California. Anyone got any ideas ? “

But at least it’s amazing for state’s brand.

“Cali, You make it. We take it !”

Come on Ro.

Ideology is not a strategy.

@GavinNewsom

[Will Quist @wquist]

No one is gonna adopt agents. They will use products that get shit done. It’s seems the same but isn’t.

[@levelsio @levelsio]

My accountant I pay a lot of money every month just replied to a question I sent him with a 100% AI reply explaining something

The answer was helpful though so I could've just asked AI myself

Of course you know what I'm thinking now, if I can just ask AI everything since he is forwarding everything to AI any way, why not replace him with AI

I guess he should be doing the opposite of AI, sell a premium service for a high price (he already does) and keep answering with humans as accounting is something I'd prefer to actually get a human in the loop

Anyway it's interesting

[Bill Maher @billmaher]

I'm not voting for anyone who thinks the wrong side won the Cold War or cheers for the Intifada like it's the World Cup.

[signüll @signulll]

dunking on ppl who have tried extraordinary things & then had a set back is lame.

[Blake Scholl 🛫 @bscholl]

What you put into your mind is as important as what you put into your body

[Frank Smith @frank_smith1111]

9 out of 12 industrialized countries who tried a wealth tax ended up repealing it, per the NYT. That includes France, the country the proponents of the California wealth tax come from.

The reason is quite simple. Billionaires just move to a different state or country and all that remains is a hollowed out tax base. This appears to have already at least in part happened in California.

What more proof do you need? This is a catastrophic tax for the state of California. Whether you are a conservative pr a liberal, you should reject it. Plain and simple.

[Richard Hanania @RichardHanania]

The Atlantic: "How Britain Became as Poor as Mississippi."

Highlights:

-The NHS backlog is six million patients, 10% of the population

-Dental care is so out of reach that 10% of Britons report "do it yourself" dental care like extracting teeth

-Junior doctors went on strike, their starting salaries are $44,000 a year. The average civil servant makes $41K a year

-Keir Starmer faced a scandal for going to a "luxury" hotel, which was $230 a night.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Between 1982 and 2020, the number of the 100 richest Americans who got rich from inheritance decreased from 60 to 27. And yet on the left they think the mid 20th century was the good old days, because economic inequality was lower then.

https://t.co/ggPKu1gN8u

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Sure you can earn a billion dollars. I've been teaching people how to do it for 20 years. The way you do it is to start a company that grows fast. You don't have to do anything bad to make a company grow fast. You just have to make something people want.

https://t.co/zXWErQqlwV