Latest / The Payments Shed / Ep. 54 - From Sales Bottleneck to Growth Lever: How Coast Is Using AI to Fix Product Demos

Transcript

Ep. 54 - From Sales Bottleneck to Growth Lever: How Coast Is Using AI to Fix Product Demos · The Payments Shed

• 0:00
  Welcome to The Payment Shed Podcast, the weekly podcast that
• 0:03
  dives into the big topics, trends and people shaping the
• 0:06
  world's of payments, fintech and business leadership of your two
• 0:09
  Co hosts, myself Grant Evans and Justin Hannah.
• 0:13
  Welcome to another episode of the Payment Shed Podcast.
• 0:15
  Today we are joined by Spencer Levitt, Co founder of Coast and
• 0:19
  Kara Parke, head of strategic accounts at Coast.
• 0:22
  Welcome to the show guys. Thanks for having us.
• 0:24
  Thank you. Please can you tell us a little
• 0:26
  bit about yourselves, your journey in fintech and and
• 0:30
  coasts? Yeah, absolutely.
• 0:31
  You wanna go? First, sure.
• 0:33
  Yeah. So started Coasts I guess going
• 0:35
  on 3-4 years ago with my Co founder Austin.
• 0:38
  We went through I, I know we'll get into this, but we went
• 0:41
  through YC and right out of YC have been kind of hit the ground
• 0:45
  running with Coast ever since. We've bounced around a bit
• 0:48
  between Chicago, Tennessee and now we're headquartered in New
• 0:51
  York full time. And I met Coast, I will touch on
• 0:55
  this, but I've been in fintech for decades.
• 0:57
  So I worked at two different startups kind of 1 early stage
• 0:59
  and then more growth stage. And then I met Coast when they
• 1:02
  were pitching me at my last company and obviously best sale
• 1:06
  of all time because I decided to come work here.
• 1:09
  That's why you know the product's good, right?
• 1:10
  Yeah, yeah, the product's good. When we when we talk about
• 1:13
  fintech, there's a lot of tools in the fintech world and and
• 1:16
  kind of product demos is always a problem that most businesses
• 1:20
  have. Why do you think it's so complex
• 1:22
  to sell technical products? Yeah, I I like to start with an
• 1:26
  analogy often times. So we'll try this one on for for
• 1:30
  size. Do you guys puzzle at all?
• 1:33
  Occasionally I think Tim tries to get me puzzling all the.
• 1:35
  Time. OK, so you're puzzling every
• 1:37
  weekend, is what I hear. So imagine you were gonna go buy
• 1:41
  a puzzle and instead of on the front of the puzzle, you
• 1:43
  actually didn't get to see what the puzzle is gonna look like.
• 1:46
  You just saw all the puzzle pieces.
• 1:48
  It wouldn't be so fun. You'd be buying a bunch trying
• 1:50
  to figure out how to put it together.
• 1:51
  You wouldn't, You don't know what the end state looks like,
• 1:54
  right? That's kind of the key problem
• 1:56
  that embedded software products and companies have, whether
• 1:59
  you're selling APIs, SDKS, anything that requires an
• 2:03
  integration. That is exactly the challenge
• 2:05
  and why we started Coast because how do you actually understand
• 2:08
  what these products are going to look like once integrated,
• 2:11
  especially when that could be, you know, infinite number of
• 2:14
  possibilities and the the solutions can be molded in any
• 2:17
  way, shape or form. I think that's a great analogy
• 2:20
  and I think there's, there's almost an expectation with like
• 2:22
  a good API that the developers that you're giving that to just
• 2:25
  know what to do with it, right? And I don't think that that's
• 2:28
  always the case, right? So being able to bring that to
• 2:30
  life is, is so important as well and current from your side.
• 2:33
  Like when we look at the customer in all of this, you
• 2:36
  know, what do you think frustrates buyers the most at
• 2:39
  the moment about, you know, demos in particular, and also
• 2:42
  kind of that proof of value that they're getting from.
• 2:44
  Demos. I think what frustrates buyers
• 2:48
  the most is probably the same thing that frustrates sellers
• 2:50
  the most. It's the, it's exactly what
• 2:52
  Spencer mentioned, but the you know, you have a PowerPoint at a
• 2:56
  30,000 foot view of maybe the problem or your product.
• 3:00
  Sellers are frustrated that they don't have a great way to show
• 3:02
  or demonstrate or educate the buyers on the actual problem
• 3:05
  they can solve for them, which inherently is the biggest pain
• 3:08
  of the buyer is, you know, you walk through a whole
• 3:10
  presentation and you say, but what does this mean for me?
• 3:12
  What does this look like for me? What does it look like in my
• 3:14
  environment? So I think this the the
• 3:17
  education gap between buyers and sellers is is equally
• 3:20
  frustrating. And kind of over time, is there
• 3:24
  not kind of incremental fixes that should be being made by
• 3:27
  businesses? Absolutely.
• 3:30
  What I'd say is what what we see often times in the market, Well,
• 3:35
  like there, there are companies that I guess we can call it
• 3:37
  their demo life cycle, like where they are in their journey.
• 3:40
  And like Kara just mentioned PowerPoints, like a lot of the
• 3:42
  largest companies in the world still run on PowerPoints.
• 3:44
  And there are a host of problems there we can get into.
• 3:47
  What I'd say is many companies end up trying to build A1 size
• 3:51
  fits all demo. And the The funny thing about
• 3:54
  that is the ones that fits all demo, they end up figuring out
• 3:56
  actually ends up fitting none. And like that is the problem.
• 3:59
  And like Grant, you said it best like you have these super
• 4:03
  powerful and flexible API products.
• 4:06
  And the really hard part about it is like there is no one
• 4:09
  outcome, there is no one end state.
• 4:11
  And like how to solve for that is again like why we started
• 4:14
  coasts and I think is why like the incremental fixes don't
• 4:17
  don't do the job. Yeah, we had someone on the show
• 4:20
  recently and they basically said just tear up the company pitch
• 4:24
  deck all together. People are tired of it, right?
• 4:26
  You know, it's it's obviously going to say how great your
• 4:29
  company is, all these brilliant things that you do, but bring
• 4:32
  that product to life, like show me how it can actually fix a
• 4:34
  problem for me and the organization that that I work
• 4:37
  for, right. Was there like a specific light
• 4:39
  bulb moment? Then I guess this is this is one
• 4:41
  for yourself. But like where you and Austin
• 4:43
  went. How do you know what, like,
• 4:44
  there's such a gap here? Like, we've got to do something
• 4:47
  about this, yes. And Kara's heard me tell a story
• 4:50
  a million times, but I, I, I will absolutely tell it.
• 4:53
  So yeah, Austin and I were going through IC.
• 4:55
  We actually started out building an API integration tool.
• 4:59
  And so we were focused on a bit of a different problem at first,
• 5:01
  which honestly would look a lot, a lot different today with AI
• 5:05
  and GBT. And, but we're, we're trying to
• 5:08
  figure out how can we reduce an API integration down to a click,
• 5:12
  a single button click. Like is that even possible?
• 5:13
  It's kind of what we went after. And like a classic YC ISM is, I
• 5:19
  think Paul Pooh had said it was like, how do you find a good
• 5:21
  startup idea? You go out and pitch a very bad
• 5:23
  one. And that's what we did.
• 5:25
  We ended up pitching this API integration tool that nobody
• 5:28
  really wanted. And so we would have
• 5:29
  conversation after conversation where people were like, OK, this
• 5:32
  sounds kind of cool. Of course API integration is a
• 5:34
  challenge, but I don't really think this would solve it for XY
• 5:36
  and Z reason until we met a founder of a debt repayment API
• 5:41
  who kind of was like, you know, this the API integration part,
• 5:45
  like sure, that's a challenge, but my biggest challenge is
• 5:47
  like, how do I even show this thing?
• 5:48
  Like I have a huge problem just getting people to understand
• 5:50
  what we're doing and why it's valuable.
• 5:53
  And so when we when we talk about like light bulb moment,
• 5:55
  that is the proverbial light bulb moment, because then we
• 5:58
  start asking that of all the other conversations we had and
• 6:00
  all the other other founders we talked to, like, how are you
• 6:03
  selling this? And then everybody be like,
• 6:05
  yeah, that's a good question. And we've been kind of focused
• 6:09
  on this ever since. And my, I mean, I mentioned this
• 6:12
  earlier with my origin story, my light bulb moment was
• 6:14
  essentially the same. And it was kind of a visceral
• 6:16
  reaction of, you know, I'm at my, my former company, I'm a
• 6:21
  non-technical kind of seller of API products.
• 6:23
  And so I know in theory what our AP is do and always have.
• 6:27
  And you know, at the time, Austin was pitching my old
• 6:30
  company and I watched him demo my own APIs in Coast and I was
• 6:33
  like, this is what our APIs do. Like I was almost embarrassed
• 6:37
  that I didn't understand my own product.
• 6:39
  And so yeah, that was obviously huge for me.
• 6:43
  And now the fun part of my job is most of my conversations I
• 6:45
  get to witness people having that exact same visceral
• 6:47
  reaction when showing people. What they think.
• 6:50
  Right. And yeah, it's.
• 6:51
  You don't know what an API can do until you can see what it can
• 6:53
  do. And often you won't actually go
• 6:55
  and see what you know without using a product like Coast, like
• 6:57
  you can still sell, right? But it's, you know, it's not as
• 7:00
  easy and you'll quite often not go and look at the end product
• 7:03
  that's been integrated, you're on to the next sale, right, the
• 7:05
  next customer. So I think you don't know what
• 7:07
  has actually been created. So it helps you to see that as a
• 7:10
  commercial person earlier in that process.
• 7:13
  And then that's kind of wider education for your next sale,
• 7:15
  right? I think most sales people are
• 7:17
  nervous about demoing their own product.
• 7:19
  Exactly. And I genuinely believe that.
• 7:21
  And that's coming from from experience as well.
• 7:23
  And I think that probably slows down sales cycles more than what
• 7:26
  you can ever imagine, because sometimes you have more
• 7:27
  questions come from it. That's not so, so people can't
• 7:30
  demo their product. It's just I don't believe most
• 7:33
  sales people have full belief and the impact that that demo's
• 7:36
  going to have on the business they're selling to.
• 7:39
  It's spot on. Like we talk a lot about the
• 7:41
  just the internal challenges and of course, like we run to where
• 7:44
  pain is most dire, which is often times like how do you get
• 7:47
  a customer to understand? But as as companies start to get
• 7:50
  bigger and bigger, as you go from like we work now with
• 7:52
  companies who are 5000 hundred and 50,000 people, like that's a
• 7:55
  lot of people internally. You need to educate from country
• 7:58
  to country, from department to department, BU to BU.
• 8:02
  And so we've seen like the problem we solved there, it just
• 8:04
  compounds that scale and internally kind of like we were
• 8:07
  saying there like that is a very real problem of like how do we
• 8:10
  onboard people effectively at scale onto very technical
• 8:14
  products. Makes sense.
• 8:17
  And do do you kind of do you have any stats on that do you
• 8:19
  think or is the way for businesses to understand how
• 8:22
  slow deals can become by not being able to demo correctly?
• 8:26
  Yeah. You've got a ton of, you know,
• 8:28
  case studies that we've talked through, but just maybe some
• 8:31
  like tangential commentary around it is, you know, it's
• 8:34
  with one of our large financial institution clients earlier this
• 8:38
  month and they were saying by leveraging cost, there's one
• 8:41
  artifact that essentially allows you to speak to everybody in the
• 8:45
  room, right? You know, you give a PowerPoint
• 8:47
  presentation or put up up a graph, you know, in a
• 8:50
  presentation in a room with, you know, a CSO and C-Suite business
• 8:54
  executive and somebody from risk and an engineer, they're going
• 8:57
  to look at that, you know, 1 artifact and, and take away 5
• 9:00
  different things. There's something valuable.
• 9:02
  Coast really kind of marries the journey for whoever the buyer
• 9:04
  is. And what that's allowed our
• 9:07
  customers to experience is really just expediting the time
• 9:12
  to the really important conversations.
• 9:13
  They've kind of eliminated the education gap.
• 9:15
  They said, OK, now we all understand what this is.
• 9:18
  Now we can start to have the real conversations.
• 9:20
  And so certainly, you know, that speeds up a sales cycle because
• 9:24
  you're, you know, shortening time to value for people
• 9:26
  understanding what you do. But I think I loved that quote
• 9:29
  where he was like, we've just expedited the time to get to the
• 9:32
  real conversations because we've gotten the education out of the
• 9:34
  way so quickly no matter who's in the room.
• 9:37
  So much of this is an education problem.
• 9:39
  And it's, it's funny because it's like buyers are not signing
• 9:43
  up to go to school, like they don't want to sit through and
• 9:45
  learn. They want to solve a problem.
• 9:47
  And that's like of the biggest takeaways.
• 9:50
  It's like, how do we sell solutions, not just endpoints?
• 9:54
  And that's a lot of what we spend our time talking to
• 9:55
  companies about, because it's not about going through the
• 9:59
  docks and going through every single endpoint feature and
• 10:01
  capability we have. It's about your business
• 10:04
  solution and what's again, what's hard about that to all of
• 10:06
  our points is like that solution looks different for every, every
• 10:09
  different customer. So.
• 10:11
  And from a strategic accounts perspective car in terms of like
• 10:15
  you're obviously front end, you're speaking to these these
• 10:18
  customers on a regular basis. Like where do they tend to say
• 10:22
  to you like their current demo suites are slowing down the
• 10:25
  deal? Is it like the interactive
• 10:27
  capabilities, is it not having anything there at all?
• 10:29
  Like what? The kind of different stories
• 10:31
  that you've heard in that space, that's what.
• 10:32
  I was going to say you just mentioned it, but it, it tends
• 10:34
  to be, you know, like what demo capabilities, you know, you'd be
• 10:38
  shocked at how and, and products change so fast.
• 10:41
  PowerPoints become outdated, you know, weekly now it seems.
• 10:45
  And so I think that is the the problem is that they don't have
• 10:47
  a a living kind of source of truth for their product for
• 10:51
  product demos or they don't have a way to demo the product.
• 10:53
  Like you mentioned, you know, most sellers at large
• 10:57
  organizations are using PowerPoint, are comfortable
• 11:02
  talking at a really high level, but more and more, you know,
• 11:06
  we're needing to get to the more technical conversation quicker.
• 11:09
  People are validating products, not just on, you know, your
• 11:11
  lucid chart diagram and, you know, company history, but they
• 11:15
  really want to see the product working.
• 11:16
  And so that's really, I think the, the, they're all coming
• 11:21
  into it at different, different points in the cycle, but that's
• 11:23
  where coast kind of steps in and and becomes the centralized
• 11:26
  living playbook for all of their sell.
• 11:29
  And and to your point on sellers don't want to dim with the
• 11:32
  product, it it allows them in a Safeway to kind of put their AP
• 11:35
  is on rails and feel more confident and comfortable
• 11:37
  speaking to their product, right?
• 11:40
  Yeah, I think no, absolutely. I think we forget that for a lot
• 11:42
  of these products, actually setting up a way to test them,
• 11:46
  especially like when you're going to more regulated entities
• 11:49
  to like can be a six month process just to get them real
• 11:53
  valuable data out of a proof of concept.
• 11:56
  Like proof of concept looks very different for these sets of
• 11:58
  companies. That's not just issuing
• 12:00
  credentials to go into and sign into a dashboard.
• 12:03
  It's how do we get a full engineering team, the ability to
• 12:06
  see and understand what this is going to look like in my
• 12:09
  environment. And that can that can be a
• 12:11
  really expensive and time consuming process for these
• 12:14
  companies. And most template demos are
• 12:16
  created by marketing with sales, with maybe a solution engineer
• 12:20
  coming and giving their thoughts and implementation.
• 12:22
  What kind of breaks down there do you think?
• 12:27
  And it goes back to what a demo means to every different
• 12:30
  company, right? Because we'll be talking about
• 12:32
  it a demo thinking like asking for a reverse demo from one of
• 12:35
  our largest customers and they'll get on and kind of
• 12:38
  screen share a video, which some of the videos look amazing, but
• 12:41
  it's also a very different problem than than we've set out
• 12:45
  to, to tackle. So I think that that that's like
• 12:48
  #1 like asking ourselves, what are, what are we talking about
• 12:51
  when we say demo? And two, the the internal change
• 12:55
  and the internal education, when you talk about like what breaks
• 12:58
  down between different departments, getting everybody
• 13:01
  on the same page of like what it even is, the value we're solving
• 13:04
  and need to go out and surface for the market is the second one
• 13:08
  that comes to mind. There's a speed thing in all of
• 13:11
  this as well, though. When I think of like companies
• 13:14
  where this doesn't exist, the salesperson has that initial
• 13:17
  conversation. They sell the dream, right?
• 13:19
  They lay the foundation and they're like, oh, we'll do
• 13:21
  another call, We'll get a solution and or engineer right
• 13:25
  on the next call. But you lose time immediately,
• 13:27
  right? That customer's in buying mode
• 13:29
  on that first call. And then you're like, solution
• 13:31
  consultant's available in eight days and they go, but our devs
• 13:34
  aren't available for another two weeks.
• 13:36
  And then you're 3 weeks into that sales cycle and then it
• 13:38
  gets delayed because someone's on holiday.
• 13:39
  You miss something in that very first engagement by not being
• 13:43
  able to bring. And even if it's the CEO or, you
• 13:45
  know, commercial leader or whatever, the person that you
• 13:47
  know, is going to get really excited about this, probably
• 13:49
  more so than the than the engineer that gets brought in at
• 13:51
  a later date on their side, right?
• 13:53
  They're probably not on that next call, right?
• 13:55
  They've gone, Oh yeah, this looks good.
• 13:56
  Sounds good. I'll let my engineer tell me
• 13:57
  what it's like. But if you were able to bring it
• 13:59
  to life for them. And that first engagement, the
• 14:01
  power of that is is so strong, right?
• 14:04
  So we talk about this gap in the market and it's persisted for so
• 14:08
  long. Why is there not being a coast
• 14:10
  sooner? Yeah, I think it's like the
• 14:15
  everybody agrees it's been a problem.
• 14:17
  How do you actually go out to solve that?
• 14:19
  And you get a lot of one off solutions.
• 14:22
  I'd say a lot of people who who will build 1 off roll out the
• 14:25
  red carpet for a huge customer and that ends up being maybe
• 14:30
  like one awesome artefact that now I can't scale.
• 14:33
  So if Sarah was able to build the best thing we've ever seen
• 14:36
  for this one huge opportunity, like how do we actually make
• 14:40
  everybody? Sarah is the way we've gone
• 14:42
  after it. And and then I think the
• 14:45
  learning is just like how how teams are able to actually build
• 14:51
  out their own internal repository for what demos look
• 14:54
  like. So it's like 1, the scaling
• 14:56
  challenge and the people challenge and then two, like
• 14:59
  actually aligning that we're all gonna decide to build out a
• 15:02
  central repository and having a system that it can support all
• 15:05
  the technical depth and breadth you need for the scale of these
• 15:09
  companies. I think that's that those are
• 15:11
  the biggest challenges. And of course, when we saw the
• 15:14
  gap, we've we've tried to attack it with everything we've got.
• 15:19
  As I say, to your point on kind of the, the technical resource,
• 15:22
  like we, we all feel that, I feel like every company, I
• 15:24
  certainly experienced this in my last companies.
• 15:27
  You know, it's just, it's a smaller team of SMEs or
• 15:29
  solutions consultants, right? If you have an entire, you know,
• 15:33
  sales team that's much larger, that's dependent on having one
• 15:36
  of those people on every call to talk through just in case
• 15:39
  there's somebody technical or just in case they ask this one
• 15:42
  question. There's nothing more frustrating
• 15:44
  as a seller than having to again, delay based on schedules
• 15:47
  and you say, OK, well, they can't make this call, so got to
• 15:49
  push it out. Two weeks just slows everything
• 15:52
  down. And so we talk a lot about like
• 15:53
  empowering even non-technical people to talk through technical
• 15:57
  products in a way that is easy to understand.
• 16:00
  So you're not dependent on SMEs and you can give those teams a
• 16:02
  lot more leverage. I think it's a good point as
• 16:04
  well. And I've definitely had
• 16:06
  solutions engineers on calls just in case, just in case a
• 16:09
  person I'm selling to brings on one of their tech guys and and I
• 16:12
  don't have the answer. Whereas actually all that
• 16:15
  they're really coming on to understand how the product works
• 16:17
  for them. That's it.
• 16:19
  Not a sales pitch. These engineers are not being
• 16:20
  sold to. They're just saying I've been
• 16:22
  brought onto this call to see if I can integrate your product
• 16:25
  into our environment. Right?
• 16:28
  Perfect. Look, I think the, the product
• 16:30
  is obviously great in the Fintech world, one, because
• 16:34
  there's a lot of legacy providers and two, payments is
• 16:37
  very innovative. It's it's moving all the times.
• 16:40
  Why do we think that that Fintech salespeople are feeling
• 16:44
  that pain more than ever? I think I'm sure you'll touch on
• 16:48
  this and you guys are the payments experts here, so I
• 16:50
  won't pretend to name all the companies, but we use the
• 16:54
  analogy a lot. You know, when a consumer swipes
• 16:56
  a credit card, you know, all they see is swiping a credit
• 16:58
  card. But what's actually happening
• 16:59
  behind the scenes is, you know, it's touching 50 different
• 17:02
  company rails and you know, there's 1000 different API calls
• 17:05
  that are happening. And I think, you know, it's one
• 17:07
  simple example for payments in fintech.
• 17:09
  But that's why we, you know, I think we got started in fintech
• 17:13
  and you know, the question of like, how do you demo a payment
• 17:16
  exists for everybody? How do you demo a payment?
• 17:18
  How do you show what's happening behind the scenes when you send
• 17:20
  a Venmo and, and all the different complex systems that
• 17:25
  it's touching? And so I think the complexity of
• 17:27
  the behind the scenes in fintech has only exacerbated the problem
• 17:32
  of, of education and understanding what's going on.
• 17:34
  And, and that's where Coast comes in, but it's certainly not
• 17:37
  limited to, to fintech. I think it's same song,
• 17:39
  different verse in healthcare and government and telecom and
• 17:43
  you know, and certainly others, but the payment spaces has been
• 17:46
  big for us. I was just say payments, I just
• 17:48
  think financial service job obviously go on your website and
• 17:50
  I look at the list of customers and like your, your flagships
• 17:53
  and I'm like, yeah, financial services, financial services.
• 17:55
  Like there's, there's an innate problem that exists in fintech
• 17:58
  in payments and financial services where we've probably
• 18:00
  ignored this gap for far too long.
• 18:01
  So it's it's got to be a happy hunting ground for you guys.
• 18:04
  It's every layer of the stack. I think is what is remarkable
• 18:09
  and like, you know, when we start out to build coasts, what
• 18:12
  we probably didn't realize, if I'm being honest, is just how
• 18:15
  pervasive the problem is at every at every altitude.
• 18:19
  But like Kara said, there's actually there's nothing about
• 18:22
  Coast that was designed for fintech.
• 18:25
  And the only reason we have a lot of a lot of, you know,
• 18:28
  partners outside of fintech now that go to, you know, call the
• 18:31
  telcos called the healthcare, more developer technology and
• 18:34
  dev tools, but also like what, what is Fintech now?
• 18:37
  Where do you draw that line? Like everybody is touching money
• 18:40
  in some way, shape or form. And so we work with a lot of
• 18:42
  fraud and identity providers and showing how things work under
• 18:45
  the hood. Like when we talk about that
• 18:47
  problem, sure, like when you send a Venmo, like there I could
• 18:50
  point to 20 or 30 coast customers running behind the
• 18:53
  scenes there, but same thing is happening, you know, when we
• 18:56
  need to, you know, verify Kara is who she says she is.
• 18:59
  Like there are a lot of different providers running
• 19:00
  under the hood to answer that question.
• 19:02
  And that's a really interesting point and either of you can
• 19:05
  answer this one, but something that then comes up like you've
• 19:08
  got that front end demo is those nuanced edge cases will be
• 19:12
  different for every single customer, right?
• 19:13
  So you're presenting the demo and they go, well, what about
• 19:15
  this situation? What about that?
• 19:17
  How does Coast enable a business to react to those edge cases as
• 19:21
  they're coming in during a demo? It and this is like to the you
• 19:25
  know, why didn't a coast exist sooner?
• 19:27
  And you know, everybody understood the problem.
• 19:29
  Why not a better solution Coast? Like we took a pretty
• 19:32
  opinionated stance about putting everything on one pane of glass.
• 19:35
  And, you know, not just the interface, but also what is
• 19:38
  happening under the hood. And you know, when I talk about
• 19:42
  technical depth of what we need to be able to support and be
• 19:44
  able to connect to, you know, existing webhook infrastructure
• 19:47
  and receive those events live and SDK call backs.
• 19:50
  And like, being able to surface all those things is what gives
• 19:53
  people the confidence and the credibility that this solution
• 19:57
  can actually work for my use case.
• 20:00
  And I think about, we had a colleague that wrote an article
• 20:03
  earlier this year talking about kind of his thoughts on Sibos
• 20:06
  and went to Sibos. And I think the first line was
• 20:08
  like, you know, Sibos is marketed as a payments
• 20:10
  conference, but it felt like an interoperability summit.
• 20:13
  You know, it's all about, you know, how do all these different
• 20:15
  companies, how do all these legacy rails, new rails like
• 20:18
  connect and you know, the purpose and, and what he talks
• 20:22
  about was like, we've got to get to, we've got to show, you know,
• 20:25
  what happens when this goes wrong faster.
• 20:26
  Everyone is more concerned and needs to be concerned quickly
• 20:29
  with how do we show, you know, every ad hoc use case that that
• 20:33
  they can that's, you know, against.
• 20:34
  It's not just when things go right like that is what builds
• 20:36
  the most confidence in these scenarios.
• 20:38
  And the kinds of companies we work with is like, actually,
• 20:40
  let's talk about the millions of different ways these things can
• 20:43
  go wrong and how we handle them and recover from them.
• 20:46
  And one thing I find quite interesting, we speak about
• 20:48
  self-service across any industry on, on when a customer is live,
• 20:54
  right? When you're live, you can do
• 20:55
  self-serve this or that. What you guys do is allowing
• 20:57
  people to to self-serve before they become an actual customer.
• 21:00
  Right. Like, like you can have some fun
• 21:04
  times playing with like some slogans, like trying before you
• 21:08
  buy, like what, what is a virtual, you know, test drive
• 21:11
  actually look like for these companies?
• 21:13
  Yeah, I think, I think that goes to the heart of what we've been
• 21:15
  trying to provide. Like you go show up and you try
• 21:17
  and buy a car, like you're not going to just buy it without the
• 21:20
  test drive, right. But like, why is it so hard to
• 21:22
  provide that test drive when you have, you know, 57150 different
• 21:28
  API products? And like some of our customers
• 21:30
  do, they have literally 750 API products listed on their
• 21:33
  developer portal and say it's like, hey, like, have fun trying
• 21:37
  to wade through this. And it's not because they're not
• 21:39
  doing anything wrong, it's just it's a hard problem to solve.
• 21:42
  Today's episode is sponsored by ISX Financial.
• 21:45
  Most growing businesses end up stitching together multiple
• 21:48
  providers to run their payments and banking, leaving them
• 21:51
  exposed to cash flow, reconciliation and even security
• 21:54
  issues. ISX Financial delivers a unified
• 21:56
  ecosystem with multi currency accounts, online payments, real
• 22:00
  time UK and EU transfers and global mass payouts.
• 22:03
  Within that platform, Paid by provides pay by bank with real
• 22:06
  time settlement notifications, automated reconciliation and
• 22:10
  integrated refund management. One partner, one integration,
• 22:14
  helping your business transact with confidence.
• 22:16
  You can learn more at ISX dot Financial.
• 22:19
  That's ISX dot Financial and a big thank you to the team at ISX
• 22:23
  for supporting the show. I don't know any business that
• 22:27
  has a demo team, right? Like you've got big teams,
• 22:31
  you've got marketing teams, sales teams don't have ones.
• 22:34
  Actually, we think about our customer.
• 22:36
  This needs to make life easier for them, right?
• 22:39
  We've definitely seen it. So I mean the the best sign and
• 22:42
  maybe Carrie, you can talk about this too, like when folks have
• 22:44
  invested in a demo team or demo maintenance or call, you know,
• 22:48
  sometimes it's the center of excellence that SAS or SES have
• 22:51
  spun up. That's an awesome sign.
• 22:53
  You're right. That means that already we're
• 22:54
  talking to a company that knows how important this is.
• 22:58
  And yeah, I don't care you you have anecdotal.
• 22:59
  Yeah, it's a really good sign. And and we love working with
• 23:03
  companies that, you know, organically kind of get to the
• 23:05
  point of, OK, we've got all this documentation, we put it on the
• 23:07
  website, people can access it. The next question is like, how
• 23:10
  do we drive adoption of that? And it's not that they have a
• 23:12
  documentation problem, it's that they have a demonstration
• 23:15
  problem of showing what can be built on top of these AP.
• 23:18
  Is, yeah, exactly right. Like we've invested all this
• 23:20
  time and energy documenting everything we have, which in and
• 23:23
  of itself is a feat, right? But now we've published it.
• 23:26
  Like, why isn't this problem been solved?
• 23:28
  Like, why isn't it easy for everybody to just see how this
• 23:31
  works for them in their use case?
• 23:32
  Well, it's because there are millions of permutations of the
• 23:35
  different products you cataloged.
• 23:38
  And it's easy for me to ask how your customers have reacted to
• 23:41
  this because I was. So it's positive.
• 23:43
  But what I'm really interested in is the stats or feedback that
• 23:47
  they've given you around like, hey, this has helped our team
• 23:49
  close our deal sales cycle from X time to Y.
• 23:51
  Like what sort of stories have you you got that you can share
• 23:54
  in, in terms of like the actual tangible outcomes that you've
• 23:57
  seen since you deployed for certain businesses?
• 24:00
  We published a few, I can think of like a few different payment
• 24:03
  orchestrators like one said, I think it dropped like their
• 24:06
  enterprise sales cycle time dropped 47 days.
• 24:09
  Another said, you know, we cut out 25% of our sales cycle time
• 24:13
  kind of collapsing that time to value.
• 24:16
  They're definitely a few others that.
• 24:18
  There's definitely also just like like 10X20X thinking of
• 24:21
  different clients that we have that have said just the amount
• 24:24
  of, you know, again, to the solutions consultant or people
• 24:26
  challenge of having an SME on a demo.
• 24:28
  You know, when they're prepping for demos, it takes hours
• 24:31
  sometimes, you know, to get up a custom environment or you know,
• 24:34
  spin up this type of demo that they're doing for a company.
• 24:37
  The amount of demos teams are able to do, the amount of calls
• 24:41
  they're able to say yes to has gone up dramatically.
• 24:43
  So they're doing, you know, 1020 X the amount of product demos
• 24:47
  that they used to be able to do It's.
• 24:49
  It's a good point, people look a lot at like SCA like ratio and
• 24:53
  like how many A's can a certain SC or SA support.
• 24:56
  I think time and time again we see coast as a scaling weapon
• 25:02
  for these companies so that the SC can map to additional A's.
• 25:06
  And also say from like an anecdotal perspective, like, you
• 25:08
  know, you, you mentioned a lot of, you know, legacy companies,
• 25:11
  which don't even love calling them that.
• 25:13
  But they're, you know, what we've been told by a lot of
• 25:17
  folks that we work with is the ability to show kind of under
• 25:20
  the hood as well as what's possible gives the reps or these
• 25:25
  executives, you know, more credibility and trust in their
• 25:28
  pitch because it's not some vaporware that they're pitching.
• 25:31
  And, and you know, the question after you maybe show the
• 25:33
  PowerPoint or whatever is inevitably, OK, well, what if
• 25:36
  this is built and, you know, you don't even have to talk about
• 25:38
  the APIs, but showing them kind of fire at the same time with
• 25:41
  what's possible, you know, gives them a lot of credibility and
• 25:44
  trust in the sales cycle. And so we've, we've had a lot of
• 25:47
  companies tell us, you know, that they, they love being able
• 25:50
  to show up like a very tech forward company or they enjoy
• 25:52
  being able to show up, you know, with this inherent trust because
• 25:55
  they can see the product working.
• 25:57
  Nice. And when we think about AI, kind
• 25:59
  of how does that sit of the core of what Coast does?
• 26:03
  In a few ways. So one product engineering side
• 26:07
  AI is baked into everything we do now and it's allowed us to
• 26:12
  dramatically collapse our time to value and providing our our
• 26:16
  software to customers. But then there's also the
• 26:18
  tailwind of just, hey, everybody is launching, you know, their
• 26:22
  new agentic voice protocol, agentic commerce protocol that
• 26:26
  we need to figure out how to integrate with.
• 26:29
  And now all of a sudden, how do we show all of these new things?
• 26:31
  And so like there's the customer tailwind as well.
• 26:33
  That's like, hey, yeah, Coast product has gotten, I can
• 26:37
  confidently say many multiple times better in the last year
• 26:41
  just because of the capabilities.
• 26:43
  But then maybe even even more exciting for us as a company is
• 26:48
  just the surface area of the problem that we set out to solve
• 26:51
  has expanded tenfold, if not way more.
• 26:53
  Like there is, I'll say this, the the non determinism of AI
• 26:58
  has created the most harrowing demo problem ever.
• 27:02
  Right now. I can show up and demo something
• 27:04
  and you're telling me it won't behave the same way that I
• 27:07
  demoed it the last time? Like that's a huge problem for
• 27:10
  these companies and the the S ES on the front lines.
• 27:13
  So it it represents a very exciting challenge and and new
• 27:16
  problem for us to be solving. And on your side of that car,
• 27:19
  you're obviously selling into regulated organizations quite
• 27:22
  often, which, you know, there's still a bit, we would love to be
• 27:25
  doing stuff with AI, but then we also are terrified of AI at the
• 27:28
  same time, you know, how important is the trust, accuracy
• 27:31
  and consistency of the demos in those organizations when they
• 27:34
  are regulated and, and how they kind of probe you guys on making
• 27:38
  sure that that's not going to impact them in any way as well.
• 27:40
  Yeah, Well, you said it in the question.
• 27:42
  I mean, it is like of the utmost importance.
• 27:44
  It's, it's all these people care about, you know, and I'd say
• 27:47
  these organizations, you're exactly right.
• 27:49
  They, they, I, I'm encouraged by the attitude and kind of the
• 27:53
  acceptance of AI more so this year than last, But they need
• 27:57
  it, They know that they need it. They know that they want it and
• 27:59
  all aspects of their job. But there is, and, and we should
• 28:01
  be grateful as consumers, you know, a lot of regulation and a
• 28:04
  lot of due diligence and a lot of governance that has to go
• 28:07
  into them, you know, adopting these tools.
• 28:09
  And so I think, you know, what we've been really focused on is
• 28:13
  the ability to provide a solution that that has kind of
• 28:16
  that baked in governments and it's it's innovation and it's
• 28:19
  AI, it's also on rails, you know, to where you can still
• 28:23
  control kind of what, what your team has access to and, and how
• 28:27
  they go to market and these customer facing, you know,
• 28:30
  conversations. And what's been the hardest
• 28:32
  thing around trying to get businesses to get on board with
• 28:37
  with AI considering they sit so close to to revenue for most
• 28:41
  businesses? Yeah, I would say just that.
• 28:45
  I mean, it's so new and so many, you know, in financial services
• 28:48
  and, and in anything that's regulated, you know, their teams
• 28:52
  are coming up with new policies and new, you know what, what is
• 28:55
  their stance on internal tools versus external tools?
• 28:58
  It's all still kind of evolving. And so I think, you know, that
• 29:03
  that's been probably the challenge is just getting the
• 29:06
  right people in the room to to kind of all evaluate and and
• 29:10
  think through, you know, the benefits in the ROI to adopting
• 29:13
  something like this and making sure that they feel comfortable
• 29:16
  because, you know, it's all new for everybody.
• 29:21
  Would you agree? Yeah, absolutely.
• 29:22
  No, absolutely. Many are excited about it.
• 29:23
  I'd say when we first talk about it and then it's about, OK, how,
• 29:27
  how do we demonstrate the safety and the governance is in place
• 29:32
  in Kos that needs to give folks the confidence that this will be
• 29:36
  a solution that they can rely on.
• 29:38
  And but one other thing I'll say is like now working with a lot,
• 29:41
  lot of large FIS and seeing what the security process looks like
• 29:44
  there. As a consumer, we are very
• 29:46
  grateful and we like it is reassuring to see just how many
• 29:51
  steps you know a company like Kos needs to go through in order
• 29:53
  to actually execute on that vision and deliver the product
• 29:57
  and the safety that needs to be like executed on and shown.
• 30:01
  I will say though, that one thing that is really encouraging
• 30:04
  about this year is that money 2020 and, and a luncheon with,
• 30:07
  with some of the Google folks giving a presentation and other,
• 30:10
  you know, kind of larger institutions in the room.
• 30:13
  And somebody used the quote of how AI, you know, at money 2023
• 30:17
  years ago was seen as kind of a risk internally at these
• 30:20
  institutions. And it's completely flipped to
• 30:22
  where now it's a risk mitigator. And like they all know that, you
• 30:26
  know, they can't afford to not be using AI.
• 30:28
  And so the entire like mindset has shifted, which is really
• 30:31
  encouraging for for all the companies out there.
• 30:33
  I think financial services can be a bandwagon game, right?
• 30:36
  You wait, see how many are on the wagon and then everyone
• 30:38
  piles on, you know, sometimes quite late in the day clinging
• 30:41
  to the wheel. You know, we want to talk about
• 30:44
  the the start up and investment journey that that you guys have
• 30:48
  been on a bit today as well, because obviously you know, your
• 30:50
  grave, some of the big brands that you've you've brought on so
• 30:53
  early in your journey is is really, really impressive.
• 30:55
  So when we talk about what the journey has looked like so far
• 30:59
  from idea to 1st customer to first big customer and
• 31:03
  investment at the beginning of that as well, I mean can can you
• 31:05
  tell us kind of the UPS and the downs I guess of that journey so
• 31:10
  far? I can.
• 31:10
  Definitely walk through some of it.
• 31:11
  I mean Austin and I speak for both of us when I say like YC
• 31:17
  going through Y Combinator was a definitely a formative
• 31:20
  experience for both of us. And this is back in during
• 31:23
  COVID, we were the first ever YC remote batch, which is you know.
• 31:28
  How many are in as well? Like for people that don't know
• 31:30
  why, I see like, yeah, how many companies are you up against
• 31:33
  generally when you're going in through that process?
• 31:35
  I mean and. The acceptance rate too.
• 31:39
  I'm definitely going to batch this, so we should look this up
• 31:41
  and validate. But I, I believe 10s of
• 31:43
  thousands of companies apply. Austin and I had applied at
• 31:47
  least once or twice before. Like we, we, we knew, we kind of
• 31:49
  always wanted it. I think that's one of the, one
• 31:51
  of the biggest things about YC is they love to see progress
• 31:54
  over time. And so I think most folks, one
• 31:56
  company in my batch had applied 12 times I think, which is is
• 31:59
  crazy. I think one of the biggest
• 32:01
  things about that remote batch was it also allowed YC to start
• 32:03
  investing heavily outside of SF, which I'm not sure if it's
• 32:07
  still. I think they, they've kind of
• 32:09
  brought that back to being more in person or at least having
• 32:11
  some in person events. But yeah, I think it, it was a
• 32:14
  great experience for, for Austin and I we, I mean, our, our, our
• 32:20
  partner was Michael Seibel, who was managing director of YC at
• 32:22
  the time since left, but a a few others that actually invested
• 32:27
  personally in coast as well. So it's, it's amazing.
• 32:30
  We value kind of operators on our cap table.
• 32:33
  After that though, we can also kind of also, I kind of decided,
• 32:36
  hey, what's the best way to know we're actually building
• 32:38
  something of value as if customers are willing to pay for
• 32:40
  it, right. And so from there on, like we,
• 32:43
  we remain pretty lean and, and profitable.
• 32:46
  And to this day, you know, haven't had to to go out for
• 32:50
  another fundraiser kind of put that off.
• 32:52
  And fortunately, we're able to just kind of focus on customer
• 32:55
  problems and how do we build the the best product as possible for
• 32:58
  all of our customers. How?
• 32:59
  How do you choose the right investor?
• 33:03
  It's a great question. YC was a bit of a a no brainer
• 33:07
  for us at the time because we'd always kind of known we wanted
• 33:09
  to go through it from there on out.
• 33:12
  It's really helpful to talk to have people on the cap table
• 33:14
  that actually have been in your shoes.
• 33:15
  And so that, that's maybe the one thing I'd say that that we,
• 33:18
  I know we both really value is having people who know exactly
• 33:22
  what the journey is like and have been through the different
• 33:24
  stages and are able to help guide us in that way.
• 33:28
  Other than that, like there is no playbook is I think it's like
• 33:31
  one of the biggest learnings. Like there is no, it's why like
• 33:34
  the Startup 101 classes, like every startup presents its own
• 33:38
  challenges. And so I think what, what all
• 33:40
  the operators on our cap table know and have told us is like
• 33:43
  they can speak from their experience, but there's a lot
• 33:45
  you just need to figure out by doing.
• 33:46
  And so like Action is the best teacher.
• 33:48
  And what advice would you give to other founders that are
• 33:50
  building products for highly technical buyers?
• 33:55
  Yeah, there there are a few things that like that like hey,
• 33:59
  at what stage? Like one of the best things is
• 34:01
  hiring people who deeply like understand and and have been in
• 34:04
  our customers shoes. Like that is something that's
• 34:06
  always a value driver. We've since like hired a number
• 34:11
  of Coast customers, which has been awesome, right like people
• 34:14
  who have actually been through that buying process.
• 34:16
  But to your point about selling to to highly technical buyers,
• 34:22
  it it goes back to the credibility game, like technical
• 34:25
  buyers see through vapour Ware, they see through kind of the
• 34:29
  video demos, but then the product looks radically
• 34:31
  different, you know, And so being able to actually, you
• 34:35
  know, trust in what you show and, and lead with their
• 34:38
  product. And again, like what what we see
• 34:40
  as the value of coast is like leading with your product.
• 34:42
  Like that's, that's a flex, right?
• 34:45
  It shows you actually believe in what you're selling.
• 34:47
  I think our it's quite ironic for you that you have to demo a
• 34:49
  product that shows you how to demo a product like.
• 34:52
  That. How do you find that day-to-day?
• 34:55
  Yeah, it's very fun. I will say like to to your
• 34:58
  point, I think we talk a lot internally and you'd not be
• 35:03
  shocked, but I think sometimes and especially technical
• 35:05
  founders are, you know, we're in AP is all we're talking AP is
• 35:09
  all day, every day. I think a lot of times people
• 35:11
  overestimate, you know, a company's understanding of their
• 35:15
  own products and you know where overestimate somebody.
• 35:18
  You know, a lot of sellers at SAS companies don't really know
• 35:22
  what their AP is. Do I was one of them, you know,
• 35:24
  and so I think that's at least my advice to to folks going out
• 35:28
  there is like you don't overestimate what you think
• 35:31
  people know about the problem you're solving or your product
• 35:33
  like it. The more simple you can make the
• 35:36
  messaging, the faster you can educate you know on the problem
• 35:39
  and the solution, the better for everybody.
• 35:42
  Where does the next kind of three to five years go for
• 35:45
  Coast? Coast becomes the default for
• 35:49
  how you buy and sell AP is and like I said before, the surface
• 35:53
  area for the, the problem we set out to solve, right.
• 35:56
  And again, that's how do you show what's happening under the
• 35:58
  hood that is growing by the day, by the week, by the by the
• 36:02
  month, which we're very excited about.
• 36:04
  And so we talked about things like agentic commerce, we talked
• 36:07
  about things like stable coins, like you're going to see more
• 36:10
  and more of coasts on and you know, inside of all of those
• 36:13
  protocols and all those new problems.
• 36:15
  Yeah. And a couple of those things are
• 36:16
  very, very hard to bring to life, you know, in their current
• 36:20
  state. Certainly.
• 36:21
  I mean, everyone likes to talk about agentic commerce as we're
• 36:24
  going to do agentic. And we've had platforms on
• 36:27
  verticals ask companies that have gone.
• 36:29
  Yeah, we're the case study for agentic commerce and it
• 36:31
  terrifies us and we're not ready for it.
• 36:33
  So everyone's like, yeah, our sector's going to be doing that.
• 36:35
  So that's been quite, quite funny to listen to.
• 36:37
  I was going to ask about you guys being based in New York as
• 36:40
  well. Obviously a lot of sort of
• 36:43
  fintech startups. So you mentioned San Francisco
• 36:45
  and some of the other places you know, is there like a
• 36:47
  geographical plan for you guys? New York is a really cool place
• 36:50
  to be You, you kind of bridge being East Coast, the the UK
• 36:53
  European reach probably better than the West Coast would,
• 36:58
  right. So you know, have you got kind
• 36:59
  of ambitions to move into new markets from?
• 37:02
  I know you guys love coming to London to see.
• 37:04
  You. Guys, Yeah, yeah.
• 37:06
  Is there a plan for for further growth by by region as well for
• 37:09
  you guys? Absolutely.
• 37:11
  I mean, it's growing, but yeah, go ahead, Karen.
• 37:13
  Close customers all across the globe.
• 37:15
  Yeah, we, we certainly are all, and I just was going to speak
• 37:17
  from my own experience right now.
• 37:20
  When I started at Coast as a very early employee, I lived in
• 37:22
  Nashville, they were in New York.
• 37:24
  I moved to New York about a year ago to be in the office.
• 37:26
  We're in office kind of all in New York at the moment very
• 37:29
  intentionally because it's, you know, fun to build together.
• 37:33
  Things are changing rapidly. You know, customer conversations
• 37:35
  can impact, you know, what we build the next day.
• 37:38
  That said, now, you know, very quickly we work with customers,
• 37:41
  you know, globally, Dubai, all in Europe, you know, so you can
• 37:44
  imagine. So I, I think it's inevitable
• 37:46
  that we will grow and in some way right now it's, you know,
• 37:51
  been doable to, to kind of work. The time zones get tricky
• 37:54
  sometimes, but you know, customers are up and running
• 37:57
  kind of on their own and it's it's fun to have teams globally.
• 38:01
  How, how do you see kind of the buyer expectations changing over
• 38:06
  the next couple of years as AI starts to do its thing even more
• 38:09
  than what it's doing today? They've heightened immensely and
• 38:15
  our, our customers, you know, everybody selling software needs
• 38:18
  to kind of rise to that occasion, US included.
• 38:21
  And So what, what previously worked, you know, 5-10 years ago
• 38:24
  selling APIs, right? Because of course the Corcos was
• 38:27
  the thing. APIs were still being sold,
• 38:29
  right? And, and people were still
• 38:30
  buying. I think that's the biggest, the
• 38:34
  biggest learning and thing is that software is getting
• 38:38
  ridiculously easy to create. And because of that, like we all
• 38:43
  expect, quicker, better, faster, more personalized every single
• 38:47
  time we show up to a buying call.
• 38:50
  Nice. I think, you know, like B to B
• 38:54
  buying expectations, you know, follow consumer expectations.
• 38:57
  Think about everything that we buy in in our life, right?
• 38:59
  Or to your puzzle analogy or Netflix, like I want to see a
• 39:03
  trailer before I watch the movie.
• 39:04
  Like that's the same, you know, concepts that you're seeing in B
• 39:07
  to B inside. The faster, you know, people
• 39:09
  expect they don't expect to work to be sold.
• 39:12
  And so the more you put homework on a buyer to say, you know,
• 39:15
  imagine this or, you know, go through this ten step process to
• 39:18
  get access to this, that's friction.
• 39:21
  And anytime you introduce kind of friction in the buying
• 39:23
  journey, it's going to get more difficult.
• 39:24
  It's not going to create urgency.
• 39:26
  And so that's, you know, it's the same as consumer, but the
• 39:29
  the more you can remove that and speed up time to value.
• 39:32
  We talk a lot about and Carrie, you made a good point like the
• 39:35
  dock dumping effects of API docs.
• 39:37
  And like with any embedded software product, data
• 39:40
  providers, SDKS included, that is that cannot be a thing
• 39:44
  anymore, right? Like buyers aren't kind of
• 39:46
  putting up with that anymore. And I don't blame them, right?
• 39:48
  Like it's it's with all of the innovation it is.
• 39:52
  Required. Nice.
• 39:54
  Now, before we wrap up. Yeah, our last part of the show.
• 39:57
  The show. For shame, Spencer Cara, what?
• 40:00
  What thing in sales, product demos or the buying process
• 40:03
  would you happily banish forever?
• 40:06
  OK. Mine's kind of meta, but I was
• 40:08
  thinking about this. I like this segment.
• 40:10
  For me, of course it's going to be in the buying process because
• 40:12
  I'm, I'm in sales. For me it is process for the
• 40:16
  sake of process. It is shocking to me and it's
• 40:20
  frustrating for buyers and sellers.
• 40:23
  The amount of companies that you know, might want your product
• 40:26
  immediately, say they have budget and they've got sign off,
• 40:29
  but they know they can't do it till Q3 just because of the, the
• 40:32
  cycle or, you know, this committee only meets once a
• 40:34
  month for this. That is equally frustrating for
• 40:39
  both parties and just limits, you know, your, your ability to,
• 40:43
  to innovate internally at a company.
• 40:45
  And I'm, you know, on the flip side of that, continually
• 40:47
  encouraged by some of even the large institutions or small
• 40:50
  companies that you know, will come in, find a problem, find a
• 40:54
  solution and move outside of, of the process.
• 40:56
  Like those are the ones that I get really excited about.
• 40:59
  But process for the sake of process and the buying journey
• 41:02
  is wild to me in this day and age with how fast things are
• 41:05
  moving. Businesses get in their own way.
• 41:06
  Sometimes. Yeah, exactly.
• 41:08
  Again, ironic selling into the financial sector where we've got
• 41:10
  a lot of processes process. Yeah, well.
• 41:15
  The committee will meet once a month to talk about a product
• 41:17
  that you know the business needs.
• 41:18
  Totally. And yourself.
• 41:21
  I think they're my shelf of shame.
• 41:24
  I think it's now that like there cannot be software without an
• 41:27
  API or or some programmatic interface exposed.
• 41:30
  And Sam Altman said it the other day, every, every company is now
• 41:33
  an API company, whether they like it or not.
• 41:34
  Like that is just the world we live in now.
• 41:37
  And so like huge hosted software platforms that don't expose some
• 41:42
  sort of programmatic interface that that would be my shelf of
• 41:46
  shame. That's a very poignant 1, isn't
• 41:48
  it? Yeah.
• 41:48
  I think I agree with both. Yeah, definitely.
• 41:50
  We'll, we'll put them on the shelf.
• 41:53
  Guys, Thanks so much for coming on.
• 41:55
  Where can people find you guys directly?
• 41:58
  Find out more about Coast. Where do they go?
• 42:01
  Tricos.com there. You go.
• 42:02
  Let's start. Yeah, tricos.com, LinkedIn,
• 42:05
  we're all over the place. We're at a lot of a lot of
• 42:07
  fintech conferences. We'll be at Money 2020 again,
• 42:09
  both in Europe and and in the US.
• 42:11
  But reach out Cara Spencer at tricos.com.
• 42:14
  Yeah, brilliant. Well, thanks for coming in,
• 42:16
  guys. Thank.
• 42:16
  You very much. Thank you, Beth.