The Exchanges

Q That is very, very kind of you. Always nice to have a little ego boost at the beginning of an interview, but I do want to start on you, and so tell me, how did you make your way into the world of startups and come to realize that you really wanted to change the way we do accounting with ScaleFactor?

A Yeah. You know, there's really, you know, looking back, there's a number of things that have happened really over my life to get here. And I think that's the first one is I'm a born and raised entrepreneur is very early on that. I realized that I thought this way. I was interacting on some avenues, create value. And so accepting that early on was key. And ultimately the problem that we're solving at scale factor really started when I was 18 years old and I had a company in high school, it's a landscape lighting company. And so at that Well, not a tech company. What I was trying to do is solve a real time inventory environment. So I had a garage full of inventory and I had a QuickBooks desktop computer and I was trying to get this accessible remotely. And so hooking a QuickBooks desktop computer to a Palm pilot with a very expensive at the time, three G cell signal to try to make it remote and work that way was really the beginning of saying, Hey, there's an operational problem to solve here and applying it to a business. From there, I went to college and I went to the university of Texas here in Austin. And I, you know, I took a more traditional path at that point in time and became an accountant, became a CPA, and ultimately went to work for KPMG and Big Four Public Accounting. And KPMG and that whole entire firm experience was very valuable. But I started to find myself reall…

AI assessment note: “the problem that we're solving at scale factor really started when I was 18”

Q That is very, very kind of you. Always nice to have a little ego boost at the beginning of an interview, but I do want to start on you, and so tell me, how did you make your way into the world of startups and come to realize that you really wanted to change the way we do accounting with ScaleFactor?

A Yeah. You know, there's really, you know, looking back, there's a number of things that have happened really over my life to get here. And I think that's the first one is I'm a born and raised entrepreneur is very early on that. I realized that I thought this way. I was interacting on some avenues, create value. And so accepting that early on was key. And ultimately the problem that we're solving at scale factor really started when I was 18 years old and I had a company in high school, it's a landscape lighting company. And so at that Well, not a tech company. What I was trying to do is solve a real time inventory environment. So I had a garage full of inventory and I had a QuickBooks desktop computer and I was trying to get this accessible remotely. And so hooking a QuickBooks desktop computer to a Palm pilot with a very expensive at the time, three G cell signal to try to make it remote and work that way was really the beginning of saying, Hey, there's an operational problem to solve here and applying it to a business. From there, I went to college and I went to the university of Texas here in Austin. And I, you know, I took a more traditional path at that point in time and became an accountant, became a CPA, and ultimately went to work for KPMG and Big Four Public Accounting. And KPMG and that whole entire firm experience was very valuable. But I started to find myself reall…

AI assessment note: “problem that we're solving at scale factor really started when I was 18 years old”

Q Final one before the quickfire, but you said there about the importance of getting on a plane. People always say, you know what, when it comes to fundraising, also, that's another trouble about not being in the valley. You've got to get on a plane. How do you think about the often stereotype around the challenges of fundraising when not in the valley?

A You know, I think that, you know, there's a couple of things that are happening. Number one is the entire landscape is changing. You're seeing where maybe 10 years ago, investors would not want to invest out of their, their jurisdiction, their location, because it was too Too far away. And they wanted to be able to meet and go down the streets and so forth and so on. I think the world's changed where there's more collaborative ways to communicate and have that touch that no longer require the physical elements of that. Right. But on the other side of that is you got to get on a plane. You know, Byron would tell you, and I think Thomas from KOTU as well as, you know, as we were going through the partner meeting process, it was, you know, they're sending a zoom link over and saying, Hey, you know, just zoom in at this time. And that'll be that. And I, I said, no, That's not how I'm going to do it. Would you have me in person? Because if you'd have me in person, I would gladly be there in person. And so it comes down to, at the end of the day, remove all the technology, remove all the things. You got to be face to face with people. You got to look eyeballs to eyeballs. You got to shake their hand. You got to have that, that interaction because you're setting the foundation for relationship that could be 10 plus years through multiple life events and circumstances. And think of tha…

AI assessment note: “I would go back to be willing to go to where they're at.”

Q Absolutely. And then how did that play out in terms of the rapid succession? Sorry, I interrupted you.

A Yeah. So, you know, from there, we went into Techstars here in Austin. And during Techstars, that was the First time to really validate the investor pull and resonance to our idea and ultimately the problem we're trying to solve. So we took notes from that point in time and we really set out to raise a million dollars. We ended up oversubscribing that round to three and a half and then took our time from there to really do the things that we needed to do in the business to get off the ground. And that was bringing our engineering team in house, creating the foundation for sales and marketing and those scalable processes to And then really focusing on the Series A partner. I took five months to raise the Series A, and it wasn't because I didn't have the opportunity to, to find a partner before that. It was much more my focus on finding the partner that I felt like I, I, you know, was, was going to take my idea and take the traction that we had had and really evolve that and help me evolve that into something much greater. And so I took a lot of time doing the initial kind of Series A process from seed round. And then from there, you know, a lot of it fell into place. Our B and C rounds were preempted. That allowed us to make the decisions possible to expand our timeframe and the problem that we were solving. And in some way I've got, there's the aspect out here of, do you take m…

AI assessment note: “we went into Techstars... set out to raise a million... B and C rounds were preempted”

Q I mean, obviously, as you said, the capital there does give you the ability to do some pretty inorganic things. When I spoke to John Fine, he asked in particular, beyond capital, what's been the biggest value add from your cap table that's benefited you most as a CEO?

A You know, the biggest value add is the experience and the pattern matching from seeing this before. I have a philosophy and a thought, and there's many other folks that have taken a stab at this, but you know, if you boil it down, I think VCs in general can do about five things for a company and varying levels and varying levels of expertise and execution. But the first would be they can write checks. The second is they can make intros to talent. The third is they can make intros to the ecosystem that you're in and partners of that ecosystem. Different platforms that they provide, whether that be a recruiting element or a partnership element or a corp dev side of things. And those are kind of platform plays that differentiate VCs. And then the fifth is really the wisdom through osmosis of being around one another and just getting kind of some of the phone time and desk time and whiteboard time and whatnot. And so the biggest thing I have employed since the day in Techstars is that as a founder, you have to know that all those things are available. It's really your job To extract it. I think folks get into trouble when they think that a lot of these things are these kind of marketing elements of a particular VC or particular firm are going to be handed to them. And to some extent, yes, the email, you know, the intros will show up in the, in the inbox, but I think it's also quite…

AI assessment note: “the biggest value add is the experience and the pattern matching from seeing this before.”

Q case of For me, I always struggled being the challenger. I was super at being the cheerleader. Being the challenger was tougher. What advice would you give to someone who may be great at, hey, Kurt, you can do this, but when it comes to Ashley, we've consistently not hit numbers, and this is not acceptable. What advice would you have to someone who struggles more with that challenger side?

A You know, I take it through a process, and it starts with what I call the LFF conversation, and that is the let's face the facts conversation. And we can do that very objectively. We can try to remove as much emotion as possible. And if we could just tie that back to data of why we're here, then we can go on a process of how we're going to solve for that in the next repetition of time. And so really kind of focusing on let's face the facts and maybe even writing those down so you can come back and look and seeing if you're successful is ultimately the thing I revert back to if we're facing the facts over and over again around this It starts to become a really objective conversation whether we're being successful or not, and I try to approach the problem that way instead of bringing a lot of emotion to the problem because that's where things start to go off the rails with performance management and ultimately your ability to dust somebody off versus just leave them on the floor, right, and so it's important that you show the data which you're operating off of, and then you can bring in the human empathy and, you know, relational component, and if you can Keep those separate. It does wonders for how people are, will self-correct, and they'll realize whether they're, they themselves are successful or not.

AI assessment note: “starts with what I call the LFF conversation, and that is the let's face the facts”

Q Final one before the quickfire, but you said there about the importance of getting on a plane. People always say, you know what, when it comes to fundraising, also, that's another trouble about not being in the valley. You've got to get on a plane. How do you think about the often stereotype around the challenges of fundraising when not in the valley?

A You know, I think that, you know, there's a couple of things that are happening. Number one is the entire landscape is changing. You're seeing where maybe 10 years ago, investors would not want to invest out of their, their jurisdiction, their location, because it was too Too far away. And they wanted to be able to meet and go down the streets and so forth and so on. I think the world's changed where there's more collaborative ways to communicate and have that touch that no longer require the physical elements of that. Right. But on the other side of that is you got to get on a plane. You know, Byron would tell you, and I think Thomas from KOTU as well as, you know, as we were going through the partner meeting process, it was, you know, they're sending a zoom link over and saying, Hey, you know, just zoom in at this time. And that'll be that. And I, I said, no, That's not how I'm going to do it. Would you have me in person? Because if you'd have me in person, I would gladly be there in person. And so it comes down to, at the end of the day, remove all the technology, remove all the things. You got to be face to face with people. You got to look eyeballs to eyeballs. You got to shake their hand. You got to have that, that interaction because you're setting the foundation for relationship that could be 10 plus years through multiple life events and circumstances. And think of tha…

AI assessment note: “So I would go back to be willing to go to where they're at.”

Q Absolutely. And then how did that play out in terms of the rapid succession? Sorry, I interrupted you.

A Yeah. So, you know, from there, we went into Techstars here in Austin. And during Techstars, that was the First time to really validate the investor pull and resonance to our idea and ultimately the problem we're trying to solve. So we took notes from that point in time and we really set out to raise a million dollars. We ended up oversubscribing that round to three and a half and then took our time from there to really do the things that we needed to do in the business to get off the ground. And that was bringing our engineering team in house, creating the foundation for sales and marketing and those scalable processes to And then really focusing on the Series A partner. I took five months to raise the Series A, and it wasn't because I didn't have the opportunity to, to find a partner before that. It was much more my focus on finding the partner that I felt like I, I, you know, was, was going to take my idea and take the traction that we had had and really evolve that and help me evolve that into something much greater. And so I took a lot of time doing the initial kind of Series A process from seed round. And then from there, you know, a lot of it fell into place. Our B and C rounds were preempted. That allowed us to make the decisions possible to expand our timeframe and the problem that we were solving. And in some way I've got, there's the aspect out here of, do you take m…

AI assessment note: “Our B and C rounds were preempted. That allowed us to make the decisions possible”

Q something that every single one of your investors mentioned, which is a huge compliment to you, but starting with Michael at Canaan, he said the energy- Physically hits you when you walk into the room and the building at scale factor, and you end up just wanting more of it. So he asked, what are some unique things you do at scale factor to build towards such a positive culture?

A You know, it's awesome to hear Michael say that, and you know, to hear investors resonate about that. I think it's very intentional. I believe that when you walk into the building, we've got to do a number of things to make it a safe place for you to be the most creative and ultimately do the best work of your entire life and your career. And so that comes into even the scent in the building, to the music playing, to who greets you, and how people treat each other is very, very important. There's also a lot of things that we do to control density inside of the space. If you have too much space, the energy level is not there. Obviously, if you don't have enough space, the energy level is there. It's just not the right type of energy you're wanting. So we constantly are monitoring the density of the space that we, which we interact in, and that controls a lot of the energy Beginning of scale factor, You know, maybe a couple months in is really celebrate our wins as a team. There's a variety of reasons that we arrived to do that, but one of the things is a Friday at 4:30 p.m., we get together as now teams within the company. We were at one point just the entire company, but now it takes too long, and it may not be as relevant for some team members, but we get together in a It could be professional. It could be relative to you. And what that does is not only give you a pulse of wha…

AI assessment note: “even the scent in the building, to the music playing, to who greets you”

Q And what an incredible journey it's been, but I do want to touch on that obsession first because we spoke to Michael at Canaan before the show, and he said specifically around kind of obsession and mission drivenness. Do you believe that a founder needs to be mission driven and have found a market fit to build a huge company?

A You know, there's so many different ways to get to success, and I think connecting the dots in history would validate one form or the other. I ultimately think you have to be an expert, and you can become an expert really fast, or you might say more naturally, the path of least resistance is to come into the problem you're solving being an expert. So you either have to learn on the fly and get the quote-unquote 10,000 hours under your belt, or you have to do that process. Prior. For what we're doing here at ScaleFactor, I'm not sure you could be successful not being an expert. This is a very technical problem we're solving from an accounting standpoint and financial standpoint, and then you add in the human emotion of a small business owner and somebody risking everything they've got to wake up every day and be an entrepreneur, and you add those two things together, I would lean more towards the side of being a founder that's mission-driven and finding, really living the problem first is at least the path of least resistance to success.

AI assessment note: “I would lean more towards the side of being a founder that's mission-driven”

Q You mentioned that the runway element, and I do want to talk about the resource allocation because it's a big mindset shift to go from the very lean, very focused resource allocation mindset to relative resource allocation abundance. Was that a challenging transition for you to make personally?

A You know, it is, and it constantly is today. I think that what I've worked on and what's instilled in the team and what we're still coming better at is really gaining that muscle between throttling these elements of growing and running a VC backed startup. You know, this is not a normal game. Most of the businesses out in the world do not have VC dollars to power them to basically do inorganic things. And so what I look at, you know, I have a couple of things here. The first is A great team, I have a saying and a philosophy that the great team is always throttled at between 80 to 130%. You can't run at 130% forever because you really start to break things. You can't run at 80% forever because then you become complacent and you might lose some speed of play. I have that same saying here with context switching between quote unquote the land of abundance and the land of scarcity. And inherently fundraising kind of does that organically for a business. As The cash on your balance sheet is reducing. You're forced to prioritize and focus on the things that are really gaining success and kill the things that aren't. And so that's a good thing. When you now go to the side of to really be strategically successful here, I need to have a longer runway, then you have to force that inorganically. And so that's what we do. We change the culture. We change the business where we've got a land …

AI assessment note: “You know, it is, and it constantly is today.”

Q so happy. In terms of the, sorry, and this is off schedule, but in terms of the value extraction now, I'm totally with you. How do you advise founders on how they can extract the best value from their investors? Is it investor updates? Is it asking directly, we have a problem here. I need your help. How do you advise founders on how do we extract the most value?

A This is not going to answer your question directly, but I think it's, I think it's a little bit of everything. The investor updates are important because you need to provide folks that are not in the business every day enough context where they can even be helpful in the first place. But from there, you know, I guess the one thing I would say, it's FaceTime. It's spending time together, and then these things come out and organically start to come out. But you have to lock interest. You have to lock on problems. You have to let people into the company to the point where they can really help solve. And so, It is opening the kimono, right? And it is being vulnerable and saying, here is exactly where I'm struggling today. And typically, every time I've done that, there is somebody right around the corner, right in, you know, in the inbox within an hour, if I can tail down to the specific problem I'm having and provide the context around that, there is somebody that that investor knows, or at least somebody to talk to somebody that can help solve that. And then you just start on that journey. Movie 20 times before, and you're getting best practices from somebody that's obviously seen success for the particular problem you're trying to solve.

AI assessment note: “I think it's a little bit of everything. The investor updates are important”

Q something that every single one of your investors mentioned, which is a huge compliment to you, but starting with Michael at Canaan, he said the energy- Physically hits you when you walk into the room and the building at scale factor, and you end up just wanting more of it. So he asked, what are some unique things you do at scale factor to build towards such a positive culture?

A You know, it's awesome to hear Michael say that, and you know, to hear investors resonate about that. I think it's very intentional. I believe that when you walk into the building, we've got to do a number of things to make it a safe place for you to be the most creative and ultimately do the best work of your entire life and your career. And so that comes into even the scent in the building, to the music playing, to who greets you, and how people treat each other is very, very important. There's also a lot of things that we do to control density inside of the space. If you have too much space, the energy level is not there. Obviously, if you don't have enough space, the energy level is there. It's just not the right type of energy you're wanting. So we constantly are monitoring the density of the space that we, which we interact in, and that controls a lot of the energy Beginning of scale factor, You know, maybe a couple months in is really celebrate our wins as a team. There's a variety of reasons that we arrived to do that, but one of the things is a Friday at 4:30 p.m., we get together as now teams within the company. We were at one point just the entire company, but now it takes too long, and it may not be as relevant for some team members, but we get together in a It could be professional. It could be relative to you. And what that does is not only give you a pulse of wha…

AI assessment note: “scent in the building, to the music playing, to who greets you”

Q I want to finish on the next five years for you and for scale factor. What's that exciting roadmap ahead?

A You know, we feel like we're just getting started. For me personally, it's about finding leverage in everything I do to increase my impact. Both personally and professionally and continuing to scale with the business. My gifts at this point are seeing the future and driving a lot of humans towards that common goal. So the next five years for scale factor, we want to become a de facto solution that you run your small business on. And we want to start to feel like we're making an impact on the entire small business ecosystem. And I think five years is a long time and start a plan, but you know, it could take longer than five years for us to really complete the goals that we want to.

AI assessment note: “we want to become a de facto solution that you run your small business on”

Q You mentioned that the runway element, and I do want to talk about the resource allocation because it's a big mindset shift to go from the very lean, very focused resource allocation mindset to relative resource allocation abundance. Was that a challenging transition for you to make personally?

A You know, it is, and it constantly is today. I think that what I've worked on and what's instilled in the team and what we're still coming better at is really gaining that muscle between throttling these elements of growing and running a VC backed startup. You know, this is not a normal game. Most of the businesses out in the world do not have VC dollars to power them to basically do inorganic things. And so what I look at, you know, I have a couple of things here. The first is A great team, I have a saying and a philosophy that the great team is always throttled at between 80 to 130%. You can't run at 130% forever because you really start to break things. You can't run at 80% forever because then you become complacent and you might lose some speed of play. I have that same saying here with context switching between quote unquote the land of abundance and the land of scarcity. And inherently fundraising kind of does that organically for a business. As The cash on your balance sheet is reducing. You're forced to prioritize and focus on the things that are really gaining success and kill the things that aren't. And so that's a good thing. When you now go to the side of to really be strategically successful here, I need to have a longer runway, then you have to force that inorganically. And so that's what we do. We change the culture. We change the business where we've got a land …

AI assessment note: “You know, it is, and it constantly is today.”

Q location being Austin. There's often this view that if you're not in a tech hub like San Francisco or Silicon Valley, that you won't be able to get the best And that is, I've had it many times said on the show to be blunt. So my question to you is, how do you respond to this? And how do you hide the best not being in a tech hub?

A You know, I would say that perspective and experience is everything, you know, and, and more so you're going to get a little bit, you know, the determination out of me. It's the CEO's job to ultimately recruit talent to the business. And that can take several years. There's folks that have joined scale factor that I've been recruiting for upwards of four years. And I You can uproot anybody from whatever location if you're willing to put in that work, right? If you can expose them to the company over time, if you can employ them where you're really utilizing their expertise and putting it into play as maybe even an advisor to the business before they might be on full time. The fascination of when you find Doesn't really matter. Now, there's logistics of how do you move, and how do you move a family, and all that stuff, and that might be annoying to people, but we've got a really great process to work through that as well, and so I would agree to some extent that, you know, you've got the idea that, you know, a place like Austin or a place like Denver doesn't have as many companies, and by virtue of that, there's not as many people available, and what I mean is specifically VC-backed high-growth companies, and so there's not as many of those folks available to To come in and do the things they've done before, and while that is true, I don't let it stop me at all. There's plenty o…

AI assessment note: “You can uproot anybody from whatever location if you're willing to put in that work”

Q invoice me for that. I do want to ask, you said there about how it started off as getting together as the whole company, and now it's teams. I spoke to John Fine, and he said, you've scaled the culture specifically so well, which is the hardest thing to So how do you retain the design culture with the incredible growth that you've had and now expansion into multiple offices?

A You know, it's something that we are testing every day, specifically right now. A little bit into the weeds, but it's relevant for this answer is multiple offices. We have offices in Denver and in Vancouver, BC, and people operating really all over the country to some degree for very specific items. But here in Austin, we're, we're operating out of three separate offices. And you might say, Hey, Kurt, why are you operating out of three separate offices in Austin? And I would answer because our space that houses everybody is, is not done yet. And while you go into the commercial real estate aspect of Austin, but we were not able to time hyper growth specifically with the space requirements that we needed. And so we sent our product and engineering team to a location. We had our customer success and support teams in a location and sales and marketing in a location. And that has tested us tremendously. As a culture. And the things that we have reverted back to are our core pillars of the standards of which we have that which we will engage with each other and which we will create success and which we won't. And so I think keeping those is very key as the foundation. The thing I tell people when I'm meeting them for the first day and our employee onboarding and team member onboarding is that really the culture of scale factor is now in their hand. The new people coming to the busin…

AI assessment note: “things that we have reverted back to are our core pillars of the standards”

Q so happy. In terms of the, sorry, and this is off schedule, but in terms of the value extraction now, I'm totally with you. How do you advise founders on how they can extract the best value from their investors? Is it investor updates? Is it asking directly, we have a problem here. I need your help. How do you advise founders on how do we extract the most value?

A This is not going to answer your question directly, but I think it's, I think it's a little bit of everything. The investor updates are important because you need to provide folks that are not in the business every day enough context where they can even be helpful in the first place. But from there, you know, I guess the one thing I would say, it's FaceTime. It's spending time together, and then these things come out and organically start to come out. But you have to lock interest. You have to lock on problems. You have to let people into the company to the point where they can really help solve. And so, It is opening the kimono, right? And it is being vulnerable and saying, here is exactly where I'm struggling today. And typically, every time I've done that, there is somebody right around the corner, right in, you know, in the inbox within an hour, if I can tail down to the specific problem I'm having and provide the context around that, there is somebody that that investor knows, or at least somebody to talk to somebody that can help solve that. And then you just start on that journey. Movie 20 times before, and you're getting best practices from somebody that's obviously seen success for the particular problem you're trying to solve.

AI assessment note: “being vulnerable and saying, here is exactly where I'm struggling today.”

Q Can I ask, you mentioned the board members there, and this is off schedule, so very unfair of me, but for you, was the board management aspect a difficult thing to really grapple? You know, this is the first time raising serious institutional capital for you. Was that a difficult thing for you to come to In terms of how to effectively manage and communicate with a board?

A You know, it's a constant learning journey, and it's a constant reevaluation of where we're at today and where we're heading. But the side of it is, it's my boardroom. It's a founder's boardroom. It's a CEO's boardroom. And so, you've got to take control, and you've got to build a team around that. And so, ultimately, if you said, hey, Kurt, list out your responsibility as a CEO, I would list one of those that says, my job is to build healthy teams. At the end of the day, I'm a professional team builder at the end of the day. And so the board is just like you're launching a new team internally. It's the same thing. You've got a new team member coming on board. How do you meld them together? How do you make sure that you go through the quote unquote kind of forming storming norming stages? How do you do all that? And so it hasn't, it's not anywhere where I've kind of been knocking my head again. How do I engage everybody? How do I make sure that we're spending the right amount of time where we're getting to know each other, but we're also spending the right amount of time where we're in front of a whiteboard and solving problems, and I think that if you're not in the driver's seat is kind of where you can get yourself into trouble of actually being effective.

AI assessment note: “it's not anywhere where I've kind of been knocking my head again”

Q Can I ask, you mentioned the board members there, and this is off schedule, so very unfair of me, but for you, was the board management aspect a difficult thing to really grapple? You know, this is the first time raising serious institutional capital for you. Was that a difficult thing for you to come to In terms of how to effectively manage and communicate with a board?

A You know, it's a constant learning journey, and it's a constant reevaluation of where we're at today and where we're heading. But the side of it is, it's my boardroom. It's a founder's boardroom. It's a CEO's boardroom. And so, you've got to take control, and you've got to build a team around that. And so, ultimately, if you said, hey, Kurt, list out your responsibility as a CEO, I would list one of those that says, my job is to build healthy teams. At the end of the day, I'm a professional team builder at the end of the day. And so the board is just like you're launching a new team internally. It's the same thing. You've got a new team member coming on board. How do you meld them together? How do you make sure that you go through the quote unquote kind of forming storming norming stages? How do you do all that? And so it hasn't, it's not anywhere where I've kind of been knocking my head again. How do I engage everybody? How do I make sure that we're spending the right amount of time where we're getting to know each other, but we're also spending the right amount of time where we're in front of a whiteboard and solving problems, and I think that if you're not in the driver's seat is kind of where you can get yourself into trouble of actually being effective.

AI assessment note: “it's not anywhere where I've kind of been knocking my head”

Q invoice me for that. I do want to ask, you said there about how it started off as getting together as the whole company, and now it's teams. I spoke to John Fine, and he said, you've scaled the culture specifically so well, which is the hardest thing to So how do you retain the design culture with the incredible growth that you've had and now expansion into multiple offices?

A You know, it's something that we are testing every day, specifically right now. A little bit into the weeds, but it's relevant for this answer is multiple offices. We have offices in Denver and in Vancouver, BC, and people operating really all over the country to some degree for very specific items. But here in Austin, we're, we're operating out of three separate offices. And you might say, Hey, Kurt, why are you operating out of three separate offices in Austin? And I would answer because our space that houses everybody is, is not done yet. And while you go into the commercial real estate aspect of Austin, but we were not able to time hyper growth specifically with the space requirements that we needed. And so we sent our product and engineering team to a location. We had our customer success and support teams in a location and sales and marketing in a location. And that has tested us tremendously. As a culture. And the things that we have reverted back to are our core pillars of the standards of which we have that which we will engage with each other and which we will create success and which we won't. And so I think keeping those is very key as the foundation. The thing I tell people when I'm meeting them for the first day and our employee onboarding and team member onboarding is that really the culture of scale factor is now in their hand. The new people coming to the busin…

AI assessment note: “reverted back to are our core pillars of the standards of which we have”

Q And what an incredible journey it's been, but I do want to touch on that obsession first because we spoke to Michael at Canaan before the show, and he said specifically around kind of obsession and mission drivenness. Do you believe that a founder needs to be mission driven and have found a market fit to build a huge company?

A You know, there's so many different ways to get to success, and I think connecting the dots in history would validate one form or the other. I ultimately think you have to be an expert, and you can become an expert really fast, or you might say more naturally, the path of least resistance is to come into the problem you're solving being an expert. So you either have to learn on the fly and get the quote-unquote 10,000 hours under your belt, or you have to do that process. Prior. For what we're doing here at ScaleFactor, I'm not sure you could be successful not being an expert. This is a very technical problem we're solving from an accounting standpoint and financial standpoint, and then you add in the human emotion of a small business owner and somebody risking everything they've got to wake up every day and be an entrepreneur, and you add those two things together, I would lean more towards the side of being a founder that's mission-driven and finding, really living the problem first is at least the path of least resistance to success.

AI assessment note: “I would lean more towards the side of being a founder that's mission-driven”

Q Can I ask, have you found those areas on the flip side of that? Are there areas where you often find founders think VCs add value, but actually they maybe don't?

A A lot of times it could be the, you know, overvaluing the brand name of either the, the firm or the investor. I think that you have to get past that, and it could be the other way around too. Maybe somebody that is investing in you isn't somebody that you would alter Automally want to, if you could kind of wave a magic wand. And so, you know, it comes down to, I think it's just the founder's responsibility to provide value and add value. And I think that if you spoke to the investors of scale factor and the folks that you even know, they would tell you that, you know, Kurt keeps us busy and I view it that way, right? It's my job to, to make sure that the board and that the investors are continually working for the company. And quite frankly, I kind of view it as a competition for their time, right? They've got other portfolio companies, and I want to make sure that they're spending as much time as I can get on ours and helping us solve our problems. So it's about running a great team and ultimately holding them accountable. It comes just the surface level expectations, I think, either way are where you can get yourself into trouble as a founder.

AI assessment note: “overvaluing the brand name of either the, the firm or the investor”

Q Can I ask, have you found those areas on the flip side of that? Are there areas where you often find founders think VCs add value, but actually they maybe don't?

A A lot of times it could be the, you know, overvaluing the brand name of either the, the firm or the investor. I think that you have to get past that, and it could be the other way around too. Maybe somebody that is investing in you isn't somebody that you would alter Automally want to, if you could kind of wave a magic wand. And so, you know, it comes down to, I think it's just the founder's responsibility to provide value and add value. And I think that if you spoke to the investors of scale factor and the folks that you even know, they would tell you that, you know, Kurt keeps us busy and I view it that way, right? It's my job to, to make sure that the board and that the investors are continually working for the company. And quite frankly, I kind of view it as a competition for their time, right? They've got other portfolio companies, and I want to make sure that they're spending as much time as I can get on ours and helping us solve our problems. So it's about running a great team and ultimately holding them accountable. It comes just the surface level expectations, I think, either way are where you can get yourself into trouble as a founder.

AI assessment note: “overvaluing the brand name of either the, the firm or the investor.”