SaaS Scaling Secrets
The SaaS Scaling Secrets podcast reveals the strategies and insights behind scaling B2B SaaS companies to new heights. Dan Balcauski, founder of Product Tranquility, leads conversations with successful SaaS CEOs, exploring their challenges, triumphs, and the secrets that propelled their businesses to the next level.
SaaS Scaling Secrets
Making Business Interesting and Successful with Matt Lhoumeau, CEO of Concord
Dan Balcauski speaks with Matt Lhoumeau, Co-founder and CEO of Concord, about the journey of building a leading contract management platform. Matt shares his experiences from moving to the US with limited resources to creating a successful SaaS business. They discuss pivotal moments, such as dropping out of high school and entering prestigious French institutions, the importance of simplicity in product design, and the challenges of maintaining focus in a dynamic industry. The episode also touches on navigating board expectations, dealing with Covid-related setbacks, and future-proofing products in the context of AI advancements.
00:53 Meet Matt Lhoumeau: From France to Austin
05:05 The Birth of Concord: Solving Contract Management
08:42 Challenges and Focus: Lessons from the Pandemic
18:02 Navigating Boardroom Conflicts and Strategic Decisions
23:39 The Importance of Simplicity in Product Management
26:20 Learning from Past Mistakes
28:19 Innovating Ahead of the Market
30:33 Adapting to AI and Future Technologies
Guest Links
Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets, the podcast that brings you the inside stories from the leaders of the best scale up, B2B SaaS companies. I'm your host, Dan Balcauski, founder of Product Tranquility. Today I'm excited to speak with Matt Lhoumeau, co-founder and CEO of Concord, a platform revolutionizing contract management for thousands of SMBs and mid-market businesses. After overcoming early adversity, Matt graduated with four Master's degrees from some of Europe's top academic institutions and worked alongside iconic leaders like former French President Nicholas Sarcozi. Over the last decade, Matt has built Concord into a sustainable business after moving to the US with just a few thousand dollars. Let's dive in. Welcome Matt to SaaS Scaling Secrets.
Matt Lhoumeau:Hi, Dan. Nice to be you.
Dan Balcauski:I am very excited that I get to talk to another entrepreneur located in our beautiful city of Austin. Although folks might not recognize that as you start to speak and realize the accent. Guess maybe we'll just start with that. What brought you to leave the beautiful continent and come try your luck here in Texas of all places.
Matt Lhoumeau:I think France is an amazing country. It's very beautiful. It. Probably the best country when it comes to, I would say cheese, soccer and wine. But if you want to build a market leader in software, it's not in France. You wanna do this, it's in the us And so that's why I moved to the US 10 years ago to build Concord. And you would've just a better chance to build something meaningful here.
Dan Balcauski:Well we welcome you with open arms and feel free to bring on some wine and cheese as well and educate us. We are very much open to that as
Matt Lhoumeau:Well, the, so studio is not that bad actually, so that part is already covered.
Dan Balcauski:I, I know nothing about soccer, so but the wine and cheese I'm all there for. But well look, we all have moments in our lives. I like to think of them as a superhero transformation moment where our lives change. Our perspectives change almost overnight or an instance, and I call it superhero transformation moment, like your Peter Parker normal high school student. You get bit by a radioactive spider the next day. You wake up and you're Spider-Man. What moment has that been for you and your journey, Matt?
Matt Lhoumeau:I think for me it wasn't really the moment I transformed into a superhero. It was more about the moment I realized that these powers were already in me. And I think the moment for me was probably when I got into Shpo. So that's one of the schools that I went to in France. Shpo, is we the French equivalent of Harvard. It's the top school for political science and all of other things, if any president or minister in France went to that school. So it's a very prestigious school and I, have a bit of a complicated background. Before I got into that school, I actually had to drop out of high school after high school. I was 17 at that time. Some issues in my family. And so I just had to figure out my life on my own. And so I. Didn't study anything until I was 20 years old. Started doing night classes at the university to learn Japanese, did other things, and I ended up at, when I was already 25, so definitely later than most people. And what was interesting at that time for me is that when I got into that school, people started taking mysteriously. I had, I was the same person. I had the same ambition before entering that school and after beginning to that school. But finally people were started to actually listen to me because I had that stamp of that school. And for me that was very problematic because I realized how messed up this you are. You can be extremely smart, but if you just do not have the right. The right background, the right context to get into these type of schools or other places, then you're kind of stuck. And that's really what the, what helped, it helped me realize is I really, I could build companies, I could do all of this. It was already in me, but now people will listen to me and I think, this is a problem that I think is particularly linked to the way France is, and I think America as is very different when it comes to this. What was interesting for me, as I mentioned I moved to America 10 years ago. I got here and no one really knew me. I had no money, no Visa. I just had to figure it out. No one knew the schools that I went to. People barely knew who Nico Advocacy was, honestly. And it didn't matter. No one really cared. What people wanted to hear is, what am I trying to build? What is the ambition that we have? And took us seriously for that. And so that's something that. Was that moment for me in France realizing that I was already that person. I didn't have to go to that school to be able to do this. And when I got very lucky is when I moved to the US 10 years ago and I didn't have to rely on this anymore, and that was great.
Dan Balcauski:There's so many different threads in that story. I overall uplifting. I wouldn't say that US is completely alleviated from that disease. We do have our own. Breed of credentialism here, but I think, compared to Europe, yes, there is I think it, it's probably better here overall but not all, not, no society is perfect. Well, okay, so how do you go from studying Japanese and political science to bring me to Concord? Like how does contract management, lifecycle management enter the picture?
Matt Lhoumeau:Yeah, I mean, the thing is, like I, in my life I wanted to become a diplomat. At some point I wanted to become a poet until I realized that wasn't a job and you wouldn't pay for my bills.
Dan Balcauski:It is very French though.
Matt Lhoumeau:it. It is very French, absolutely diplomat poets. I wanted to do politics obviously at some point, and that's why I ended up working for Nicola Sarid in the campaign in 2 0 0 6, 2 0 0 7. So I just was always a bit all over the place. For me, it was more about. Seeing an opportunity and trying to go for it. And the reason we build Concord and we work on contract management is because between two of my schools in France, I spent a year working for the CEO of the second biggest telecom company in France Company called Free, amazing Company. The founder is basically the French Jeff Bezos. I learned a lot over there. And so I was working with the CEO on different topics and one day he asked me to renegotiate 500 contracts we had. We founded vendors, we needed to save money. And they told me, just find the contracts and tell me what we can do. And I was young at that time. That was back in 20 0 9, 20 0 10 2010. And I was very proud of that mission for the first five minutes because I. It was a lot of money at stake, several hundred million dollars until I realized that he just gave me the worst job of my life. I basically spent six months doing this, just finding the contracts in the file cabinets of the company. This is before the cloud and everything, right? And then I had to spend months reading the contracts plan by one to understand what we agreed at the time, and build an Excel spreadsheet with 52 columns and 500, 500 lines. And then I had to renegotiate the terms of the contract, sending hundreds of Word documents. And so, I was coming home every single night asking myself like, what the hell? Why are we managing contracts manually in what was already at the time? I think a$5 billion revenue company when we asked software for everything else. And so that's how I ended up doing contract management, is because I hated my life. I thought there would probably be a better way to do this. And we built Concord this way.
Dan Balcauski:And so obviously you've hinted at it, and I broadly stated that Concord is in the contract management space, but for folks who aren't aware of Concord, like how would you describe the company today? What's the kind of 32nd overview of what you guys do for your customers?
Matt Lhoumeau:Yeah, we basically help companies manage their contracts entirely online. So you know today, what does it look like when you do a contract? You do your contracts on work, you send it through an email for the revision, and then you use DocuSign, maybe. To do the signature, but that's basically it. What we help companies do is taking care of not only the e-signature, but what comes before and after. So no more documents through Word documents back and forth to, to get a revision of a contract. You can do it directly on Concord like you would do on Google Docs. You cannot automatically create con documents from templates. All of this is entirely managed online for you. And then you sign your document. But once you sign your document, there is so much. It's so many thing that you need to do with it. You have deadlines on the renewal, you do some reporting, and so all of this is managed directly on Concord. So today we serve, we focus mostly on small and medium businesses, and we have thousands of customers in the US but also in Europe and other places in the world. And really the approach that we're taking is we're trying to just let companies take legal out of the contracts. Because that's, when it comes to this, a contract is not really a legal matter. It is just about studying a relationship. It's about getting business done. And so we're trying to help these companies spend less time on reviewing contracts and just more time doing business directly.
Dan Balcauski:Well, appreciate that overview and well this is, SaaS Scaling Secrets, and so I do wanna shift and kind of talk about, challenges that you faced along the way because, it's, I'm sure obviously Concord's very successful now but it always hasn't, probably hasn't always been that way. And any, every CEOI talked to on this show there's just daily challenges that you go through. Some more memorable than others if you know, year review or decade review. But you come from France, you moved to the us, but you have a problem with one of the pillars of the American society. Why do you hate the Cheesecake Factory?
Matt Lhoumeau:Well, it is so that I hate the Cheesecake Factory. I think it's more about. What do you want to eat and how do you want to do that? But I think maybe here, just to explain why you were even mentioning this is we had a conversation earlier and, when it comes to building a company, I think there is different things you can do. You can decide to build a Cheesecake Factory where you have, I think still as today, like the biggest menu I've ever seen in my life. But the problem about this is that you can't be good at everything. So I. We probably assume that it's not that great. I haven't been to the Cheesecake Factory in nine years, so maybe they did better now. But that's one way to build a company. Or the other way is to go more for, the local pop shop, the PDA shop that you have next door and that, and they do one thing and they do it very well. And you know exactly what you're getting. You're getting that, that personalized service. It's just a different experience. And I think when it comes to building a startup, at least, especially in the beginning, you should choose between the two. And I think there is one that you can do. And the other one is rr a bit complicated. So that's why but yeah.
Dan Balcauski:Well, I wouldn't place too much bets that they've improved significantly in the nine years since your last visit. But I am not there very often either, so I can't say one way or the other. If they wanna come sponsor the podcast, I'm open to bribery for future episodes. But, well, I mean, you did hint at it wouldn't be the first time on this show that we've, entrepreneurs have brought up a focus and the importance of it in growing a company, I guess. As you look at Concord's, journey, is there a critical moment that stands out to you where you kind of realize like, okay, we're spread too thin, we really need to narrow our focus?
Matt Lhoumeau:Absolutely. I think for us it was right after Covid. So if you look at Concord, so we've been around for 10 years, right? So we started in 2014 in the US and what was interesting with Concord is we probably went through all the different stages a company can get to in 10 years. We at the beginning for, from 2014 to 2017. We were just building the platform. Think about it, Concorde is basically Google Docs meets DocuSign meets author system. So it's a very complex system to build. So it took us two to three years and we were in pure evangelization phase. No one really knew what contract management was at the time. People knew about electric nature, but that's it. And so we, we had to do this, which was on its own, like a interesting phase after it. We had the very quick growth that we saw. Between 2018 and 2020 and then Covid hits. And we were spread too thin. We were burning too much cash to be able to grow, and we basically had to restructure the company and start asking ourself the right questions when it comes to our business. And when it come, you just mentioned that the question of focus, what I think for me, I realized at that time, in 2020 when you have to make cuts in your company, you have to let go of people at a very difficult time on top of this. You really start rethinking a little bit about the decision that you made and trying to make a purely better decision in the future. And one thing that I Yeah. That I understood when it comes to Concord is we were not very clear about who we were selling to because the problem that we had at Concord when it comes to contracts is literally every single company in the world has contracts to manage. Every single one. So your market is based potentially any company. And as a matter of fact, as when you start a company, especially in the evangelization phase and fast growth, you sign any company that comes to you, you will sign any customer. It's a dollar, I'll take it. And so we started looking at our customer base and we realized that about a third of the companies we were working with were SMBs. A third was the mid market and a third was enterprise. And so. Who should we target? The three of them are basically the same size. And so we try to just keep going after all of them. That's basically what we did at the time. And obviously that's not something you can do. You have to pick a lane, you have to focus on one type of customer and just focus on this. We were the Cheesecake Factory at that moment, and we decided to downsize to a more local mopa store, and I think that's honestly what saved the company. And let us now grow again the right way because we can serve some customers very well instead of trying to serve everyone in a terrible way.
Dan Balcauski:So this. Hey, we've got multiple different customer segments. They have different needs. They're, exp expect they have needs that aren't necessarily synergistic with each other. Like I've gotta do things potentially multiple times or in different ways in either marketing or sales, et cetera. And look, this is a problem that, is really at the core of a lot of company struggles. I guess walk me through like, okay, you've got. It sounded like almost an even split between SMB, mid-market enterprise of, dollars or customers, however you wanted to frame it. But like, how do you go about evaluating, okay, there's needs here, which, where do we go? Like what was your process? What steps did you go through?
Matt Lhoumeau:Yep. I think, what we did at the time is and this is, all of this is before Covid, and so I think the mindset on the market has changed a little bit. But you have to remember one thing is back in in 20 15, 20 18 in the Silicon Valley world there was not that many ways to actually get to the big billion dollar valuation company. You had to go enterprise at that time. That was the playbook. All the companies that were iPod were enterprise focus. And so what was interesting is that. We had with our board for instance, we had different investors that had different pool of view on this. Some of them would tell us like, Hey, you can stay focused on SMB mid market. It's a viable play. Or some other that were, no, you have to go enterprise. That's the only way. And so to answer your question about how do we evaluate that, yes, the numbers, everything was basically one third, one third one firm. So numbers would not help. And then we had more the perspective of future growth. And that's one of the reason we try to actually. Focus on enterprise when my DNA was against it to your point, I think you cannot build the same company whether you focus on SMB or enterprise and to, to your point, it is absolutely. And Omic, you cannot do one and the other. If you do one, you will mess up the other because enterprise companies obviously want very sophisticated feature of configuration, et cetera. Whereas on NSMB, if you start adding this, it makes the whole system more complex and less adoption. And so what was very hard for me, and that's why we didn't really pick a lane, is because my DNA was more on the SMB and mid-market and wanted something simple that people can understand immediately. We had numbers that would not help us choose, and then we had at the time, I think a playbook in Silicon Valley that was mostly focused on enterprise. That has changed. However, I think just before Covid, people were calling that the Postmate effect, which was the idea that you can still be number two or number three. In one industry and still be worth a billion dollar. And so I think things have changed since then. You see amazing companies doing extremely well in the assembly market. Obviously, HubSpot companies like Penoc, for instance, but this is relatively new. And so I wish I would've known that earlier because I think we would've made the choice on our lane. Sooner. And that's what we did. And so that's why Post Covid, we really went through that process. And at the end of, at the end of the day when you look at all the data and everything, the question that I got back to was, what do I want to do? And what was interesting, I think over the first years of Concord is I kind of forgot that at the end of the day, this is my company with my co-founder. This is our company, and we built it because we had something in mind. And we wanted to do some things in a specific way. And so we ended up just, if there's different path in front of you, at least pick the one that you have fun doing. And that's how we decided to really refocus again, the company.
Dan Balcauski:I love how you tied that in of like, your DNA and ultimately, if you're gonna run a company that you hate showing up to, I guess what's the point of running a company? So that's very appropriate. But, I probably, a lot of people would sweep that under the rug pressure from other people who sound like they know better, have been there before. Um,
Matt Lhoumeau:I did that and and it's also, I think it's a good thing for a CEO for a founder to actually try to not put their personal desires ahead of the company. I think you have responsibility and so you should try to do what's best for the company and what's best for you. But what I discovered is they don't have to be against one, one or the other. You can probably actually do what's best for you and it's best for the company too.
Dan Balcauski:Well, it sounded like within this multi parties of, advice, right? Everyone's got an opinion. The numbers don't tell a clear story. I guess how did you sort of navigate these conflicting points of view? Because, I mean, it sounded like maybe some, you had different, very conflicting points of view even on your board level or investors. I guess anything that you learned and how to sort of get, I mean, obviously everyone's probably trying to do what's. What is they think is in the best interest of the company, right? Everyone's trying to, assume good intent. No one's trying to lead you down a bad path. But probably also very strong opinions. I guess having gone through that process, was there anything that you found successful in sort of being able to really, like, okay, hey, like I've heard everyone and now we're gonna sort of move this direction.
Matt Lhoumeau:I mean, literally what you just said I think what I've learned over time, even with your board is that you can just say, okay, I hear you, but this is what we're going to do and this is why. And I was at the time, once second, a young entrepreneur and I had to. To figure out my relationship with my board. You want from the board different opinions. If you have only one opinion in the board, that's not a good board. So it's a good thing to have different opinion and different point of views. That's how you get better. But the thing is, at some point you cannot try to please everyone. And that's what I did. I tried to please too many gods, so I would build a feature for the enterprise that someone told us about. And the other thing on the SMB and that was just a mistake. It was just a. Basic mistake. And so what I've learned over time is that whether it's with your board, with your teams VPs, ize, at the end of the day, someone has to make a decision. And it's okay to disagree. And, it's easy to say that now for me, but once again, seven, eight years ago just fresh of friends coming here to America, that was a harder conversation for me to have with the board. And now I'm having these conversations and it's going very well. And we, I think we actually have. Healthier debate because I'm less hiding sometimes. Be behind trying to please everyone and giving more directly what I think about what would be good for the business and why.
Dan Balcauski:Well, so you've make this, well, you get you build the alignment or hear everyone out and you say, okay, this is the direction we're going. And so I'm curious, as soon as you make that decision, you're like, all right we're, we don't wanna be the enterprise company. We're gonna, we're gonna go towards this particular market segment. I guess what were sort of the practical steps? Like, did you like last year or maybe it was two years ago now, but you know, Airtable made a big, like. Pricing and packaging change that, that tick, they decided to go the other direction. Go enterprise, tick off all their s and b mid-market users. Is it, do you proactively fire your enterprise customers? The strategic comms being like, Hey, we're, yeah, we're not gonna build these, all these integrations, et cetera, that these enterprise customers want. What kind of happens next? And like anything that you've learned kinda going through that process.
Matt Lhoumeau:Yeah, I think when you do such as change, you have to take it step by step and you have to look at what is the most impactful right now and what's gonna have to be managed later. And so what we did, the first thing is, you just actually mentioned it, is it's pricing. At the end of the day, it's changing your website to be able to adapt your pricing and just the customer path to your company. To your target? What does that mean here? If you target enterprise, typically what do you see on the website? Not much exactly. You don't see pricing. You can't do a free trial. You don't have any of this. You have to go through the classic path, which usually will. You will talk to an SDR, and then you will talk to someone else and maybe on the fourth call you get a demo and maybe on the fifth call you get
Dan Balcauski:it is like the nucle, it is like the nuclear codes. Right? We can't God forbid we tell you what the pricing is before we have four, four conversations.
Matt Lhoumeau:It's a horrible experience. I mean, that's one of the reasons I don't wanna work in enterprise because I don't want to get through this. I don't want people to give through this either. But that's what you do in enterprise. And I understand there is reasons behind this obviously, but when you, for target more SMB in market, you have to adapt to this. Pricing has to be transparent. So our pricing is on our website. Our platform is extremely open. You can, we can give you free trials to it. All the videos are online. We're not hiding anything. And so people already know exactly what they're getting into before they even talk to us most of the time. So we did just a massive change on the website to just adapt to this. So that, that's the first part. Then obviously what comes after this product, obviously if you build for SMB not building for Enterprise, and so we actually had to change a lot of things on our roadmap to realign with our target of SMB, and so we killed. A number of development that we had in mind that were more focused on the enterprise. And we even killed some feature that were already developed, but that we knew were not just useful for our target. So we didn't touch that for existing customers, but for new customers, we would actually just turn off some of the features to just simplify the experience. And so that's on the product side. And then you have the existing customers. And indeed, when we did have very nice enterprise customers, we still have some today and. We had sometimes to have tough conversation with them. When they would ask for developments, we would have basically to tell them that we won't do them and explain why and explain that this is what the direction we are heading toward. And basically telling them that if that's not something that they align with, well we're gonna help them find someone else. And we did actually, we did help some customers. Transition to some of our competitors more focused on the enterprise. What was interesting for me doing this is that I was very surprised by the number of. Enterprise customers when it comes to the size of their companies, their revenue, that actually didn't want to have an enterprise grade software. Because in their mindset enterprise means one, it's very expensive. Two, it's probably six months of implementation. It's a complex UI typically. And so we actually had many enterprise customers that. Decided to stay with us because we told them about the path that we had more focused on simplicity on automation. And that really resonated with them. So sometimes you never know.
Dan Balcauski:Yeah. There's so many good things you said there, so, I spent all my time in the pricing and packaging world, and so like absolutely core of the way I approach pricing and packaging is all around segments. You price to customer segments and, you change who you're going after, like of course you're gonna change that. I've loved that part. And then. I spent a lot of my career in the product management world. And so I loved what you said there about, we had features built and we decided to hide them. And I can just imagine a chorus of cheers coming up from a bunch of product management people, but then everyone else being very confused about like, well, you had it built. Like, especially if you're on the. I pick up, I'm gonna pick up my sales friends right now. Be like, well, you had it there, like we could sell it. Why help, help unpack that situation. I could give a long answer, but I want to hear your analysis of that.
Matt Lhoumeau:Less is more. It's just this, it's at some point, you, the more you put on a system, you have more features. That's quite, it means that you have. More access points, you have more problems. It don't communicate between one and the other. It's more maintenance. It's a mess. And when you start really looking into why people use your system, you start realizing that in the end, 90% of the users are using what, 20% of your features. So should you really try to build another feature or to maintain a feature that is used by 1% of your customer base? Probably not. And and especially nowadays, I mean, companies that have been around, we've been around for 10 years, technical debt is a real thing. Maintaining code that is barely used by anyone is, will cost you months of development. So it's just better to remove, remove, remove, remove, remove. And it's funny because, now Concord is working pretty well, things are running. I have management in place, et cetera. But. My job, honestly is 80% of the time just removing things from the, either the roadmap that we have removing. When I look sometime, I'm still very involved in product and design, and so I'm just asking to remove things that I think are not useful. How can you just trim it down to what's the most important thing? And that means, for everyone there is less things to learn. It is less things to develop, less things to design, it's less things to maintain. It's just better.
Dan Balcauski:Yeah. Well, every garden needs tending, right? Otherwise it's just a jungle. And so we need to constantly trim and, uh, tend to.
Matt Lhoumeau:decide. Yeah, exactly.
Dan Balcauski:and hey, it's just 10 lines of code. The engineers could write it in an afternoon is never the right answer. And you're gonna live with that, for the rest of your life. As someone has to maintain it, someone has to fix bugs around it. It doesn't do what some customer expected, and so they want an extension to it, and you're like, we should never, should have built that first part in the first place. So I applaud everything that you just said there. I guess as you kind of think about anything else that you had on that particular,
Matt Lhoumeau:The funny that you just said that I think my developers right now would be laughing very hard because. I was that person probably, five, six years ago that wanted at all costs, that 10 more lines of code and eh, we'll handle it. And now I see what we pay because of this. And so, yeah, a lot of the decisions that I made at the time were mystic and now we're doing way better. And I now, I'm probably the person in the company that is trying to push more and more people to just keep it with what the framework that we use out of the box. We don't do any customization, just make it work this way. So yeah, I learned the hard
Dan Balcauski:look none of us came fully formed perfection. We've all grown and make mistakes, and that's what this show is about, is like, Hey we made these mistakes. This is what we learned. I guess just to wrap up this kind of area of strategic focus. I guess kind of looking back on that time now, is there any, anything that you would've done differently? As, you're talking about, Hey we're spread across too many segments. Like if you had to go back and advise yourself, anything you'd have done to make that process smoother.
Matt Lhoumeau:I think what I would've done is probably I think at the beginning of when we built the company with my co-founder, I think we should have sat down and we should have put in writing why. We were building this company and how we wanted to build it. No we talk about this all the time. Look, the manifesto from founders and things like this, and we had something, but we never really spent the time to really, truly try to put it in writing and stick to it. And I regret this because all the work we did past covid and we had to do a lot of soul searching. We could have just gone back in the end to that initial manifesto, why we were doing this. And that would've worked. And I think losing that from site, I think is the biggest mistake that we made.
Dan Balcauski:I love it. It's beautiful in its simplicity. And I'm sure that would be, yeah, it's, I mean, it's so easy to overlook, right? When there's so much code to be written you're like, oh, like, yeah. And especially, probably'cause it's something that's just in the shared air between you and the co-founders. Right. It's not explicitly written down, but then, you're five years later and you've drifted.'cause you've got, it's been pushed to the back of the mind. Well, well look I kind of talking about product in general, you were talking earlier about, you guys built the equivalent of. Of Google Docs before there was Google Docs and I can imagine there's, any number of those sort of types of investments that you need to make. Right? And you need to sort of understand where the market is going or the old Wayne Gretzky skate to where the puck is going, right? But also you don't wanna skate so far ahead that like nobody understands like what you've built. I guess has there been situations like. With Concord in, in the last 10 years where, you were convinced like, Hey, this is what the market needs, but the market just wasn't ready for it. I mean, and maybe that was the whole idea of contract lifecycle management. You mentioned earlier, maybe it was something else.
Matt Lhoumeau:Oh yes. So many times, and I think, you just mentioned this we decided with Concord back in 2014 to let people edit their contracts. Not on Word, but directly in our system. Like, like they would do in Google Docs. And Google Docs at the time was already there, but no one was really using it yet. Post Covid. Now everyone is using Google Docs. It's not a question anymore, but that wasn't the case back in 20 14, 20 15. But from the get go I was like, why are we using work? This is ridiculous. This it's off offline document. We should all be working on online documents to collaborate on them. That seems pretty abuse today. So that's what we built in the first place and we really wanted to just focus on this instead of building good add-ons for Word so people can still work inward. That was a mistake. Why DID was the right one. And nowadays, if I were to build a company, do today, that's what I would do immediately. But at the time, the market was not there yet. The truth is people working on contracts at the time would still wanted to work on word. And so we had a few years when we were trying to sell a technology that I think was very pleasing to people on the idea, but on an everyday basis it just would not work. And so we had to change a little bit our strategy here and realize that we were just too early with this idea. And we did this of so many of the things on the platform. And that's kind of like the trouble of. Big, innovative without being just out of your market. And that's a fine line right now that we're trying to still to still work. And I think that's the same thing for any company today, especially when it comes to ai. The behaviors of people today is changing so much because of ai. And so you want to anticipate what people are going to do in three, five years from now without really knowing what will that be, and so do you, you have to find that cursor right now, which makes our job very interesting. But that's also why you have some risk and you make some mistakes sometimes.
Dan Balcauski:Well, I, it's such an interesting problem because, plenty, there's plenty of entrepreneurs out there with the reframe of like, well, people just don't know what they're missing, and if only they understood how good our, solution is. Right. So I, this is, has so many different flavors of the same kind of core problem, I guess. How do you sort of differentiate, hey, we're, the timing truly isn't right, versus, this is actually a really innovative idea and we're just kind of encountering normal resistance to an innovative idea. Right. And like, it's, I know it's a, it's all nearly an impossible question, but like having sort of navigated that, how do you think about that type of trade off?
Matt Lhoumeau:The way I present this now when I work with the product teams here at Concord, is the first thing that I always ask them is, do you really think we're still gonna do this in five years? That's the one question that I ask them is, do you think we are still gonna do this in five years? You are showing me something new right now that you're building this way, that, typically something that we other companies have done for five years in a different industry and. Just trying to adapt this to our system. And the first question I'm asking every time is, are we still gonna do this in five years? Think about it. When it comes to contracts, for instance are you still gonna try to build a report about your deadlines? What's coming in five years? Are you still gonna have to like select one by one your contracts to build a report? I don't think so. I think in five years from now, you'll just ask a question to your system through AI and it will just build a report for you. And so I think that's how we start with this type of problems is just trying to anticipate what we think is gonna be done in five years from now. But that's in five years, right? Doesn't mean that it's something that we should build right away. But what we do in that case is we think about the different steps to get there. So if that's what we want to do in five years, can we build some intermediary steps? Where we can already get there on some specific use cases. Just want to prove that what our ID is actually good because sometimes you're just plenty wrong. And two, to try to maybe educate slowly your customers to that. So you validate your idea, you get some early feedback. And then when time comes, you can make the full switch. So that's the way we're taking it now. Just make sure we are not jumping too soon, too fast in a new technology. So, yeah, so it's a step by step. It's obviously very complicated once again with AI today because the way you're gonna interact with software is going to change. And so how fast no one really knows. And so where do you put the cursor on what you do temporarily right now versus is it for the next two years? You don't really know yet?
Dan Balcauski:Yeah, it's it's such a, it's such a challenge, but I like that idea of, okay, we, are we building something that we're not gonna immediately want to obsolete? An immediate could be three years from now in the software world and or two years even. Right? So having that five year outlook, but also not. Understanding that user behaviors are inherently a lot more sticky. I mean, it's even something as simple as, on I'm a PC guy. I don't know what the Mac looks like these days, but we still have folders and files that I put I sort into folders. Right? And there's no need for that in the world of a computer. It's a behavior. We took from the physical world, it seems to work, even the idea of having a desktop right? To mimic a physical desk at work. But those things are, those concepts are sticky, right? And humans are,
Matt Lhoumeau:They are, but it's, it is okay. And it's our job, I think as product leaders to be able to keep that in mind. I think at the end of the day. What our job is to make sure what we, whatever we build, is going to be usable very easily by anyone. And so if that's the type of mindset that they have, the folder, when then build folders, why the hell are you trying to revolutionize something that works very well? I think the example that I take all the time is the keyboard. You have, you are in the us you have a query keyboard. In France it would be. But this, all of this is basically from when, from typewriters. Um, it's, yeah, it's absolutely efficient. And so what is a better way to, to type, it's the BRAC keyboard of things like this, but have you ever tried to learn the BRAC keyboard? I did. It was a nightmare. And I decided to stop and I'm sticking with the query keyboard and it works just fine. And so that's sometimes, innovation is not always better. We just have to find the right, right things for this. But I think. What's interesting, I think what's happening once again right now is you are going to see a lot of change in behaviors thanks to ai, thanks to the way people interact with software. And I think for us, the people that are focused on product, that gives us a massive lever on the future. Like we are literally kind of inventing the way people interact on this. And so I think at the end of the day, it's just about trying something and figuring it out. No one has. The right solution here. And we're really trying to build it and create it. And that's the cool thing about it. And once again, because of what we do, because we focus more on SMBM in market, one of the biggest thing for me is all about simplicity. If you have to go through training to use my software, I'm not doing my job properly. So you have to be able to use it, by the way. But what I always tell people is, you don't invent simplicity. You craft it. And so how do you get to extreme simplicity? Well, if you have a first person that you improve because you're removing things, you're simplifying things, and you do this over and over and over again. And that's why, Concord in our small industry is known for its simplicity because we have done this, because we're removing things sometimes. And so it's a craft. So take your time, keep it iterating, and you'll get there. And like. You mentioned you're a PC guy. I'm an Apple guy. I'm sorry. But if you look at an iPhone, what's
Dan Balcauski:I'm sorry for you two.
Matt Lhoumeau:it, it, that's okay. But I mean, you're probably my age. I grew up with a no Catalyst three 10. I remember the 50 pages manual that you had to go through just to understand how it worked. My grandmother is using an iPhone. She doesn't have a manual. She doesn't need one, and Apple was able to get there, not on day one, even though it's one of the biggest companies in the world with some of the. Best design teams, they keep it rating. They're on iOS version 67. I don't know where they are now, but it's just what you have to do. So you have to make a choice and iterating on this, and that's what makes our job fun once again.
Dan Balcauski:Yeah. Well, and I've got Steve Jobs biography on my desk or back, bookshelf back there. And yeah, he was a maniac for do it again. Not simpler. Do it again. Do it again. Right. And look it's very. Hard to make things simple. It's very easy to make them complex, right? You can get a lot, you get away with a lot if you're building enterprise software, you could build a three arm sweater that nobody understands because you've got a sales team that can, ram it through and help people like, get it over the line. But in, yeah, in SB in your world, you, we have to find out how we make things simple for folks. I loved your. Grandma using iPhone example. That's perfect. Well just in terms of ai, like it is interesting. I'm curious kind of your thoughts in general because, I dunno Davos is going on this week and you've got all the AI companies being like be off at. Satya being, oh, all the workers are gonna get replaced with AI agents in two years. Right. But I don't know, I mean, we're three years into chat, GBT yeah, probably 60%. I think probably US population is, has heard it or tried it, but on a daily basis, only 10%. I mean, it seems like we're still incredibly early. I guess how do you sort of view like. What are people in the AI world getting wrong? Like, I guess, and how have, how is your sort of view of like, how is that affecting? It is, it does seem to be changing rapidly, but I think we're still at like this very bleeding edge of people who are kind of using it on a daily basis.
Matt Lhoumeau:I mean, I think you're right, but I would say the speed of the change right now and how people are using AI is incredible compared to other technology. If I just look at, once again, we do contract management. Look at actually signature, actually signature became legal in the year 2000 in the US and in Europe. That's 25 years ago when was electronic signature really fully adopted by companies.
Dan Balcauski:Covid.
Matt Lhoumeau:Covid. Exactly. It took 20 years Right to signature, which is a very obvious technology when you think about it. Why we're still sending documents by the Post for our contract. It makes no sense when you have technology to change that and look, it took 20 years. So the fact that it only took, what, two to three years right now to see Chad GPT behind another system being adopted widely by. By companies. I think there's still a problem when it comes to the OI right now, but the adoption I think is there and I think instead of taking 20 years, like it took X electric signature, it might take us 10 years. So yeah, it will probably take another five years to really get there, but I do believe it's really transformational with the way people work in general. And when, once again, going back to contract management, what's interesting here is I'm telling you right away, within in 10 years from now in 2035, companies are less than 500 employees. We'll not have legal people whatsoever in their companies. We already see it today with companies that are a hundred, 200 number of employees. They outsource legal for specific important topics, but everything else now, thanks to AI and other things, can be entirely managed internally by people would not, without a legal background. So this is the type of thing we're going to change. We're going to see people more focused on what really matters to them instead of having to go through. Three or four different intermediates to get something done. And that's AI that we're doing this today.
Dan Balcauski:Well, Matt, I could talk to you all day, but I wanna be respectful of your time and this has been a fantastic conversation. I wanna close out with a couple of rapid fire questions. You ready?
Matt Lhoumeau:Let's go,
Dan Balcauski:What has been a purchase you've made of less than a hundred dollars that's significantly improved your life?
Matt Lhoumeau:huh? A very good pillow.
Dan Balcauski:Very good pillow.
Matt Lhoumeau:Yeah, I, sleep way better and this is the most important thing in my health. Now I'm planning to understand this. Sleep.
Dan Balcauski:If we have the chance to eliminate the mosquito, should we.
Matt Lhoumeau:No, I don't think we should mess with this type of things. Let's let the word decide for itself.
Dan Balcauski:A man who has read his share of Michael Creon we did not mess with nature nature biked back. When you think about all the spectacular people you've had a chance to learn from be coached or advised by over the years, has there been anyone who just pops to mind and had a disproportionate effect on building you as a leader to you are today?
Matt Lhoumeau:Yeah, I would probably say Max and Xavier were the CEO and the founder of that telecom company in France. It's amazing people, amazing background, but also just gave me a chance, I was what, 25, 26 at the time. And being able to just be around them to see how they were making decisions and what they were able to do, change everything in my pers my own perspective about what I could build myself. So I would say both of them.
Dan Balcauski:Well, it seems like it's been a theme, right? Of being able to see what others could do, but then also have that reflected back, and I'm sure them, you being around them helped boost that confidence as well in your own skillset. If I gave you a billboard, you could put anything on there for other B2B Sass CEOs trying to scale their companies, what would your billboard say?
Matt Lhoumeau:Trust your gut and write that manifesto down right now.
Dan Balcauski:Write your manifesto down. Love it. Well, Matt I really enjoyed this conversation. If listeners wanna connect with you, learn more about Concord, how can they do that?
Matt Lhoumeau:Concur app and on LinkedIn. Happy to answer your message.
Dan Balcauski:I will put those links in the show notes for listeners, everyone that wraps up this episode of SaaS Scaling Secrets. Thank you to Matt for sharing his journey, insights and valuable tips for listeners. If you found this conversation as lightning as ied, remember, subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes. I.
