B2B SaaS Cash Management and Metrics - with Brandon Metcalf, Founder and CEO Place Technology

**Ray Rike** (0:00)
Hello, I'm Ray Reich, founder and CEO of RevOp Squared, and your host of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast. We talked to a wide variety of B2B SaaS and Cloud thought leaders, executives, investors, and people just like you to discuss the metrics and benchmarks they use to make metrics informed decisions. Now on to today's show.
Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics That Measure Up Podcast. We are joined by Brandon Metcalf today, the founder and CEO of Place Technology. Today, we'll be covering three main topics with Brandon. First, prioritizing cash management and cash forecasting in early stage SaaS companies. Second, cash management best practices, including the use of technology. And third, what are some of the top metrics to facilitate great cash management and cash forecasting? Brandon, please take a moment to give a brief background of your journey to becoming a guest on the Metrics That Measure Up podcast.

**Brandon Metcalf** (1:11)
Hey, Ray. Thanks for having me on. I've been a big fan and following what you're doing for a little while, so excited to chat with you. My background is a little bit different. I started my career in banking when I was in school, and after about six years of that, got bored and decided I wanted to move to a different industry and stumbled into the staffing and recruiting industry with Kelly Services. Did that, held a lot of different roles, leadership roles across the country, but I eventually landed at a retained headhunting firm in San Francisco called CB Partners, where essentially I was recruiting senior-level finance folks at top tech companies. Long story short, was there for a couple of years, got recruited by Google, actually turned Google down, said, no, Google, I didn't want to work for you, which was a big decision to make at the time. But I turned it down because CB Partners gave me the opportunity to take over running technology for the company, which fast forward, that led to me coming with an idea for building a software company, which became Talent Rover, which was an operating system for staffing and recruiting firms across the world. I ended up scaling that to nine global offices with companies as large as the Deco Group. 2017, we were rated as the ninth fastest growing software company in America, which is cool. And then we got bought by our biggest competitor in 2018 And all of that experience really led me to creating what I'm doing now with Place, which was creating a software to solve financial operating reporting challenges that you have with scaling SaaS companies, which ultimately has led to to our conversation today.

**Ray Rike** (2:35)
Well, that's a pretty interesting journey from recruiter to recruiting technology to a financial management platform. It reminds me a little bit of my career, where I went from an engineer to a sales and marketing leader. And now I'm doing benchmarks all day long. So one of the greatest things about our career journey is, it can be very diverse and always engaging. Right, Brandon?

**Brandon Metcalf** (2:56)
Absolutely.

**Ray Rike** (2:57)
Well, let's jump into today's primary topic. And that's kind of the increased importance of cash management, or at least the increased buzz and noise on LinkedIn, et cetera, around cash management, especially in today's more uncertain, I call it cautious capital environment. In fact, my friend Ben Murray, the SSEFO, says that disciplined financial management and cash management never goes out of style. We just talk about it more sometimes. So let me ask you as an entrepreneur with many companies and now providing kind of financial management platform for SaaS companies, what's the importance of cash management, both in good times but also in these more challenging times, Brandon?

**Brandon Metcalf** (3:39)
Ben's a very smart man. What he's saying is spot on. It's really how I've always been in my companies where cash just doesn't grow on trees even if investors want to particularly give it to you more at certain times than others. A talent over cash forecasting, cash management was just something that we got really, really good at. We developed all these models to manage cash flow. I really understand what was coming in and out of the business, primarily because we were angel-funded. We raised $28 million for that business and all except for 3 million came from angels, 3 million came from our largest company, our largest customer, so we never actually did an institutional round. We had to be good at cash management because we had to keep everyone updated on what was going on. As I scaled the company, we had eight global entities. Not only was it doing cash management, it was doing cash management in eight different countries with foreign exchange, currencies, and consolidations, and it was a beast. But we also knew the importance, like everything in a business, just about everything, if not everything, cash is always a consideration for the decisions you're going to make, or it should be. You just can't run out of cash or else you don't have a business. You can't miss payroll or else you don't have a staff.