Discussing the Benefits of SaaS Spend Management - with Sid Sridharan, Founder and CEO, Spendflo

**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 and form decisions. Now on to today's show.
Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics It Measure Up podcast. Today, we are joined by Sid Sridharan, the co-founder and CEO of Spendflo. Today, we'll be covering three main topic areas with Sid. First, his definition of SaaS spend management. Second, the keys and best practices to maximize the return on investment on a SaaS spend management program. And third, the top ideas for controlling SaaS spend in fast hyper growth companies. Sid, would you please take a moment to give a brief overview of your journey to becoming a guest on the Metrics It Measure Up podcast?

**Sid Sridharan** (1:16)
Thanks Ray for the amazing introduction and thank you for hosting this as well. I'm an avid listener, so I'm super excited to actually be on the podcast as well. For folks who haven't heard of me before as well, I'm Sid. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Spendflo. Prior to starting Spendflo, I spent some time in banking and I also ran the business operations team for a company called Volta Charging based in San Francisco. And it was during my time there that I actually saw the SaaS spend problem and SaaS had quickly become one of the top three spends for us in Fairnog. And that's what inspired me to actually start Spendflo.

**Ray Rike** (1:50)
Well, you already, the first thing I was going to ask you, Sid, was I was going to ask you, you were involved in such a hot space, you know, EV charging. And then I saw that you pivoted here to co-founding Spendflo. I was going to ask, you know, what was the catalyst? And you said, well, it's because I saw the SaaS spend. Was there something else that really motivated you to found your own company versus working in the EV space?

**Sid Sridharan** (2:15)
Yes, actually. So when I joined my previous company, Volta, I joined with about 10 folks, right? We were a Series A company. We were 10 folks out there. It was me and a couple of folks and two of the co-founders. And it was very clear to them that I'm here to learn so that I can go build my own company one day. And they were super open to it. They actually just embraced me and said, let's, okay, great, come join up. But the reason why I really wanted to go build a company was I'd been training. It felt like I've been training for it since I was maybe like my undergrad or something, right? Like I felt that a company is actually just a group of individuals. And I felt like the most happiness that I ever got was to be in a room with folks that have one goal in mind, right? Like I'm just grabbing all those folks in a room, getting them aligned to one particular problem, going and solving that problem. I never felt that type of happiness anywhere else. And I realized that even when you work at a company as well, at Volta, it was fantastic, right? We actually went from CDJ to IPO in about four years during my time there. It was a fantastic experience. And I saw how to build a company. I saw how to manage folks. I saw how to hire.
And that inspired me to say, I'm actually ready to actually go give it a try. That was the inspiration to starting a company. But the reason why it was SaaS spend management was because my CFO and I never got along in all honesty. She used to walk up to me every quarter and say, Sid, I think you're spending too much money on SaaS. Go figure out what it is and go cut it by half. Because I was the one technically spending most of the money and I didn't want to do it. It was really, really hard because we had too many tools. We were spending a lot of money. I had no idea what to pay for them. I might as well start a company to go solve this problem. That's what inspired me to start Spendflo.

**Ray Rike** (3:54)
Well, you jumped right into the middle of it because I've been doing a series on Spend Management over the last 45 days. I'm just amazed at how much coverage and even noisier is in the industry now. The first thing I'd like to start with, with a founder and CEO of a SaaS Spend Management company is, Sid, how do you define SaaS Spend Management? Is it unique to the rest of the industry?