What does it take to transform a struggling startup into a booming enterprise? In this episode of Not Another CEO Podcast, host David Politis sits down with Didi Gurfinkel, Co-Founder and CEO of Datarails. Together, they delve into Didi’s decade-long journey of building a successful financial platform from scratch, discussing both the struggles and triumphs of his entrepreneurial path.
From his early days at Cisco to co-founding Datarails, Didi shares invaluable lessons on startup pivoting, embracing new technologies, and harnessing AI to revolutionize financial operations.
Takeaways:
The Power of the Right Team: Didi highlights the importance of having the right co-founders. He credits the success of Datarails largely to the strong foundational team that shared common goals and complementary skills.
Embracing the Brutal Truth: Didi emphasizes the need for leaders to be honest about their failures and to learn from them while maintaining a visionary outlook for the future.
Importance of Having a Name: Drawing from past experiences, Didi advises startups to choose a product that has a recognisable name and existing budget line.
Finding Your Ideal Market Fit: Datarails achieved success by narrowing their focus to finance professionals who love Excel, aligning product benefits with users’ existing skills and preferences.
Strategic Use of AI: Datarails seeks to prepare organizations for AI integration, ensuring readiness for technological advancements.
Balancing Work and Family: Didi points out that while entrepreneurship is all-consuming, showcasing the possibility of building something significant can offer invaluable lessons for family.
Quote of the Show:
“If someone ask me, I’m not sure if I have the product market fit, I’m saying, no, you don’t have it. If you had it, you know.” - Didi Gurfinkel
Links:
Website: https://www.datarails.com/
Ways to Tune In:
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Spotify:
Apple Podcasts:
Transistor: https://podcast.notanotherceo.com/
#NotAnotherCEO #BusinessSuccess #Datarails
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:21 Co-Founders Matter Most
02:28 Finding the Right Partners
05:47 Evolving Founder Roles
07:28 Five Tough Early Years
09:28 Building Tech Without Sales
13:08 Staying Motivated to Pivot
18:05 The Breakthrough Pivot
20:52 Why FP&A and Mid-Market
24:40 Scrappy Early Go-To-Market
26:38 LinkedIn Phone Number Hack
28:17 Knowing Product Market Fit
30:43 Removing Buying Friction
32:47 Zero to One Million ARR
35:26 AI and Finance OS Vision
41:38 Three Year Company Outlook
43:06 Founder Origin Story
46:25 Israel Startup Mindset
47:50 No Work Life Balance
51:02 Outro
Transcript:
Didi: [00:00:00] we’ve met our prospect and we had to convince them to change.
David: Welcome to not another CEO podcast. I’m your host, David Palus. Every week we talk to inspiring leaders and get the true stories, the ups and downs, the lessons learned, and come away with actionable advice for our own journeys.
Today’s guest is Didi Gurfinkel, co-founder and CEO of Data Rails. Data Rails is a platform that automates data consolidation, forecasting, and reporting without forcing finance teams to change how they work. He’s been building the company for over a decade, but like many enduring businesses, data rails didn’t find product market fit overnight.
Dee spent years iterating and listening to customers before things really started to click. The patient has paid off in a big way over the last five [00:01:00] years. Their growth has accelerated, and they’re on their way to a hundred million in a RR. The company has raised $180 million from top tier investors, including One Peak, Zev Ventures, vertex and Coma, KU ura.
Please welcome Didi to the show. Hey, deedee, thank you for joining.
Didi: Hi. It’s a pleasure to be here.
David: Um, I’m excited. We’re gonna kick it off with a question I ask every guest. The first question, what is the one thing that you’ve done big or small at data rails that’s had the biggest impact? And you would do, again, if you’re CEO, of another company in the future?
Didi: So I, I think it’s the easiest question, uh, ever. I mean, it’s
David: Hmm.
Didi: having the, the right co-founders. I think it’s the, the, the one thing that, uh, make the difference from, uh, success to, uh, to a fellow. uh, we are 11 years together from, uh, 2015 ups and downs arguing all the time. [00:02:00] But, uh, building a company in, uh, and, uh, have fun together.
We are also good friends um, uh, sharing time together. Having fun together. So, uh, I would say this is the 90, 95% of the success. Is that
David: Hmm. How many co-founders are there
Didi: co-founders?
David: and how did you find, did you work together before, or I think you were at Cisco before. Did you work together there or?
Didi: No, we, we’ve met, uh, first I, uh, met, uh, ODed our, uh, CTO. I told him we are going to connect all the, uh, Excel files in the world into one centralized database. And he looked at me and back then I, I didn’t know him very well, so I thought he’s dreaming or something, but now I know that this is the way he, he digest and, um. He said after 45 minutes he say I [00:03:00] am in. And, uh, we started to work together. And then, uh, al our, uh, now he responsible actually for everything, but now he focus mainly on the product. Um, he joined us, uh, a few months, uh, later. And, uh, since then we are, uh, dancing together.
David: Wow. And how, so you talk about, You know, 45 minutes and then he says, Hey, I’m, I’m in. Um, and, and how, how long before you knew that he was the person that they were the people, like how did you date, You know, quote unquote date for some period of time before getting married or it was. Pretty quick. ‘cause I just, I asked that because I’ve, I’ve interviewed a number of people who’ve actually broken up with their co-founders within a year, You know, a year or two years.
Three. And, and most of them say we didn’t date long enough,
Didi: Yeah.
David: know, upfront.
Didi: So, so yeah, it is a, a, a challenge and, um, I came from a software engineering, uh, [00:04:00] background, so. I has, I had the, the, the tools or the, the, the skills to evaluate, uh, the, the, the technical level of a person or how smart, the potential co-founder. So I, I had no doubt that, uh, that or that is the, the, the right, uh, uh, fit what I, um, I, I felt, or the, the, um. The, the, the connection or the friend, the friendships or the personal connection that we had in the first meeting. The same, uh, sense of humor or the sense, uh, You know, uh, uh, maybe the al way, way to look at the world. He said, okay, uh, this is a guy that, uh, I believe we can, uh, we can, run together for, uh, for and, and, and with the challenges and, You know, uh, long way and, and. Apparently I, I was right. I’m not so good in picking people. I mean, I have, uh, I usually, I, I let the, the, the, um, the HR and, uh, because I’m, [00:05:00] uh, I’m very impressed from, uh, very specific, uh, skills and I forget to check, uh, other aspects. Um, but, um, we thought that it was a great success. And then with Al uh, yeah, and, and Al Al also, we had like, in, in the, the Israeli.
A community. There is a, it’s very, very, in the way they, the, the people can meet each other and, uh, introduction between, uh, people and, and out of the blue. Um, one of my, uh, advisor said, okay, AI is here. He just left, uh, WalkMe. He founded WalkMe before he started
David: Hmm.
Didi: and he left WalkMe and he, he’s, uh, looking for a another venture.
And we
David: Hmm.
Didi: together and yeah, it was.
David: Amazing, amazing. I mean, to be together still at this point is, is, um, and let me ask another question now, from the people that I’ve talked to who ha who are still together with their founders over a decade. I’ve had a couple of those guests on the show, [00:06:00] the founders have moved roles sometimes, You know, has, has that happened at Data Rails or has everyone kind of been in the same role from the beginning?
Didi: Yeah, so, so the CTO is very easy. The CTO uh, starts from, uh, doing everything, engineering, everything. And then, uh, focus more and more on, um, the, the edge technology aspect architecture and being like, uh, the advisor for the vp, r and d. This is easy. I think it’s pretty stable. I, myself, naturally, as a CEO, there is, you cannot compare the job of A-C-C-E-O in, uh, the company without revenue, the company with, uh, tens of, uh, million, uh, revenue.
So, so I moved inside the CEO role. Of course, I, I, I changed my, my everything. And, he’s like the, the, the, the Swiss arm. The Swiss, uh, how,
David: Arm.
Didi: yeah. Swiss Army. Yeah. [00:07:00] He is so talent with the execution and operation that he, uh, he built our Go-to-market and then we moved it to the CRO and then he built our customer success and moved, and then he built
David: Wow.
Didi: So he, he is the, the inbound guide. The guide, he, he run the, the day-to-day operation and the day-to-day, uh, projects. Um, and I’m busy with, uh, speaking with people like you, with, uh, my, You know, the company unfortunately, but yeah.
David: Um, so I want to talk a little bit about the journey because, You know, um, it, it’s based on the conversations we’ve had and what I understand. The first five years were not. Up into the right. Um, You know, and, and it took, took some time before you found that, that that trajectory that you’re on today, can you maybe talk about when you started the company and, and what the idea was for the product then?
And just that, that first five, let’s start with the first five years [00:08:00] of the challenging years. Like what was going on in those years?
Didi: Yeah. yeah, it’s another statement that, uh, the first five years was, it was pretty tough. Yeah. We, we started the company, I, I worked in Cisco. Um, I got into Cisco as part of acquisition of a company that I was a COO in this company. Anyway, I, I spent a few years in, uh, in Cisco, um, and when I, I left Cisco with a, a mission to, uh, solve the Excel hell problem.
Okay. It’s a, a, um, huge company. Endless spreadsheets, so many processes that instead of running in, in Systems one on an Excel, it it, it looked to me very even ridiculous. So I said, okay, I have engineering background, I am pretty good in architecture. And I said, okay, let’s, let’s connect all the organization spreadsheet into one centralized database.
That was the concept [00:09:00] and I. Thought that once we do that, everything will, will be, um, will be amazing because it’s amazing, right? You have all the data in one database. The organization has the full control on the data. You have consolidation, you have analysis, you have, you have so many things, and you have huge market.
There are 1 billion Excel users in the world. And you see, I, I already, I remember the pitch from those days, same
David: Yeah.
Didi: one, and I went out of, uh, Cisco and started to, uh, raise money and it was not easy, but it was okay to raise the first money because I, if, if I have one skill is to, to convince people that this is something that I know that, that I do pretty, pretty well. And I were able to convince, um, to early investor that I’m on something. Okay. And we raised like million dollar or so. [00:10:00] And we started to build the technology. We build the platform, uh, two patents, um, take Excel data into database. Amazing, really amazing, very unique. And we had something that we thought, this is the best technology ever.
And then I put the heart of the, uh, salesman and started to, uh, sell. did I sell? I didn’t know. I just get into, the, the, the customer’s office and say, okay, I have, what is your problem? You have Excel, right? Okay. What is the way? Consolidation. Okay, I can solve it. Um, we have a data integrity issue.
Okay, I can solve it. We have, uh, this, uh, process that it’s to, okay, we can solve it. It was like, and it was true because if you take Excel in database, you can solve anything, but it was and end. I dunno. I would say, uh, luckily or the opposite, I was able to, to, to bring or to, to, to win. Um, [00:11:00] some, a few customers from large insurance companies, uh, with the, the, the use case of compliance and some, uh, financial companies in term with a, a consolidation and some companies with the data collection and few use cases, customers, so. We, thought that we are on something because every new customer, okay, this
David: Hmm.
Didi: use case. This is a use case. And, um, but we, we, we couldn’t, uh, grow. I mean, we, we, we, we didn’t, uh, uh, uh, be able to, to, to create any repetitive process. Every cell was a a nightmare. A nightmare. Um, and. Year after year that we feel that we are on something because the feedback from the customers are, wow, this is amazing.
I can do with this, that, that the feedback was super, super strong, we couldn’t translate [00:12:00] the, the, the, this feedback to real revenue. So year after year, and uh, You know, the money is, uh, is, is a run, run over. So I have to go again to my investors, say, look. We are on something here. Believe me, we are on something.
We just need to find the crack. We are on something. So another million, and we raised almost $10 million in with almost no revenue, just by, by, providing soft evidence of potential, technology, potential impact, potential market. And we pivoted maybe four or five times from different, uh, use cases, uh, to other use cases, uh, different ICPs company size.
It was such a long, [00:13:00] difficult, fascinating process that
David: long was this period? How long was that? So in this five year period, how did you keep yourself motivated? Like when you’re in that kind of a period, it is not easy to be a founder or CEO. Like it’s exhausting no matter what, even if you’re, even if you’re doing amazing. So the question is, in a period like that, how did you.
How did you keep going? How did you have the energy to, to yourself personally, or you and your co-founders? Like how did you guys keep doing that?
Didi: I started the company at, uh, age of, uh, 42. It means that I have a one shot, right? It’s not, uh, you find, you find, uh, you find the company in, uh, age of, uh, 30, 35. You have another chance. I knew that this is my last shot. Uh, the only, and [00:14:00] last and only, uh, shot. So. I didn’t have even the, the, the thought in my mind that it won’t succeed.
David: Hmm.
Didi: a hundred percent sure that something will come up with this idea or with this concept. So,
David: And how were you able to keep the team, the broader team, because you had people, like how were you able to keep them motivated?
Didi: is, this is the, the, the, the challenge. And I think that what made it happen, what make it possible is to not run away from the reality and to look very, very in a very, You know, honest and brutal truth on what. Is going well or in more in what go, doesn’t go well. [00:15:00] And when you people see that you are not just envision or use your imagination or just making up stories, but you actually very authentic, very, um, um, look at the, the, the reality. Sometimes it’s tough because it’s brutal, but you look at the reality, but still keep the, the long term or the the, the vision or the, the, the optimism. I think it helps people to believe that you believe,
David: Hmm.
Didi: and once people believe that, I believe that I’m really, really, uh, uh, um, true and, and and honest about my belief. I think this is what, um, uh, give, gave me, gave me the, the, I would [00:16:00] say, uh, the ability to, to continue to, to lead the company even though sometimes we were lost in the desert when we pivot three times or four times in, in two years or three years. You need every time, not only convince them about the new pivot, but also convince them that we were worried about the previous, uh, pivot.
Right. Because sometimes they are still motivated about the, the, the past pivot. And you need to know you spend time. Actually, no. It’s funny. But you spend time on,
David: It. Such a good point. It a good point.
Didi: no, it’ll work. You see, we, we have this customer and this customer and this customer are happy, but You know that this is not the right direction, that we are wasting time and money, so we need to pivot.
But said, no, it’s good. It’s good. No, it’s not good. Why? Because 1, 2, 3, and then you need to convince them again
David: Such a good point. It’s such a good point. Um, it, that lesson for [00:17:00] founders is really, is really important because again, very few companies. Start and then they just go off to the races. Yes, there are some, but very few. And the way you just described that, I think that for a lot of founders, they either put their head down and keep running their head against the wall and their team’s head against the wall and everything because this is what we said we’re gonna do.
And then others are pivoting so quickly not communicating with their team, not, You know, and there’s this balance where it’s. Yeah. This is the reality of where we are today. I love, this is where we are today. This is where I want to go. And I think you get more credibility when you’re honest about where we are today.
And people are like, okay, he’s not crazy. I mean, he knows what’s happening, but this is where he’s trying to take us. Um, I I’ve never actually thought about that last p I’ve, I’ve not thought about that. That once you do all that work to get them convinced, if you have to pivot again, you, you have to.
[00:18:00] Unwind all the work you just did. I, I never thought about that.
Didi: a hundred percent.
David: What was the, because now, now you’ve been on a run for the last five, six years. You’ve been on this, this amazing run. Um, I think a lot of people know data rails. I I know a lot of finance people who use it in their companies. Like, you’ve been on this run.
What was the, what was that catalyst? What was the thing that that changed the trajectory?
Didi: So I would say that if I look at the, maybe a path or trajectory between our pivot, I think that although none of of them worked, expect except the, the last one, but think that we in, uh, in, at least in something from pivot to pivot. Okay. We get, uh, we got more and more realistic from pivot to pivot, and in the last pivot. I think that the, we, we, we made some, uh, few decisions that, uh, were the, the, um, a, a key success factor for this. I [00:19:00] pivot one, we decided that we are not trying to invent any new product. I mean, let’s find a solution that there is a name for it, okay? just value. Okay. Data integrity complaint. No. Give me a name, and a.
Uh, uh, expense management, uh, tax management, a name. is so important, so important that first you have the budget line, then you have, you can, You know how to advertise, You know how to pitch people. People understand it’s so important. And this is a lesson that we, it took us, uh, five years to, to learn. I first recommendation, find something with the name. This is, this is one second.
David: Sorry, on that name thing. What the, the other thing you said I do not want to gloss over is the budget line. I’ve been through this and I’ve been through trying to get people to buy something when there isn’t a budget line. And [00:20:00] that is, I mean, is it possible? I guess it is possible, but now you’re fighting, you’re, you’re fighting many uphill battles, not just to prove your product, but for them to create.
I, I think that having the name and having the budget line is really. I, I thought it was cool to create a category and then you actually start to go try to create the category and you realize you, you’re, you’re doing a lot of work to, to a very expensive work. Timely work. I, I think that that budget line comment is a good one.
Didi: a right time for, for everything. And, and now in the last, uh, uh, year or two, we are creating new category. And this is the time. Once you have the, the, the brain,
David: Right.
Didi: the awareness. Now you can start, but to start with a new category. Okay. Who will listen to you? I mean, it’s, uh, yeah.
So, so, so this is one second. We added another aspect in our, um, exploration. [00:21:00] That one of our core advantages is our native Excel, uh, capability. And this is something very strong. And, uh, and, um, and, and every business user that we have met was very impressed and very, it was a very good, uh, uh, selling point. Now, what we maybe may, uh, did something more accurate. Is that we took this, uh, uh, a value or this, uh, uh, advantage and we focused on finance people. And for finance people, the Excel a different thing if you compare it to other business user. Because finance people not only use
David: Mm.
Didi: Excel, they, also love Excel. And the rest, the, the generic business user marketing sales, they use Excel, but they hate [00:22:00] Excel. They see it as the, as You know, in Microsoft, they call Excel the second best tool. If you
David: Right.
Didi: the, the, the dedicated, if you don’t have Salesforce of you, you don’t have expend expense system. If you don’t have, uh, whatever you use Excel finance people for them. It’s a skill. It’s a skill. It’s, it’s, they’re very proud of their excel uh,
David: Hmm.
Didi: Right. Excel skill. It, it’s a, it’s a, You know, there is an Excel competition in the world. It’s a world champ.
David: Yeah.
Didi: Yeah. and I think it, it’s one of the thing that made, uh, the shift the extra value that now we can pitch.
Uh, uh, users that the, the value, maybe the same value in term of the, the actual, You know, saving time and everything. But now you, you, you pitch to people that actually have some, emotion. Emotion
David: Hmm.
Didi: your product and not just, uh, [00:23:00] um, um. the, the, the, the value of ROI, uh, um, uh, calculation. Um, and, and then we, we, we decided to take the, the, this, uh, platform that connect, uh, excel into a database.
And, um, and, um, decided to, to pivot into the fp and a space. Again, a name. Okay. A name. Um, and we decided to focus on the mid-market. Why mid-market? Because we’ve, I met. Hundreds of customers, and I saw the difference between uh, companies, way they look at Excel and the way mid-market companies, mid-size companies look at Excel, the CIO of, uh, I don’t know, large insurance company.
They don’t want to seek it. They want to replace If they, if they could,
David: Hmm.
Didi: would share, they would replace. All the [00:24:00] spreadsheets in the organization into systems in the mid-market. You don’t have this, um, You know, uh, vision. They own this ambitious. They, they want that thing will work in the best, You know, uh, ROI and that things will, will be simple and not, not to change too many things and, and keep. Walk in
David: Hmm.
Didi: best way. So, so if Excel is the tool, so be Excel. And so this is why our product market fit is, is very strong in the mid market because they, they love Excel. They don’t want to replace it, not today and not in the future.
David: Hmm.
Didi: Um, and also we, we chose the, the mid-market because like in every startup story, we made this pivot when we had like a few months of, uh, runway. Uh, so we had to have like, quick feedback from the market. We couldn’t wait for enterprise sales, uh, cycle.
David: Hmm.
Didi: Um, [00:25:00] and then, um, we had like, I don’t know, maybe 10 people in the company. Most of them engineers, and we have, we had one. that used to, uh, uh, cold call people to, uh, to book, uh, meetings for me. Okay.
I was a salesman with my, uh, broken English. I tried to serve the product and, uh, say, okay, we go to the fp and a, um, uh, try to create a, let’s build a pipeline and let’s. Try to let this, uh, SDR and to be an account executive. Why not? I mean, it’s over the phone. It’s, uh, is more sensitivity to, uh, to accent.
And let’s give this SDR. He is a native English speaker. Let’s give, try, let him sell and we, uh, [00:26:00] generate the leads. We, the founders, the co-founders, we from a LinkedIn, we just hit
David: Yeah.
Didi: connect, connect, connect, connect, connect, connect, connect, connect, connect. At some point, I, I let my, uh, kids every night to connect, connect, connect.
Thousands of thousands. We have a, a huge metrics of, uh, so we will not, uh, we’ll be able to cover the entire market from a, a territories, I mean, how you, You know, you arrange the data, LinkedIn. And I, I let my kids those days. Today, LinkedIn, uh, has the limitation, how many
David: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Didi: back then it was, you could, you could do like hundreds of hundreds every day. So we generate like four numbers from LinkedIn. Uh, I don’t know if, if, if this is crazy, but one of the five people in LinkedIn actually put their personal phone numbers in LinkedIn. Yeah, so if you first connection, if your first connection, you can [00:27:00] get their phone numbers, 20%, even more, 25%. It’s crazy. um, I have 20,000 connection in my LinkedIn, so I have 500, uh, uh, 5,000 phone numbers of CFOs, right? And my co-founders again. So, so this is how we created the, the, the initial, uh, list. And we started to, to create, uh, to book, uh, meetings for this. Uh, uh, Robert, his name is,
David: For the SDR who became the ae.
Didi: uh, is, uh, Robert. Okay? Until today is the number one, uh, salesperson in the company. So it’s a, it’s a great story and he, in the first week, he closed. Four deals. It’s more than what we close in
David: In one week.
Didi: the, the, the, uh, three years in total. Uh, before this, uh, this week in four, in one week, four meeting. [00:28:00] And by the end of the, the month we had 12 or 14 deals. So it was such a strong signal of product market fit we had no doubt that we are
David: Wow. Wow.
Didi: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a, it
David: So it was not a question. I mean, this, this is not, um, the way you’re describing it, which is how I’ve seen it for companies. This is not a do we have product market fit or not. I mean, when you started to make these changes and when you went through what you just described within a month, I mean, sounds like within a week you were already feeling like this is just different.
It just, it just feels. Very different. Within a month, you had already done more deals than you had in the whole previous history of the company. Like there was no question. I think some people say like, I think I have product market fit, and my answer to people is, you will know when you have product market fit.
Like,
Didi: exactly,
David: it’s, it’s a very different, I mean, it’s, it’s a very different feeling
Didi: [00:29:00] if someone ask me, I, I’m not sure if I have the product market fit, I said, I’m saying, no, you don’t have it.
David: ex exactly.
Didi: If, if you had it, You know, so, so, um,
David: Something you said that I, I, I want to double down on here also is the ideal. You really had this ideal buyer persona about going to finance, who had an attribute about them, about loving Excel, using, like, having pride in their Excel skills, like you had that that ideal buyer persona that you focused in on, and then simultaneously focused in on ideal customer profile of this mid-market customer.
Because of their dynamics of how they think about Excel in their environment. And so when you, when you kind of did those two things and you stopped trying to create a category and instead jumped into an existing thing, you really were able, from what I’m hearing, able to narrow that down, do the territories in LinkedIn, You know, it’s a, You know, connect with all the people that fit that profile.
But now. [00:30:00] It, it’s, it seems obvious when you say it out loud, but then when you’re in it, you don’t really, You know, I, I’ve had this experience where I was like, no, I’ll sell to it and security, and maybe we’ll try the finance team. It’s like those are three personas that have completely different.
Everything, tools, mindset, You know, needs. I’m gonna sell to the small company and I’ll sell to the enterprise. Why not? That’s, that’s a good idea. But of course the bank needs something very different than, than the mid-market, fast growing company than the start. You know? And so when you say that, it’s like all of those things, it’s not one of those things.
I mean, it’s, it’s all of those things happening kind of simultaneously where the magic happened. It, it sounds like.
Didi: Yeah, I, I would add maybe in another factor that I think. Were for the velocity or the how fast we identified the product market fit. I’m not sure that there are, well, a, a must have for the [00:31:00] product market fit. But when we, uh, pivoted to this, uh, space, decided to lower down every, the, the barriers, I mean, to, to remove every possible, uh, obstacle. We reduce the price to minimum. I mean, we, we chose the price. It was a seven 90 a month. Okay. That it’s enough to, to, to see that the customer is actually willing to pay. Okay. It’s not $1, it’s not $5. It’s something that they need to think about and we not just, You know, pay just to see how it works. From one, but it’s not a budget that they need, like a cycle of, five, six weeks to improve it.
To approve it. And this is one. And, and we also, uh, um, we offer the monthly subscription. No commitment. You don’t need to take long decision, long term decision. Just if you think
David: Wow.
Didi: see that it’s the right, uh, product for you, take it. [00:32:00] We actually. the market because there were, um, a few competitor in this market, and I know, uh, now we have, in, in our sales team, we have the best, the, the best performers from each of our competitors.
So we know all the stories from back then that we, our name data rails, You know, you were mentioned in the, the, the, uh, competitors. Um, rooms and then offices in that we actually disrupted the market because we came with a super interesting product, very unique approach, and we offered a price and a pricing model that no one could compete
David: Hmm.
Didi: that.
Okay, so this is how we, we can actually, in the first year, we grew from a zero to million dollar a RR. Even it, it took 11 months, it was February until. Uh, uh, December [00:33:00] in 11 months from zero to million a RL with one single account executive that this is his first year in account executives as account executives.
So, so it was a very strong, uh, uh, momentum. And since then we, we, of course, we the, the price is, uh, multi-year contracts,
David: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Didi: 10 times the price and everything. It’s, it, we, we went, You know, uh, um, The, the, the facto that once you have the product market fit, you start, you can, you can build a company.
David: You, yeah, you were in the right, you were in the right to do that. Um, can I ask you, uh, after that first week or maybe the first month, did you. Were you like, celebrate, were you high fiving everywhere? You know, were, were you and Robert and the co-founder? Like was everyone, did you feel like this is the beginning, You know, did like of the next chapter?
Did You know at that time or it was just kind of, kind of business as usual?
Didi: yes [00:34:00] and no. I don’t know if this is us as, You know, the nature of the,
David: Yeah.
Didi: of the, the, the founders or before we spent so
David: I.
Didi: in the desert that we, You know, we look at things in a very. Balance the view, say, okay, that’s fine. Okay, now what is the next challenge? And then we move to the next challenge.
And so I don’t want to, to, You know, to, sounds like, uh, like, but we’re not celebrating things. It’s a, it’s nice, but we, no, we, we are in a mission to build a multi-billion dollar company. So, okay. It took five years happened only now, but okay. We know that this is only the first right? The very, very initial phase. Now we have a, a, a, a company to build. So that was the,
David: Hmm.
Didi: um, the mindset.
David: Yeah. So, um, in terms of, You know, as you’ve evolved now from where you are, and you [00:35:00] talked about this, now you have the credibility, you have the customers, you have the brand, and now You know, you’re, you’re, you’ve, you’ve evolved, right? You don’t just sell one product anymore. You have like, can you talk a little bit about the next.
Let’s say inflection point. Okay? So now we’re five years in. You’re start, you have this product market fit. You’re doing what you need to do to get the, the, the momentum going. What’s the next moment? That’s that, that next turn in the, in the trajectory of the company.
Didi: So this is, uh, the, the creating, uh, a new category. This is the thing. And the way we look at the, the, the market and of course the impact of, uh, AI on this market. So we believe that there is, and our investors believe, and uh, we just got a new investment of, uh, $70 million from, uh, um, a one pick venture.
So, so we believe that the impact of AI on the mid-market [00:36:00] is very. Um, unique because it’s a market that was domain for many years. I mean, we’ve met four years ago, we’ve met our prospect and we had to convince them to change. You need to automate your uh, processes. You need insights, you need to get the, they will stick with the status quo.
I have Excel. That’s fine. I will spend some time and, and we had to convince it’s today. There is no one single CFO who believes that they can sit and do nothing. Right? They know and they fully understand that they need to do something in order to prepare their organization to ai. Right? A hundred percent.
And if the CFO doesn’t understand it, their CEO. We’ll force them to understand and no, sometimes I’m saying it because we, we, we, we meet the, uh, customer prospect. They come to the co [00:37:00] Yeah. The, the CEO asked me to check data rail because we want to bring AI to the company. Okay. This is pretty common, uh, introduction. And AI waking up the market and we meet CFOs that they have. Two problems. One, they have actual challenges of processes, manual work, and this is like always, but they have also even more difficult challenge, which is, okay, what I’m doing with ai, how I prepare my organization to AI and what we are, the position that we have here, it’s, is, is. interesting, I think because the fp and a, and it wasn’t by purpose. I mean, we just got to this space somehow. But the, the position of fp and a in the CFO office, it is very interesting because it’s the only product, the only system in the office of the CFO that [00:38:00] actually own the unified data, the single source of truth, the only system now the CRO has. Salesforce, right? The CIO has ServiceNow. The, the marketing guy has have, everyone has a system that everything go flow into this. The CFO every month needs to go to each system, export the data, unified. Now, when you think about ai, AI can do nothing without data. So we, if I want to bring AI to my organization today before you have data rail, so any unified data, you can actually leverage AI in the system level, right?
You can have AI in your EOP, you can have AI in your, You know, HR system. But if you want to run AI on your business or CFO level data, you can’t. And this is. the, the solution that we are trying to, uh, the, the [00:39:00] problem that we’re trying to solve and bring a platform, we call it
David: Hmm.
Didi: os finance operating system that connect.
We have connection and integration with hundreds, hundreds of systems in, in, in our market. ER PS C-R-A-H-R-I-S, you name it. We have long tail of endless number of systems. We consolidate the data. We own the data and we bring the platform that make this data available for applications, for ai, for And we offer only fp and a product, but also cash management month and close spend management. So now it’s a platform that solve the existing and the current problem of the CFO, but also. Yeah. Now you can look at the future and say, okay, I’m ready. I’m ready. One day, maybe next month, maybe next year, the AI will replace [00:40:00] everything and you will be able to, the prompt will replace the, the, the, the budget creator.
Okay. Or you build my budget for next year. Okay. And you have budget. but I’m ready because I have the data, I have the platform. And I’m ready for any new magic that, uh, open AI anthropic, um,
David: Hmm.
Didi: we introduce. So
David: Hmm.
Didi: the category that we are creating. It’s super exciting for me personally because I was really connected to the, of a, of a, a platform in the beginning.
David: Hmm.
Didi: And when we pivoted into the FPNA. was of course very satisfied from the success, everything but the engineering side in me. Um, I, I felt that, okay, it’s, it’s too narrow. It’s too narrow. I want, want something more to, to, to, to [00:41:00] provide the foundation, the, the, the platform. And now I’m very excited from, from that.
And also it’s very interesting to build the category. It’s, it’s interesting. It’s, it’s a, it’s a slow movement. over quarter. You can see more and more. And when I meet with, uh, some, sometimes, uh, investors or bankers and they mention finances, okay. They use our terminology, but they don’t know that this is our terminology.
David: Yeah.
Didi: okay. We created the category. We start to see how it’s, it’s a new thing, finance operating system.
David: Yeah, so, so now You know, you fast forward, I mean, feels to me the, the, the, the slope of change and growth and everything is increasing. You fast forward three years from today, it’s 2029. What does data rails look like, You know, three years from today?
Didi: [00:42:00] We will be multi-billion dollar company. This is, is, uh, one thing that I, I can, I can see. we are a multi-billion dollar company, and I believe we will be a standard in the market, a standard in the market like that. Every CRO when you, we start, okay, I need Salesforce. The CFO will say, ID, I need data address.
We are not replacing any ERP, we’re not replacing any, uh, uh, payment system. No, but I need that address. I need that address because without data, have. My single source of truth, I don’t have AI. In three, uh, years from now, they will be able to develop, applications themselves. They, they, they will not, they won’t need us to develop applications.
Right. Okay. database. We have the platform, we, we have the data, we have the permissions, the, the, all the infrastructure develop, any application. So
David: Hmm.
Didi: I want to be the standard and of course multi-billion [00:43:00] dollar, uh, uh, company. Um. This is the vision.
David: Amazing. Amazing. Um, alright, I want to transition to a little bit of your. Background. Um, so you mentioned, You know, you, you’re, you started as a software engineer, a a technical person. Did you always know, like, as a, as, when did you get into this? Like when you were really young, You know, when you were a kid?
Like when did you start to, to get into this? And, and the question I ask everyone, which I, I personally find very interesting is like, did you always know you wanted to be. An entrepreneur. Did you, was that something like that you dreamed of from an early age, or you kind of came about it because of the time at Cisco and seeing this problem?
Like, gimme a little bit of your, your, your backstory. You know,
Didi: so I dropped out of school at age of uh, 14. Um, at the 10th grade, I had enough, I couldn’t, uh, fit[00:44:00]
David: I.
Didi: the standards and, uh, I, I left. By the way, it’s an interesting story because until age of 40, I was sure that I left school at age of 40, my birthday. No, it’s a real story. In my birthday party, my mother. Um, share or expose a, a, a letter that I received from a school that they, they, they actually, how they say lay me?
David: You found out at four
Didi: Yeah.
David: you found that out.
Didi: Yeah. They, they, they, I mean, I couldn’t, I thought it, my decision. Okay. I’m not a, but. My parents, they knew that it wasn’t my decision. I mean, the school actually, uh, uh, uh, throw me out of the school. But yeah, so, so I, I, anyway, I spent, uh, my, uh, uh, uh, years in, in, at home, and I, um. [00:45:00] Most of the time I was in front of the, between the basketball, uh, court and the, the, uh, the computer, um, programming. Um, I’m not, uh, any kind of, uh, genius or any kind of, uh, super smart, uh, program. I’m okay. I’m a good, uh, programmer.
Not, uh, something, uh, You know, uh, that, uh, um, but I really enjoyed it and I. Was Sure a hundred percent that I will be A-A-C-T-O. I mean this, that was my dream, okay. A CTO. Someday I will be a CTO. I had no of any kind of, uh, to be a founder, to be an entrepreneur, to be nothing. Only on my days, in my days in Cisco when I spent, um, too much time in, uh, biking my, uh, bikes and, uh, I, I started to think about, okay, [00:46:00] how, how I, I. I, I make some impact and how I do something with my life and, uh, and, um, make it more interesting. And, um, I decided to, uh, to start the, the company, but it’s not something that I, it’s not part of my, no one in my, in my family is a founder. Not my parents. My my brothers sisters, none of them.
David: Do you think that something about being, you think that culturally in Israel with Startup Nation and everyone start, do you think there’s an element of that, that that gives you this view of I can do it? Because I think one of the things I’ve learned from all these interviews that I’ve done is a lot of people say.
I couldn’t have started my company, I wouldn’t have started my company unless I saw this other person. In some cases, it’s their family. In some cases it’s their friends. And so like someone did it and I then have the, the confidence that I can do it, You know? Do you think that there’s an element of that, or the problem was just [00:47:00] so clear to you, You know, and you wanted to have an impact that you just, do You know what I mean?
Didi: I, I, I was hundred percent sure that it’s possible. I, I, the, the, and I think that this, um, um, belief or, or understanding that this is possible is because of the ecosystem here in Israel that you can see it works. I mean, if you are actually, if you, you, you pick the right people, you pick the right, uh, you build the right technology. And you believe, and you are ambitious enough, you can build a, um, an, an amazing companies and, um, yeah, this, uh, um, sense of, uh, possibility. It’s,
David: Yeah,
Didi: it’s a.
David: it’s powerful. It’s powerful when you’re surrounded by it, You know? Um, um, in terms of your, You know, you mentioned your family, you mentioned your kids clicking on LinkedIn and everything. You know, you started this company [00:48:00] at a point in your life. Um, You know, I started my company when I had no kids.
Um, I wasn’t married. I had no kids. Like, it’s, it’s a very different. Uh, it’s, it’s hard, You know, when you, when you have, have a family, a growing family, young family, like what kind of sacrifices did you make? Or, or did you go into it with the very, like the mindset of I’m gonna have that work life balance, which I don’t know if that’s even possible for what we do, but I’m just asking like, how did you handle that at that stage of your, of your life?
Didi: There, there is no worklife balance. I mean, and I, this is something that I say to every entrepreneur or every founder that, uh, You know, I have an idea. I want to start a, a company. There is no worklife balance. It takes a hundred percent of your mindset. Everything else in your life is the second priority.
It’s so. Total. [00:49:00] Totally. Still total, how to say? It’s that it’s,
David: Yeah,
Didi: it
David: it’s all consuming.
Didi: It, it takes every part of your brain. My, my, uh, youngest, uh, kid today, he’s, uh, 16. When we started the company, he’s 17, he was uh, seven, and he used to say that my father to half of what I’m saying. Okay. This is how he described my always. Eh, You know, half
David: Distracted. Yep.
Didi: half brain is not with person that I’m speaking with. Half of my brain is on the, the, the startup on the company. So, and, uh, yeah, this is, um, this is a thing that, uh, a price that, uh, you cannot, you cannot, uh, run away from this, uh, price. It’s part of the game. You know, if, if we want we and say we, the, the, the founders, and we want to say, [00:50:00] okay, there is a, um, a word, or maybe there is also a positive things about it. I hope that kids, when they look at the, uh, their, uh, father, they first, they are proud and also they, learn that it’s possible. And the
David: Hmm.
Didi: of possibility. I, I hope that this is something that, uh, I don’t know, justify or, or, but compensate, You know, the power that they missed in.
David: I, I’m sure. Well, I, you would, I can’t even tell you how many of the people I’ve interviewed on here that the reason that they are where they are is they said because they saw. Like I said, their parents, their, You know, um, worked, You know, did what you just described, press the LinkedIn, You know, whatever that case was, go on the delivery runs with them, sweep the floors, You know, and um, so I’m sure that that’s [00:51:00] the case.
Um, okay. Let me, um, LA last question for you. Knowing, knowing. Everything You know today and all the experiences you’ve had both working at companies, but also as a founder, what is the one piece of advice that you would go back and you would give yourself at the very beginning of your career?
Didi: Start a cyber company.
David: First person to answer that, but a very good answer. Probably a lot of people thinking that. Um. Okay, good, good answer. Um, Didi, thank you so much for doing this with me. I mean, the, the, the, the specificity where you talk around the journey that you’ve been on, I, I really, there’s so many people in that part of the journey that just need to find those, You know, it’s not easy, but need to find those knobs to turn.
And, And so hearing that, I, I really, I think that’s going to stick with a lot of people. So thank you very much for, for doing with me. I, I really enjoyed this.
Didi: you. And if we were able to help even one founder [00:52:00] with their, You know, in the, the tough, uh, period of their journey. So, uh, we did our, uh, good thing for today.
David: I couldn’t agree more.
Didi: So thank you very much.
David: Thank you. Thank you. Well, hopefully everyone listening, I hope you enjoyed. If you did, please share this out with your networks and we’ll see you for the next episode of not another CEO podcast. I.
