The CannaTech CFO

David Yan: for it. I don’t think I started out when I was in college, if I can go all the way back then. I don’t think I started out with the perspective that I would end up in the world of finance. Firstly, I was incredibly interested just in university studies, in economics. And I studied marketing. I dived into marketing. I dived into a little bit of finance, a little bit of accounting. and was sort of just intellectually interested in a lot of different topics. And wanted to, I knew I wanted to make some dent in the business world, but was, you know, like many young people was just trying to figure out, you know, exactly how I would impact that. And, um, you know, I went to a state university based in California, um, and I was sort of trying out. couple different internships, some in finance, some in marketing. I had the great opportunity to work for several startup accelerators actually, which kind of got me intrigued in the startup world. But I wasn’t an entrepreneur at the same time. So really I found my way in and at the time it was sort of early mid 2000s. there was a lot of hiring that was being done in the accounting side of the world, specifically on the public accounting side. You know, the big four, it was, actually at the time it was the big five that just shrank down to the big four just because of Arthur Anderson. And, you know, well, what I found was that, you know, I had seen a lot of people build really great careers coming out of the public accounting world, but I didn’t. You know, internally, for me, I didn’t necessarily feel like a pure accountant. Right. And, um, unlike a lot of people that, that had planned their public accounting journey very, very early on in their studies, you know, I sort of made the decision quite a bit later, maybe my senior year of college and, um, you know, after a number of internships, I sort of thought that I would take a path of ultimately corporate finance. but that the best entry point into that, not coming from an Ivy school where you’re typically looking at investment banking type of consulting jobs, but coming from more of a state university, I thought that public accounting would be a great path to the fact that there was a lot of hiring, as I mentioned, and Sarbanes-Oxley was full in effect at the time, just coming up and ramping as a result of just so much corporate governance change that was. that was going on. I think that part of it and the regulatory side of it was pretty interesting to me. And I saw some of that start to take shape in a few of my internships. So, you know, went out and interviewed with all of the four large accounting firms as well as some corporate and ultimately started my career the traditional way at KPMG and audit.

Rohit Agarwal: All right, very cool. It’s interesting. Not many people realize these mega shifts in whether you think about Regulations or governance that comes in they really have a huge impact on the job market

David Yan: Oh, absolutely. You know, I think that the year that I started, they probably hired a class of. I want to say 80, 90 people right in out in the Bay area. And, um, you know, there’s, there’s two offices in the Bay area. I ended up, I ended up starting in Mountain View, just right at the epicenter of all the tech activity. And, uh, you know, but what, what actually kind of overshadowed even some of the. Just. the start of activity to IPOs, large big box software companies that you typically see in the Bay Area was just at the time, so many companies were going through transition to Sarmad’s Oxley, transition to higher, more visible and transparent financial reporting standards. They were moving toward, some of them were a little bit behind the curve and some of them were standard setters. in that sense. And then we were also coming out of a sort of awkward economy just because between 9-11, the war in Iraq, a number of other things, the Dodd-Compost, which proceeded that a few years earlier, things where Silicon Valley was kind of still coming back out of everything. And then we get hit with all this governance. But it was very fortuitous for me because They, that class, you know, and I’ll say this admittedly, like, as I mentioned, I didn’t start out, I didn’t start out my career thinking that I would be a pure accountant. And that’s the, that’s the sort of model archetype that the big four looks for. So you know, when they, they went out and they hired a class of like 90 people and they probably, it probably would have been something closer to 60 or 65 had it not been for all those regulatory changes and just the demands of the clients at the time. So, you know, I’m a major beneficiary, you know, of this whole, of that whole regulatory wave that took shape during that time. And, you know, I’m really glad that I started out my career at such a large firm with, with really such high standards for excellence across the board. And, you know, even though accounting is probably a fraction, just a sub-fraction of the CFO’s job today as a modern CFO. You know, I still, I still rely a lot upon, you know, just the standards that I’ve learned there. Not, not even from, not from a technical standpoint, although that always helps, but really just from the way I approach my job, the way I, I work with people, the way I collaborate with, with others. You know, it’s, it says a lot in terms of how I think through my work ethic, how I think about highs and lows and, uh, you know, it was overall a very good experiences. just early in my career.

Rohit Agarwal: Makes sense. Can you tell us a little more about your time at KPMG? You were based in the Silicon Valley, right? So were you exposed more to the technology companies or it was a mix of other industries as well? And what kind of really learned you learned in that time?

David Yan: Well, it was almost exclusively technology, probably 95% or so, right? I think what, you know, as I mentioned, when I started out, every company was going through the Sarbanes-Sachs-Wilkes side of things. You know, it was that while that helped me get the job, just because of the hiring inflection. I don’t think that was my main interest area. My main interest area was really just understanding all the different challenges that companies were going through as they navigate. If you were working with a larger company, maybe they were navigating their revenue recognition transitions, compliance standards. If you were working with a smaller company, maybe they had broader ambitions down the line for IPOs, transactions, capital raises that really forced them to take a hard look how they were governing themselves internally, how they were building out processes, how they were building for scale, how forward was the CFO thinking at the time? Were they thinking one year forward? Were they thinking three years forward? Were they thinking right at the moment just because they had to? What was sort of the perspective that each company was taking? And you get such a broad mix of clientele in different stages of… their own company life cycle and stages of their own internal teams. And, you know, overall, you know, as, as an early professional, it’s something that, that you can still reflect on years later, as you think about your own leadership journey, as you think about your own company journey, just because you see so many different things, you know, one year you might be, you might be. in the middle of a very strong capital market. Another year it might be down. Regulations change. I’m personally in a very highly regulated environment today and it’s a very interesting business, right? So overall, you sort of learn the sort of hard business skills and then at the same time, you learn a lot of the soft skills because business is ultimately about people. in the CFO seat, you have to go way behind the numbers and you have to get down into the operations, you have to get down to the people. So learned a lot about building relationships and ultimately leadership at the same time.

Rohit Agarwal: Make sense. What made you then move from KPMG to the corporate finance side? And especially when you mentioned sort of a, you know, broad repertoire of companies and clients that you were working with, a lot of interesting people that you get exposed to. And I was sort of in a similar situation on the investment banking side and then moved to corporate. And it took me a while to reset my mind to be able to just focus on one single company, 24 by seven, right? And so…

David Yan: Makes sense. thing on company trade. Yeah.

Rohit Agarwal: Tell us kind of both how did you make that move? What was the thought process behind moving from KPMG to the corporate finance side of the world? And then did you have to make a similar adjustment that kind of I alluded to right now?

David Yan: I think my perspective, if I go back, you know, a couple of years, just knowing that corporate finance was ultimately what I wanted to do. You know, I think I sort of mentally prepared myself for that transition years ahead of actually getting into a corporate finance or, you know, sort of financial planning seat. And, you know, really it started with just a desire to broaden my perspective and my operating experience in a, and take finance from a general management standpoint, not a comply, you know, you can look at it from a compliance standpoint and a regulatory standpoint, which is essentially what coming from the big four is about. But if you ultimately wanna impact, influence the strategy of the business and you wanna influence the outcomes. of the company, then you’re going to have to get into the operation. You’re going to have to understand the strategy. You’re going to have to go down into, into the model. You’re going to have to go down into how you actually affect change and decision making within a company. So I was really looking for a company where I could, I could do that. And I didn’t want to take a very early stage startup because that’s kind of too much. You’re kind of spread a little bit too wide and you might not go deep enough. And I didn’t want to go into a very, very large, you know, fortune 100 either, which is actually the path of a lot of, a lot of big four alumni, just because I, I didn’t want to be boxed into some, into some, uh, role where they’re exclusively hiring me out of KPMG for my skillset that I learned there, whether it be, you know, working as a revenue recognition accountant or whether it be working. you know, in Treasury or some other area. You know, usually larger companies have multiple, multiple facets of the global finance organization. So, look for a mid-stage growth company that was in the ad tech space at the time. They were actually my clients, so I kind of knew them. I knew the CFO’s operating style just because I had always enjoyed and sort of… in some ways even admired my interactions that I had with him during my time as an auditor. And I really saw in him that finance leadership from a general management standpoint, not a banking standpoint, not a compliance standpoint, not a pure transaction standpoint, but really somebody that covered all grounds very well as well. had a big hand in company-wide leadership at the same time. So, you know, this person is somebody that I have in some ways over time tried to model my own approach off of, at least early on. And then, you know, and then you sort of take your own style and approach and navigate that, you know, as you get further along the journey. But at least early on, he was somebody that I really, really… watched very closely behind the scenes. And so, you know, when, when an opportunity came about where I would have an opportunity, where I would be able to provide the company with the guidance that I had, that I had provided them when I had, when I had been at KPMG and they had been my client and at the same time, build that finance from a general management standpoint, you know, from reporting to analytics, FP&A, operational. type of finance and really wear a lot of hats, right. Um, and, you know, did that for a couple of years and that was, and, you know, I felt like that gave that kind of rounded out my profile and, you know, by the time I had gone through the whole, all that, I was probably maybe four or five years. Into my career. And I, and I felt like that, that sort of like three and a half years at KPMG plus another, you know, one, two years. Um, in a in a corporate setting where I was able to round myself out pretty well. You know, I, I felt very good about the experience that I had gotten there. They, uh, just given that they had gone through capital raises, they had gone through some ups and, you know, a lot of ups and, and handful of bumps along the road as well, so helping them have a good time.

From Synopsys to Womply#

Rohit Agarwal: Makes sense. And since that first foray into corporate finance, you have been at companies like Synopsys, Forescout, Twitter, Wrike, Womply, a good mix of large scale companies, relatively smaller companies, public companies, private companies. So tell us a little more about how did you pick and choose? Or was it more just organically how kind of those transitions happened? And what was it?

David Yan: Makes sense.

Rohit Agarwal: to work in more of a public company setting versus a private setting.

David Yan: You know, um, as far as picking and choosing and, uh, how organic were things, you know, a little, a little bit of a mix of both, you know, opportunities come your way during your career. And, um, they’re going to present, they’re going to present ways in which you can put yourself outside of your comfort zone. So, you know, that’s, that’s number one as if we’re talking about a path to ultimately being CFO, um, putting yourself. outside of your comfort zone, as many times as you can within the first, call it five years of your career, right, is tremendously valuable. Now you’re going to take a little bit of risk in doing so because you’re learning, right? But I think just putting yourself out there shedding the sort of risk-averse side of your, the persona that typically comes with… a most people in finance, you know, just, just to put it, it’s a little bit of a bad stereotype, but there’s a little bit of truth to it as well. And, you know, that, that risk aversion protects companies, but I don’t know that it’s the best decision for your career. So number one, you know, just to reiterate, putting yourself out there, taking tape, putting yourself outside of your comfort zone and, you know, multiplying your resume over, you know, get that multiplier effect inside your resume. It’s okay if not everything works out exactly as you plan, but you have to learn a lot along the journey. And, you know, I, so I thought about it from the standpoint of, you know, CFOs have to navigate. If my ultimate goal at the time was CFO, which, you know, by that time it was, then, you know, what situations do I have to put myself in? What stages of companies do I need to see? What type of transactions do I need to be, to get myself exposed to? And what type of decision making do I need to, um, to expose myself to as well. And, you know, that really guided, um, a lot of the different roles that I had taken over time from whether from mid level through, through senior management. ranks and the different roles that I had taken. So, you know, starting with some of those companies, right, you know, working in a large public company like Synopsys, I had an opportunity to do a combination of SEC reporting and we also had an M&A sort of advisory function and they were highly acquisitive of a company. So a little bit of exposure to the transactional side as well as the reporting side. But it’s a larger company, so as I mentioned, it’s a lot of different facets of the finance organization. It comes with the territory. You see the rigor and the discipline of really excellent processes. But earlier in your career, you’re going to be a little bit removed from a lot of the, some of the more bigger picture corporate finance type of things. So I… I went back to a growth company, ultimately, where I felt like I was most impactful. Worked on an IPO transaction, had an opportunity to write an S1. I found that a lot of those early jobs that I took, it was the first time that I was doing something, for instance, into ad tech company coming out of KPMG. It was the first time that I had worked in finance from a more general management standpoint than a pure compliance one. You know, when I worked at this network security company, Forscout, it was the first IPO transaction that I had directly been able to work on. And I wrote a good amount of the S1 and just helped the company with its processes and its discipline across readying for that initiative above and beyond that. You know, when I went to Twitter, they were just… They were just coming out of their IPO and, you know, most companies, most companies spend a good amount of time preparing for the IPO and getting really mature internally and they were, but at the same time, when there’s a multi-billion dollar transaction on the table, you know, the companies move as fast towards that as they should, as they reasonably can. And so, you know, post the IPO, there’s still lots of work to be done. was responsible for some of the North America accounting functions and had an opportunity to build on people management and process development as well as well as just overall leadership. But, you know, ultimately, I have found my calling in helping growth startups scale, you know, companies that have raised a substantial amount of money that are navigating their business. And that opportunity… That opportunity came for me probably sometime in 2014, 2015, when I was put in touch with a CFO who was kind of, who was their de facto COO and then probably later on in the journey, maybe six months into the journey, he became COO and CFO, but he was running a number of different parts. of the organization, essentially everything outside of some aspects of product and engineering. So very commercially focused and that sort of profile of a CFO who was also a COO was a big draw to me because A, it would give me the opportunity to take on the entirety of the finance function. FP&A, finance operations, treasury and traditional controller functions. And, you know, I knew it would, I just knew that it would set myself up for a path to CFO over time, just because of the wide span, combination of the wide span of ownership and the very broad focus that the CFO, COO had at the time. So, you know, the person placed a lot of trust in me saw that I was able to execute on a number of things at other companies without necessarily having gone through it several times before because I was still relatively early in my career, probably mid-career, right? And took the chance on me. That’s a lot of part, that’s a lot of what you do as a CFO as well. When you, when you’re building your team is you, you want a certain level of certainty and what the person can bring, but you also take a chance in people and you also make a big investment in developing people. So, you know, I, uh, in addition to the hard skills that I learned there, that was another thing that, that sort of is, was a very good takeaway from my experience working for the C the, this, this person is just, uh, you know, how much trust you can put in people and how much you can and what your role is in making sure that your team succeeds because ultimately in a growing and scaling company, you really can’t do this alone. You know, but so when I was put in that position, you know, the company was probably, I want to say like 300 people at the time, you know, by the time I left and Ultimately at the exit, there were probably 600, maybe 650 people. We had been growing at a pretty good clip. It was a SaaS business model. When I started, they had a very inbound transactional business approach, transactional high touch funnel. And then over time, they migrated into the enterprise market with much larger customers. So- helping to navigate the company through that transition and unlock several different vectors of growth paths for the company, as well as build a finance team that I’m still very proud of and many are still there today, that supported such a large organization that was growing at the same time. So, it really gave me the opportunity to not only build the team, but anticipate needs. years in advance, not go way ahead of ahead of scale just because, you know, finance functions tend to be tend to be lean and you don’t want you don’t want to over process a company beyond its maturity. But you don’t but you never want to fall behind either. You always want to be at the you always want to be ahead, but you actually don’t want to pull it too far ahead. And so, you know, navigating that balance was also another sort of great learning from from my journey upright.

Rohit Agarwal: Very cool. Tell us, did the Vista transaction happened while you were there or it happened after you moved to Wombly?

David Yan: Very cool. so we went, you know, we had done a handful of capital, we had done a handful of capital transactions, you know, I joined after, I joined after their series B, we had done some credit and debt rounds as well, which helped us navigate really the cap table very well. And the company was, the company was growing and it was managing its burn. So it was, it was, it was, it was opportune for us. And there was, you know, we were always viewed sort of as like number. number two in the space, maybe number three. There were a handful of, I think there was, if I reflect on it, there was one IPO at the time, there were some large capital transactions, and there was always a healthy amount of private equity interest in Wrike, as well as strategic opportunities, but ultimately the company exited to Vista Equity Partners. You know, that, you know, my next journey after that was with a company called Womply, which, which was a growth company, but they would, they were P E, you know, they, they were P E backed by Sageview Capital. What was very, very unique about, about a Womply is, is just that they were in some ways, they were able to make SMB SaaS businesses work very well. And, um, you know, just from a from an operating model standpoint, a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of software companies sort of shy away from the SMB market, just because the economics, the unit economics, as well as the total economics are very hard to master. And the reason that is, is because churn is typically very high. Small businesses, you know, tend to go out of business at a faster clip and they tend to view software purchases very transactionally. So, you know, the long-standing relationships are not always there. And the transaction, and just at the price points, you know, it’s easy to switch. So, you know, if you think about traditional SMB or, you know, their churn tends to be higher than average. Cost of customer acquisition tends to be, it’s either very predictable or it’s very unpredictable. And it can take a good amount of finessing to work, but this company here, this company, Womply, they had a mission to serve a really horizontal scope of small business owners, their addressable market is probably over a million small businesses within the US. So a very wide TAM and a very wide distribution, but we nailed the economics and that was really critical to that company. So I brought it with myself by this time in my journey. I had… worked with high growth SaaS companies that had both spanned SMB as well as enterprise, large transactions, right? And really everything kind of in between the inflection point and the sort of transition point, excuse me, you know, as you go through from one to the other. But you know, it’s, it’s the SaaS is like, I’ve also had the opportunity to see SaaS business, the SaaS business models evolve. quite a bit, you know, just over my, the course of my career. And, you know, it’s been quite interesting.

Joining Treez and the cannabis market#

Rohit Agarwal: We’ll certainly touch a lot more upon the SMB SAS dynamics once we talk more about Treez. But why don’t you tell us how the move to Treez happened and maybe introduce Treez to the audience?

David Yan: What’s up? So Treez, we are the technology platform and backbone of the state legalized cannabis industry. So cannabis is legalized in 39 or 40 of the 50 US states. And there are probably 24 or so of those are like recreational markets. And then the remainder other medicinal or some combination of recreational and medicinal. And, you know, it’s, it’s a really intriguing industry. One, firstly, it pulls me way back to my roots of just being in a very, very highly regulated industry, but in a different way, because, because if you have to remember it’s regulated at the state level, um, the industry has been around for well, the state legalized industry has been around for well over a decade, but each state market is very, very different. It’s. It’s dynamic, it’s changing. It is, um, it is interesting at many different levels, you know, uh, intellectually, operationally and culturally, right. It it’s so, you know, there’s an element of fun and it’s also, it also requires a, a high amount of grit is what I would say, just because the industry is, it goes through so much change. And my job as CFO, which is my first CFO position, which I’ve been in the seat for just about almost five years, going on five years now. But it’s overall a fascinating company. We serve the retailers in the space. There’s approximately 8,000 retailers in the US, ranging from very small businesses to large… large multi-state, multi-store retail operators that span across the country, some public, mostly privately held businesses. But to your question as how I ended up here, I took a call. I was intrigued by the opportunity. I had, by now I had been in a very heavy VP of finance seat twice where I had owned finance and a little bit more for, you know, two times. I, you know, I had both, in both cases, I had worked for a CFO who was also operating as the COO. Today, one of them is a CEO. And so that gives you a perspective of the type of leader that I had always, that I, you know, throughout my career that I had. always wanted to work for and learn from. And, you know, I just felt like it, I really felt like it was my time to, to take on the challenge, um, I’ve been in the position for five years had an opportunity to, to do two capital raises for them to see the company through, you know, over five X of growth execute upon a few transactions, as well as really get into the operations of the company. You know, so that’s, that’s sort of the internal side of it, but But what intrigued me about the opportunity was the emerging industry, the fact that they too have to make small business SaaS work, that they have had and have since has materialized a very major component, data assets that are core to the company. And that their vision was a little bit broader than SaaS. We have a combination of SaaS and FinTech payments in… the cannabis industry is very complex, it’s very highly regulated, but it’s also a very meaningful pain point for retailers and it’s a very meaningful recurring revenue stream for Treez. So it really serves the industry very well across the board. So when you combine sort of SaaS, FinTech, data, right? I sort of… I felt like the business model was compelling. The market opportunity is compelling. It’s incredibly tough to figure out. And I think, I’m very proud that we’re one of the companies that have sort of figured out exactly how to navigate across this market, but it has incredibly high barriers to entry. I think what’s so unique about the company. outside of the fact that we serve cannabis, which is still intriguing to some in 2023, but is just that when you look at a traditional startup opportunity, like let’s say I go back to the first startup that I worked for, which was an ad tech, conversations are always like, okay, well, when is Facebook going to do this or when is Google going to do this or when is very large player going to come do this. I think we are in cannabis, we don’t really have a whole lot of conversations on a day-to-day basis about when is Oracle or when is NetSuite going to come in and build ERP for the cannabis industry. I don’t think that, I wouldn’t say that they would never. do that, right? But that day-to-day overhang of a threat isn’t as present. And we’re very much a startup industry, all the can of tech companies in this space, which interestingly, there are some public companies, but nevertheless, I consider them to all be startup and growth companies. We have hit a certain level of scale and we have hit a certain level of maturity that we are continuing to build upon and grow. But we’re still very much in the startup market.

Rohit Agarwal: Very interesting. So if I understood the product accurately, so it’s basically a CRM plus a financial management ERP solution plus of course the front of the reception fintech checkout solution all packaged in one specifically for the cannabis retailer

David Yan: that’s a fair way to articulate it really. We’re a point of sale, right? So at our, we’re a point of sale first at our core. What we do is we help our operators manage their business. So we provide the technology platform. That’s the point of sale. It’s the FinTech. It’s, we have. We have some elements of e-commerce. What it is, it is also an ERP light and we have tremendous data assets and, uh, retail analytics that help retailers operate their business. But, you know, when I say point of sale, you know, most people think the first analogy you’ll go to is like, okay, is it, is it like a cash register? Is it like, is it, is it just like square? And, and, you know, it’s, it’s a lot more. complex than that in our industry first just because of the regulations, you know, every piece of inventory has to be tracked and traced through the system. Everything has every record has to be kept detailed records have to be kept and recorded up to the state because it’s a state regulated market. And so it’s all it’s all there’s a lot more compliance to the point of sale. than a traditional cash register. So, you know, it’s much more than that. I think that that’s the sort of first notion I try to dispel when I tell people what we do is if they bring up like cash register, when you talk about point of sale, it’s so much more than that. But for simplicity sake, we can call it a point of sale. And, you know, but it’s ultimately the technology backbone behind how a retailer operates their business.

Rohit Agarwal: Very interesting. Can you give us some flavor in terms of why every state has their own regulations in this industry, and there is nothing at the federal level? Is it all just politically inspired, or there is something else to it as well?

David Yan: Well, a mix of both. Well, firstly, it’s, you know, cannabis is state legalized today. So we are in a position where the federal government still considers cannabis to be a schedule one drug, which what that means is that it’s going to be classified with the worst substances that can be out there. You know, there’s… there are proposals in place for that to be reclassified and we hope to see some movement soon. But, you know, we, you know, at Treez, we really operate our business to help our retailers across the regulatory environment, no matter what state it’s in. And right now it’s at a state regulated market simply because it’s not federally acknowledged. And so, you know, each state will take their… different approach for how they want compliance to happen, how they want legalized sales of cannabis to happen in their market. So we help our operators comply with that in a seamless way and help them so that they can focus on their business. Highly regulated market overall and unique by state. I think that there are some states that are more similar to each other than others, and that in some ways makes it a little bit easier. There are very good frameworks out there. For example, in California, we have close to 40% of the overall market share, and that’s the largest legal market in the world. We have significant market share in a number of other states. And we tend to, as an approach, we tend to go in and dedicate ourselves to very important states, tend to focus on cam dynamics, ideal customer profile, the economics of each state, as well as make sure that we have really, really good product market fit in the markets that we operating. And so, you know, that’s all part of the journey that we have to navigate as a growth startup, which is to figure out the capital investment and the long-term investment thesis for each of the markets. You know, if you kind of, in some ways, go into early, the economics might be difficult, the regulations could be changing if you go in too late. You missed the opportunity. You’re not there for customers that are expanding across markets. So it’s a very delicate balance and and, you know, it’s a very delicate balance and, you know, a very good case study every day that comes across the CFO’s desk, as well as our entire executive staff.

Funding a cannabis-tech company#

Rohit Agarwal: Very cool. Let’s talk about, you said during your time, you have done a couple of funding rounds. I would imagine it has gotten easier over time for the company to land funding rounds. It perhaps wasn’t as easy at the very starting, and to be able to raise like a seed or a series A because the industry itself might not be fully formed, right? And so…

David Yan: All right.

Rohit Agarwal: Maybe tell us if you have any anecdotes from what you have learned about the company in terms of how were the prior or the earlier rounds and then how kind of easier or harder or different it ended up in the two rounds that you have led for the company.

David Yan: It’s a great question. When if I start back to when I started, well, the company had already completed its series long before I joined. But, you know, at that, you know, from the perspective of my founder at the time, right, he’s our CEO. You know, early on in the industry, there was a, there are VCs and investors. that are specifically focused on the long-term investment thesis of cannabis. And they see this as a long-term circular trend that extends beyond the US, but with the US setting the standard. And really, it starts with that group. And these are smaller to midsize funds that are making a bet on the industry. And at the time that I started, well, we weren’t raising capital right away when I started. It was a little bit further down the journey. But at the time that I started, there weren’t many traditional investors that had a view on the space just yet. Many of them were still sort of just learning the market. And I think that there was a lot of inbound interest from the standpoint of… of just pure research like what do you guys do? What’s the market about? What’s the overall opportunity? And I think, but it’s very clear that in 2019, 2020, traditional investors were very much in the wait and see type of mode as well as, and just sniffing things out. And then I think if we move, If we move into 2020, 2021, you know, there’s starting to be some real interest and real diligence that’s done, that’s done in the space. And at the same time, you know, I might just step back and mention the stigma of the industry, which, you know, I think has an unwarranted reputation. But, but the stigma of the industry just from the general population, even in a five year time span. has anecdotally has gone down sequentially. Gosh, I want to say at least 30 to 50 percent, you’re here. That’s anecdotal, and maybe some of it is just because I’m very immersed in the industry today. But I view that as a very major positive trend that will overall guide the how how the US thinks about cannabis. And we’re still somewhat a ways from federal legalization that’s not regulated at the state level. But I see that as a positive trend. And you see that in the investor sentiment as well. I think that there were a lot of investors that really want to make a bet in the industry, but don’t know exactly. how to articulate the opportunity or how to think about it in absence of a federal landscape. So that’s part of the job at CFO is to articulate the opportunity, articulate the opportunity, articulate the risk, articulate the growth path above and beyond just the traditional Here’s what our SaaS economics looks like. Here’s our financial, here’s our data room. But the long-term thesis is really important to highlighting that. But ultimately, our Kana Tech companies took a handful of paths with their financing. And there are some that predominantly stayed within the investor network that they know, which is the… investors that exclusively focus on this industry. A. B. sort of coinciding with 2021-2022 SPACs were a big thing. So we did see some companies that, and remember I said all these are still growth startups, but quite a few companies took a SPAC path, which was a path to liquidity and a path to capital. It unlocked some M&A opportunities for them because of the capital and the transaction. But I do feel that there was a rush, and I don’t mean this just for our industry, I mean this in general, there was a rush for many companies to be public. And when you’re below a certain scale, you don’t want to do that just to do that. And I don’t think it’s not one of those things that you just check the box to check the box. that would possibly be equivalent to getting married to get married. You know, right? I think you just sort of have to find the right person. You have to find the, you have to find the, it has to be at the right time in your life. Right? And so, so there’s the SPACs. And then, and then, you know, for, for a very, a very select group of companies, including Treez. we were able to attract investment from traditional investors that were really focused on vertical SaaS, combination of vertical SaaS, fintech opportunities or traditional software. And they really saw a long-term opportunity in what we were doing. They’ve been following the sector for probably close to a decade or so and was just waiting for who are the winners are going to be? When is the risk level? tolerable for them to make that first investment. Where do they see the longer term secular trends going? And, you know, but that’s all the macro stuff. Ultimately comes down to which company are you investing in. And that still ultimately comes down to the fundamentals of the company and what the company’s track record has been. And, you know, we are very fortunate to have built a great SaaS business, again, with data assets and elements of FinTech that have driven our growth. over the past, at the time, three and a half years that have led to our series C in investment. So overall capital raised today to Atreus is about $79 million, and we are proud to be a leader in the industry.

Treez vs Womply vs Wrike: the metrics quickfire#

Rohit Agarwal: Very cool. I love the kind of the secular trends in terms of regulatory industry Closest to money product right your appos system. So closest to money and you kind of really Enable the transaction as well as given the structural Kind of formulation of the industry it kind of automatically leads to very low competition for someone like Treez. So Super awesome. I would like to play a quick game with you where you have to choose which one of Treez, Womply and Wrike has the best metric. I’m going to give you five different metrics and you have to choose which company has the best of that metric, right?

David Yan: The best metric as in who had the best number or who? Okay.

Rohit Agarwal: who has the best number on that metric. Okay, so gross profit, Treez, whomply, rike, who has the best gross profit.

David Yan: Um, that would be right. payback, that’s going to be treat. We pay back incredibly quickly. It’s the duality of our SaaS and Fintech that pays back.

Rohit Agarwal: Uh, churn.

David Yan: turn. Right.

Rohit Agarwal: Okay? Average revenue per customer.

David Yan: average revenue per customer, that’s going to be Treez. We have a lot of uniformity in our ICP, and our average revenue per customer is very predictable.

Rohit Agarwal: gh as well.

David Yan: Yes, yeah. And at Ryke, I think, you know, we have a lot of SMB and then we have some enterprise. We had a healthy mix of enterprise as well. So it’s more of a wide distribution of deals. So the average is less precise. LTV to CAC is going to be Treez.

Rohit Agarwal: All right. So now I’m curious. You said, rike for gross profit as well as churn. I would have imagined for someone like Treez in such kind of a structural advantaged market, the churn would be quite low, like really almost closer to the best-in-class enterprise churn. So can you demystify that for me in terms of why would you say that churn is better at rike versus Treez?

David Yan: I think we well, so at Treez, we still deal with a lot of startup small business operators. We, you know, because we sell to retail and, you know, many, many of the operators are new in the business. And sometimes, unfortunately, just doesn’t the actual business doesn’t work out for them. And then and then there’s other churn reasons as well. But that’s going to be that’s going to stand out. It’s just. It’s just the small business dynamic of it. Of course we do have a SMB or transactional element of Wrike as well, but those are still within, those are still largely within larger companies because it’s a project management. It’s a work, it’s a work management for collaboration systems. So even if it’s a, even if you look at the smaller end of the deals, they’re still going to be born from larger companies. It might be like an engineering team or a marketing team. that is using the product with, but it could be within a large, a very large organization that has land and expands. So there’s different turn dynamics with that type of profile as well, but small businesses, if you think about just a structurally day and just their life cycle, there is a predictable clip of when they go out of business. And that’s… that’s just part of the environment that we operate in.

Defining the modern CFO#

Rohit Agarwal: OK, very helpful. I’m curious to know one more thing on the SMB SaaS side. So I’m going to go ahead and start Uh… was about to ask. Never mind, it’ll come to me. I had it in my mind while you were finishing the, but we’ll come back to it. Why don’t we move ahead? All right, I think all that sounds really good, David. Why don’t we move on and talk a little about the modern CFO? Over time, you must have seen a lot of different CFOs and the role has certainly evolved as well. What has been your experience in terms of the evolution of the role of the CFO? And how do you think about the role of the modern CFO right now?

David Yan: Good. Great question. I think, you know, by the time I started my career, I feel like most CFOs were strategic CFOs already. Right. You know, other than the fact that they got hit, they all got hit with massive compliance stuff from Sarmane’s Oxley in the early to mid 2000s. But I think that, you know, there’s a lot of talk, you know, if you just, whether you read articles or if you talk to you know, a 30, 30 year, 40 year CFO veteran, you know, there’s a lot of talk of the transition from like the compliance focused accounting CFO who traditionally came out of the straight from the controller’s office, right? To one that’s focused on, on sort of a forward looking view. You know, I like to say that by the time I started my career, most were already along that continuum of making either, either day they were always forward, they were ready for thinking or. they were in the process of their finance functions were in the process of making that sort of transition. So, I think that that’s very much table stakes. A lot of people I think would answer just that, hey, you need to be, a modern CFO has to be forward thinking they have to be a good partner to the business in addition to just the sort of compliance and reporting responsibilities. But I think that both are incredibly table stakes. So, you know, I would like to elevate the definition of, of the modern CFO to really being the nexus point between the company’s strategy, its capital investment, as well as, as operations. And, you know, I’ll add another element here, which is, which is people. You have to, you know, in my, in my current role, I also oversee people as well as some elements of FizzOps and the people element of it is something that I don’t think a lot of people would necessarily think connects well to the CFO office. But I think, I personally think that at least for me, I think it’s really important. In addition to the numbers, in addition to everything else that a traditional CFO normally deals with. Number one, it’s going to be, it’s in almost every company, it’s going to be your number one investment. From a capital standpoint, from a time standpoint within the organization. So, you know, making sure you have the right level of talent, making sure you have you, you make the right level of investment in your, in the employee base and that you’re growing that talent is very, very important. But, you know, ultimately the role of CFO is a combination of making sure that the company can see around the corner in all aspects. That to me stands out as the role of CFO. The company should never be surprised with things that are happening. You should always help the rest of the executive staff and your CEO and your board see around the corner for what risks are coming. and how you might navigate against that and how that’s ultimately going to impact our ability to execute on either the operating plan or the company’s longer term strategy. You want to be able to see well ahead of the curve. You have to sort of be the most mature person in the room. You’re not going to be the most creative product leader. That’s a different archetype. You’re not going to be… the visionary of the company, but you have to help the company see ahead of the corner, whether that’s 12 months, whether that’s 18 months, 24 months, or whether that’s just around the corner on a short-term project plan. Whatever that might be, your job is to help the company navigate that and mitigate risk without… without reflexively diminishing the opportunity. And that’s a delicate balance because, you know, it’s one thing to see around the corner and say like, here are the 75 things that could go wrong, but that’s not your job either, right? I think that that’s being a naysayer. So you have to preserve the opportunity that is inherent in the CEO’s vision. and manage that within a certain level of risk and help the company develop the right goalposts for operationally and then track to it from a metrics standpoint and make sure that the company is adequately prepared for it from a maturity process as well as discipline standpoint. And that’s all and you have to navigate that all within likely some very tight resources just because we are a growth company and we are investor-backed, right? So it’s that sort of delicate dance that I think is a skill set of a modern CFO and which is ultimately you have to capture the opportunity. That’s why the company was founded, right? And that’s why investors have placed a bet in this company. Um, you know, when there and every startup has a number of unknowns, every startup investment opportunity has a healthy amount of risk inherent in it. But so, so you have to help preserve that preserve that opportunity and accelerate it as well without blindly throwing money at it and without, uh, reflexively diminishing the opportunity, because I think that, you know, if you, if you, if you don’t hit the right balance, then. those two are going to happen. You’re either going to waste capital and once the capital is gone, it doesn’t come back. Right? And or you’re going to reduce the scale of the opportunity and that’s not the job.

Rohit Agarwal: I love that. It’s almost being the Sherpa navigating the company to reach its full potential. Makes a ton of sense. Tell us how has the integration of advanced technology and data analytics transformed the finance function in your experience?

David Yan: of the technology. it’s critical. You really, you know, shifting to internal finance operations, right? You really have to build the finance function and, you know, I think of it sort of as a pyramid. And when I say pyramid, I don’t mean a hierarchical pyramid because, you know, we’re a flatterer organization and I tend to run things, you know, without multiple, multiple layers, although we do have layers of management. But I think of it as a pyramid in that at the very bottom layer, you have to have the operations, you have to have the finance operations. If you don’t have that, you’re not going to have the accounting. If you don’t have the accounting, you’re not going to have data integrity. And if you don’t have data integrity, you’re not going to be able to do financial planning. And if you don’t have the financial planning, and then above the financial planning is analytics. and insights. So you really have to create a team and navigate systems and data that can sort of compartmentalize that all within that meets the sort of maturity of your business. And I’ll call it the current maturity plus give it a one year outlook. If you’re going to be doing something like an IPO, you’re probably going to have to look past one year. But if you’re not at that scale yet, I think current state plus one year is all, and being one year advanced of where the median company would fall in your stage is probably a reasonable benchmark. That way you’re not expending too much capital and getting ahead of your skis, but that you’re always in a position where the finance functioning can lead from the front. And that’s really what it’s about. If you find yourself just at the average or behind average, then you’re going to want to move, you’re going to want to make that investment and move along to continue it because that’s, that’s a finance function that cannot leave from the front, that’s a finance function that will be giving you information late. They might have one element of the company of the finance function nailed. Like they might have the accounting nailed, but they don’t have the planning or that they have the planning, but it’s not rooted in great actuals. Or that they have. financial planning that is very gap-based, but it might not have the deep analytics that’s necessary to guide the company through the sorts of things that companies go through when they advance their business model or change it or go through transitions, which many startups often have to encounter whether they acknowledge it or not, right? So… So really, it comes down to data, but it’s not about raw data. It’s about insights. So you have to start with what insights you need to run the business one year forward or a little bit more, right, again, depending on your scale, and work backwards into what systems, what processes, and what team structure would best help you get to that state. And, and you know, when you, when you’re armed with that level of information, you’re going to, um, along with, you know, good business judgment, you’re going to be in a position where you can help the company see around the corner, where you can help them, help them identify opportunities, where you can help them mitigate unnecessary risk, not all risk, but unnecessary risk relative to the business strategy. Um, and you know, if I, if I. If I break it down into several components, firstly, it’s the team. It’s not even the systems. It’s not even the reporting systems and the ERPs and all that stuff. I think that I’ve gone through dozens of system transitions over the course of my career and I’d like to say I probably have like a 80% success rate. Some systems are. oversold, but I really think that it starts with the team that you have and that the team that you can build and grow over time. A really solid FP and A and accounting personnel, if you have those two functions nailed, you’re probably, I want to say you’re… you’re probably 70% of the way there. And then from there, it’s your systems, it’s your processes, it’s how you choose to architect those systems as well. I think it is very important. I think that a lot of finance professionals sort of jump to, the reflexive answer is. We need systems to do all this stuff. Well, yes, you do. You absolutely do. But have you, have you dive deep to understand the problem, right? That you’re trying to solve, or is the reflexive answer that, you know, some magical software solution is going to unbox and, and solve your FPNA or your accounting clothes or your, your payroll problem or your HRIS problem. Because, because I think if you, if you reflexively jump to that. you’re probably going to get it wrong, whether it’s from a strategy level or whether it’s from just, just basic day to day operations. And so, you know, I, I actually, you know, when I go in on SIT, when I make an investment on systems, I go in hard and heavy, but leading up to that point, I, I forced a manual process for just a little bit longer before I make it. And then once I, once I make that investment, go in, go in, go all in. but forced to process the manual process long enough so that the real gaps and the real problems are really, really well understood. And that applies to everything that you’re solving, whether it’s the company-wide ERP or whether it’s just a sub-module for, pick a topic, travel and expense or accounts payable or. or revenue recognition, right? Well, revenue recognition is pretty important, right? But pick a system, whether it’s the entire, everything under the sun, that’s sort of your entire finance stack, right? And how it connects all the way down to these sub-modules. Make sure, I think that CFOs are really well-served if they force that conversation within the organization of what problem they’re really trying to solve. to make sure that systems and infrastructure actually do support the business and it goes beyond the PowerPoint business case.

Building a culture of innovation#

Rohit Agarwal: I think your point on people preceding the systems is quite interesting. Tell us then as a leader, how do you foster a culture of innovation and accountability within your team?

David Yan: after. This ultimately you, you want to hire great people who, who are motivated to solve problems. But I think that, you know, I, I personally try to make a big investment in every person in my, in, in my team and make sure that, you know, direct reports also do the same with theirs, um, in terms of developing their career, as well as, you know, above and beyond. managing the day to day you really want to help them from especially those earlier in their career from a learning standpoint and you know by learning I don’t just mean that you go out and send them to a bunch of different trainings and Make them read a bunch of books like they were still in school Although although you can support, you know, it’s it you can support a healthy amount of that as well But really show them how you solve problems Ask them questions in turn, you know force them to think through the hard parts of their job, how they can make their job better, how they can make their job easier, and make them reconcile decisions that go back to the company’s overall business objectives. I think it’s pretty easy for a lot of people in traditional corporate or G&A functions, whether it’s… finance, accounting, HR, IT type of functions to think within the scope of what they’re doing. But ultimately, you have to be a good business partner to the rest of the organization. You have to be able to influence them in a forward way. And to do that, you have to have a very good understanding of the business. So every decision, try to make people think back to how. how their decision reconciles to not just the process problem that they’re trying to solve at the moment, but the larger business, right? How does their decision impact customers? How does it impact employees? How does it impact execution? How does it impact risk or growth, right? Think through all those different things. And over time, I think if you find that you make that investment, you’re gonna have a team that… that makes pretty good decisions and probably tells you a lot of things that you should be seeing yourself. So there will be some natural meeting at the minds and everybody will sort of complement each other in that way.

The first 100 days#

Rohit Agarwal: Makes sense. Let’s move to a hypothetical. Let’s assume that today is my first day as a CFO at this company. What would be your advice to me on my first 100 days plan?

David Yan: My advice to a CFO on a first hundred day plan, you know, firstly, you know, I tend to not go around telling people that I’m brand new, even though it’s obvious, right? If you’re in your first hundred days at any company, most people will know. But I think that, you know, I think you want to, you want to, again, it’s a balance, but You want to put yourself in an advisory position to the rest of leadership as quickly as you can. You know, I don’t mean that you rush to things and that you don’t take the time to understand something and that you just kind of go in and start telling people what to do, but it’s really, really important that firstly, that hundred days, you should probably scale that down to 60. I that that’s my advice. Um, but it, but I mean, mechanically, what do I do? I, uh, you know, aside from meeting people and talking to people and understand getting to understand the business and so on and so forth, I, you know, I will go in and, you know, it’s, it’s like my role of 10, I’ll, I’ll just, I’ll, I’ll explain what that, what that means. Go, go pick 10 sales contracts, pick 10 offer letters, go pick 10 T and E. expense reports, go pick 10 performance reviews, go pick 10 of anything out there that might be important, and just read it. It’s not going to take you 100 days to do that. It’ll take you about three hours, so it should be something that you can do in your first week. And that’ll really give you a flavor of, you know, hey, does the company overspend? Does the company have a… of where deals on the sales side, the, you know, are, does, do we have the right talent? Do we have the right, do we have the right controls? Have we made the right decisions in the past? Where have we missed? Right, you, I think that’s a very quick first, first five hour thing of your job that you can do above and beyond. Of course, you know, I’m trying to explain this in a way that that gets beyond the obvious, like, like sit down with your colleagues and, and understand what they do, because of course you’re going to do that. And that, that stuff’s table stakes, right? I think, um, you, you want to understand as quickly as you can, what you can do to help the company see around the corner. And that’s going to be different for different companies, but your job is to unpack that because. When you interviewed for a role, if you’re interviewing for a CFO role, you have to think in some ways like an investor because you’re making an investment in yourself for hopefully in an indefinite period of time to put this company on the path to success. So while you’re not putting in financial capital into the company, you’re putting in personal capital. The same could be said about every… every other employee of the company, but as CFO, you’re going to have access to a level of diligence to join a company as an investor would. So you’ve probably already gone through that diligence process by the time you’ve signed that offer letter. And if not, you should have. So that’s what I think is really important, is one, that you made an investment in this company. Okay. Not a financial one, but you’ve made an investment in this company. How, how can you, and you know, that’s based on it on certain fundamentals. It’s based on a certain strategy. It’s based on a certain vision. How can you help the company on block that as fast as you can? And, uh, you know, so you want to understand, you know, in your first hundred days, you’re going to want to understand, you know, what paths you can do to unlock growth. You know, are there any, are there any major governance or compliance things that you need to get ahead of? Because if there are, and if you’re, if there are, and you don’t get those cleared out of the way, then that’s going to, that’s going to block any opportunities to the business. And that’s going to, that’s going to block upside. So you want to, you want to make sure that you’re checking, checking those boxes. You want to build great relationships with Pete, with your executive colleagues and people, um, you know, throughout the ranks of the company. inside and outside of finance because you need to hear things. You need to hear things, not so that you can be nosy, but so that you can get ahead of the problems and so you can solve them in the strategy. You need to figure out what’s what are big problems and what are small problems, because for sure there will be there will be issues. But your job is your job is to sort of prioritize and stack rank, which ones you’re going to address and how you’re going to build that road map and have that communicated well ahead of. the first hundred days with a certain level of precision. So to me, I like to make it the first 60 just so that I can have a very clear impact. I sort of feel like if the impact isn’t felt, it isn’t felt until like month four, month five, then you sort of might lose a little bit of ground. Don’t make quick decisions, but… Get your, but you own getting yourself ramped as fast as possible and your ramp period should be shorter than longer, especially given the level of diligence that you should have done prior to taking the job.

Rohit Agarwal: I love your rule of 10 and thinking like an investor before joining the company. I’m curious though, what kind of diligence is acceptable before joining as a CFO?

David Yan: I love you. I think your typical data room, right? Typical data room is probably acceptable. You’re going to have gone through interviews with board members. You’re going to have to go through interviews with of course the CEO and other executive staff. So I think that your ability to probe and ask questions is critical. And some of that is learned over time. But really, I think you really just want to understand where you can help and what problems are solvable, what problems are not so solvable and approximately over what time period and with what capital investment, right? But in terms of actual, like what you should be looking at, I mean, you should be looking at, should be looking at financials, you should be looking at… One level beneath that is just the company’s execution plan, how they’ve been meeting their internal goals, like internal OKRs or MBOs, execution priorities, understanding where the company’s missed before, where they’ve tended to succeed. You know, that type of thing, making sure that there’s, and then of course there’s always the basics, like making sure that there’s no major outstanding legal matters, that type of thing.

Rohit Agarwal: Awesome. What would be your advice for young professionals who want to be a CFO one day?

David Yan: You know, a lot of, I think that, I don’t think there’s necessarily one or two or even three paths. I think that the role is dynamic enough where CFOs can come from a number of different backgrounds and early career paths. You know, I outlined what my path was earlier in the call. I certainly by no means think that it’s the only path. I think that there are many great paths more than ever to the CFO seat today. And I think that’s a good thing because the role can be as wide and as deep as it needs to be within the organization and that’s going to come with a lot of different skill sets. The only thing I would say is to make sure to focus. Go beyond the numbers. But as I mentioned, I really think that that’s table stakes today. I would say that go beyond the numbers, but make sure you have that solid grounding in the fundamentals, whether it’s corporate finance, planning, corporate governance, accounting. You can always hire great people to support you, but you have to have a certain baseline of fundamentals that you can always rely upon. And try to get yourself focused on the company’s strategy and how it operationally meets its numbers as well as you can. It’s not just knowing the numbers and what they are, but how does your organization go about… meeting its numbers, right? Top line, how does it meet its OPEX plan? How does it think about investments? How does it think about M&A? You want to really understand how it executes well in all those key areas.

Rohit Agarwal: All right, makes a ton of sense. I think we are up on the time, so I would love to move to a lightning round. That should be quite fun. I’m just going to ask you some quick questions, and all I want from you are immediate responses.

David Yan: I just wanted to ask you a quick question.

Rohit Agarwal: Alright, let’s get this rolling. Let’s start with something simple. Sweet or savory?

David Yan: Let’s get this rolling. savory.

Rohit Agarwal: Books are podcasts.

David Yan: Books. Sorry.

Rohit Agarwal: Think… no worries. Thinker or doer.

David Yan: Doer. Introvert.

Rohit Agarwal: Introvert or Extrovert? Scotch or whiskey.

David Yan: Neither. Wine. Coffee. If it has to be alcohol, wine, but really coffee is my savor.

Rohit Agarwal: Oh, so what’s your guilty pleasure? Wine, alright. We’ll go with coffee. How does someone impress you?

David Yan: I’m out. Authenticity.

Rohit Agarwal: Very cool. If not a CFO, what would you be?

David Yan: would be. That’s a good one Rohan, if not a CFO what would I be? Well I mentioned early on I’d probably have gone down some strategic marketing paths.

Rohit Agarwal: All right. If you can be CFO of any company for a day, which company would you choose and why?

David Yan: The one I’m at now, and I don’t mean that in a cliche way, but the reason why is because it’s such a changing market that there’s something that intrigues me every day.

Rohit Agarwal: Alright, what is your ideal place to retire?

David Yan: The Bay Area.

Rohit Agarwal: If you could teleport yourself right now, where would you go and why?

David Yan: If I could teleport myself, I would go, I’d probably go somewhere that, trying to think where I would not have the opportunity to ever go. You know, I would go. You stumped me on that one. Can I reshoot that one? Can I reshoot that one real quick? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, if I could teleport myself. You mean, is that question like a location or?

Rohit Agarwal: There are some tough ones coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. location era could be sometime in the past history. Like for me, I have had, correct.

David Yan: Ah, okay, so that could be a time period, right? Yeah. Okay, yeah, so, okay, so ask me the question again and then we shoot it, yeah.

Rohit Agarwal: so the next one, if you could teleport yourself right now, where would you go and why?

David Yan: or that was a little in the way? Yeah, well, if it’s a time I would go, I would probably go back to when my parents were born. I would just, I, you know, I just over the course of my life, I’ve had many great conversations of just the evolution of the decades. And I just, I would love to see what they, what journey they went through in their time period to get to where they are today.

Rohit Agarwal: Awesome. Number one item on your bucket list right now.

David Yan: reshoot that one. Hold on one second, I gotta think about it. I don’t wanna gap in the recording. Number one item on the- Gosh, you know, real hit, I spent so much time at work that I don’t think about this stuff. I’m just kidding. Yeah, okay, but I’ll answer. Number one item on my bucket list.