Speaker0: I would have bought Bitcoin at one cent or at one euro.
Speaker0: The rest of the things, all the mistakes that I've done as a founder,
Speaker0: I would redo them the same.
Speaker0: They are what I am right now, and I am grateful for all those mistakes and for
Speaker0: all those failures, no matter how hard they have been.
Speaker0: Every one of them has been a teaching moment.
Music:
Speaker1: Welcome to startuprad.io your podcast and youtube blog covering the german startup
Speaker1: scene with news interviews and live events
Speaker1: Hello and welcome everybody this is joe from startuprad.io the authority on
Speaker1: german swiss and Austrian startups.
Speaker1: And today we've got a powerhouse episode for founders, SaaS builders,
Speaker1: and tech investors alike.
Speaker1: What if the next breakout SaaS company for accounting firms came from the back
Speaker1: office of a bookkeeping firm in Switzerland?
Speaker1: We're sitting down with Blas, by the way, he spared me pronouncing his family name,
Speaker1: a serial entrepreneur who bootstrapped his first company at just 18,
Speaker1: made a few successful exits, learned from failure, and is now sailing Scaling
Speaker1: Sequence, a B2B SaaS platform turning hats across Europe.
Speaker1: Sequence started as internal accounting software, evolved into robust AI-enabled
Speaker1: ERP system for small companies, and recently caught attention of several major
Speaker1: investors in Switzerland.
Speaker1: In this episode, you'll hear how Blast turned a back office tool into venture
Speaker1: back scale up, What it takes to build SaaS products with product market fit
Speaker1: in a conservative industry,
Speaker1: his most painful lessons on entrepreneurship,
Speaker1: failure and bouncing back, and
Speaker1: the playbook for scaling from Spain to Switzerland to global relevance.
Speaker1: If you're a founder, VC, accounting tech innovator, or just love stories about
Speaker1: building software that actually solves boring but critical problems, this one is for you.
Speaker1: Guys, don't forget to subscribe and last, welcome.
Speaker0: Hi, Joe. Very happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker1: Totally my pleasure. For our audience, can you first once pronounce your family name?
Speaker0: Yes, yes. I'll go ahead. It's Pechenaut. It's a Spanish name.
Speaker0: Notice to say Pechenaut.
Speaker1: Okay. Muchas gracias. You saved me from pronouncing that.
Speaker0: Gracias, Joe. Yeah, I know. You know, it's a hard one. In French,
Speaker0: they say Pechenaut. So, you know, I cannot have both versions. They're going for me.
Speaker1: Yes, especially since you have three languages in Switzerland.
Speaker1: I think that the French-speaking area would prefer that one.
Speaker1: Talking about you, founder journey and origin story, you started your first company at 18.
Speaker1: What sparked your interest in entrepreneurship?
Speaker0: Listen, Joe, I've always been that way.
Speaker0: I started really working when I was very young.
Speaker0: I started in the night industry I
Speaker0: started creating parties when I was 16 years old I couldn't go to the nightclub
Speaker0: and I was already organizing stuff so that was a pretty fun moment for me and
Speaker0: I've always wanted to do things in a very particular and peculiar way which
Speaker0: was my own way and at 18 I found,
Speaker0: that artists,
Speaker0: namely electronic music artists
Speaker0: were very good at creating music but very bad at telling themselves.
Speaker0: And I was very good at sales and very bad at creating music.
Speaker0: So I created my first company called Fresh and Blunt, and it started like an
Speaker0: artist management agency.
Speaker0: We were taking local artists and giving them national or international exposure.
Speaker0: And then we started organizing festivals and helping running a couple of clubs.
Speaker1: Let me understand this step from doing parties, electronic music,
Speaker1: to internal accounting tool. How did that happen?
Speaker0: It's been a fun ride, to be honest.
Speaker0: So I started managing, as I said, artists and electronic music parties.
Speaker0: Then I moved out of Spain into the UK.
Speaker0: I kept working on the night industry, and at some point I hit a wall.
Speaker0: I couldn't do really what I wanted to do into the industry.
Speaker0: And I went into plain hospitality. I started managing a cocktail bar and a restaurant.
Speaker0: And then from there, I got scouted by a Chinese company to introduce in Spain
Speaker0: and Portugal electronic cigarettes.
Speaker0: I'm talking, you know, early 2010s, where there were no A6s anywhere.
Speaker0: So actually, if you vaped in Spain in between 2010 and 2012,
Speaker0: there's a big percentage of chances that I did that import and that distribution.
Speaker0: And then from there, I got recruited by a Swiss entrepreneur who wanted to build
Speaker0: a startup on electronic cigarettes. And that's who brought me here to Switzerland.
Speaker0: All around these years, I've always faced the same issues.
Speaker0: Admin and accounting, it's a pain for every single entrepreneur out there, myself the first.
Speaker0: So when I came into Switzerland, I faced the hard truth of the Swiss market.
Speaker0: It's a fantastic market, but everything is very open-minded and in accounting
Speaker0: as well. So there's no real structure.
Speaker0: Everyone can do it in a different way.
Speaker0: You obviously need to be compliant, but to get too compliant,
Speaker0: you can do it in different ways. So I was struggling a lot.
Speaker0: And that company got acquired, and that was great.
Speaker0: But at some point in 2021, a very good friend of mine, he showed me this accounting
Speaker0: software that he was building. And I was like, hold on a minute.
Speaker0: This is exactly what I've been looking for my whole career as an entrepreneur.
Speaker0: Let's take this stuff from an accounting software and building on an automated
Speaker0: and AI accounting software for SMEs.
Speaker0: So that's the whole trajectory up until accounting.
Speaker1: Before we go into the next questions, you ran a bar. What was your favorite cocktail?
Speaker0: Oh, wow. I used to love Ponce de Martini.
Speaker0: If I don't mind that the bartender looks weird at me, a good old-fashioned.
Speaker0: It takes a little bit of time to make. So when you go to a cocktail bar and
Speaker0: you ask for an old-fashioned, the guy's not going to like you very much because
Speaker0: they need to stir it for a long time. And I'm a whiskey lover.
Speaker0: But yeah, I even got certification to make cocktails.
Speaker0: I knew. I don't know them anymore, but I knew how to make 120-something cocktails.
Speaker0: It was pretty fun. It was pretty fun, Joe.
Speaker0: What is your favorite cocktail, Joe?
Speaker1: I like Planter's Punch.
Speaker0: Nice. Nice. Nice. When was the last time that you drank a good Planter's Punch and where?
Speaker1: Last weekend here in the balcony with my wife.
Speaker0: Oh, fantastic. Fantastic. What was the name of the place? Let's give them a shout out.
Speaker1: No, here, just on our balcony.
Speaker0: You made it?
Speaker1: Yes.
Speaker0: You are a master. That's great. So you know your way around cocktails?
Speaker1: Maybe.
Speaker0: Fantastic. I hope we can meet one day and I can taste your planter sponge.
Speaker0: I will make you an Amaretto Sour that you may like as well.
Speaker1: I also like Negroni.
Speaker0: Oh, yeah. Negroni. Very nice. Next time you go and ask for a Negroni,
Speaker0: check a Negroni Svaliato.
Speaker0: So it's a regular Negroni, but it has a top of soda, a little bit of sparking
Speaker0: wine, like Prosecco, you know.
Speaker0: So it's a Negroni with a little bit of Prosecco. Try it out.
Speaker0: Very nice. Negroni is Valleato.
Speaker1: I also do have my personal recipe on this, but that would lead a little bit
Speaker1: too much astray. I was originally trying to ask you, you've been working with
Speaker1: the back office accounting software.
Speaker1: What was like the aha moment that convinced you you could really scale this?
Speaker0: Listen, the first one was very much internal. It's when Jonathan,
Speaker0: the real founder of Sequence, showed me what he was building.
Speaker0: When he showed it to me, I was the first aha. Like, I've been looking for this my whole life.
Speaker0: I've been looking for a software that can allow me to automate my accounting.
Speaker0: So that was the first aha moment.
Speaker0: Then when we reworked that internal tool into an external SaaS and we went into
Speaker0: the market, The market's aha moment was when a client of ours,
Speaker0: one of the first clients, his payment on the card didn't go through.
Speaker0: And the guy was calling me on a Sunday saying, please, please,
Speaker0: please reactivate the software.
Speaker0: I cannot believe without Sequence. I need to do the invoices.
Speaker0: I need to get back the subscription. And that was when we said,
Speaker0: hey, maybe we got into something that really is helping SMEs and freelancers
Speaker0: out there to do their invoicing and accounting much easier.
Speaker1: I see. I was wondering for our audience, what's one thing you wish you had known
Speaker1: when starting your business? Share your wisdom in the comments.
Speaker1: We might feature you in a future episode.
Speaker1: Talking about transition and resilience here, you've had exits and setbacks.
Speaker1: Tell us about the failure that changed your approach.
Speaker0: Any failure? Any point in my career?
Speaker1: One that had special importance for you.
Speaker0: Yeah. So my first company, okay, fresh and blunt, I had to shut it down in 48 hours.
Speaker0: Very abruptly. Because I was very bad at selling an event that I didn't follow
Speaker0: up correctly with the owner of the nightclub that I was selling that to.
Speaker0: And he was so powerful and he gave me a call and he said, you did such a bad
Speaker0: job that you're not going to be able to work in here anymore.
Speaker0: And I couldn't believe it. And 48 hours later, all my artists had to leave the
Speaker0: agency, otherwise they couldn't be playing music anymore in the north of Spain.
Speaker0: And that taught me a lot about facing conflict and issues. I was running away
Speaker0: from saying to this guy that I couldn't deliver on the talks that we were having.
Speaker0: And because I didn't do that, by the time I did it, he took it so,
Speaker0: so badly. And he was right.
Speaker0: That tanked my company. That absolutely tanked my company. Yeah. So that was a big one.
Speaker1: I see, I see. Even though many are usually doing over-promising and under-deliver,
Speaker1: but for some, it just doesn't work out.
Speaker1: How did your relocation to Switzerland shape your mindset as a founder?
Speaker1: And by the way, do you already love fondue?
Speaker0: I love fondue. Sweets are going to kill me, but my favorite fondue is tomato fondue.
Speaker0: I know Switzerland is absolutely going to kill me right now because they hate
Speaker0: it, but I love it because for me it's like drinking pizza and pizza is one of
Speaker0: my favorite drinking pizza,
Speaker0: it's like drinking pizza man, it's fantastic so coming to Switzerland was a
Speaker0: very big change for me, I was coming from pure.
Speaker0: High-paced environment and countries I was living, you know,
Speaker0: at the time I was, I went from London to living half in Marbella,
Speaker0: half in France, traveling all over the place.
Speaker0: And I arrived into France, into Switzerland, sorry.
Speaker0: And it was so calm and peaceful and everybody was so respectful.
Speaker0: You know, I really, really, really liked it a lot.
Speaker0: I know a lot of people, they don't, they say it's too slow for them,
Speaker0: for me, they put a great balance because it allows me to be calm when I'm in
Speaker0: Switzerland and high pace when I'm outside.
Speaker0: As a founder, the mentality of the market is much different than anywhere in
Speaker0: Europe that I've been doing business before.
Speaker0: It's a very conservative market, a very risk adverse market.
Speaker0: If you want to raise funds in here and you're not in biotech, good luck to you.
Speaker0: That has changed a little bit in the last 12 months thanks to AI and the hubs
Speaker0: that they're doing in Zurich and thanks to crypto in the crypto valley in Neuchatel
Speaker0: and I get that but historically it has been a little bit complex to raise funds
Speaker0: in here so it made me a founder,
Speaker0: more based on facts with a little bit of storytelling always storytelling it's
Speaker0: always important to do storytelling but you cannot bullshit your way around
Speaker0: Switzerland if there's no facts and that there are no unit economics back in
Speaker0: your business, for sure.
Speaker1: Mm-hmm.
Speaker1: Talking about a little bit your product vision and market positioning,
Speaker1: what's broken in current ERP and accounting software?
Speaker0: It's so goddamn hard to use. That's it. That's it.
Speaker1: Yeah, I have to admit I've been working for quite some consultancies in the
Speaker1: past and I'm dramatized by SAP.
Speaker0: Yeah, that is, wow. Yes, that's a big one.
Speaker0: That's a big one. And yes, if you have a gazillion bucks lying around or you're
Speaker0: a big company, you can pay a consultant to run SAP for you and customize it for you.
Speaker0: It's still going to be hard to use, but you're going to have a full team of people doing it.
Speaker0: But when you're a freelancer and you need to be looking at your numbers,
Speaker0: right now there's not many things out there that can work for you in Switzerland.
Speaker0: In Europe, there are good initiatives. In the States, fantastic software being created.
Speaker0: But here in Switzerland, firsthand, I can tell it's very hard to find one that
Speaker0: is easy to use and that you prefer to use the software rather than doing your
Speaker0: invoices on Word or on Excel.
Speaker0: So I think that's an issue.
Speaker0: And then even if you're using a software and you're doing it yourself,
Speaker0: then you need to go into an accounting firm and pay a small fortune to do your
Speaker0: taxes and run your books. So that's quite inefficient.
Speaker0: I believe that is quite, we believe that is quite inefficient. Yeah.
Speaker1: Also here in Germany, you have the duty by now to have electronic invoicing.
Speaker1: Also, depending on how and where you invoice, also electronic invoicing,
Speaker1: machine readability, and so on and so forth.
Speaker1: So you cannot use any software.
Speaker1: Talking about any software, how do you guys sequence your piece sent out from
Speaker1: competitors like Sage, Xero or QuickBooks?
Speaker0: Well, we are going in the direction of becoming a full-stack company, okay?
Speaker0: Sage, Shed and QuickBooks are fantastic pieces of software. I cannot say it again.
Speaker0: I cannot say it enough. They're very good softwares.
Speaker0: You may want to run QuickBooks. Now, QuickBooks in Switzerland,
Speaker0: you cannot be running it.
Speaker0: Sage, you can, but then the adaptation is going to be hard. Shed is the same.
Speaker0: So you're going to have a hard time getting those to work in the Swiss market out of the bat.
Speaker0: Now, I said we want to become a full stack company, and that's where we're really
Speaker0: seeing us in two or three years.
Speaker0: Accounting software is hard to use. Accountants, you know, have a lot of manual work.
Speaker0: Our mission is to blend both into an AI operative system where SMEs can run
Speaker0: their books by simply uploading documents and the software.
Speaker0: That's the rest with very minimal human interaction.
Speaker0: I don't think any of these guys are going in this direction. We certainly are.
Speaker0: And if I may, just a little scoop for the guys that are listening to us out there.
Speaker0: It's not yet public, but three weeks ago,
Speaker0: we got a license from FinMath to be a 1B light bank or a fintech company,
Speaker0: which means that by the end of the year, we will be able to open multi-currency
Speaker0: accounts and give cards to sequence users.
Speaker0: And that means that as an SME, you're going to have in the same platform,
Speaker0: your bank, your accountant, and the software, all included and all built on AI.
Speaker1: That is actually pretty cool, exclusive announcement here on Celebrate.0. Pretty cool.
Speaker1: For our audience, because we've been talking about accounting systems and they
Speaker1: are not, let's say, the most intuitive they use most of the time.
Speaker1: I was wondering, what is the most frustrating software our audience has ever
Speaker1: used to work at or you could never get to work? How would you redesign it?
Speaker1: Actually, I have a mission to make Blast. For me, it was kind of printer software
Speaker1: not going to tell the name of the company who produced it but it's now two years
Speaker1: um about a dozen friends who some of them studied computer science master's phd degrees and
Speaker0: Nobody could get it running um anyway.
Speaker1: Um let's talk a little bit about your growth strategy and gtm um how did you
Speaker1: acquire your first external customers
Speaker0: Yeah going to the street outbound pure
Speaker0: outbound reaching out to people um so
Speaker0: the founders of sequence they own
Speaker0: accounting firms so the first clients that we brought in actually are their
Speaker0: clients obviously and then we went out there into the market with outbound uh
Speaker0: we started emailing people calling people asking about their issues asking about
Speaker0: the pain points, understanding what they needed,
Speaker0: and once the answer to what they needed was what we had,
Speaker0: then it kind of fell into place.
Speaker1: What is your current go-to-market strategy and how is it evolving?
Speaker0: Our current go-to market strategy, and I wish I could call Mercedes,
Speaker0: our chief product and growth officer here, into the call to get that one.
Speaker0: It's a blend of inbound and outbound sales.
Speaker0: We do a lot of inbound generation that then led outbound contacts,
Speaker0: and we do as well outbound contacts.
Speaker0: So we have cold calling people. We love cold calling.
Speaker0: We hard call salespeople. So we pick up the phone and start calling people and
Speaker0: asking about their pains and asking about their day-to-day and what works and
Speaker0: what doesn't work on their day.
Speaker0: And as I said, if one of their pains is something we can give a solution to,
Speaker0: then, hey, that's fantastic.
Speaker0: And if it's not, then we try always to give a solution with other products out
Speaker0: there. And then on the inbound side, we run ads, a lot of ads,
Speaker0: content, strategy, LinkedIn, content.
Speaker0: And then, yeah, it's kind of a blend. It evolves constantly. We do a lot of iteration.
Speaker0: So we have a marketing team that they iterate every month.
Speaker0: So on a rolling basis, we plan, we execute, we analyze, we improve,
Speaker0: we repeat. We go on and on and on and on.
Speaker0: Things that work, we keep them. Things that don't work, we change them, and we just remove them.
Speaker1: Sounds like a steady improvement cycle. We'll be back with some insights about
Speaker1: fundraising, investor relations, team and culture, vision and future outlook
Speaker1: after the small ad break.
Speaker1: Welcome back to us. You're a serial entrepreneur currently leading a SaaS accounting
Speaker1: software from Switzerland.
Speaker1: You've done a lot in the past, and we talked about this already.
Speaker1: Let's go a little bit into fundraising and investor relations.
Speaker1: You've raised VC before. What's your best tip for early stage founders to prepare
Speaker1: for SaaS fundraising rounds?
Speaker0: Some investors out there are going to kill me, but don't raise.
Speaker0: You know bootstrap as much as you can um get your metrics in place and then race,
Speaker0: europe and especially switzerland is very different to
Speaker0: the states in the states you can definitely go out and race with a fantastic
Speaker0: plan in europe you're gonna have some metrics locked in and in switzerland those
Speaker0: metrics need to be even better either you have a successful background behind
Speaker0: you and you know what to do, or if it is the first time,
Speaker0: you really need to get those metrics locked in so you can lead the conversations
Speaker0: with, okay, this is our metrics, this is what we're capable of doing,
Speaker0: now this is what we want to get,
Speaker0: And to do that, we not only need cash, which we're raising right now,
Speaker0: but we also need a partnership that is going to enable us to get there.
Speaker0: And always look for that smart money. Don't only look for the cash.
Speaker0: Cash only is not going to get you as far as cash plus partnership plus help.
Speaker0: Look for those investors that really believe in your business and that they're
Speaker0: going to help you get and fulfill that vision that you together with them have for your business.
Speaker1: You talked about metrics. I was wondering what traction metrics or storytelling
Speaker1: techniques helped you win over investors.
Speaker1: So sequence, I would assume right now, important roles play a number of paying
Speaker1: customers, customer acquisition costs, customer lifetime value.
Speaker1: So basically, the VCs can make a calculation. If we invest X,
Speaker1: we should get Y, something like that.
Speaker0: Exactly. So revenue, revenue growth, very important both.
Speaker0: Out of that revenue, what's recurring and what's not recurring?
Speaker0: And of that growth, what kind of historic can you show? Have you been growing
Speaker0: double digits every month?
Speaker0: Is there any spike? Why not? cost
Speaker0: of acquisition obviously and lifetime value of your clients if you know your
Speaker0: lifetime value then you must know your churn that's very important to know your
Speaker0: churn and if you're in sas daily active users and monthly active users may be
Speaker0: very interesting now on top of that if you are an ai you,
Speaker0: and you are on agents if you are on human
Speaker0: in the loop agents that most of them are right
Speaker0: now then you need to have your first pass-through rate you need to understand
Speaker0: how many of the proposals that your agents are making are right from the bat
Speaker0: and they are accepted how many are slightly modified how many are rejected and
Speaker0: if you're an autonomous agent what's the accuracy of those agents.
Speaker0: At the end of the day, a lot of people are kind of selling AI right now,
Speaker0: but then they don't include any AI metrics in their deck, which is kind of crazy.
Speaker0: So I think that's very important right now. If you are an AI,
Speaker0: if not, just skip that stuff.
Speaker1: I was wondering from my experience, I was in capital markets during MEDOF happened
Speaker1: and the MEDOF feeder funds have been used its entities He's headquartered in Luxembourg.
Speaker1: And so basically a lot of those companies said, yeah, it would have never happened
Speaker1: to us, but you have so much straight to processing,
Speaker1: automated processing at the time in the funds that basically one user's funds
Speaker1: would have been treated like another user's fund.
Speaker1: Do you see any potential for future scammers and how to prevent it with the
Speaker1: application of a lot of AI agents in accounting and bookkeeping?
Speaker0: Definitely there is a risk in that, of course. In the same way that there was
Speaker0: a risk when computers came and invoices started to be done by hand and everybody
Speaker0: started to do them on a computer,
Speaker0: there is risk and it is...
Speaker0: The responsibility, it's a shared responsibility to avoid, to stop that from
Speaker0: happening. But yeah, of course, there is a risk.
Speaker0: I've seen articles going around LinkedIn of people that they can create tickets,
Speaker0: expense tickets, just asking to charge GPT to do that.
Speaker0: So there's definitely going to be scammers out there. Definitely.
Speaker1: Going back to my last question about VC, in your experience,
Speaker1: what are VCs really looking for in the next generation of SaaS platforms?
Speaker0: I think we should ask that to VCs.
Speaker0: No, listen, that's a great question, Joe. I hope they're looking stuff like Sequence.
Speaker0: To be honest what I'm reading right now is that they're looking for full stack
Speaker0: companies companies that can replace verticals on its own there's no longer
Speaker0: such thing as the niche SaaS you can just do one thing,
Speaker0: what they're looking for right now is the companies that they can replace a
Speaker0: whole vertical it was Y Combinator saying this a month and a half ago,
Speaker0: they're right now looking into that kind of traction and interaction and automation
Speaker0: from AI that can come in and say, okay, this has been done manually for years.
Speaker0: Now, thanks to AI, can be almost fully automated.
Speaker0: So I think that's really what they're looking for, these companies that can
Speaker0: kind of revolutionize how the status quo is and how human labor is being done into automation.
Speaker1: Mm-hmm.
Speaker1: Talked about labor here, team and culture. What values define the sequence team?
Speaker1: How do they guide hiring and leadership?
Speaker0: In hard work, we believe. In hard work, we believe.
Speaker0: We have all our jumpers are marked in hard work, we believe.
Speaker0: And when you come to our digital office, it's the first sentence that you're going to find.
Speaker0: And it's not me who said it, but that's really us. We are a team of people that
Speaker0: are very unconventional.
Speaker0: We believe that there is a better way and we always ask the best of ourselves.
Speaker0: And that's the kind of person that comes in and works with us.
Speaker0: You have to be extremely curious. You have to be eager to learn.
Speaker0: You have to be eager to share, to give feedback and to receive it.
Speaker0: And when we hire someone, one of the things we tell them is,
Speaker0: look, when you come into sequence you're going to be facing issues and
Speaker0: challenges that you've never faced in your life and that's
Speaker0: totally okay what is going to be the difference is
Speaker0: that you are capable of finding the right tools and the solution and learning
Speaker0: new things that allow you to do the best that you can your work none of us knew
Speaker0: how to build a bank yet here we are building a bank all together,
Speaker0: None of us knew how to build an accounting software, yet here we are changing
Speaker0: how accounting is done thanks to artificial intelligence.
Speaker0: And most certainly none of us knew anything about AI four years ago.
Speaker0: And here we are using it on a day-to-day basis, and that's because we have that,
Speaker0: knowledge, hunger, continuous drive to learn more and to get better every single day.
Speaker0: And that's the people that they
Speaker0: stick with our company. The rest of them don't make it past month one.
Speaker1: Talked about not making past month one month.
Speaker1: How do you build high performing startup teams and maintain them?
Speaker0: That's a great question. I don't know. I'm trying to do my best on that point.
Speaker0: Maybe the team is the best person to, is the best one to answer that question,
Speaker0: whether if I'm doing a good job or not.
Speaker0: But for me, it's about giving a place where the team can be the best out of
Speaker0: them, giving them accountability,
Speaker0: delegate effectively, and giving them, you know, a space where they can learn,
Speaker0: they can grow, they can shine.
Speaker0: And where their work really impact the company itself.
Speaker0: You know, at Sequence, we're not only looking at the team as individuals that
Speaker0: they come in and do a work and then they leave.
Speaker0: We look at the full lives that they have. We finance the gym.
Speaker0: We finance, we have a corporate psychologist.
Speaker0: We have a mental and performance coach. We just hired a corporate hypnotherapist
Speaker0: so they can also go into that. We hired them with private insurance.
Speaker0: We're just trying to give them the best possible scenario so they can do what they love to do.
Speaker0: If one of the people in the team wakes up in the morning and says,
Speaker0: fuck, I don't want to work in the morning, that's a failure from leadership.
Speaker0: Because we didn't give them enough room and enough place to shine and to do what they love.
Speaker0: They need to really do what they love.
Speaker0: Now, if we're going to maintain them, then they're going to get a piece of the cake.
Speaker0: That's always very classical, but it's just an ongoing challenge.
Speaker0: It has to be an ongoing challenge. So we have to keep those minds, myself as well.
Speaker0: We have to keep those minds going and learning and growing.
Speaker0: And yeah, I'm impacting the world every day.
Speaker0: What do you think, Joe? I'm sure you've talked with a lot of entrepreneurs out there.
Speaker0: How do you think that you can keep high-performing teams?
Speaker0: I would love to have your input on that one. And so the people out there can
Speaker0: hear what you think from all your conversations that you had.
Speaker1: Turning the tables here. Okay. Well, I think at first, it's important to get
Speaker1: the best people putting a lot of effort into acquiring talent.
Speaker1: Secondly, I've just talked with Christian Conrad about how to build and maintain
Speaker1: a corporate culture and one of the best approaches I've seen from him.
Speaker1: He talked about giving 100% trust first and then if the person doesn't use the
Speaker1: trust responsibly, he'll deduct.
Speaker1: And that was actually a really amazing approach that I've seen there.
Speaker1: Plus, it's very, very difficult to get really talented people.
Speaker1: I've been talking to a lot of people about hiring headhunters and so on and so forth.
Speaker1: And I do believe especially like the first dozen people you hire from your startup,
Speaker1: they make an essential impact on the growth, on the survival,
Speaker1: on the bare survival of the company.
Speaker0: Yeah, crazy. I agree with you 100%. Thank you for sharing, Joe.
Speaker1: Totally my pleasure. Now it's up for you to share again vision and future outlook.
Speaker1: Where do you see Sequence and the industry heading over the next five years?
Speaker0: Yes, we see Sequence as an AI operative system for small and medium businesses,
Speaker0: where they can do banking, run the company, and accounting all at the same time.
Speaker0: Right now, if you look at SMEs and freelancers, they all have three main points.
Speaker0: The first one is you need an accountant.
Speaker0: You don't want to do the books yourself. If you do them yourself,
Speaker0: it's hard and it takes time.
Speaker0: And if you get someone to do them for you, it's expensive and it's slow.
Speaker0: So that's like a compulsory pain that you have to have. Okay,
Speaker0: fine. Then you need to have a bank. But the bank doesn't care about you.
Speaker0: And the bank, at some point, may decide that the relationship with you is no
Speaker0: longer profitable for them.
Speaker0: So you may find yourself not having a bank.
Speaker0: And the third one is that you need to look to your cash flow.
Speaker0: But to look to your cash flow and to look to know how much money you are owed
Speaker0: and how much money you owe, you need to have a software.
Speaker0: And using that software, as we said earlier before, is very hard and very time-consuming.
Speaker0: And you didn't launch a company to do that stuff.
Speaker0: We believe that Sequence can come in and replace those three into one only software
Speaker0: that automates across the whole of them, thanks to the power of AI.
Speaker0: So we see ourselves in five years, in three years even,
Speaker0: by the end of next year, by the end of 2026, already automating the work of
Speaker0: the accountant almost completely by allowing people to open accounts with us.
Speaker0: And by having a software that is already on the market, that is so damn easy
Speaker0: to use, that when you go into other software, you just wish you never left sequence.
Speaker0: And that's where we see us.
Speaker1: Already kind of takes my next question away. What trends or AI you believe will
Speaker1: redefine SaaS and accounting software by 2030?
Speaker1: My understanding is most of the stuff that right now accountants do will be
Speaker1: automated with AI agents.
Speaker0: Yes, I believe we are seeing a change similar to the industrial revolution.
Speaker0: In the industrial revolution machines helped humans to do stuff and humans were focused on more,
Speaker0: you know value generating positions and I think thanks to AI in some positions
Speaker0: we're going to have the same things so accountants are going to be focusing
Speaker0: on generating value for the clients and not on number crunching on the screen.
Speaker0: Number crunching on the screen is not fun for the accountant and it's not efficient
Speaker0: for the client because it's a high cost that is going nowhere.
Speaker0: So I believe that that is definitely going to be automated and accountants are
Speaker0: going to be focusing on other value services. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker1: Do I interpret this right that you say the introduction of AI agents will have
Speaker1: for white-collar workers the same effect as the Industrial Revolution had for blue-collar workers?
Speaker0: You tell me why not, Joe.
Speaker1: Interesting thought. I need to think a little bit about it, but it's definitely
Speaker1: an interesting thought. Never thought about that this way.
Speaker1: We're already a little bit into reflection.
Speaker1: What is the hardest decision you've had to make on this journey?
Speaker0: I think one of the hardest ones was closing one of the startups I was running
Speaker0: here in Switzerland before taking over Sequence.
Speaker0: It was a very hard startup. I invested a lot of capital myself,
Speaker0: but I proposed the startup to some family members and some friends.
Speaker0: And as much as I tried to make it work, I couldn't.
Speaker0: I tried to pivot all that i could and the
Speaker0: the day i took the decision and having
Speaker0: to make that call to that people and saying i am
Speaker0: so deeply sorry i just
Speaker0: couldn't make it work that was a very hard
Speaker0: moment that decision was extremely hard and at some point i had to
Speaker0: do because it was dragging everything and everyone down with it
Speaker0: and and the unit economics were not there as
Speaker0: much as we were increasing sales the costs were growing and and and you know
Speaker0: we could never reach profitability and and the moment we realized that we tried
Speaker0: to do all that we could but deciding to close that that company was one of the
Speaker0: hardest decisions i ever had to make.
Speaker1: If you could redo just one thing as a founder what would it be
Speaker0: I would have bought bitcoin at one
Speaker0: cent i would have bought bitcoin at one
Speaker0: cent or at one euro the rest of the things all the mistakes that i've done as
Speaker0: a founder i would redo them the same they are what i am right now and i am grateful
Speaker0: for all those mistakes and for all those failures no matter how hard they have
Speaker0: been every one of them has been a teaching moment,
Speaker0: I wouldn't have done things different because I wouldn't have learned in the same way.
Speaker0: Yes, they might have led to different outcomes, but I don't know that.
Speaker0: So honestly, if I could relieve it again, I would go all over again in the same way.
Speaker0: The only thing I would do is buy Bitcoin when it costs one cent.
Speaker0: So, you know, money wouldn't be an issue right now.
Speaker0: In that case, yeah.
Speaker1: I know where you're going with that um where can people follow you and learn more about sequence
Speaker0: Yeah so i am not a believer in instagram so i'm not an instagram there is an
Speaker0: account of my name but i don't have it on my phone and i never logged in so
Speaker0: instagram is not a good place neither is facebook sorry that's gonna be linkedin
Speaker0: on linkedin people can find me definitely it's Blas Pejenaute.
Speaker0: That's very difficult to say, but I'm sure we can pop it down there on the screen.
Speaker0: And then the company, you can definitely follow them on LinkedIn, Sequence ERP.
Speaker0: Many great things are being announced there. We have a blog,
Speaker0: fantastic blog if you're into business.
Speaker0: I like to share a lot of stuff on my parcours and everything that I've done.
Speaker0: And the team at Sequence also, they share a lot of stuff on LinkedIn.
Speaker0: They're very active. So I think LinkedIn is our network. Yeah.
Speaker1: We'll definitely link that. And for our audience, I was wondering what questions
Speaker1: you would have asked last.
Speaker1: Drop it in the comments below and we might ask him next time.
Speaker1: Thank you very much, Buzz. It was a pleasure talking to you.
Speaker1: Guys out there, don't forget to like, share, subscribe and review.
Speaker1: This is Joe from Celebrate.io. See you next time.
Speaker0: Thank you, Joe. It was a pleasure being here very much thank you for having me pleasure.
Speaker1: Was all mine thank you
Speaker0: Thanks.
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