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Interview with Therese Tucker, BlackLine

This year, we're sponsoring the Recurring Revenue Conference (www.recurringrevenueconference.com), presented by Sutton Capital Partners. As part of our sponsor relationship with the conference, we're running a series of interviews with speakers from the conference about their experience in the area of recurring revenue, customer service, and similar topics. Today's interview is with Therese Tucker, the founder and CEO of BlackLine (www.blackline.com), which she took from a tiny startup to now, a big, public company by providing accounting software used to automate the financial close at enterprises. Therese is one of the keynote speakers at the Recurring Revenue Conference.

Where's BlackLine today, in terms of size?

Therese Tucker: We're now at 800 employees, with more than 2200 customers, and we operate in more than 10 different countries, with customers logging in from more than 130 countries.

What has been the most important driver of the growth at the company?

Therese Tucker: It's the team. It all comes down to your employees. We have an incredibly passionate and dedicated team, and they are great advocates for the customer. That's the core reason for our success, is that the people who work here care.

Who are you customers today?

Therese Tucker: Ours customer today are typically companies with $50M and up in revenues. We have some of the absolutely largest companies in the world as our customers. In 2017, we did $177M in revenues. The market in front of us really is a green field. Every company does accounting, and most of them have a lot of manual processes. Those processes are rote, repetitive, and error-prone. Being able to replace those with software really streamlines things, and automates their jobs, so they are not so boring. That's super helpful. What has made us successful in this area, and when you have a big market in front of you like this, is when it isn't populated by lots of other, well established and well funded players. That's key.

Explain your place in the world of recurring revenue?

Therese Tucker: We're a SaaS company, and in fact, that's 95 percent of our revenue. Only 5 percent of our revenue is from services, the remainder is pretty much recurring. The beautiful thing about recurring revenue is that it's predictable. You can predict your revenues within a margin of error within time.

Are there any particular challenges you have to manage with a subscription business, such as renewal rates?

Therese Tucker: Actually, I love the idea of SaaS, because with on-premise software, in the old days, you saw a lot of shelfware. People would go out, sell a big on-premise deal, and a person would put it on the shelf and never use it. The beautiful things about SaaS, is you're able to provide value to your customer on an ongoing basis. Because you are so focused on their happiness and providing value, the quality of the software is a natural part of the business model. By focusing on those things, you end up with very high renewal rates.

How has it been adapting from the early days as a startup founder, to running a public company?

Therese Tucker: My title hasn't changed, but my job has changed every year (laugh). In the early days, you had to sometime clean the toilets, and do whatever job needed to be done. You had to do demos, go buy the bagels, get on a plane at the drop of a hat to meet a customer, stand for 10 hours at a trade show—really, do whatever you had to do. Those are the early days. As you start to grow and hire people into different areas, your job almost becomes more and more narrow. The other day, I had to send out an email about a door on the 9th floor not being closed properly, but in prior years, I would have just pulled out a screwdriver. So my job has certainly changed in that regard. After the IPO, that job also changed substantially as well. Because I'm now the outward face of Blackline, I'm the inner face to a whole cadre of bankers, investors, analysts, and other people who want to make sure we're doing a good job with their investment. It's a different world.

Is there anything you might tell those CEOs about life after the IPO, that they might not realize thinking the IPO is the finish line?

Therese Tucker: I always tell people that the IPO is like the wedding day. Then, the real work goes into the marriage. People think, hey, it's great, I have an IPO, I got this great dress, took a lot of photographs, and then you have to go to work the next day. Oh my gosh. You realize that people are watching everything we do, and want to make sure we do it really well. So, be aware that is so not the finish line. It is the beginning of a whole new phase for your company, one with a lot more scrutiny and pressure. There's a whole lot of learning, but it's been great. One of the biggest things I've learned, is that words matter. You have to think before hand. There was a point on an earnings call where I said I was disappointed, and our stock dropped 25 percent. I said—wait a minute, you're kidding? I said I was disappointed, not that the world was ending! But, they're looking for anything, because how much you can reveal is fairly limited. They're looking for any indicators of problems, and indicators of good potential. They're looking at your every nuance. I even had an investor tell me that my tone was too depressing on a phone call, and I needed to have a more upbeat tone. I'm a pretty upbeat person! It's interesting how your every nuance is watched, and most of us are not used to that, or that kind of scrutiny.

Finally, what's the best advice you'd give to other executives, and especially those who hope to get to where you have with your company today?

Therese Tucker: Please your customer! It's a lot easier to please a customer, than it is to get a new customer, and to lose a customer and get another customer.

Thanks!