Executive Summary:

Mike Whitmire, CEO and Co-founder of FloQast

reveals how his company is revolutionizing the

accounting profession through an unconventional

blend of creativity and technology. From producing

a SAG-approved sitcom starring Danny Trejo to

building a platform that empowers accountants to automate their own workflows with AI, Whitmire shares the bold decisions that helped FloQast raise its first $300 million of venture capital without a CFO. Learn how FloQast is addressing the accounting talent gap by transforming mundane manual work into strategic, judgment-based roles through their FloQast Certified Accountant program, and discover why hiring auditors and accountants as salespeople - in the face of board resistance - became one of their smartest competitive moves. Whether you're interested in building category-defining companies, are a seasoned accounting professional or simply want to understand what "Prepared by Client" (PBC) really means, this conversation offers valuable insights from a founder who's successfully merged deep industry expertise with innovative go-to-market strategies to set his company on a course to $1B in ARR. Stream it now, and be sure to LIKE, SHARE and COMMENT!

​

Transcript:​

Mark Vigoroso (00:01.745)
Greetings everyone. Welcome back to the enterprise edge. This is Mark Vigoroso founder and CEO, and this is the enterprise edge podcast. Thank you to those who are returning and thank you for the first time listeners joining us. have a great session here on a Friday afternoon. we have a, another CEO, Mike Whitmire, from Flo Qast we are both fresh off a trip to Las Vegas. So we'll be trading a few stories there. but more importantly, Mike.

is at the helm of FloQast in the FinTech accounting space and we'll be getting into some pretty detailed discussion on vision, strategy, market, as well as getting to know Mike a little bit as an LA native. So before we get started, let's give Mike a proper welcome. Mike, thanks for being here and thanks for taking the time.

Mike Whitmire (00:51.83)
Awesome, thank you for having me Mark, I appreciate it.

Mark Vigoroso (00:54.881)
Absolutely, thanks. to you as well. So we've got some icebreakers as we always do and we will end with a speed round and in the middle we'll have a semi-serious conversation. So let's start on a Friday. Let's start with this piece of information that I've got confirmed now is that you've actually released a sitcom

Mike Whitmire (01:08.814)
Sounds good.

Mark Vigoroso (01:23.477)
in the accounting space. I gotta know a little more about that. What was the origin? What has been the reaction? Maybe just why.

Mike Whitmire (01:33.004)
Yep, that's fair. Very fair.

I can't tell the story without going into my background a little bit and kind of the founding story of FloQast. So let me just take a step back for that. So I started my career in audit. I was at Ernst & Young for close to four years. And in my time at EY, I noticed that a lot of what we would do is we would work a lot of hours. We would go home at night. And a lot of the content that we like to consume was more like mindless stuff, like comedy shows, like just TV basically. And it was like, all right, we'll talk about

Mark Vigoroso (01:40.463)
Yep. Yep.

Mike Whitmire (02:07.12)
What happened on American Idol this week or survivor or what happened on workaholics last night or whatever, you know, like like though like that was kind how it works So anyway, I had that learning and then ultimately decided to leave audit. I went over to a pre IPO software company by the name of cornerstone on demand I was the fifth person hired in the accounting department over there and what was appealing to me about that company was that when I interviewed the CFO was like, yep We're gonna go public in the next 12 to 18 months and I really want to be part of that that growth story and go through an IPO from that lens

Mark Vigoroso (02:10.033)
you

Mike Whitmire (02:37.04)
So I hopped on board there got to do all kind of worked a ton of hours But with that got to do all kinds of interesting projects, you know get a new ERP implemented We were on QuickBooks before and you can't go public on QuickBooks. So we got a real ERP implemented Got through our first audit started codifying a month and closed process, of course got the s1 Drafted and filed ultimately went public. It was awesome. Then it was time for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance I got to help with a lot of the implementation work over there. We in general scaled up accounting operations

like everyone has to. So we got to about 50 people on that team and I noticed we have this really tough process around the month end close. We have a hard time managing it. There's no automation around it. It presents a lot of audit risk. The close is hard. The trial balance tie out is tough. Reconciliations are brutal and none of it's good for us being done manually. And almost every company does that work manually. So I had the very classic, there must be a better way to do this moment and left my job in 2012 and founded FloQast. So we started FloQast.

very fun journey. ultimately fire up a marketing department and a big part of marketing is content marketing, obviously. And this is not rocket science. We had been very into content marketing from the beginning of FloQast. We fired up our own podcast. We do our own webinars where we talk about accounting guidance and it's all CP certified and all that kind of stuff. You start to put together case studies, white papers, blog posts. It's all content you're producing for the market. as we wrote more more white papers,

kind of realized, I thought back to my time in audit and I was like, man, I wouldn't like, I'm not gonna work all day and then go home at night and read more about accounting. I'm not gonna go read a white paper about something. This is not the reality. So maybe we should think about content more in the terms of how people actually consume content and meet people where they work with the type of content that they wanna watch. And that to me was a really big epiphany. That was back in 2020. I had the guts to get up in front of the board and say, I wanna pivot our content strategy.

do some of those things like case studies and white papers but let's only do them if we know for sure they're gonna be popular and they're gonna hit and they make a lot of sense for us. If they're not, let's take that time and let's carve it out and try to do some more interesting and entertaining content, things that are fun but also if we can hit the educational mark that would be awesome also. So with that, the first and I think the craziest idea to come out of that whole thing was called PBC and that was a sitcom that we put

Mike Whitmire (05:06.595)
together a comedy. basically went to the team and said I want to make a show that's sort of like Silicon Valley or Workaholics but for accountants directly at accountants and so that was the starting point for it. I was hyper involved in the process like helped write the first draft of the script. We were in there with the writers room and everything and ultimately the project took on a whole mind of its own and we had a lot of budget to commit to it and so we produced like a very high quality comedy sitcom. It's on YouTube now just for free. We have two seasons.

Mark Vigoroso (05:24.465)
Wow.

Mike Whitmire (05:36.548)
up there. It is called PBC, which stands for Prepared by Client. And the idea is that the prepared by client process, the PBC process, is this like confrontational thing that sits between the accountants and the auditors. And so we kind of latched onto that. And a lot of the show is about the relationship between accountants with their auditors and then also accountants interacting with other departments within a company. And gives you some of that like inside sneak peek, inside baseball. There are a lot of very in the weeds jokes and references to accounting.

Auditing for sure and everyone I've talked to has watched it and who came out of accounting has been like yeah This cuts a little this hits a little too close to home This is exactly what I remember or this is what I'm experiencing I just got back from our trip in Vegas where we were visiting for sweet world I literally had someone tell me that they they loved the show they made their husband watched it with them and We're like, this is what my life is like I'm not doing tax returns all day Like this is actually what my life is like and it like gave the husband whole new perspective

Mark Vigoroso (06:15.515)
Yeah.

Mike Whitmire (06:36.371)
on the day to day of what their wife is doing. So I that was a pretty cool story. But yeah, definitely recommend everyone check it out. And with that, we spun up a whole content department called FloQast Studios and it's their job to help make interesting, entertaining, and creative content that is also hopefully educational as much as humanly possible. So yeah, that's been a really fun project. Definitely met with some resistance from the board, but now that they've seen the success, it's been very popular and continues to get funded.

Mark Vigoroso (06:38.161)
for

Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (06:55.525)
That's cool.

Mark Vigoroso (07:02.107)
Well, can imagine. mean, it's on paper. sounds a little more than a little unconventional, but it's actually brilliant. mean, mean, target, I mean, very targeted audience, right? For sure. but very much in line with your, might say your ICP, right? Your customer profile, right? So, yeah.

Mike Whitmire (07:13.666)
Yeah.

Mike Whitmire (07:19.149)
Totally, yeah. We actually had a really fun debate around the target audience with that. We hired a production company, like a legit production company, and when they were talking about even naming the show, they wanted to go with something broad like The Accountants. And from their perspective, they're selfish. Where their heads are at is they want the show to go as big as possible because then their resume looks bigger and they can then use that as a launch pad to bigger productions. From my head, I'm like, I want it for accounts.

Mark Vigoroso (07:24.336)
Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (07:34.17)
Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (07:46.629)
Yeah.

Mike Whitmire (07:49.056)
is way more of an inside joke and makes sense to accountants. And I remember telling them like, I would rather have 10,000 accountants watching the show than a million people where only a thousand of them are accountants because they think it's cheesy. And so it's just like, we, so we went for that direction. So it is very, very inside baseball, a lot of that show.

Mark Vigoroso (07:52.816)
Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (08:01.819)
Yeah, yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (08:06.605)
Yeah, well, no doubt. mean, even before we were talking, I had to ask you to spell the acronym. I mean, I'm not an accountant. That's why.

Mike Whitmire (08:13.837)
Yeah, it's in there. Well, if you want to know more about the day-to-day of an industry accountant, please check it out. It's awesome.

Mark Vigoroso (08:21.841)
Good for you, man. I love that. I love that. Well, that's you know, I love you know founders stories in general, but that one's a good one I don't think I've heard a Someone go all in on a high production value sitcom two seasons I'm gonna check it out. I will check it out over the weekend

Mike Whitmire (08:39.243)
Yeah, like it's SAG approved. have Danny Trejo is one of the stars in the show. Like it's legit actors. It's a very, it's a very real production, very real production.

Mark Vigoroso (08:44.609)
wow!

I'm checking it out. I'm checking it out. Maybe on a Saturday afternoon tomorrow. Awesome. All right. Let's talk. Speaking of founders, you are one. I am one. But you're way down the path with FloQast. Great trajectory you guys are on. And I'm curious, in the early days, when you were bootstrapping and...

Mike Whitmire (08:53.453)
There you go.

Mark Vigoroso (09:14.329)
and fundraising and looking for support financially and otherwise. I'm sure there were some ups and downs and some rocky road and rocky roads and windy paths. I'm curious, there, give us a sense for your musical interests. Were there any kind of tunes that you would play in the car or, you know, in your house that would remind you that you're not crazy, stay the course, know, pump you back up again.

Mike Whitmire (09:41.868)
Man, that's a good question. A little bit of an embarrassing answer, I guess. I do enjoy rap music, and so it's very funny to be doing very mundane fundraising or accounting things while listening to rather hardcore rap behind the scenes. it does, it pumps you up, it keeps you motivated. Some of the talk is about making money and stuff, and so you got that in the back of your mind. So I don't know, that is, yeah, I won't dig into specific artists or anything like that, but yeah, high ego rap music back.

Mark Vigoroso (09:45.006)
You

Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (10:09.396)
That's all right. That's that's.

Mike Whitmire (10:11.811)
in the day will help, will keep you going, keep you motivated through all this.

Mark Vigoroso (10:14.633)
I love that. love that. I love that. Well, we talked about Vegas a little bit. You and I missed each other, but we were both there at Sweet World. And I'm just curious. I think you had some customer interactions. Any takeaways? Anybody aside from the nice one about somebody showing their spouse the sitcom? Any other nuggets that you heard from clients or prospects that are worth mentioning?

Mike Whitmire (10:40.395)
Yeah, su-

Yes, super important one to me. obviously AI is really top of mind for everybody right now. It's like a nonstop discussion. In fact, I was in the Boston airport with my eight year old daughter and she saw a sign for AI and she goes, why does everything say AI? And it's like, yep, I totally agree. Everything says AI. It is important. And one of the things I think about AI and accounting is just from a human level. There's a lot of fear around AI and will it automate jobs and how much work is it gonna take? And I think it's sort of easy

Mark Vigoroso (10:50.672)
Yep.

Mark Vigoroso (10:57.615)
Hahaha

Mike Whitmire (11:12.993)
to fall into that trap of being scared about it. And I had this epiphany about six months ago that I think part of that is because you'll have this broad response of like, the industrial revolution automated jobs and then they found new jobs and there you go. it's like, okay, you can say that, but what is that going to look like? Like, what is the reality of that? And is that true when you have such innovative technology where you have tech people claiming it's going to do like automated ton of work, right? How do you like reconcile all of that? And so I realized no one is

Mark Vigoroso (11:27.056)
Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (11:41.627)
Yeah.

Mike Whitmire (11:42.816)
doing a good job painting the vision for what the future of accounting is going to look like. That's not being done. so FloQast developed our vision for what we think it's going to look like. We built a product that supports that vision, and then we're going to market with that message. And our goal here is to not displace accountants, but we want to give them the technology that allows them to leverage AI to do the automating of work down the road. And that is especially appealing in accounting because we have a talent gap right now.

Mark Vigoroso (11:47.249)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Whitmire (12:12.769)
People are leaving the profession. You don't have as many people majoring in accounting. And so in many ways we need technology to automate that gap and help help plug the workload issue. And so we're coming in with a, Hey, it's not IT or engineering that's going to do this work. We've built a platform for you to own your destiny and do this work on your own. It is a new way of working. It's different. And so with that, we've backed it up with an education platform that we call the FloQast certified accountant. And it's an official designation. Now it's a certification that you can get.

The idea is like what being a CPA is to auditors or tax preparers. The FloQast certified account program is going to be to an industry accountant. And so we announced that program a month ago at our user conference. just came out a month ago. We've already had many people go through the program, complete it and get their certification. And when I was at Sweet World, people come up to the booth. So many people loved it. That's like having a clear vision. They love that we're there to support with the upscaling of them to make sure that they're successful in the future. So many people were the

either in progress on the FCA or had completed it, were having their team do everything. was just like, the response was overwhelmingly positive. And I think it's because number one, we're using AI the right way within accounting. There are nuances within accounting that need to be contemplated with how you use AI. And then second, we're putting that power in the hands of the accountants, which is like, awesome. It's perfect. I love it. So that to me was my biggest takeaway is how much does our FloQast strategy vision mission is landing with the market and how excited everybody is.

you

Mark Vigoroso (13:44.05)
That's great, Mike. You know, it actually blends right. You actually already partially answered my first sort of business question, which is great. But that's this, this and your eight year olds response to, to AI is, interesting because, know, when she's working, you know, in years from now, the question for a lot of functions is, you know, what is, what is that?

occupation going to look like, right? And I'm curious when you think about accounting, which is where your skills, interests and passions are, do you have any concern about the industry's, I guess I'd call it muscle memory, right? As more and more tasks that you might call the low-hanging fruit of accounting are fully automated, partially automated,

perhaps enabled with agentic AI and autonomous workflows over time. You know, there will always be human in the loop processes, right? Where you have some gates or some approval triggers for humans. Do you think that the humans that remain in the accounting profession will, what's the term, like atrophy? Do you think they're, or the opposite, right? Will they actually be,

the ones that are left are super humans when it comes to accounting expertise and intelligence and creativity. How do you think that human and machine combination in accounting is going to evolve over time? guess that's what I'm asking.

Mike Whitmire (15:23.553)
Yeah, one of my favorite questions. So today, today what we ask an accountant to do is a whole lot of manual work, spreadsheet work, reconciliations, data input, very manual work. And as they're doing that kind of in the weeds mundane work where you want them to do it in a manner that is compliant with GAP and accounting standards so they can produce financial statements properly.

Mark Vigoroso (15:32.241)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Whitmire (15:46.542)
It is, it's surprisingly hard to do both of those things at the same time, especially when you're ripping through a large volume of data. Like the road work just has to get done. And sometimes you forget and incorrect judgment calls are made, or we just forget to do something. And so that's the job today. And the fun part of all of that is when you get to deploy judgment in your accounting knowledge, which is the, unfortunately, the lesser part of the role today. Most of it is mundane road work or managing people less on the like proper accounting guidance and how do we apply it?

How do we properly book journal entries? How do we present financial statements? That's just not as much of a focus today in terms of time concentration. So in the future, what happens with accounting is FlowCast, we built our platform and within our platform, you're able to leverage AI to automate end-to-end workflows. Now, within those workflows, there's gonna be a combination of standardized boring work that our engine can just do. And then you're gonna meet a point where we need a human in the loop

to review and approve any judgment calls or any new form of data that feed into that workflow. And so it's important to have like a human in the loop review step along the way. For accounting, it's particularly important because we get audited at the end of the year, every quarter at the end of the year, we go through an audit and all the technology we build and the processes that are run need to be audit compliant. So you'll have the obvious no-brainer stuff done by an automated workflow that has been built in FloQast. If there's a judgment call required, that will then get surfaced to the accountant.

They'll then review and approve and make sure that, let's say for example, if a journal entry is being populated, that journal entry has been populated correctly, the correct debits and credits are contemplated, all the numbers are accurate, and it's gonna flow through to the financial statements properly. If there's new data that came in, my favorite example for this one is, like you do this thing called a benefit allocation journal entry. I won't bore you too much, but it's based on payroll and it's based on where employees are located. And so if you hire your first employee

Mark Vigoroso (17:17.624)
you

Mike Whitmire (17:46.208)
in a new state, that changes how that journal entry is populated and how that data needs to be contemplated through an agent. And you wanna make sure that the human is reviewing and approving and ensuring that that new form of data is being contemplated properly. So you have like these people who are now able to get away from doing the rote work, level up and be more of a reviewer of the work that's being performed by an agent. What's nice about that is reviewing judgment decisions like that is actually a lot more in line with what you learn

College.

So when you're majoring in accounting, it's much more about theory and principle. It's less about the practical side of, I think you would scare everyone off if you were like today, you're going to learn about what the day to day of an account is like, which is involves wailing away on Excel and doing manual reconciliations and inputting data. like you better be good at the nine key on your keyboard or else you're not going to be hyper-effective. That's not what we do. We talk about gap accounting, financial statements, journal entries, like how all this should be applied to financials. So if you believe in the future I'm preaching,

Mark Vigoroso (18:17.489)
Hmm.

Mike Whitmire (18:47.215)
That's what we get to do is now more so focus on what we actually learned in college, which is the more interesting stuff. Then there's going to be another role, which is more akin to a technologist or a software developer where they're taking our platform and they're the ones who are then actually automating the work within their own company. And I think one of the things that's not appreciated about accounting is how nuanced it is and how customized it needs to be across every single company. Every company is a little bit different. And so technology needs to be applied in a very highly customized

Mark Vigoroso (19:27.057)
Got it.

Mike Whitmire (19:37.015)
That's wild.

Mark Vigoroso (19:42.117)
Yeah.

Mike Whitmire (19:43.542)
So then in 14 years, presumably she will have majored in accounting. She'll be entering the workforce. Let's just say she goes into a corporate accounting department. She'll enter, she'll enter a department where automation has now been aggressively rolled out and we are, and she has one of two jobs that she can start to take a look at, which is either being the person building and managing the agents that need to be maintained and managed as the company scales and changes, or the person reviewing the work that the agent is performing. And she will be.

effective at both of those things because she will have been trained on the gap side of it already within college or and then on the technology side hopefully by then college is up to speed and his type teaching these things if not flow cast we're here to we're here to help flow cast certified accountant program is to make sure everyone knows how to do that but ideally you're learning that in college so you can hit the hit the workforce you enter a department where all the boring stuff has been automated you have less people doing that work which is just because of the talent gap that's naturally played out over time

like not to not to do with firing a bunch of people just has to do with the reality of accounting is we're gonna have fewer people in the field in 2039 right we're now talking about 2039 there will be fewer people in the profession but hopefully we have more economic impact there's more GDP and as such is more of a demand for accounting at large so we've plugged that gap with technology and she gets to do the fun stuff at her new job so I'm actually very bullish on the future of accounting I think it's a better role going forward and also I also believe

Mark Vigoroso (21:03.035)
Yeah.

Mike Whitmire (21:13.295)
maybe a little bit of a big pitch here is I think it gives you an opportunity to interact more with the rest of the company and provide more operational input at large, which is just a more fun, more strategic role to have as well. So I'm bullish about it. I'm excited as long as our vision is executed.

Mark Vigoroso (21:21.691)
Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (21:27.206)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, Well, my oldest daughter is double yours, 16. She's going to college in two years, and I'll tell you, yesterday she was eight. So enjoy every moment. Yeah.

Mike Whitmire (21:42.013)
I know, eight's a fun age. It's a fun one, man. I do find myself saying that every year, but eight's been a lot of fun.

Mark Vigoroso (21:50.034)
Well, that's awesome. No, I, know, it's, it's, it's, it's sort of a macro trend that we're seeing as well. And you think about what's happening is that the more strategic value added, quite honestly, attractive parts of jobs that perhaps aspirationally have always been what companies want people to be doing, but haven't been able to because of bandwidth and other stuff is sort of now.

Appearing to be more possible than ever right to your point about being able to engage more be more strategic perhaps be more proactive than just reactive and Leading versus following right? So it's just it's just I'm seeing it across the board not just in finance and related functions So it's it's I think I think it makes a lot of sense in in terms of positioning You know, it's interesting Yeah

Mike Whitmire (22:44.203)
It's a human brain thing. It's hard to be in the weeds and strategic at the same time. So the vast majority of people have to pick one. And I think most wanna pick strategy. I've never met a person who doesn't want a title that involves strategy. But if you're mired in the weeds, you simply don't have the time to give yourself the head space to be strategic. So can we solve that problem and empower the second? Yep.

Mark Vigoroso (22:58.747)
Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (23:05.275)
That's right. That's right. That's right.

So on the founder track that you're on 2012 is that when you officially found it or 2013? Yeah.

Mike Whitmire (23:14.637)
2012 was when I quit my job and started like working around doing, planting the early seeds. Took us a while to build product and we took our product to market in 2015. I think that's like the good line of demarcation around selling. Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (23:22.385)
Good. 15. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. So say a decade, decade ish, more than a decade. My research tells me, and you might keep me honest that, that you, went quite a bit into your path in terms of raising financing and launching the company without a CFO.

Mike Whitmire (23:31.413)
Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (23:50.326)
And I'm curious about that, your retrospective, your hindsight view on that, was that a deliberate choice? Was that the right choice in hindsight? Would you have done it differently? What did you win? What did you lose as a result of that decision?

Mike Whitmire (24:06.219)
The reality is I was...

I was cheap with our budget because from my perspective, I had a really good accounting department. had a really good finance manager. And so I thought I have the background here. can effectively, as long as I have really good people doing the FP &A and doing the accounting, like I can handle this stuff and save myself a good amount of money because CFOs aren't cheap, right? Both in terms of cash or equity. And so I said, yeah, we'll just save ourselves some money. So, and we were able to run that for significantly longer than most companies, you know, weird

Mark Vigoroso (24:12.207)
Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (24:30.575)
That's right. That's right.

Mike Whitmire (24:39.631)
point of pride is that we raised over $300 million in venture capital before we got a CFO in the building at FloQast. So it's cool. I can tell that story. I was proud of being able to do that, whatever. In hindsight, I should have hired a CFO sooner. It would have made my life much easier operationally. I could have spent more time on other things, like back to freeing up headspace to focus on other things. There's only so much time you have in the day. so a CFO can do a whole lot more than just fundraise and just oversee two

Mark Vigoroso (24:47.355)
Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (24:52.443)
Yes.

Mike Whitmire (25:09.611)
people. So it would have been good for us. I regret it. All that said, know, money was tight. It was like our first time building a company. And if I have to decide whether to allocate to product or go to market or finance in those early stages and I'm sitting there like, I can, I can do this stuff. Like, I don't know, it was probably the right move at the time. But if I started a company again, I think I'd be able to go out and do some arm waving and raise more money and would probably just bring a CFO in like immediately to help me do all this stuff. So I don't have to focus on it. Mixed emotions on it.

Mark Vigoroso (25:33.423)
Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (25:36.888)
I love it. It's all good. It's no regrets, man. No regrets. So far we've got two very unconventional moves that have paid off for you. One is to launch a sitcom and one is to hold out until the last possible moment for a CFO. So good on you for that. That's great. That's great. do you?

Mike Whitmire (25:52.171)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Whitmire (25:56.494)
I got one more for you, is, we have hired auditors and accounts all over our sales organization.

That's a really important one. So we were the first ones to do this. think other companies have seen us succeed in it and are now moving in this direction as well. But I fought with my board aggressively about this for several years. I wanted to go and hire accountants to sell because there's a lot more credibility behind talking to an accountant when you're buying software. And I just remember when I was an accountant buying software, not enjoying any of the account executives that I worked with from other companies, because my mindset was like, what are you even doing?

Mark Vigoroso (26:06.659)
Mark Vigoroso (26:23.884)
yeah. yeah.

Mike Whitmire (26:36.015)
You don't know what you're talking about. Let me talk to the solutions consultant who actually knows what they're talking about and you just seem like a waste of time and an annoying person to me. So if we could bring an auditor, an accountant to the table who knows what they're talking about has been in your shoes. It's a better buying experience. The resistance I was met with was accountants don't know how to sell. You can't scale an organization like that. Silently in the back of my mind I'm like I have sold all of you to the tunes of at that point tens of millions of dollars in fundraising. Like what are you talking about? So I just went out and

Mark Vigoroso (26:40.581)
Yeah, I

Mark Vigoroso (27:04.529)
You

Mike Whitmire (27:05.995)
it and executed on it and it's been so successful that others are now copying us at this point. So accounts and auditors are very versatile. There are extroverts out there in that field and they're able to be very collaborative and helpful and sell some software. So that's been awesome.

Mark Vigoroso (27:21.681)
Well, that's another great one. It's also in line with another macro trend, which we forget about the function, right? Having industry domain expertise when you're standing in front of a prospect pays off a hundred percent of the time, right? When you're speaking their language and when you know what PPC stands for, right? And, you know, I would be laughed out of the room trying to sell accounting software personally without any support, right? But...

I also think the lesson there is that it's dangerous thing to generalize. Everybody is an individual and there are accountants, like you said, with extroverted tendencies, but also, you know, people who are career salespeople who haven't reinvented themselves proactively are, you know, are at risk, right? In this market, right?

Mike Whitmire (27:56.811)
Yes.

Mark Vigoroso (28:16.241)
and that don't necessarily have a verticalization and they're more horizontal. It's just not as in line or in harmony with where organizations are going from a go-to-market perspective. So another one, that's a great one. I love that. So how big is your Salesforce, by the way? You have direct Salesforce, right? So how big are...

Mike Whitmire (28:36.735)
On the direct sales force, think we have, it's nice that I don't fully know the answer to these questions anymore.

Mark Vigoroso (28:44.398)
You

Mike Whitmire (28:46.509)
It's about 60 quota carrying account executives. And then overall, the go to market function is, you know, in the order of like 300, 300 people, something to that effect. got that's partner business development. We put customer success under there because that's all one beautiful flywheel, making sure you have happy customers ultimately generates more revenue. So everything lives under our CRO and president. And he has, yeah, I believe it's about 350 people rolling up to him.

Mark Vigoroso (28:49.082)
Okay.

Mark Vigoroso (28:54.352)
Got it.

Mark Vigoroso (29:10.981)
Got it. Got it. Good stuff. All right. Last, last real question and then we'll, we'll dismount here for the weekend. But, you know, in this world that you've, I think mapped out pretty, pretty, pretty well, which is, you know, this sort of mix of automated semi-automated human in the loop, right. With this sort of elevation of the function to be more reviewers, et cetera. I'm curious if you think about.

this highly regulated industry, this issue of liability and where does liability land when FloQast is involved? When you have things like there might be a misstatement or an SEC issue or a reconciliation that was AI generated that there was some sort of error.

Where does liability land? Does FloQast take on any liability? it with the controller? Talk to me about that area. Is it black and white or is it more gray?

Mike Whitmire (30:17.012)
It's well.

In some ways it's black and white, in some ways it's gray. So black and white, the legal liability and the ultimate cost to the company would fall on the company. It would be the decision is basically like, hey, you made the wrong software purchasing decision. You weren't on top of the controls enough. You failed the control. Now you get dinged as the company for doing this. So like the legal technical definition is it would be with the client. The reality is it would be awful for our reputation if people were failing audits because of FloQast.

would ultimately be the end of FloQast if we don't think about this properly. it is, I view it as like it's an existential thing for FloQast to get right. So with that, and I think because of my background in audit and not just audit but also the single most conservative audit firm that's out there is Ernst & Young. It's very burned into my mind that everything needs to be audit ready. And so as we're building out our solutions, that's always top of mind for us. And we actually collaborate with our partners who have audit practices to make sure that

what we're building is audit ready. We have, at this point, hundreds of public companies using FloQast, and so there's zero room for error in how we're deploying our technology. So everything we do is thought through. Ultimately, how is this gonna get audited, quarterly or at the end of the year?

Mark Vigoroso (31:35.074)
it. Now that makes that makes good sense. No, you guys have thought it through. think it's it's it's awesome. It's phenomenal. You know, there's there's a lot I've got.

more questions but we're already out of time almost and I want to be respectful of your calendar Mike so thank you for all that great stuff we're gonna we're gonna have a little bit of fun here before we say goodbye or farewell for now. Do a quick speed round as we always do for those of you who have been with us before we've got five speed round questions that will be hopefully a little bit of education and a little bit of entertainment so let's get to it.

Mike Whitmire (31:55.789)
All right.

Mark Vigoroso (32:14.065)
like when you pitch flow cast, um, and I think it was at the amplified LA accelerator back in the third 2013, I think timeframe, is there anything that you said that I think I know the answer to this, that you said that made perfect sense to you as an accountant, but got completely blank stares from everyone else in the room.

Mike Whitmire (32:35.51)
I think everything product related.

Mark Vigoroso (32:38.725)
Yeah.

Mike Whitmire (32:39.245)
Anything product related quite frankly The the reality is when you're that early stage It's more the investor is making a gut reaction of whether they think you as a human being are gonna be able to figure it out So from their perspective, it's is the market opportunity big enough and can this person figure out how to build a company within that market? And so I think like most of the nuances between that are not what they're interested in so if I'm talking about Reconciliations or closed checklist or whatever like

Product demo would be pointless a couple screenshots But then talking about how big the market is with some customer quotes is like way more impactful than anything I can do to speak to the product and what they what they ultimately do is like I'll go through that part of the pitch and then they introduced me to a couple CFOs where I actually did the product pitch and then they got the feedback from the CFOs and like does that make sense or not? Is he onto something blah blah blah, you know, they got the thumbs up They believed in my and my co-founders abilities to execute and that the market was big enough and so it was sort of like

as simple as that. Remember, we have no revenue, early stage product, it's like that's it, it's a gut instinct investment.

Mark Vigoroso (33:46.45)
Got it, got it. All right, talk to me about your typical morning. How do you get the day started as a CEO, as a co-founder? Do you have a regiment in the morning? Do you pound a few cups of coffee? Are you a workout guy? What do you do in the morning to get you to set the tone for your day?

Mike Whitmire (34:06.837)
Yeah, think you're yeah, I'm not going to give you the like David Goggins style answer anything to that effect. So I at some point in the six o'clock hour, I hear my daughter yell daddy and then I get up. I go get her and then we start to get I make a pot of coffee. We start to get breakfast going. I bring my wife a cup of coffee in bed. I have my first cup of coffee as well. The two of us combined to drink an entire pot of coffee in the morning. My daughter eats breakfast. She gets ready to go. My wife takes her to school and then I get my workday started.

Mark Vigoroso (34:11.525)
Hahaha.

Mark Vigoroso (34:17.711)
Hahaha.

Mark Vigoroso (34:31.281)
Yes.

Mike Whitmire (34:36.801)
there. So that's really it on a weekday. It's pretty consistent. There's no working out. There's no walking on for a mile or anything to that effect. There's none of that stuff, man. It's get up, hang out with my kid, help her get ready, and then go to work. And it's awesome. I wouldn't have it any other way. I only get a few more years of that, Yep.

Mark Vigoroso (34:38.073)
Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (34:42.118)
Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (34:46.224)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (34:56.749)
I do know, I do know. And that reminds you of why you're doing what you're doing. So that's great. That's great. All right. So let's now let's look forward a little bit. Let's let's project the day when FloQast gets a billion dollars of ARR. Are you?

Mike Whitmire (35:01.181)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (35:14.351)
I don't know how to say this. What does second chapter look like? Do you see a future where you seem like a creative guy, but also a very left-brained accountant guy? do you think you might launch another series? Do think you might write another book? You think you might release another album? What do you think is next? And is it really that far away?

Mike Whitmire (35:38.612)
It's, I mean, it feels like it's far away, but.

Mark Vigoroso (35:42.639)
Yeah.

Mike Whitmire (35:42.818)
when we get there, it's gonna be like, whoa, that happened quickly kind of thing is my general take. But to me, what's really important is in the evolution of a company, it's how much product have you built? so it was act one was, okay, let's build a close, a month then close management solution. That was what we did. And then stage two was let's build out a broader accounting transformation platform where we do more of the work that lives under the controller. And then phase three is how do we deploy AI to help automate that work? And then ultimately capture some of the

Mark Vigoroso (35:45.883)
Yeah.

Mike Whitmire (36:12.751)
the form of revenue, we'll capture some of the expense that's falling off of the talent gap labor market pool there. for me, it's all about we've built the products now. It's really a matter of executing on making sure our vision comes true where accountants are certified on FloQast. They're deploying their own agents. They're building their own agents. They're deploying their own agents. They're now the reviewers of this work. They've been leveled up and they're doing all of it in a ready way, in an audit ready way. I think if we sit maniacally

on making that happen, we will get to a billion of error. That's really kind of, we have the platform, we have the product to make it happen. At this point, it's us creating the future of accounting. And if we do, which I think we have a very compelling message and something that accountants seem to be excited about, then we will hit a billion of error. I can't commit to a timeline, but it will happen.

Mark Vigoroso (37:01.457)
Yeah, that's exciting. That's exciting. So on that note, I think if my research is right, I think you guys are over 800 employees, maybe total. Does that sound roughly correct? OK, so OK. You mentioned a pretty solid hiring decision around the sales team. Are there any hiring?

Mike Whitmire (37:14.017)
Yep. Yeah, about 820, I believe.

Mark Vigoroso (37:28.729)
mistakes that you've made along the way that you've learned a lot from and that you make sure you don't repeat.

Mike Whitmire (37:37.038)
I think maybe at the executive level, the skill set of the person for the stage of the company is super important. And it's not just the skill set, but also sort of the mentality and how they like to work. So I would say like early stage.

Mark Vigoroso (37:51.909)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Whitmire (37:58.85)
The most successful executives are ones who are hands-on and in the weeds and making sure things are successful, kind of like a come hell or high water type mentality. Oftentimes a lot of people who work like that are then unable to scale into the next phase of the business, which is where you are more removed and have to have more trust in your team and you're more of a leader than a doer. And so that was one change is like making sure you monitor your team and they're able to do that and level up, which people are able to do that.

to help people who scale with the organization and have been here for a long time. But also even when you're going to hire an executive, like I can think of one role where I went for more of the high level strategic type person too early in the company's history and it's just not a good match. So really thinking about what the company needs in terms of personality at the executive level and how they like to work and what they focus on is hyper important. I made a couple mistakes. I think for the most part I've gotten it right. I've been really happy with all the people I've worked with over the years.

But, that's one of the mistakes I reflect on.

Mark Vigoroso (39:03.473)
Yeah, that makes that makes good sense. I totally see that. All right, Mike. Well, Mike, last question will let you will let you run. You know, think about a lot of what flow cast has done, and I think you guys have probably very, I would say thinly sliced the the work that goes into the profession and what you think should be automated and what you think should be, you know, ultimately remain in humans hands. And I'm wondering

are there, is there anything that you've encountered? Maybe it's early on where a prospect or a customer was tracking something in an Excel spreadsheet that made you think, you know, this is, this is the tip of the iceberg in terms of why this company exists or needs to exist where they're, they're just maybe tracking something that is just absolutely, automatable. Or maybe there's tons of those examples. I don't know if any of them stick out though.

Mike Whitmire (39:58.402)
I mean, this is the founding story of FloQast. The first one is that almost every company manages their month-end closed checklist inside of Excel. Excel is not a workflow solution. It's incredible for numbers and doing stuff with numbers, but it's not a workflow solution. So that was the first one. It's like every company manages their clothes with Excel. My prior company included, that was the kickoff point for it. And really I liken it to, it's like,

Mark Vigoroso (40:01.851)
Yeah.

Mark Vigoroso (40:08.527)
Yep. Yep.

Mike Whitmire (40:28.175)
Salesforce, imagine if sales teams were tracking their opportunities and stages and all that stuff inside of Excel. Like that would be viewed as absolutely psychotic if any VP of sales wanted to operate that way. That's how accounting operates today. And it's cause they haven't been given the right tools. So the closed checklist is the no brainer. Then Excel is used all around accounting. Like it's still used mostly for reconciliations and budgeting and finance and putting financial statements together, things like that. There are some times where it makes perfect sense to be using Excel for use cases like that.

Mark Vigoroso (40:37.167)
Yeah.

Mike Whitmire (40:58.095)
So I'm a fan of integrating with Excel and not just like ripping it out of everyone hands telling them Excel is evil and not using it But there are certain examples where the work can be automated and should live inside of a platform like flow cast So we allow our clients to work in both modes They can continue to use Excel for reconciliations that they want to they do not have the option to continue using Excel as a checklist It is not a checklist solution So that's not an option But if you want to use it for reconciliation supporting documentation things like that be our guest if you want to automate those as well

and we have automation capabilities around much of that. I would say, yeah, looking at Excel and productizing stuff is an easy path to revenue and solving problems.

Mark Vigoroso (41:31.279)
god.

Mark Vigoroso (41:38.253)
Yeah, no doubt. No doubt.

Well, Mike, I've overstayed my welcome. Thank you so much for your generosity with your time and your insights and congrats again on the trajectory that FloQast is on. It really is impressive. And I especially admire the creative thinking along the way and some, maybe some unpopular decisions that you stuck with. So kudos on that as well. Thank you so much. Thanks for everyone who's listening. Thank you for your participation in the Enterprise Edge community. We will catch you next time on the Enterprise Edge podcast.

Until then, take care everybody.

Mike Whitmire (42:11.906)
Thank you for having me, Mark.