 Hello everyone and welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Commerce Tools Elevate here in Miami Beach, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host and analyst, Shelly Kramer. So Shelly, one thing that is clear is that Commerce Tools is a company that's got momentum. This is a company that was founded in 2006. 2013 launched its technology, but this is a company that is really growing. A company that is not playing around and I could not be more excited about our guests this morning, exactly. So we are welcoming to the show, Dan Murphy. He is the CFO at Commerce Tools. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Happy to be here, so I appreciate it. And you know what? I'm going to go ahead and cop to the fact that I am actually a CFO company. You set me up. I had some conversation before we started and but here's why though. You have the keys to the kingdom, Dan. I mean, you know what? Everybody has to come to you and pitch their budget and everything else. You're the person who makes the decisions of who gets money and who doesn't. So I think to me, you're one of the most important persons in an organization. Now, that's very kind of you. I think the team is really important. And you know, when you think about just talking about cash and capital allocation, it's actually really important in this kind of environment. And you know, many CFOs have not gone through somewhat of a significant adjustment from a macroeconomic perspective. And so I've been lucky enough or unfortunate enough to be through it. And you know, that tightening of the belt I actually think is good for businesses. I think it's a smart thing to do. And you move from that growth at all costs to efficient growth and smart growth. And commerce tools has been able to continue to invest in our growth and continue to drive, you know, strong growth in 23. And we expect the same as we go into 24. So it's exciting. No, and I think that's really important. I think moving away from it costs what it costs, mindset to how can we do more with less? I mean, I think I feel like that's sort of been the mantra of 2023 and moving into 2024 and it is smart. I think these adjustments help us keep things in line so that we don't go off the rails. I think that's super, super important. It does and it actually forces, at least to me, it creates a forcing function of the more, not that every project isn't important, but it forces the more important and the more valuable ones to the top in order to drive that decision making for the organization and for our customers as well. So let's actually delve into that a little bit in terms of commerce tools and the financial and strategic decision making that you're doing, especially as you are battling it out with competitors like Salesforce Cloud and Shopify. You know, as far as the capital allocations talked about and we did our keynote this morning about some of the product launches that we had and we're pretty excited by the things that we're doing. The Kinect platform, very exciting, sort of making it easier for partners to integrate into the commerce tools structure foundry, which we launched in January, making it easier for customers to get the value and time to live a lot faster than they've been able to do it on their own, a pre-composed solution. And then we have different growth vectors that in our business that we're continuing to invest in. Globally, we are a global company. North America's been a great growth opportunity for us. B2B side, B2C side has also been growth vector and we're starting to see different veins in different areas. When I joined commerce tools about eight months ago, I had a pre-composed thought process that, you know, this is not a greenfield opportunity. This is a replacement of, you know, maybe a monolith, old player, maybe something that they built themselves. But the reality is the greenfield in the B2B side where these companies are just realizing or maybe they realize that they've got to become more connected from an e-commerce perspective and it's been a great opportunity for us. What do you think is driving that revelation of companies understanding that they need to do more? I think there's a combination of things, their old model and maybe they were a little bit slower to react when COVID happened. The retailers were very fast to react to make those investments. B2B slugged it out, you know, some of the companies made it through, some of the companies didn't. And I thought they're coming out and coming to that realization. They don't always move the fastest, but they're starting to come to that realization that those are really good opportunity to interact with our customers differently than we did today and to be able to expand our footprint significantly wider than maybe the direct one-to-one relationship they have. So it's been a great opportunity for us. I think it goes beyond we have an opportunity to, there's a customer expectation. You know, we're seeing a change in the marketplace. We're seeing the buying age of our key buyers within B2B companies decrease, right? And so people don't want your product catalogs. They don't want your, I mean, I want it to be easy. And a lot of these new buyers are part of the digital native group, right? And so they don't know anything, but going online, being able to use a marketplace, being able to shop for what they want. And if we don't make that possible, they're not going to sit around and wait for us to get our act together. So I think it's beyond an opportunity. It's an imperative. Yeah, that's a very good point. You've got to be where the shopper or the consumer is and the consumer, whether it's B2B or it's an individual, they are used to, consumers are used to buying this way. And in their business world, they want to buy this way as well. So it's a very, very good point. So the role of a CFO has evolved. There's always been, to be a CFO, you always have to have a healthy appreciation for risk. Pragmatism balanced with optimism about the business. I'm curious to hear how you would describe this evolution. You've been a CFO for a long time, but only eight months here at Commerce Tools. What have you observed? So it's a good point about the assumption of risk or understanding of risk. And you go through cycles where you're willing to take on a little bit more risk, depending on what's happening from a macro or your business or the opportunity. And where you at Commerce Tools are willing to take on a little bit more risk, maybe more so than other companies, because we see a huge opportunity and we've been able to grow extremely well. So from a CFO's perspective, again, I think there's a couple of things. The role has evolved significantly from the armband and the counting money and the calculating machine when I started to really being a partner to the organization, a partner to the different areas of the business. Being that sounding board, being that trusted partner, too often CFOs get stuck in the no comment and let me control all the decisions. It to me, the best decisions that get made are when you are transparent in the decision-making process, you're transparent in what you can do, where you want to invest, and you bring the team along for that journey. And they have to have significant input because they've got to live by those decisions as well. It can't just be the CFO making the decision in conjunction with the board or the CEO or whatever it might be. So I think it has evolved quite a bit. And then as I talked about a little bit earlier, a lot of CFOs haven't gone through this belt-painting process. And it's hard to do, right? And it's easy to say yes, hard to say no, but really hard to get it right, right? So where you say no, or where the team says no, this doesn't make sense to do it today, but these three things make sense. So let's make the three bets or the three investments versus five broader investments and let's just really focus on what we need to get done. So I think that's how it's evolved and that's how I've evolved just as a CFO. Relationship with the board, relationships with Dirk, relationship with the management team, I think it's just important that everybody's involved in that decision-making. Not to say that it's, you know. Like for five to five. A full consensus building, it's actually, let's make the decision together and let's drive towards the outcome of the goal. Well, and I think also, you know, making sure that those key stakeholders feel like they play a part in the decision, you know. I don't want to feel like they do play a part in decision-making. Yeah, I think that's super important. And that's where I think those deep relationships throughout the organization as a CFO, as opposed to sitting in an ivory tower doing that. No, no, you know. And who wants that job anyway, right? So being a consultative, sounding board, all that, that to me is what makes the job exciting. I agree. And I worked for one of those CFOs way, way back when, I mean, you know, I was like, I don't think that's the role I want. I don't think I want that kind of a job. So, you know, as you evolve through your career, you take the best parts of different people that you work with and you make them your own and create your own. And that's how I've kind of operated. And that kind of no position is, it just logically doesn't make a lot of sense. Very old school. Yeah. So that's what's happening internally at the culture is that it's no longer part of this siloed experience of this is what the money people do, this is what the product people do. How does that translate externally in terms of the CFO and your outward-facing role? Because you are so much more involved in the business. Yeah, I actually enjoy events like this. You know, I think it's a good time to connect with customers. I talk to customers actually all the time as part of the sales cycle. I will make myself available to talk to other CFOs. CFOs are getting involved more and more in decision-making around investments, around, you know, similar to what I was just talking about. Every CFO is going through that same thing. And I offer my assistants just to talk about commerce tools, what it looks like, what the implementation time looks like, how we can help, what we can do to help them round out and make that decision to make it a good decision for them. Because it's in our best interest to have them have a good experience with commerce tools. So, being that customer-facing, it's a part of the role that I do enjoy. Can you talk a little bit about a potential IPO? Can I talk about its potential? We have to ask. You do have to ask. It's not often that I get stumped, but listen. Yeah, we're looking at a path and there's an opportunity here. It's a great company. We've got the things that we've got to put together as like any company. We're putting in the infrastructure, the plumbing, if you will, to make sure that we're ready to take any path that we want. We are growing quite quickly. We are in a great market. We are product-market fit. I mean, we don't have to define any of that stuff. It's working well. We just got to get ourselves ready. And when the time comes, whether it's market-related, when we're ready, whatever it might be, we just want to make sure we're in the right spot for it. All right, good night. What are you working on this year? What looking ahead to... On the main stage, there was a great discussion about the momentum and about the growth path of Commerce Tools, lots of product announcements, a deepening of partnerships with existing partners. What are some of the things you're looking ahead to 2025? So I think there's a couple of things. First is we look at 2024 and going into 2025, getting the business ready to continue to scale. Yeah, you go through phases in a business. You do things to get you to the certain level. Then you do how to do different things to get to your next level. And we're on that next phase to get us ready. Maybe it's an IPO path. Maybe it's kind of the infrastructure. So making sure we're set with that, that's kind of the first thing. And then on the just the overall business piece is making sure amongst the press, amongst the investment community that they know who Commerce Tools are. We started out as a European company and we are headquartered in Europe, but we've got much more of a presence here in the States and we want to make sure that people understand who Commerce Tools is, that we are a global company, that we are well entrenched in North America. We had a stat that we gave out. We've had 65% growth in North America, which is impressive. And it's the first time it's actually outpaced our European growth, which is great. And then you've seen some of the customers that we have here, incredible customers. So we want to make sure we continue ad and we're growing as efficiently as possible can. So yeah, I'll cut it. Very exciting things ahead, I think in the B2B focus. I was really excited to hear that in the keynote. And I think there's tremendous opportunities there. I know we talked about this a little bit more, but just that whole, the composable solution, the simplicity, all of that, making things easy for developers, making time to value as short as humanly possible. I think all of those things are things to be really excited about. Yeah, and the B2B is actually pretty interesting. You look at some of our customers and maybe we're doing one line of business and they might have 20 lines of business. So the expansion opportunity, once you get into one of these businesses is amazing. And we've got incredible net dollar retention just to throw out a metric that we use internally. Our net dollar retention, our customers, once they're in, they continue to buy from us over a period of time. And that's a great way to grow a business. And on the B2B side, that opportunity to sell to another business unit, another region, it presents itself very well. And it's a benefit to our customers as well, being on one platform across their businesses and unifying that is pretty key. So you're relatively new to Commerce Tools. You're based on the East Coast, as you said, the company's headquartered in Europe, but it's got people all over the world. What do you get out of being at a conference like Commerce Tools Elevate? I get a couple of things, right? On a daily basis, you're so into the business and as a CFO, you talked a little bit about risk, but they're also, you know, not pessimistic, but they look for the problems in order to fix the problems. We all know those people. Right, so you can sometimes get mired in the things that you got to fix, and oh, we got to do this, we got to do this, but you have the ability to come to Elevate and you get to talk to customers. And you're like, wow, we're really impacting, you know, e-commerce in a big way. You get to some of that positive feedback. You get some constructive feedback as well of things that you can do better. And customers, they don't hold back, right? They'll tell you what's going on, partners as well. So I think that's a pretty big benefit. The other benefit that I think we get is, which is just key, you know, part of my goal here today is, I'm just introducing customers to other customers, right? And see, hey, we're trying to do this. Well, why don't you meet this person? And that connectivity, and you can see it happening all over the place, is invaluable for our customers, for them to continue to know what they can actually do with the e-commerce tools, but with the Commerce Tools platform. And it's nice to have those relationships face-to-face as opposed to screen-to-screen. Oh, yeah. We all do a lot of that on a different basis, right? You know, having that personal interaction is great and having to be able to have a coffee with a couple of different people or whatever it might be, it's a breath of fresh air. A way to grow the ecosystem, and also one thing that's coming clear is that you want the feedback. You want to know what are the best practices? How do we deliver on these solutions? Yeah, I mean, one of our most successful things we do and our VP of customer success does is, he hosts dinners in certain regions and just brings customers together. There's a little bit of agenda around Commerce Tools, but there's more of agenda of just bringing them together to talk about maybe some of the problems they're experiencing. Yeah, I think the similar to CFOs, somebody else has solved the problem that I've had. So just help me understand how I can solve my problem versus me trying to reinvent the wheel. From a CFO perspective, I talk to different CFOs all the time, hey, I got this going on, I got this going on. What did you guys do about it? And there's usually a solution in there somewhere that I can then say, okay, that makes sense, let me try for my business. And that's the same thing for our customers, which is great. Excellent, Dan, great conversation. A lot of fun to have you on the show. Thank you for having me, really appreciate it. I'm Rebecca Knight for Shelley Kramer. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's coverage of Commerce Tools Elevate. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news.