Sam Jacobs

And, you know, again, I've been talking.

My name is Sam Jacobs.

I'm the CEO.

And we've been in the shift from a world where investors were driving a lot of the value for organizations to a world where now customers are driving value because growth is driven for at least for us through profit.

And so our journey, it should say investor value on the left.

But.

Over the last couple of years, particularly in 2020 and 2021, investors were driving a lot of the value creation for enterprises.

And that's because when capital was not constrained, when there was free money, it meant that people could invest in businesses and growth at any cost.

And that's where this phrase comes from.

Growth at any cost was worth something.

And the reason for that is because of...

Not exclusively, but because of interest rates.

Because if you understand about the net present value and time value of money, you understand that a dollar at 0% interest rates in 20 years is worth the same as a dollar today.

And as interest rates go up, that dynamic shifts.

It's not the only thing driving the compression of multiples and

public technology companies and in private technology companies, but it's part of it.

And we're not immune from that either.

I didn't think when I started this business that it would be a venture-backed business, but it turned out three years ago that a company called Elephant Ventures got in touch with me and they wanted to invest $25 million.

And so even though I lecture and write about go-to-market alignment online, we immediately fell victim to all of the mistakes that we comment other people embody and employ.

So we were growing very, very quickly through last year when the tech recession ultimately hit us.