Andrew Michael
Hey, Huw, welcome to the show. It's pleasure to have you on the show today. I was actually recommendation as you know, we chatted before from Sancho who's actually the VP of Marketing at Hotrar. So thanks a lot for the recommendations. Great to have you. For the listeners, who is the CFO, a travel perk. TravelPerk is reinventing business travel with an intern solution that works, which we'll chat about in a bit. And prior to travelperk. He was the CFO at typeform, VP of international finance and operations at box and the finance director for service delivery at bt. So my first question for you is as the CFO of travelperk

What are you accountable for? Like, where do you focus your time? Today?

Huw Slater
It's a mixed bag, Andrew. So first and foremost, I'm accountable for the the financial reporting, I guess. And there's a lot of statutory reporting that goes alongside that. So making sure everything's done, as it should be. And that's kind of the the most fundamental functional part of the role, whether it's getting into financial information into internal stakeholders hands, tell them how the business is going, or whether it's fulfilling our obligations with our statutory reporting. So that's a foundational part of the role. Now, I try and set that up in a way that it doesn't take up a lot of my time. And really where I'm spending a lot of my time is with the exact team and really trying to catalyze action, to make sure within the money as best we can to get the best return. And in our case, it troubled us a lot about growth, because the opportunity in front of us is enormous. So really providing them with the information to catalyze action.

I strategizing with the team on where we should be going, and which which options we should be taking to get there because the options are infinite, and our resources aren't. So making good decisions and saying no to a lot of things is very important. And really, that's where I spend a lot of my time.

Andrew Michael
Interesting. And I see as well, like, obviously, I mentioned a few companies in Europe before they predominantly subscription based businesses is no reason like, as a financial officer, you've chosen to focus on subscription businesses.

Huw Slater
It's more the the technology aspect and subscription, the coming from bt I spent 10 years at bt, as you said in your intro, and, you know, it's a very kind of engineering focused business, you know, there's copper in the ground providing broadband at all the houses in the UK. And that wasn't motivating. For me. I you know, I learned a lot at bt and I'm very grateful for the opportunities that I had there. But it wasn't motivating for me and moving into technology is much more motivating. You know, the amount of innovation that happens to Technology, both on the consumer side and the business side I the products that you're delivering for the end user, but also on the internal process and the systems that you're using internally, there's just a huge amount of innovation. And that's what was interesting for me. So, subscription as a service is kind of secondary to the fact that it's technology, a technology led business.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, it makes total sense. The point of like, the subscription side of things, as well as any sort of unique things you like in these types of businesses, that's from a financial perspective, like excite you.

Huw Slater
But I think the model itself is is interesting, and you know, people probably don't think of it as that disruptive these days. But, you know, when I got into this into subscriptions, whatever was eight years ago, I'm still relatively new as a business model. So that in itself, you know, kind of leaning towards my enjoyment of innovation. That was exciting. So getting into a business where the business model itself was a piece of Innovation was very exciting, you know. And then there's lots of financial implications of that, you know, you do your mundane processes differently. And just the accounting rules are different for subscriptions than they are for other businesses. So that was definitely side for me that, as I say, leans towards my enjoyment of innovation.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, I definitely see that I think as well, like it's still in its infancy when you think about it as a business model. And we're still going through these learning curves. I think maybe one of the first subscription businesses that started as a subscription business was probably Salesforce in 1999. There were other cases before that. But if you think about it, this sort of model is only barely 20 years old, and at 21 just getting a driver's license. So I think there's there's a lot of innovation, it's still to be done and still hasn't been uncovered yet when it comes to running and operating them. So then bring into the topic of the show and I'm really interested I think as a challenge, because when It comes to churn and retention. This is something that's typically like not taught about in the early days when growth is is immense and growing and its growth at all costs for the majority of companies. And then until some point, they had this sort of growth ceiling, and then they're like, Oh, shit, we need to turn things around. Now we need to figure out like how we can retain more customers. And I think the nature of your role, though, as well is you're typically not going to be one of the first couple of hires at a startup. So the question is that when you join a company, like First of all, like how do you decide on which company you think is going to be a good fit for you? And what are some of the metrics is general retention, one of those? And then second, when you come into this company, sort of how are you looking at your retention and how are you trying to influence it and make a difference for it?

Huw Slater
Yes, if I try to break that down, so the first part of the question is, you know, what type of company or what stage of company with a join and you're right, you know, CFOs aren't required that seed stage, I'm very unlikely to be asked to come and be somebody's co founder and try and help out there. So, you know, kind of certainly series a kind of late series A is probably where I'd come in and through that scale up phase where product market fits already been achieved, hopefully. And it's really about how you how you're allocating capital really to drive the growth. So that's certainly more where I'm likely to be found. It's actually what I really enjoy as well. So that's good. And then in terms of metrics, absolutely, churn and retention are one of the most important things everyone loves to see those, you know, the cohort slides, we see that each cohort compounded on top of the new cohort and up into the right, it goes you know, our slack and Dropbox and the other guys. So it's absolutely something that I look at. And in fact, you know, travel club was the first infrared joint It was the first thing that I built when I got access to the data room to my interview process. So you know, it's fundamentally important to the business and and I you know, Is the CFO really want to understand that before I, before I jump in? So that's, that's really important to me. So, you know, once I guess I know that channel retention is important, then what do I do about it? And you know, when I joined the company, what am I looking at? And it's understanding, you know, it's been four years at bt kind of doing internal management consulting and six sigma. And you know, a lot of your listeners might roll their eyeballs at this, but kind of following the dimeric approach to define, measure, analyze, improve and control. But it's very helpful. So you know, you come in and define. And I've actually seen people do this wrong. You can measure in a million different ways or measurements, pretension, a million different ways and actually narrowing that scope. So you understand what it is you're trying to measure who it is, you know, which geography you're looking at which geography Do you care about, which segment, big businesses, small businesses, or even what's happening by cobalt, so really defining that problem, then measuring it and Again, this isn't you might expect me to say it's just pure data. It's not, you know, you know, churn is a misalignment of values. So I want to understand both the qualitative and the quantitative side of what's going on, you know, what, what are people saying about the product on the chin? And then what does the data Tell us about it, you know, is it a specific type of customer, they're not using a certain feature is a particular time in their life cycle. So sort of doing all of that measurement and then analyzing and like diving into to look for trends really look for the root cause of what's driving it. And again, that's not something I can do on my own, you know, I really enjoy and I pride myself in working across the whole organization, you know, working with the heads of customer success or sales or product to really understand that and, and with them come up with the kind of improvements and then putting in place that controls the KPIs to look at it. So it's a very standard kind of process and it's not like I come in and write all down with a huge project plan, but I think My mind's just naturally works like that. And I'll work through that kind of processes. Yeah, I'm help.

Andrew Michael
I realize I have to ask the question as pretty loaded. But I think it's an excellent way of unpacking it and answering step by step. So thanks for that, I think you'd make an excellent host. So you mentioned quite a few things. And I want to touch on as well. So the first one was, when you were going through the hiring process at travel perk, one of the first things you put together was sort of a retention analysis when you got access to the data. And what did that entail? What was the steps you're looking at? What was the actual figures that you were trying to establish from your side?

Huw Slater
me it was, so I didn't know the business at all. I mean, I was a customer actually, at the time, but I didn't know the intricacies of the travel business. So the analysis I did was relatively high level but I think it stands the test of time. So I'm just I was just looking at cohorts. So each month You know, what customers Did you acquire? And then I just did account based retention from that and built a the cohorts, and then what we call gmv. So gross merchandise value retention, like the dollars through the platform from that cohort each month, how did that change? And then you just have to, hopefully very pretty charts in front of you. And from that you can I was able to sort of learn a little bit, but enough to ask a lot of questions. And really, that's what the interview process is, and a practice where me understanding more about the business and the behaviors that sit behind those cohorts. You know, now I've joined You know, there's a million different ways that we're looking at it, but that one is still one of my low when I look around in the morning and look at the dashboard. That one is still up there. So I'm still looking at the same one. And I just know drill down on it as I see things

Andrew Michael
and you see things yeah. So then you predominantly obviously from a CFO perspective, but focusing on net Mr. Attention then and talk us The coats as well, this is something that we talked a little bit about on the show, but we never really go into great detail. So what is the benefits of looking at retention at tomorrow attention on a code basis? And why should companies be doing it?

Huw Slater
I mean, there's pros and cons to doing it. I think it's very powerful, because you're not averaging things out. I think there's a big risk in companies, when you analyze the data that you just take, you know, essentially, you take every cohorts retention curve, and then you average it together. And, you know, inevitably you'll end up with a smile curve to begin with, because the oldest cohorts usually the best performing because they're an investor, or they're your family or friends or, you know, so averaging your tags can be very misleading. And it also to that's why I don't average fact, that's why I like the cohorts. And it's also an ability to see what's happening in a, obviously in a bit more detail, but by that I mean there might be one cohort that's really outperforming or underperforming or halfway. Through their lifecycle, they change behavior. And that's interesting. Okay, that gives you a data point to go and dig into. Because maybe that cohort was made of, you know, in our case, it might have been a start up. And then net retention is amazing. Because they're growing. Okay, well, that's interesting. But that doesn't necessarily mean our product was any better or any worse at that point. So it just gives you an extra level of granularity. And I'd encourage everyone to do it. And there's loads of information on the internet to go and read. And, actually, there's an article called the eight ball analysis, which talks a lot about this. And I'd encourage you even comes to the SQL queries to kind of pull it all together. So definitely encourage people to do it. And you know, there's tools out there that do it for you as well, but it's it's visually pleasing. I know that sounds weird for a CFO as well, but it's, you know, it's a shot. And that's how to drive change, which this is all about, you know, you do the analysis to drive change, actually having something that people can engage behind is useful.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, for sure. And I think as well as The aspects you touched a little bit on is understanding how the different courts are performing over time. I think one thing is your gives you the visibility on seasonality and the influences that that has on various cohorts and starting times. And I think even now in the times is quite interesting, obviously, in the travel industry, what's happening with some global health scares, but I'm sure like, you see that in your numbers as well starting to influence sec, depending on what's happening at the time and in the news and able to easily see that in your different cohorts and having an understanding of like how behavior is changing is really important. I'm also interested in the context and sticking with courts is looking at LTV and the customer lifetime value and trying to understand from each account or from each user, like how much money are you making from them over time? And I think the problem with LTV is typically it's one of those metrics that is blended and that is an average is anything that you've done are you doing currently to try and get a better grasp of what the ltvs at the moment, because obviously this is an influence of churn and retention itself. It's an influence of like the average sale price for the oppa. How are you looking at this metric? Is there just no better way than looking at this blended average over time?

Huw Slater
Yeah, I can vary really vary depending dependent, I guess, on the business. If it's a bit of a cookie cutter business, then I think LTV, fine. You know, it's like I say it's an average. And if nothing's really changing underneath and keep it simple, and use the average, but it is, you know, lots written about LTV and CAC. And we need to remember that it's just a return on investment, just a different way of articulating return on investment. So the things that we do internally, and actually I've done in previous roles with a lot of help of other people, and my dad, certainly certainly not my genius that does these things, but with the support of other people is using the cohort to build an actual like real LTV. So how much have you actually written What was the actual cost of that actual cohort of acquiring that cohort? And then you're just building a payback model. So it's exactly the same analysis as you do for the cohort retention, you just layer on the cost of acquiring those customers, and then just follow those cohorts through to see, you know, what was the payback period did they pay back in eight months, 12 months, 24 months. And then using that you can go on to, if you want to get slightly more finesse than just doing a simple LTV, you can go on to use some predictive models to say what those you know, each cohort will look like over time. You know, LTV in its own right is, is clearly a is you know, if your retention plateaus and in essence, your your lifetime value is infinite, right. So, already you can it's very easy to sense the LTV isn't accurate. It's just a simple way of making the numbers work. And then for me, it's actually doing it by cohort showing the payback which is a critical metric or should be a critical metric It's all about how quickly you're recovering that cash from, from the investment and then how much money you make beyond that. So, again, that use the same excel sheet, it's not more complicated. You're just dropping in the cost to acquire and then you're observing the real payback, and hopefully the real profit that you make from those customers.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, I think it's always a very, very like, it sounds like it's the ideal scenario of having sort of cohorts understanding what it costs to acquire those customers, and then understanding their payback period, depending on the business. So this varies greatly, like the first month you acquire them. And then when you get the first revenue from the customer for your freemium business, it adds another level of complexity but definitely having a closer view on sort of on a code by code basis, what it costs you to acquire them and then at what point do you actually pay back their sucking return on investments over time, I think is also a very good way of looking at it and being able to understand how healthy is your acquisition strategy Are you acquiring the right customers? Are things improving over time? As opposed to sort of looking at that LTV metric, which could take up to 12 months for its relative stopping influence on some changes that you make, and you only see those impacts gradually, not immediately. Yeah. Cool. So you mentioned something else in as well here in terms of like your role and trying to understand and see where resources need to be allocated within a company within a business. And when it comes to sort of churn and retention, specifically, you needed to sink and organize between success and sales and product and understand how resources should be allocated. And a lot of times, I think, as well, companies are looking at growth, and really that becomes the focus. At what point or how do you decide as a CFO, like where you should be allocating resources, whether it should be to growth and to try and unlock new channels versus trying to retain customers and working on product initiatives or customer success? And how do you strike a balance between the two

Huw Slater
I wish I had a framework It allowed me to answer this question easily. And the answer is I don't I think it's the my experience has been in high growth startups and I don't often have the luxury of time. So the honest answer is usually, it's the most important thing, it's the most critical thing that happened to be in front of you, is the bit that gets the attention. And that works, certainly on the quantitative side. And by that, I mean, you know, if growth is stalling, clearly, you know, the attention will go there. And we'll try and invest more in a understanding it and then be acting on it. And if retention is the problem and rich engine could be the problem of this heading growth clearly, then, you know, spend more time there and analyze it and work with a customer success team and the user research teams to really dive into it. So I don't have a good answer that says, you know, over a year I look at these different things at this particular cadence is about always being on top of the data, always being curious about it, never taking anything for granted. And then you know, using that data to kind of direct myself in the conversations and then from that, hopefully direct the resources help direct the resources around the business in the right way. I think there is a, there is one element of that, that I try and you know, we will have our faults, but I try and maybe fail at this more often than I should is I do try and keep one eye on the kind of the next growth curve, or the next growth opportunity. So that might be a new product innovation. Or it might be, you know, really making a difference on retention. So it's this kind of three horizons growth model. And, you know, horizon one, clearly in a hybrid startup, you're constantly thinking about it. I do try and keep one eye on the horizon to, to just think you know, what is going to happen? What happens when we hire every sales person in Europe? You know, there is a limit to that. So you can't grow any more quickly than that. So what else could we be doing? So, you know, I think it is my job to do that. And it's just, you know, how much time, my time do I spend thinking on the longer term is the shorter term? And I absolutely don't have a model that I that I run myself to or framework, I just try and do the best I can.

Andrew Michael
Yeah. And it makes the most electron understand which points different growth channels become saturated. The thing is, well is interesting. And I don't know if it's something you've done, maybe travelperk, or a type form is the concept of doing a growth ceiling. Is this something that you've done? Maybe you want to talk us through it, if you have with the listeners sort of gain an understanding of what it is and why it's sort of an important moment for any company to realize?

Huw Slater
Yeah, so and the terminology I'm not familiar with. So let me give you my interpretation of that. So both apps type form and travelperk. I think a fundamental part of the job is to do that scenario analysis that says, at what point does the grow start to plateau and for what reasons, and that could be saturation of the channel or it could be the retention of the church. That drives that. And that's a very eye opening, a very, relatively simple anyway, piece of analysis is easiest thing, the growth is unlimited. But actually, it's very easy to prove that it's not or it's very, very hard or very expensive to maintain the growth, too. So I think that that might be what you're talking about with the growth ceiling. And it's a hugely powerful analysis, and I would encourage everyone to think about it. I mean, it took me maybe four hours, one morning to do here. Yeah. You kind of, you know, I backed into almost I was thinking about, you know, what's the triple, triple double, double double, you know, if we were to achieve that, what's the resources we need? You know, what sort of channels could be used to drive that growth? You know, how does retention play into into, you know, I started a very high level model. And it doesn't take you long to work out, you know, where the bottlenecks are going to be whether ceilings are going to be in doing it, and then you're going to have years, you know, to plan for it rather than stumbling into it one day.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, and I think it's really critical. thing to do like you save something that takes you four hours. And even if it takes you a week to do it, I think a lot of companies in early stages will just see growth and see, okay, things are going really, really well today that having a clear picture of when that ceilings going to be hit, and then they go ahead starting to hire as many people as possible and in some investing two different resources without having a clear picture of what the growth trajectory looks like for the business. And for some people, that moment is a lot sooner than others. And that's we tend to see sort of people losing jobs and companies shutting down because bending was never done or this analysis, it's reasonably simple to get done, but just nobody ever spent the time to do it. Because growth looks too good to be true. Yeah, yeah. So is there anything that you've done specifically a travelperk when it comes to general retention that has been a game changer for the company or maybe even a type form if you want to speak to

Huw Slater
certainly not a trouble but we've been blessed with an incredibly good product and may Seven staff service that really drives, you know, exceptional net dollar retention here. So it's not been a focus for me at all since I've been here. In fact, it's a case of, you know, how do we make sure we keep investing in those areas to make sure we maintain rather than enhance that retention type form? Again, you know, certainly don't think I did anything great there. But one of the things I did with a couple of the exact CNF was really into retention. And you mentioned this before, it's, you know, when you have a freemium model, versus a standard subscription model, there's a lot of different behaviors going on in there. And defining actually, where you start measuring retention from is is a critical point as well, is it when somebody signs up and then, you know, if you're a freemium product, you will naturally see a huge amount of churn because it's just a tourist coming in, you know, playing around with the product and then churning out versus when they start paying or when they end the paid trial. You know, it's a defining that is is an important point. And, and one of the things that I partnered with a number of the execs at the typeform leadership team is trying to unpick this, you know, what is driving that retention curve that we can see, which was very healthy. But, you know, it was a bit of a struggle to understand how we could influence it. And really, we took a click down, and we saw a number of different things. So we did see this kind of last tourist, you know, somebody signs up and just has a play around and which is fine. It's a freemium model, we should expect that versus somebody who's using the service for projects, you know, maybe it's a school teacher asking for a survey, the end of the term, fine, we only expect to see that once every three months or four months, versus somebody who has 10 different use cases, and they're using it every month. So really running that analysis with the data team. And you know, with the head of customer success, David Apple who, who's amazing, working with Sandra as well on the persona analysis, you know, really building a team effort behind this and understanding the behaviors that sit behind it. Because until you understand the behaviors, you can't do any emotion. So, again, certainly nothing I can take any credit for, frankly, but very good team effort and, and I really believe in that I said that at the top of the call, that's there's very little I think any one individual and a good modern SAS company can do because the end consumer of the product is enjoying so much debated and not just enjoying the, the kind of the value that the outcome that they're getting from it, they usually enjoy the experience as well. So, you know, the design aspect of how it works and the service aspect of, you know, speaking to customer care, when they have to So, you know, you've probably could find one or two silver bullets, but I think they'd be quite small and, and working cross functionally and really still clicking through all of those different root causes is, is very important. And I was very grateful to be working with a great executive antifoam to do that.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, absolutely. I love the modesty too, as well. It's excellent. They The thing I think as well it's very interesting in What you mentioned now is in terms of, and I think a lot of companies maybe forget is that when people are purchasing a product, so many people just see their product is that and thing that people play with or where they're going to be in trouble purchase to book a trip. But really like in today's day with SAS tech, companies need to be evolving to become product companies where they're not making products, they are a product, and every touch point that they have with their customer is a touch point with their product. So whether it's customer service, whether it's a marketing, creating that unique experience all around their company, and not just the specific end result, I think is really, really critical to get right to get sort of that moment we say with that travelperk where you're blessed with really, really strong retention, but it's because of all the surrounding aspects of the product and not just the product. In today's terms of product itself. Its next thing I want to ask you is like the question I ask every guest is a hypothetical scenario now that you've joined a new company And you see the attention is not doing great. And you've been asked to actually turn things around to head up the initiative, what would be some of the things that you would want to do in the first 90 days to try and produce some results for the company?

Huw Slater
Okay, so I guess I would follow the framework that I spoke about the top of the call is it there's a few critical piece that kind of dimeric you know, define, measure, analyze, improve and control framework, but there's some critical things I didn't speak about there that I'll talk about now, which is, first of all, engage people engage people in the company, respect the past, I guess it's unlikely that if there's a problem that people have never looked at it before. So make sure you respect the past, go and learn everything you can. There's no point wasting time repeating old mistakes. So go and engage people around the problem, learn from the past and really engage them in you know, we'll do something different this time, but we'll do it together. Right. So I think that's, that's really important. So that's part of the definition phase is building that kind of case. Whether it's an emotional No case whether it's at the actual business case for the driving the change so that's one I think the if I kind of mentally walk through the process myself I'd move into the the measure stage and as I say, that's a lot of user research so I'm definitely be speaking to customers and I did the same when I joined travel Berg and I just bring up some CFO, some customers and say, what do they love them? What do they hate about the product and really get it from their perspective and also really understand the product it's very easy I think for exacts or you know, somebody, maybe in a finance team to think why, you know, I don't have to use the product. So you know, I don't use it day to day I don't need to but gotta really understand that product. So I think part of the measurement phase for me is really getting into the into the nuts and bolts and how it works and the different personas and how they use the different product and just generally what the product experiences and the outcomes are so speak to customers understand the product and then obviously all of the data analysis that goes with it And then after that said before, it's it's back to the team game, right? It's bringing that insight to people analyzing it from different perspectives, and prioritizing and testing with customers, I think you, and this is where the taxi the finance role becomes quite tough. Clearly, I want to point to something and then be able to, you know, we made this change, and then I can see the return on investment and as you just articulated, that's not always true in the SAS world today, like there's a lot of soft kind of belief and emotion that goes around using the product is not just the the hard part of the product. So that makes sometimes for an uncomfortable, you know, investment case, if you like for me because there's no tangible outcome or that the outcome might be improved MPs maybe. So it's hard. I mean, that part's hard, but you've got to get together as a team and really make almost a portfolio of changes, some of which are very tangible and some are less tangible. And then follow it through, you know, measure those impacts and really make sure that you you still Valley. So, again, it's formulaic. And you know, it's not for everyone to understand that, you know, I'm a CFO, and I kind of get to have that, that approach. And it's worked for me before. So I'm happy to happy to follow it again. But I guess the key takeaways there, you know, engage people at the beginning and through the process. Everyone, you know, live in the past, engage everyone, as many people as you can, and understand everything from the customers perspective to how the product works, and then go and collect data. Doing it from an abstract position isn't going to help you at all.

Andrew Michael
bass and again, great job on the summary as well doing my job for me today. Last thing I wanted to ask as well, and you mentioned this quite interesting is the concept as well like of word of mouth and a lot of times like you have different aspects that you're trying to invest into, but you can never really justify the cost because you can't see an immediate ROI in the context of word of mouth. And I think obviously, in the concept retention, the longer you retain customers, the more chance you have for them to speak about And the more chance you have for you to offer your product your service. Can you experience sec what has been the best way to try and measure word of mouth and the ROI that you get from it maybe company like tab for more trouble pick.

Huw Slater
This is making me Come on cold sweats. I think talking about this, we, we I would say I struggled with this part of this is the 10 years of training, I guess the kind of functional training I had at bt which everything had to be tangible. And, you know, when I ended up a type form, and it was incredibly viral product and word of mouth is fantastic, you know, it's one of the biggest assets The company has. And that's because it's a product led company, it became very hard for me to, you know, to point, these direct correlations between things and we spent a lot of time with the data team and cross functional team with marketing trying to unpick this and build attribution models and, and the reality was, you know, we spent maybe six months you know, a small group of us trying to do this and really, we didn't get them Much better answer at the end of me at the beginning. Now I'm sure they've improved that dramatically since I've last. But one of the learnings I took from that is sometimes you have to accept it depends very much on the product you need to understand, you know, should you accept it or not? Or is it just we haven't got the right tracking in place or something like that. But there are products out there that are inherently viral, and you just have to be at peace with it. And I think if you focus on what works, you know, focus on building that good product, making sure you're delivering a you know, the functional value that the user wants, but also the experience that comes with it. And then word of mouth is like a very important but it's from a financial perspective is onus on top if I can make the LTV to CAC work on the directly attributable stuff, then the word of mouth is is a very nice sweetener on top. And then you can just monitor it it you know, is it changing over time? Should we start to get worried? But, you know, unfortunately don't have a good answer. I don't have the answer. And I promise you I'm actually sweating while we're talking about it.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, it is an uncomfortable thing. And it's very sort of elusive to try and understand the influences. Because a lot of times like when we think about making running experiments in the Sunday actually at hacia, we was talking about recently as if you're looking at your pricing and packaging, and you say, okay, the products improved quite a bit. Now it's time to look at it at a price increase. It's difficult to try and then understand, okay, if we increase our prices, how is this going to impact conversions? And then how does the impact on conversions impact word of mouth? And then how does that look at the long term? Because I think more often than not, people might look at the short term gains, and say, Okay, if we increase prices, and that's going to increase our ASP by x and R pi y, but what they're not really looking at is second is specifically more viral nature businesses. How big of an impact does that have on word of mouth and on growth overall? It's critical and I think one of the Jason Lemkin from solstar came across a blog post where he mentioned sort of that ultimately, like almost all software companies end up getting about 80% or so. Customers from existing customers. So once they add scale, either through referrals or from brand or from word of mouth, and typically in the early stages maybe around 40% is coming in. And I think this does century these first touch are, we see, on average, around 40% of growth come just from word of mouth or hearing from a colleague or have used it before. So it definitely is an interesting topic and the concept of retention as well to not only just be thinking about, okay, like, how do we keep customers but how does keeping customers impact growth overall, and this word of mouth? Well, pleasure having you on the show today, I really appreciate your time is anything you want to leave the listeners with before we close up for today.

Huw Slater
I think the only thing we didn't touch on that I believe is very critical for for retention is this essence of being part of an ecosystem. And by that I mean you know, integrated with your PS or your HR systems, so that you don't just become one feature that's easily replaceable. When a better feature comes along. And you know, you can see this in the data we sort of tied form with this hit a travel perk box, it was the same I know event it was the same. So there's this huge value in being part of the overall ecosystem so that you're not just a standalone service, or you run the risk of just being shelfware. Or, you know, you're just in one small part of the company. So I think is a huge asset you see more and more people doing it is probably Salesforce, in fact that the kind of Lotus way of working so I think that's a huge thing to consider. And if people are starting that journey, definitely get the right tracking in place because you'll be able to see the uplift very visibly, when you see people integrating your product to other solutions they use.

Andrew Michael
Yeah, absolutely. You want to be where your customers are. And I think so often not to be forget about this and we look at our products and it's our product, but at the end of the day you serving your customers and if your customers are not in your product, you want to be where they are so differently that's come up in the podcast a couple of times. Well, we specifically spoken about integrations. More recently, we had an episode with the CEO of crossbeam, where we discussed this with actually looking at now, how do you take advantage of partnerships and like it? Well, it's been a pleasure. Again, like I said, having you today here, I really, really appreciate the time and wish you best of luck now in this new year and your new journey travel pack.

Huw Slater
Thank you very much. Thanks, Andrew.

Andrew Michael
And that's a wrap for the show today with me, Andrew, Michael. I really hope you enjoyed it and you able to pull out something valuable for your business. To keep up to date with turned on FM, and be notified about new episodes, blog posts and more. Subscribe to our mailing list by visiting chern.fm. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our show on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you have any feedback, good or bad, I would love to hear from you and you can provide your direct feedback by sending it to andrew@churn.fm. Lastly, but most importantly, if you enjoyed this episode, please share it and leave a review as it really helps get the word out and grow the community. Thanks again for listening. See you again next week.

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