#30 Tom McLeod (McLeod Software) on Building a Trucking Software Company That Lasts 41 Years

Transcribed from the episode recording. Speaker labels are approximate; light cleanup applied for readability.

Jesse [00:01] Welcome everyone to another episode of The Freight Show. I'm very excited to have Tom McLeod on. Many of you in the industry will have at least heard of Tom, know of Tom, and certainly know of the software company, McLeod Software, that Tom and many others have built over the last... how long has it been now, Tom, since you started the business?

Tom [00:25] Forty one years. I like to say I was in the third grade, but it's been a while.

Jesse [00:31] It's been a while. It's great to have you on, Tom. I'm excited. I've been looking forward to this to learn more about your story. It's a really special business that you guys have built at McLeod. Tom, maybe to kick it off, I'd love to hear from your perspective what the industry was like and the opportunity that you saw when starting the business forty years ago.

Tom [01:01] Well, of course that was the time that the freight industry had been deregulated, from a barrier to entry and a rate standpoint. And so there was a lot of, I'll say, turmoil and turbulence, a lot of things happening and changing in transportation, just like they were from the technology side on the computer end. And really any time there's disruption, it creates opportunity.

In the regulation days, a trucking company would have essentially a franchise ownership of certain rights to haul freight. When that went away in nineteen eighty, it unleashed the opportunity for hundreds and then thousands of new companies to enter the market, compete more effectively, and it accomplished the purpose of the deregulation in the first place, which was to help lower costs and lower inflation, and it benefited the economy.

It's probably been one of the biggest productivity enhancements that has happened to transportation, although since then there have been steady and incremental improvements, including the improvements that we're seeing today. But initially trucking companies were manual operations.

In some respects it's similar to what we're seeing now in the AI field, with dozens of startups taking advantage of new technology. In the mid eighties it was a similar situation. Dozens of little software companies springing up with the ambition of developing an operations platform for trucking companies. And thankfully we were in that group, and had great customers that came along and pushed us in the right direction. We had very bright people coming in and getting a lot of great work done, and managed to, I'll say, rise above the fray there by the mid-90s and grow into an establishing leadership position which we've been able to extend.

Some of the moves by our competitors have not worked out so well. We've managed to do as many things right as we could to cover up for mistakes. Certainly it hasn't been perfect, but we've had great people and great support from the industry and it's carried us to where we've been able to get to today.

Jesse [03:40] It's amazing. And so when deregulation happened, part of the opportunity there was it fragmented the industry and therefore you had many more companies that were buying software, whereas previously it was much more consolidated. Were they all manual operations prior to that, or were some folks trying to build their own software at that time? What were some of the incumbents doing?

Tom [04:10] Up until nineteen eighty, really the computer technology wasn't to the point where it was feasible in many cases to automate very much at all. And so yes, all of the incumbent transportation companies were essentially manual operations, and very slow to change, because they had little incentive to even get more productive.

They were regulated like a public utility. They were entitled to a 15% profit. The higher their expenses, the higher their rates. So that all changed and revolutionized, and market forces came into play in the 80s, and that's really been a healthy thing. It's brought about maturity of management teams and a much more efficiency focused approach to the business.

Tom [05:14] One of the things that we were fortunate at the beginning was to work with companies that were doing both trucking and brokerage. And brokerage was almost a novelty in the mid eighties, just very nascent, really just coming out of the ground. But two of our early customers, one was Charles McCalpin and another was Jerry Garrity, these are the first two lifetime achievement award winners for the TIA. They really contributed a lot to the thinking and to the formation of the transportation brokerage industry, and they had a lot of people emulating them. They were really evangelists for that particular business form.

I really view brokerage companies as being a kind of America's secret weapon in terms of making the transportation system efficient, because they work with hundreds of carriers. Our typical shipper these days wants a very small list, maybe a top twenty, in terms of companies that they maintain contact with. If their top twenty doesn't have a truck today, they don't have anybody else in their list of calls. So the freight broker typically has relationships with hundreds of carriers.

I know some carriers don't like it, they see the broker as a middleman, but most of these carriers couldn't send salespeople all over the place, and they end up occasionally with a truck that needs a load to return. So there has to be good relationships with the brokers and the trucking companies. But it's really been a great symbiotic relationship, from my point of view.

Jesse [07:12] And so you have served the brokerage use case and workflow, it sounds like, from the very beginning. Some of your early customers have always had brokerage operations. I guess I'd thought that you all had built the PowerBroker product later in the lifecycle, but it sounds like that was sort of part of the early platform as well.

Tom [07:38] Well, we certainly understood the way a trucking company who also incorporated a freight brokerage worked and how that helped with the efficiency. And for several years we did offer a product for both of those markets. We did temporarily exit the brokerage market with a software product for a few years, until we could focus and really achieve a leadership position with our trucking product. The trucking market is larger and more complicated than the brokerage market.

Really I always attribute this to my wife. She taught me the value of focus, and if you set out to do something, you're going to do an excellent job with it and not get yourself spread too thin. And the focus that we put onto the trucking market really was helpful, stood us in good stead.

And then after a complete rewrite of our product line, the very next phase was our PowerBroker product. And that did come out in two thousand six. So after a few years of not being too active in the brokerage market, we came out with a very strong product when there really weren't any strong products available. There were a small number of, I'll say, lower end products on the market. Aljex was probably the leader at the time and they did have some large accounts, but we were able to come in and get great support from the industry, great feedback, continue to extend the product and add features, and work with many of the large brokers but all the way down to brokerage companies with three, four, five brokers in the company as well.

Being able to bring the tools that allow the brokers to negotiate better, cover the freight better, see the carriers better, at the same time where we've got tools for the carrier side, able to see their operation, achieve efficiencies, negotiate better rates with their customers, some of whom are freight brokers. That's been a great combination.

Jesse [10:11] I'm curious, and this is maybe even a little bit of a technical question, how much of those systems are built on a common foundation versus needing to be quite separate? Do you think about this generally as being a system to help manage freight, and then a carrier is one way to move freight, a broker is another way to manage it? Or are they quite distinct in the way that you guys approach building those?

Tom [10:44] Well, there is a lot of overlap with some of the functions of a computer software system. Both of them require an order entry screen. Those screens are going to be very similar or in many cases identical. You've got to print a freight bill. That's got to go to accounts receivable, you've got to process cash receipts. Our system goes all the way through the general ledger, so we're going to produce financial statements. So there is a good deal of overlap in that standpoint.

But in terms of operations and making especially the operations user more efficient, we've got totally separate teams doing that development. And we're working directly with the large carrier and the midsized carrier to look at their needs and requirements. What are the tools that are going to make them more efficient? How do they reduce empty miles, maximize rates, take care of the driver, communicate with the driver and make those commitments?

On the brokerage side, very similarly: I've got an available load of freight, where are carriers that have done this before? Who has had the best service record? Who has got my best internal ratings, and where are my contract rates with the carriers? But a totally separate team develops those tools, because there are some real big differences in the information that those carriers need to make the best decisions and run the best operations.

Jesse [12:27] That makes sense. So where there is commonality in the workflow, then use it. But for a lot of the operational workflows they are quite different, and so there's different teams that are focused on them. Tom, I'm curious, going back to the beginning where it sounds like you were in this moment where there were a number of software platforms, probably many that don't exist today. What enabled you to separate yourself from the pack over that first sort of five, sounds like ten years? And were there decisions that you made that were different than others? Or do you attribute it more to the fact that you built better product, provided better service? When you look back on that early success that you had, what do you think that you did differently that others didn't do?

Tom [13:25] Well, what can I say? If you look back and look at what we did do and didn't do, you'd have to say, God must have helped this guy, because he's not that bright, and there's more he could have done. Certainly if I was smarter, we could have done more by now.

But some important things were maintaining our focus and making sure we got the basic blocking and tackling down, and then building on that. We really took the long term view. I wasn't trying to build something three or four, five years and then cash out. We were looking for a long term play, and serving an industry that was going to stay in the US. At the time there was a lot of offshoring being done, manufacturing jobs moving out of the country. So to me, trucking and transportation was something you couldn't move out. We're seeing some things like back office operations being done elsewhere, but they still require the software, and the companies obviously are still based in this market.

But keeping focused and getting good solid product, adding the right features, and developing a real good development feedback loop with our customers. Listening to them, finding out, always having a group of customers giving us input and pushing our product the way it needed to go, having an advisory council that was representative of the industry. In some ways you have to pick the right customers and pick the right input. And in other ways, they have to pick you. You've got to perform. You've got to make and keep commitments to continue to win over the market.

So we were able to build, especially through the nineties, as things really ramped up. The number of carriers grew tremendously during that period of time, technology was improving. It was actually a difficult time to grow because the unemployment was down to like zero, especially in the computer field, because everybody was gearing up to get their system converted for year two thousand. But everybody was again swimming in the same ocean, and thankfully we had the right customers come along at the right time and were able to continue to put one foot in front of the other to grow the company.

Jesse [16:20] You mentioned the value and importance of having the right customers on your customer advisory board, formal or informal. I'm curious about this because we have not put in place a formal advisory board, but it is something that I'm eager to do. What do you think the right profile is? What have you learned about what the right customers are as part of that?

Tom [16:49] Well, one thing we resisted, and I think you'd have to resist, is picking one customer to use for all the development input. Any single customer seems to have enough idiosyncrasies to take you off on a rabbit trail and really keep you from developing the functionality that addresses the wider market. So it's important to have a group of customers.

Now our advisory council process has always been fairly open. We don't limit it to twelve people and only have meetings twice a year. We'll offer the option to a much wider group of customers. For our PowerBroker rewrite that we've been through in the last few years, we had thirty or thirty five companies in our influencer group that would view our sprint demos every two weeks, for a period, in order to give us input and give us guidance on what was a major project, a major rewrite of our user interface and workflows, just being one example.

And prior to that we again had a pretty wide open process. We would encourage and invite companies that we had seen do well. We spend a lot of time on site with our customers as well. We can see who's using things effectively and we can see where some additional functionality might be needed.

And that input is important. When we rank development priorities, we'll do our ranking internally, but then when we put it before a group of customers, we're always surprised that they flip around a lot, many times, our priorities on what would give them the best results. And again that's helped us to have the right products, and develop some very loyal customers who are getting what they need in order to serve their customers better.

Jesse [19:25] I'm curious, you mentioned this focus at one point and making sure that you nailed things on the carrier side. One of the challenges that I would imagine is true in serving the trucking industry, to your point, it is larger than brokerage, but it's probably less homogenous in their workflow. There's so many different types of trucks. You could have heavy haul, and then tankers, and then you've got your traditional dry van and reefer and flatbed, and each of them has different ways that they think about the product that's moving on the freight and how they bill. It seems to me that you guys have done a pretty good job of building a system that is pretty broadly applicable across the industry. I'd be curious if you see it that way as well, and what allowed you to do that. Because I know that has been something that others have struggled with.

Tom [20:27] Well, yes, we do see lots of different really niche markets within the transportation industry. And that's been one thing that's made it so hard for new players to come in and attack. It's not just one large homogeneous market, it's many small niche markets with very different requirements. And over time, as these companies get better at what they're doing, the requirements continue to increase. They want more. The system needs to do more.

So again, working very closely with customers. Certainly there's more we could do and should do and plan to do. But in making the product configurable, in understanding the top priorities, in working with the leaders many times in these trucking companies, that's been what's kept us on track.

And the brokers, there's brokers that specialize as well. Brokers that specialize in refrigerated freight or flatbed freight or heavy haul, even bulk freight. Many brokers just running van freight with their shippers, but you can't get away from the configurability requirement just by focusing on the broker.

Jesse [22:08] Totally. Do you think about McLeod for heavy haul, McLeod for bulk tankers, McLeod for different pieces? Or is it not really the way that you think about it, and it's more being able to serve your customers and the different types of freight that they move and the assets that they have?

Tom [22:40] Well, we have tried to focus on, I'll just say, the biggest part of the market, which is flatbed, van, refrigerated freight, and develop product that meets the needs of the widest number of companies. At the same time, by making the product more configurable, and with our latest release, we've really added configurability options and layout options that further extend that to our customer. Because we have liquid haul, heavy haul, dry bulk, to some extent container operations. But typically that's as those companies are relating to the larger part of the market.

By addressing and focusing again on the largest part of the market, that's given us momentum and then the resources to do some of these specialized functions that are required by some of the niche markets that are not so much like the market as a whole.

Jesse [24:00] That makes sense. I'm curious how you think about being opinionated in the way that you build the product and think about the workflows that people should adopt, versus thinking of it more as a configurable platform where there's a lot of choices. And what the tensions are that you guys have experienced between those two, because I think they can both be valuable to different people. I'm curious what your philosophy is there.

Tom [24:36] Say that again. I'm not sure I quite followed the whole thing.

Jesse [24:42] And maybe you disagree with this. One of the things that I think about when building the platform: one approach is to say it's going to be extremely configurable and you can design whatever workflow that exists in your business on the platform. Versus you could imagine building a brokerage TMS with quite a specific view of how you should be brokering freight, and what the workflow should look like, the screens that you're looking at.

Those sometimes can be in tension, because if you're more opinionated, you might be able to design a simpler solution that is a little bit more streamlined, but it might not work for everyone, though it would be easier to adopt in some cases. Versus building a platform where if you're a power user, there's a lot of tools at your disposal and you can build something that is quite unique to your business on the platform. My sense is, in working with a lot of your customers, that part of the value that they get is the fact that your system is quite extensible and they can really dial things into their specific workflows using the pieces that you all have built.

Tom [26:02] Well, as software systems in general have gotten more sophisticated, I think users have come to expect more configurability. And we have put a lot of development time into allowing for that, including an API so that a customer can... we've had a number of examples where a customer has developed a bolt-on solution or an external solution that takes advantage of the main backbone of product processing, but that can accommodate specialized rating or a specialized customer requirement they've got.

And that's, I'd say, crucial going forward, because of all the small markets within transportation. That's a real advantage to our customer when they can extend the system to meet the needs of their customer.

Jesse [27:06] That makes sense. Tom, I'd love to talk a little bit about your view on AI. You've led through many waves of technology now. I assume when you started McLeod, the internet wasn't really taking off, and then there was the move to the cloud, there was mobile, there was all of these phases. And now we're approaching another one with AI. I'm curious your perspective on AI and what you're excited about, where you think this is going, what you think the role of the TMS will be. Will it change? How will it change? How will it stay the same as we move forward in this world where AI is front and center, at least in the current moment?

Tom [28:07] Yeah, the whole AI thing seems to be catching on. Seems to have a certain amount of potential there, maybe, do you think?

Jesse [28:18] I think so. But I'm pretty all in, so yeah.

Tom [28:22] Yeah. Certainly it has been hyped. Nothing has ever been hyped like it, and it looks like rightfully so. It certainly holds great promise and certainly has begun delivering, and we're going to be happy to participate in that whole revolution.

I will say in many ways it's very similar to what we were doing forty years ago. We were taking computer systems and coming up with an application that would help to eliminate manual work. Once an order was in the computer system, the operator didn't have to sit down and type out a freight bill anymore. It gets printed automatically. They didn't have to sit down to the typewriter and type a driver paycheck anymore. And that's the way all freight bills were cut and drivers were paid, until computer systems came about. So there was a tremendous amount of efficiency and productivity that occurred on that front wave.

With AI, we're doing some very similar things. In most transportation operations, the operations people are spending forty percent or forty to fifty percent of their emails are coming in and require them to do some kind of manual work, to either get information into the system or to respond to a customer request. That's a huge amount of manual work that can be eliminated, and that's what we're using, you're using, AI to do. So again, it's another productivity gain. It's another tool that's in use, but it's really just a continuation of what computer systems have been doing for the last forty years.

There's still some things to be worked out and grasped, what the real potential is. But really from an AI standpoint it appears to be tremendous. And we've talked about all the niche markets that are present. The companies that are pursuing AI functionality, there's so many different avenues to pursue. And again, how many dozen companies do you think there are that have sprung up to do AI just for transportation? I mean, it's a very similar situation to the greenfield we had in the mid eighties in terms of computer systems in general.

So we're going to be wide open. We are going to produce AI functionality for our product and we're going to continue to work with Vooma and companies, and be wide open in terms of helping the customer get where they want to go. And if they'll point us in the direction and show us what that is, we'll certainly help to make that happen.

Jesse [31:39] Tom, one of the things I have always appreciated about McLeod's posture is that you both develop your own very innovative solutions in a lot of areas, and at the same time you put a lot of work into cultivating a very robust partner ecosystem and making tooling available for folks like ourselves to integrate easily. I'm curious to learn more about the philosophy there. It seems obvious to me in some respects, but I will say that not every one of your peers, not every TMS, sees the world in a similar way, and that can make it challenging, and I think challenging for their customers. I'm curious how you guys arrived at that posture.

Tom [32:31] Yeah, there's been a couple of companies come along and try to achieve a vertical technology stack, and usually that hasn't worked out really in any case where that's been tried. And it's because in that stack you can't have the best of everything. You might have a real good piece of it, but some pieces are just not going to live up to it, especially in a market that's as fragmented as transportation.

But in the mid nineties, as we were looking to grow, there was another software company that got so far behind on their backlog they couldn't bring in integrations, including integrations for mobile communications, which were really catching on at the time. Whereas we put focus on that, and so the mobile communication providers were bringing us their customers.

So our focus... we want to do what's good for the customer, because then they'll buy from us. So in a way it's self-serving. But if it makes us stronger, we can serve our customers better, and hopefully that creates an upward spiral. It's that experience that has really kept us on that track and has really made things work as well as they have.

If a customer can see our wide range of integration partners, there may be technologies they're not ready to implement yet, but they can have confidence that when they do get ready, if it's a product that's been successful in the marketplace, they'll have access to it through our system.

Jesse [34:47] It's interesting to hear from you that you've seen that flywheel in practice, because it does seem to me, if I was leading a TMS, that giving people confidence that you are a system that they can build their business behind, that will give them optionality in the future, including being able to buy from you but also being able to work with a number of other providers, actually will make you a preferred provider. And so it sounds like it's a pie expanding mentality that ends up allowing you to grow faster because it's an easier buying decision.

Tom [35:30] Yeah, in general that tends to work. We're seeing things move very quickly. And really our goal is to be the company that demonstrates how to best use AI within a transportation operations product. There are a number of ways of that being deployed, but we want to help with the ecosystem and everything that will enable that for what our customers are going to need to do from an efficiency standpoint, and also to meet their customer expectations, which continue to rise at a rapid pace.

Jesse [36:10] Tom, what has been the impact that you all have seen on your internal operations? Are you starting to see, are you guys using AI to develop products and seeing increases in your own development efficiency? There's a lot of talk, I don't know how much you follow this, but there's a lot of talk of what's going to happen to SaaS, what is going to happen to software, AI can write software much more easily now. I've got my own opinions on this, but I'm curious your perspective on what you think the impact will be on the software industry.

Tom [36:58] Well, certainly we're using it internally in a tremendous way. It's touching every part of our company, including our accounting department, including our administrative department. But from the software developer standpoint, all of our developers are using AI. It's improving their efficiency, it helps them write code faster, they can get more done. We got things into this latest release that just came out two weeks ago that weren't planned, because we were able to do extra development and get extra things done for the customers.

We're using it from a cybersecurity standpoint. We're using it to do the software testing and it's given us great direction that way. We're using it in our knowledge base, in our training for customers. We've got a knowledge base we use internally to improve support, and we also have an external knowledge base for our customers to improve their experience. We just dropped in three hundred new documents into the knowledge base, again two weeks ago with this latest release. So our customers have better access, better explanation on how to use the system, or our support people have it.

Our developers are getting more done. And certainly that's key to also knowing how to get it into the product. We're introducing an integrated AI system so that the user can ask questions about what's going on in my data here, with this last release. So it's going to rapidly be a part of everything that happens in all computer systems everywhere, I think.

Jesse [38:58] Tom, you've been building this business for a long time and I don't know exactly how the business was financed in the early days, but as I understand it, you haven't really brought on much, if any, outside investors and capital. And I'm curious if that was a deliberate decision that you've made, or is it part of the fact that you've been able to sustain the business and build it sustainably off providing really great service to customers? I'm curious to hear what that journey has been like and how you thought about the decisions that you made there on bringing external investors on board or not.

Tom [39:42] Well, part of it is when we started in the mid eighties there just wasn't this enormous private equity venture capital ecosystem that's out there today. It really went through a maturing phase, I'll say, during the dot com boom around two thousand, or the dot com bust even, two thousand, two thousand one. But again, mid eighties, things were moving at a slower pace.

I'm not aware of any other transportation software company that took on venture capital, or in those days it was called vulture capital. That you're going to go through rapid development with the goal of achieving certain recurring revenue, and then sell for a multiple and sail off into the sunset. Or actually serve as a private equity bird dog to help find the next deal, as always seems to happen with people that have ever participated in a transaction.

So again, it'd be very difficult today to start a new company without that investment backing, because you are expected to have to cover more ground much more quickly and you've got to reach a tenable recurring revenue point in order to stay viable. I didn't have to do that. We were allowed the luxury of time, being able to focus on our product. So because we didn't have to try and build something quickly, it was easier for us to make longer term decisions, take the long view, and just stay on the path to get us ultimately to a complete system that works well and that had gotten the feedback of a large number of customers.

And really we've never had to take on investment. We only went through one period where we had to borrow a little bit of money, and that was in our complete product rewrite during the recession of two thousand one. So anyway, thankfully we've been able to continue to move forward, keep things going forward, do things in such a way that it's really helped to promote customer loyalty. We certainly haven't been perfect, but we continue to work to improve, and that's put us in that position.

Jesse [42:32] That's cool. I've spoken to a lot of investors over the years who have been eager to invest in McLeod, but I don't think they've ever had any opportunity. So I was curious to ask. Tom, I'm curious for you personally, what keeps you energized and motivated to stay at the helm, having been at this for forty years? What brings you the most joy and energy in the work that you do?

Tom [43:04] Well, I guess making things work. It's interesting to work with an organization of people. We have five hundred and fifty employees. That's a lot more than we had forty years ago. And it's in some ways like a puzzle or a project: get the right people in the right place, pick the right objectives, execute to get the right things done in order to let you go on to the next step.

Over the last couple of years I've been really engaged in the opportunity we've had for our entire revamp of the entire product line. And now with AI coming in, that's another great new technology we get to work with, play with. And just being close to helping make those things happen, helping to be a part of that. It's trying to avoid using the word rewarding or engaging, but those are two words that would describe the way I respond to the opportunity.

Jesse [44:23] Do you find yourself most drawn to the product? You were an engineer by trade, is that right?

Tom [44:34] Well, when I got out of school I went into sales, and so I had sales training, sales background. But at some point I decided I'd really rather do something more technical. And again, that's another advantage of the early eighties: the programming languages coming out, the operating systems were all brand new, everybody was starting from zero at that point. And so I was able to cover a lot of ground quickly, and did do a fair amount of programming for the first, I'll say, 10 years. I could sit with the program team.

But we had some very bright people who developed some great tools that were used internally, but also great applications on a timely basis. And so I was helping to make sure we also had the other bases covered: our support, our sales, obviously pretty crucial. It actually kind of came in handy to have some sales background, because I sold our first fifty systems. So without that happening, you can't pay the developers. So anyway, you've got to cover all the bases.

Jesse [45:56] So it sounds like, they say if you can build and you can sell, you're going to be pretty formidable in at least technology company building. It sounds like you had a bit of a flavour for both.

Tom [46:11] Yeah, yeah.

Jesse [46:13] Tom, my final question is actually one of more advice. It sounds like we are in this moment where there's a lot of AI vendors that are coming into the transportation market. And it sounds like there's parallels from your perspective to what things looked like in the eighties. And I'm curious what advice you would have for folks like myself, who is obviously one of those providers, but also others out there, about how to build an enduring business that has a big impact on the industry over time like you all have.

Tom [46:57] Well, I'll go back to the word focus. It's very important to focus on one area that you can cover and be the best. You've got to be very solid and very good at it. You've got to in some ways pick the right customers that fit your product or service, which at the same time is going to be in motion. You're going to be developing it. It's going to be a moving type of a product.

But anyway, focusing on the niche functionality, to get you back just to the minimum viable product definition, but then that's got to be extended and has to continue to grow pretty quickly. That part has to move faster these days, it seems, but it's still very similar to what we would have been doing during the eighties. And there's more information available. You've got more examples to follow, you've got more access to people that can give good advice. But you can't spend all your time getting advice. You've got to allocate some time to get the work done. And coming up with that balance and that formula is important.

And at the same time, sales. I think that's one thing that the PE group seem to be getting a little bit better at, is understanding the value and importance of developing sales organizations to go along with the product development, going after some total addressable market sizes that seem to be wildly overestimated in some cases.

So at the same time I'm saying you want to be ramping up sales, you have to be careful not to outkick your coverage. That's coverage on what are you promising from a product standpoint. You've got to be able to deliver on those promises, the brand promise. And you've also got to be able to service your customer and your product. The services are as important as the product itself. And surprisingly that very much seems to be the case with the AI functionality.

You can spend a lot of time trying to get that prompt right. And unlike computer code, which has some very definite execution paths, tweaking an AI prompt can be a good deal trickier. It's easy to get it up and running, get you seventy, eighty, ninety percent there. Getting it the rest of the way sometimes can be time consuming. So anyway, be careful. Don't outkick your coverage. Sell a ton of stuff and develop great product. That would be my formula.

Jesse [50:37] I love it. Easy to say and harder to do in practice, but it's salient advice. Thank you, Tom. Really enjoyed the conversation today. Appreciate you sharing all the wisdom and learnings, and appreciative of the partnership that we have with you all. As I said, you guys are really, really great to work with. And credit to you on the impact that you've had on the industry over these last forty years.

Tom [51:10] Well, again, we've had such great people and customers. I certainly get credit for stuff I didn't do. But we appreciate working with your company. Impressive what you guys are doing. We're getting good reports. And hey, we'll have a couple of good years and get back together and do this again.

Jesse [51:32] I'd love that. And where is the next user conference? It's coming up in September, right? I've forgotten where we're going this year. I'm excited.

Tom [51:39] Nashville, Tennessee, downtown at the conference center.

Jesse [51:41] Nashville, right? Great. It's my first time as well. So we'll be there in full force and we're looking forward to it.

Tom [51:48] Yeah, that's great. Thank you.

Jesse [51:50] Wonderful. Thanks, Tom.