Consulting Spotlight

Michael Bernzweig (00:02.192)
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I'd like to welcome everyone to this week's edition of the Consulting Spotlight. And this week we're joined by Bill Dillmeier. He's with Aperture Advisors in Seattle, Washington. And Bill, welcome to the Consulting Spotlight.

Bill Dillmeier (00:19.502)
Hi Michael, I'm excited to be here.

Michael Bernzweig (00:21.348)
Yeah, no, it's great to have you and I can see from some of the audience questions coming in that a lot of people have been following your journey, but for those that haven't, can you share with us a little bit about how you got to where you are and a little bit about what's going on over there at Aperture Advisors?

Bill Dillmeier (00:42.83)
Sure, would love to. So I think of my finance career as a little bit atypical. I started out in large investment banks, mutual funds, and then slowly over time transitioned into startups and then where I am today on the consulting side. my early career started at Vanguard. I was working in a small group that they had called Vanguard Brokerage.

It was something that was built to go ahead and meet the needs of all of the Vanguard clients, both from a fund side, but also giving them the opportunity to buy equities and options, as well as bonds. So for me, I started out on the phones like most Vanguard people do. I got my Series 7, my Series 4, my Series 63, and helped out clients with all of their...

Michael Bernzweig (01:06.012)
Sure.

Bill Dillmeier (01:29.356)
brokerage needs, then spend some time in the back office working with our clients more from a corporate actions perspective, mergers, acquisitions, rights offerings.

And after doing that for a number of years, had the opportunity to join Morgan Stanley Institutional on the fund management side. So really in this case, I was working for the president of the fund company, looking at really the business of mutual funds. things like from a board reporting perspective, who has the same investment thesis we do? And then what are the returns of that portfolio?

And then if also if you're to look at it from a lens of a fee perspective, who is also an institutional portfolio manager and what are they charging for, an actively managed bond fund? And do our fees stack up? And is an opportunity for us to add incremental value to our customers.

After doing that, actually, I spent a good bit of time in mortgage banking. So actually, Michael, at one point, I used to call Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and trade mortgage-backed securities. So at one point, I was delivering about a billion dollars a month of securities into the open market. And it was...

Michael Bernzweig (02:31.078)
Yeah.

Bill Dillmeier (02:41.846)
an amazing time to be in the mortgage space. you know, every day was a new opportunity to go ahead and build a security that would go ahead and allow our traders to be able to be making actually a lot of incremental money. I used to build specialty pools. So for example, if you built a pool of all New York bonds, you could actually get more money in the market. So that was one of the things that I was really specializing in as well. And

Also, kind of later towards my mortgage career, I moved to Seattle and worked for a bank called Washington Mutual, at one point the sixth largest bank in the United States. And there I was actually working for the CFO of the mutual fund company doing planning strategy analytics. And right about June of 2008, where you'd already started to see the mortgage market get a little bit shaky, I...

And I always say that if you put three finance guys in a room with a whiteboard, something's bound to happen. And we started charting out the trajectory of the bank. there was that moment of pause where we're like, the bank is really going to have a pivotal moment coming up. And I took it as a bit of a wake-up call and went to work for Bill Gates, actually, in June of 2008 for a media company that he owned in Seattle called Corbus.

Michael Bernzweig (03:44.914)
Sure.

Bill Dillmeier (04:05.664)
So we would actually compete head to head against Getty Images in the stock photography market.

And there I ran global FP &A, global treasury, and global sales ops. And it was really an opportunity to both see that from a numbers side of the business, but then also from a sales ops perspective, was able to go ahead and really learn what was going on in the local markets, both in Europe and in Asia, to be able to go ahead and set quotas, help teams motivate and succeed. And...

after spending a lot of time and learning so much in that organization, really started focusing on small startups and SaaS companies in particular. So really, I'd say for the past 10 years, I've been focused on really how to partner with leadership in SaaS companies, whether they're venture capital backed or PE backed.

I've done everything from be the first finance hire, I ran sales operations, I ran a team of, shall we say, shadow sales operations at one point. Really spending a lot of my time being a finance business partner to the leadership team. So sitting with really smart domain experts from marketing, sales, product.

Michael Bernzweig (05:11.644)
Sure.

Bill Dillmeier (05:23.148)
and listening to what they have to say and then synthesizing that back into a financial model that we could use to take to investors to go ahead and raise incremental funds.

Michael Bernzweig (05:33.885)
So you really had the foundational knowledge in the industry with all of the financial background. And you've been able to apply that towards earlier and later market SaaS founders and their organizations as they're growing and getting to market. Are there some?

learning lessons that you see from the different kinds of clients that you've worked with in terms of similar challenges as their trajectory is early on with these organizations.

Bill Dillmeier (06:09.902)
As I look back over the companies that I've worked with, it really stems from having an effective go-to-market strategy. One of the things that I really pride myself on is sort of breaking that stereotypical mold where finance and sales are always at odds. Every sales leader that I meet, I will say, I want to make you the richest man in the building.

but I'm going to help you get there only through efficient growth. I'm not going to buy my revenue. I'm not going to overpay in commission, but I'm going to lay out a strategy that's going to help make you incredibly successful. And it starts with understanding the marketing funnel. What is that drop from MQLs to SALs to being able to get that right number of customers into the pipeline to then be able to give sales a fighting chance?

And then from there, working with sales to talk about, you know, what are the best and few deals that you really should be focusing on? Because as a salesperson, you've got a lot of variety in a lot of cases, and it's questioning really who is the best client for me from a long-term perspective and who's going to help drive that most incremental ARR over time.

Michael Bernzweig (07:19.14)
And for a lot of these firms, are they typically angel funded at the point that you're meeting with them? they venture, venture backed, series A, series B, pre-venture? Where were they at?

Bill Dillmeier (07:32.087)
Most of the companies that I've worked with have been at the series A through series C stage. So my last two companies were series A, series B companies. They had great investors. And for them, it was how do I think about really that true product market fit? And how do I think about being able to create a lot of repeatable processes within the organization? Things like.

What is an effective way to set up Salesforce? How many stages do I need in Salesforce? How do I go ahead and measure the right degree of velocity of deals as they're moving through the pipeline?

And then looking at that from how do I go ahead and build a compelling retention strategy to be able to want them to stay with me? Do I need to compete on price? Do I need to continue to compete on features and helping them scale and go through a lot of those really important pivots? know, as you know, zero to five million is very different from five to 10. And then 10 to 20 is, you know, a whole other leg in the process. So it's really helping them think about building the right

process where they are now, but also having that long-term vision.

Michael Bernzweig (08:50.427)
And for most of these SaaS founders, at the point that they're taking on venture capital, have they more often than not iterated to the point where they've found product market fit? Or are many of them still figuring it out along the way or a little bit of both?

Bill Dillmeier (09:05.674)
I would say a little bit of both. One of my first companies that I worked for was actually from was backed by Madrona Ventures here in Seattle.

And they just received their B round and the company was moving in the right direction, but it didn't really have product market fit. had a number of sales teams hunting a number of verticals. And it wasn't until we got to say over 20 million, did we really then begin to distill down and say, we're really good at regulated industries and working with manufacturers of FDA certified devices. And then that's ultimately where we built our beachhead and then continued to

to really focus the rest of the organization and began to sort of step away from some of the periphery industries. So in that case, they were lucky enough to get to a true product market fit. If I go back to those last two companies I was with, they were still searching for the right vertical, for the right customer. And it was, how do I go ahead and really hone that message to be able to go ahead and dominate the markets that they played in?

Michael Bernzweig (10:16.358)
Which is interesting and it can be a little scary for venture capitalists because typically, you know, they just want to toss their money on something that they can blow up with more money and expand what's already working. Typically, you know, you'll see angel investors and all of that working with those early stage.

stage companies that have not found product market fit. But I think it's always, you know, it is just that. It's iterating to find the right fit. And it's interesting, we actually had a couple of weeks back on the episode, had Adrian Mendoza over at Mendoza Ventures, who's a VC. He has offices both in Boston and out in California on the coast there. And I think

you know, lot of VCs are really focused on specific niches where they can add value, you know, in terms of the different areas that they can help, whether it's connections or insight or what have you, or even just fundraising for some of the organizations within their portfolios. But have you found, as you're working with, you know, different...

SaaS founders, I guess maybe even backing up a little bit, are most of the founders that you're working with first time founders or are they founders that have had firms before, had an exit and then this is the next venture? What do you say?

Bill Dillmeier (11:47.102)
of the SaaS companies that I worked with, they were all first time founders. right now, as I think about my fractional consulting practice, I'm actually working with a number of second time founders and it's vastly different when you work with a second time founder. I will often kid first time founders and say, it's a bit like having your first child. You've sort of wrapped that child in bubble wrap and you're very sort of like protective about all the little types of things.

Michael Bernzweig (12:11.858)
Sure.

Bill Dillmeier (12:15.97)
But second time founders are almost like parents that have had that second or third child. You're like, you're fine. It's OK. They don't sweat the small stuff. Exactly. Exactly. So it's really working with them. in some cases, you already know where they want to go and you're helping shape and deliver on that vision.

Michael Bernzweig (12:23.768)
Yeah, as long as they're still crying, you know they're alive, right?

Bill Dillmeier (12:37.984)
Other times you're doing maybe a little bit more guiding and a little bit more coaching along the way. And the one thing that I have always seen with my first time founders is the importance of them having an outlet, either a mentor or a coach to be able to help them talk through and process what's going on within the company. So not only looking to your leadership team, but also just having that outside counsel where you can maybe do a little bit more dialog and talk through some problems.

Michael Bernzweig (13:07.218)
Yeah, and I know, you know, obviously having someone, you know, that's been there and done that before along for the ride, you know, can shortcut a lot of challenges that can come up along the way. But I guess, you know, and it's funny, I know there's obviously a lot of, you know, funds. I mean, you have different...

funds that are helping founders out, but there's also a lot of communities. know, for example, Ryan Alice over here, he actually founded iContact, he's running a community called SassRise. And I know they work with a lot of different early and later stage founders, and really help in terms of advising. groups like that are a great way to get some additional insight from founders that

Bill Dillmeier (13:36.846)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Bernzweig (14:01.682)
been there and done that before. But I guess the other question that I have, obviously there's a lot of options for founders as they're looking to grow and expand in terms of dollars. What do you advise?

early stage founders in terms of taking money that's, know, obviously they can either look at debt, you know, they can look at equity, you know, they can look at different ways of raising funds. And how do they know if they, know, which way they should be going, what's important, you know, obviously they don't want to end up with no equity at the end of the day if they do have an exit. So what are you caution?

Bill Dillmeier (14:42.594)
No, that's a great question, especially given the slope of the yield curve and the myriad of options that are out there. For most of the folks that I've been working with of late, it's a very traditional route. It's we're going to go ahead, we're going to bootstrap this, we're going to get traction, and then we're going to go and move into either a pre-seed, a seed round, to then start to unlock the A through C rounds.

I've actually worked with Silicon Valley Bank on some venture debt options and I think if your company is at the right inflection point, venture debt could be good. For me, you from a finance perspective, I'm always thinking about it in terms of when do I have to start making my payments back? So if I were to get, you know, $5 million in venture debt, like, I want, you know, six months to a year of interest only on that money.

no payments for the first six months, and then I, because I don't want to have to borrow the money and then start paying it back immediately. So I want to be able to put my money to work. And from there, making sure that once you go down this path, that you can go ahead and support the debt service. So a lot of it comes down to if you can use venture debt to unlock a new market or something that's a creative, I think that's a win. If not,

You almost have to work doubly as hard to not only grow your business, then also cover your debt service. So it's not something for the early stage companies that I advocate. I think it's something where you've got maybe a little bit more product market fit and a little bit more traction to think.

Michael Bernzweig (16:22.898)
Sure, and it's interesting, there's obviously a lot of hybrid approaches and other scenarios as well. I mean, know Nathan Lotka over at Founder Path has offered some interesting non-dilutive capital options for other B2B SaaS founders, which provide some other alternative types of financing to protect equity.

within within an organization so it's interesting.

Bill Dillmeier (16:50.026)
Yes.

One of the alternative sort non-dilutive things that I had built with Silicon Valley Bank was we had about $20 million of ARR and our customers were traditionally Fortune 2000 and they all paid for their subscriptions upfront. So we had a really good handle on churn and our cashflow. I was actually able to leverage our ARR and effectively our accounts receivable to set up a credit facility to then be able to kind of just be

Basically, as our customers were paying us, we could then create leverage to be able to borrow against the facility. So for us, it was very, I think of it as a very safe bet because you had so much insight into your customers, your customer behaviors versus, you know, sort of...

I wouldn't want say rolling the dice, but it's more like if you're taking venture debt on the hope of getting to point X, it's a little bit less predictable and becomes a little bit more of a potentially a strain on the business if you don't hit point X.

Michael Bernzweig (17:56.549)
And I'll tell you, I wish we had met when I was young and stupid and 20-something and started my first SaaS company and had no idea what it was all about back in the mid-90s. And funding was literally from one credit card to the next. So that was the early days of funding, but really, really interesting.

You know, I think the one difference is in the 90s, you know, traffic was a penny a click and there was not a whole lot that you could do wrong and there was not a lot of competition in the early days, but that's not the case today. So I guess the other question is, know, aside from common challenges in terms of financing, are there other types of...

common challenges you see with these series A and B organizations in terms of common things going on that if you were to give a short list of what founders need to be looking out for, you'd advise.

Bill Dillmeier (19:07.79)
Sure. One of the things that I see a lot of is, honestly, good old fashioned storytelling is you can be a really smart founder with a great technical solution. If you can't really communicate that and break it down for an investor, like that is one of the areas where I've seen people fail and become incredibly challenged.

One of the things that I think about when I'm telling a story and would love your thoughts on this approach is I actually tell the story backwards. So instead of saying, Michael, once upon a time, this happened, this happened, and this happened, I'll actually tell you the end of the story first and use the next four to five slides to unpack my assumptions. So I set the expectation of where we're going and then welcome the audience back in for feedback, largely because

think about it we're so distracted between you know our phones buzzing, slack popping up, you're trying to multitask in a meeting. So if I can get just a smaller window to be able to distill down what I'm looking for, it makes it much easier to bring everybody in at once. And as to have somebody sort of look up and wait for their name to potentially be on a slide.

Michael Bernzweig (20:22.116)
And do you find that you and your team are able to add the most value to organizations if they approach you before they take funding versus after, or does it become more complex after? What do you find?

Bill Dillmeier (20:37.966)
That's a great question. I'm always an advocate of before to be able to go ahead and set the right degree of expectation because for me it's a under promise over deliver when you go to the investors. As you've seen, if you go to your investor and you start promising,

really big multiples and you don't hit them, you lose confidence very quickly. And once you start to have eroded confidence with your investors, things can become a very slippery slope. So for me, I would much rather come in, build a plan that is achievable and has the opportunity to overdrive. And from there, that's going to unlock a lot more goodwill with the investors to be able to then have them maybe reach out and do some contacts for you, have them use their network.

to help drive traffic. I've come in after that's done and it's always about, as I say, a bit of expectation management. Like what does the investor want to see month to month, quarter to quarter? How much intimacy do they want to have with the financials? And being able to, again, have that dialogue and, you know, at times have filtered and unfiltered conversations about the state of the business.

Michael Bernzweig (21:54.919)
Yeah. And I think, you know, the one interesting thing, and I think for any would be entrepreneurs or founders listening to the podcast, you know, there's plenty of money out there, you know, in terms of funding your startup. But I think it's a matter of, you know, taking the right money and finding the right value on the other end of the equation. And to that point, as far as maybe following up on your previous thought.

What are the value adds that different VC funds and fund managers can add to an early stage startup that's going to help to accelerate their growth?

Bill Dillmeier (22:39.758)
From a value add from the VC perspective, I see it as making sure the CEO has a good mentor, has an outlet of other founders to talk to, to be able to share ideas, help cultivate ideas.

Definitely offering an analyst from time to time to that company to actually make sure that there's alignment on that VC lens. The questions that are going to come up internally and is the company able to go ahead and answer those questions crisply and cleanly. So for example, like AI right now is at the forefront of so many companies. And if you're an existing company, you're thinking about how do I AI-ify my company? And as an investor, you're thinking,

Okay, how is this company going to be able to compete in the new AI landscape? So really making sure that there's alignment in that is something where the VCs, I think, can add a lot of value to say, this is an emerging trend. This is sort of table stakes for what competitors are bringing to the market. And how can you then get your product, even leapfrogging above that, to be able to remain competitive in the space?

Michael Bernzweig (23:56.679)
Yeah, and I think that's an interesting point, because I think a lot of different scenarios are out there, but I think it's a matter of figuring out what's important on both ends and making sure there's alignment. So in terms of metrics and things like that, as you're advising early stage founders, there specific metrics that you like them to be really

zeroed in on as they're growing.

Bill Dillmeier (24:27.352)
Sure, for me the first one obviously is always cash. At the end of the day it's how much cash do we have in the bank? How do we feel about our runway? And from there, gone are the days of revenue at all cost. So for me it's about...

Are you growing ARR? And are you growing it in an appropriate degree of growth? Are you growing at 50%, 100 % year on year for this first couple of years? Another big one that I always focus on is, what's my churn rate? Why are my customers leaving? If you start to see that normally high churn rate, there's a lot of analytics you can do in that space to say, I'm a big fan of an old fashioned,

where you start to stack rank consistent themes from churn to then be able to get in front of that systemically to be able to go ahead and build a more compelling product. And then obviously, know, CAC to LTV. You want to make sure that you're going to be able to not only cover your CAC, but really understand that lifetime value. And I also look at it a lot from a unit economics perspective. So,

if you think about the traditional I'm sell a subscription and I'm going to take out a lot of my costs associated with that transaction, but then I always actually take out the gross margin as well. So you're really looking at it as a contribution basis. And I think a lot of people sometimes don't bring gross margin in when they're thinking about LTV and it actually creates an inflated LTV because you're not necessarily

giving yourself acknowledgement of all the potential costs that are going to be incurred in the process.

Michael Bernzweig (26:19.866)
Interesting. And I guess, you know, to help some of the individuals listening to the podcast kind of wrap their heads around some of what you're doing there, you know, with clients of aperture advisors, can you give us a story of, or an example of a client that you're working with or have worked with that, you know, had either a really good or bad outcome, you know, and kind of like the before or after what it looked like.

Bill Dillmeier (26:48.36)
sure. So as I kind of think back about some of the clients that I've worked with, and I'm really proud of the clients, and it's been a nice diverse set of clients. There's been some real estate clients on the PE side. There was a really smart manufacturing company in the Midwest that I was able to work with. There's a really smart...

battery company that I'm doing some work with right now here in the Seattle area. For me, what I of think about from a kind of a before to after perspective was super smart founder. It was a really good idea, but he was having trouble really understanding the actually the go-to-market strategy. And where he was struggling was

there was always this degree of infighting between the sales leadership team and the marketing leadership team. And as you know, there's always a healthy tension there.

So what ended up building was a very simple two page Excel spreadsheet. And the first sheet is actually about marketing activity. And what it does is it's a great sheet for a CMO to sit down and say, okay, I'm going to deliver this many leads. Those leads are going to convert into this many meetings. Those many meetings are going to convert into this many pipeline opportunities. I'm going to give my sales team. So on one page, the marketing leader goes ahead and sets.

his accountability or her accountability for the year.

Bill Dillmeier (28:16.448)
At the same time, you can then say, it's going to cost me, you know, to your point, like a dollar a click, a penny a click. So you can then build the marketing budget at the same time from just a marketing spend perspective. So if I need X many leads, I'm going to have to go ahead and set forth so much money. So after you've set this page from a marketing side, now the revenue leader comes in, looks at that pipeline and then says, okay, what is my win rate? Am I going to win?

25 % of my deals. Am going to win 30 % of my deals? So now you're able to say pipeline that's created times my win rate is going to yield X enclosed one. So then now you can then begin to say if I'm setting a goal of five million, does that scenario that's on paper get me to five million? So just that two simple two sheets was able to go ahead and bring the founder, the sales leader and the marketing leader all together.

together to understand accountability and delivery. And it's done in a bit of a decentralized way because you're not talking about the business. You're just simply talking about the amount of inputs and outputs that each party is signing up for. So it's an accountability curve. And at the end of the day, if you're not hitting that 5 million in that example, your levers include, I need more leads, I need better win rates, or I need to come off my 5 million. So very quickly, you can diagnose one of the three areas.

that you're going to be able to go ahead and pull a lever on to be successful.

Michael Bernzweig (29:51.909)
No, that makes a lot of sense, and that's a great example. So as we're wrapping up, if you were to bullet point a few pieces of advice that you'd have for any SaaS founders or companies that are just kind of starting their transformation journey, what would you bullet point for them to keep in mind?

Bill Dillmeier (30:12.558)
I would say if you don't have a finance leader in-house, definitely look to a fractional leader. They are, you know,

a third of the cost, if not more of what you would pay for an in-house seat. They bring a wealth of diversity across a number of different industries and can really be a good strong thought partner for you in this journey. The other thing I would say is make sure that as a founder,

There's a degree of self-actualization. One of the things that I actually ask every one of my founders is, what are you good at? Are you a sales founder? Are you a technical founder? Are you a podium speaker? Are you an evangelist? And it's really helping that founder think about what they're best at. And from there, helping them build a team around areas where they might not be as proficient.

So for example, right now I'm working with a really smart team of engineers. They're mechanical engineers, they're electrical engineers, they've got a great concept, but...

They come at it from a very narrow lens of being in an engineering space. As I've talked to them about marketing for their company, they're actually incredibly skittish. like, we don't know anything about marketing. You know, like I was talking to them about a marketing funnel. They're like, tell us more. Like how does a marketing funnel work? So as a founder, just raising your hand and saying, I don't know is so, I would say in empowering to be able to go ahead and look to a subject matter expert to help you go ahead.

Bill Dillmeier (31:48.496)
and unlock incremental value. You don't have to do it all alone as a founder as much as you feel you have to.

Michael Bernzweig (31:55.147)
Interesting and I'll tell you one insight that I see on this end. know, in years past, tech was an absolute moat in terms of, you know, locking out competitors and things like that. I'm not seeing that so much anymore. I mean, a lot of, you you said technical founders, marketing founders, sales founders, with all of the new low code and no code tools that are coming to market.

I think it's really empowering a lot of different types of opportunities for non-technical founders that is really exciting. So I think it's interesting to see this quick evolution and journey of both ends of the spectrum. And I would agree with you. It's really very important to figure out what the competencies of the different founders are.

and to really take those strengths and make them the strength of the organization. But a lot is changing and very quickly from all ends in SAS.

Bill Dillmeier (33:05.038)
Oh, definitely. now you're probably starting to see, you know, SaaS when it first came out was very, shall we say linear. You'd buy a $12,000 subscription and mathematically it would be a thousand dollars a month that, you know, you'd either do a rev-rec on if you paid upfront or you'd make 12, $1,000 payments if you're a customer. But now you've seen this really, this new twist where people want to go to usage based pricing. And how do you start to refactor your business? Like, are you now?

Michael Bernzweig (33:30.587)
Yeah.

Bill Dillmeier (33:34.944)
in the token business and trying to say, we'll keep it simple, like an API call is this, or a call to an AI engine is worth that. So now you're trying to somehow better meter the product.

and go ahead and try to show incremental value from a pricing perspective where it's more related to what a customer is doing or consuming. The one caveat that I always tell founders is in a traditional model where it's a thousand, a thousand, a thousand, you get up into the right revenue. It's very easy for an investor to kind of get their head around that. Once you start going to usage-based pricing, depending on the seasonality of your product or how the customer is using it,

You could get revenue that looks a bit like an EKG meter because it's not as consistent. It's not as linear. So as a business owner, you need to make sure that you have enough cash flow to be able to go ahead and support both the high months and the low months.

once that happens. And I think that's a really big opportunity for fractional CFOs, consultants to weigh in and talk customers through and founders through the opportunity of understanding what this really means over the long.

Michael Bernzweig (34:52.549)
Yeah, and I would agree with you. think it's even more important to have heavy hands around all the numbers because, you know, it's very, very easy as things are transitioning so quickly to find yourself on the wrong side of the tide.

Bill Dillmeier (35:07.852)
Definitely, yeah. The other quick analogy that I always say is in a sort of a traditional SaaS model, it's largely it's a cash flow play. If you are a SaaS founder, it is all about trying to get your customers to pay all upfront and use that cash to effectively run the business and grow the business.

And if you're a sales leader, if you miss bookings for say Q4 or Q1, you've effectively right shifted your cash flow 36 months to the right because your bookings that you don't get in Q4, that had a domino effect on all of your cash in the outer months. So really being incredibly thoughtful about...

what your sales team is delivering is so important. To your point, looking at all of the numbers, because that's going to drive your ratios, it's going to drive your hiring plan, it's going to go ahead and drive your ability to go ahead and tell a compelling story to an investor.

Michael Bernzweig (36:02.702)
Absolutely. Well, Bill Dillmeier. with Aperture Advisors. Thank you so much for joining us on the consulting spotlight this week. That was a deep dive into the world of SAS. And I think we'll absolutely be sure to share a link in the show notes with anyone that is looking to reach out to you and learn a little bit more about some of the different.

solutions that you're providing to clients but thank you for for joining us this week

Bill Dillmeier (36:32.844)
It was my pleasure, Michael. I really enjoyed the conversation.