Ambrook Rejects Venture-Backed Subsidies to Target Farm Financials

Ambrook拒绝风投补贴模式，聚焦农场财务管理 农业企业需要行业专属的数据架构而非通用会计工具，以在大宗商品价格波动周期中求得生存并应对复杂的多实体运营。 在本期节目中，Ambrook首席执行官Mackenzie Burnett深入探讨了美国中型家庭农场复杂的财务格局，并阐述了其平台如何通过整合会计、支付和银行业务来构建乡村韧性。她详细分析了农业面临的经济现实，例如碳信用的局限性、严重的劳动力短缺以及传统纸质支票处理的摩擦。此外，Burnett还讨论了垂直SaaS的架构、会计的四个运营层级以及她对即时资金流动的热情，同时就Stripe作为生态系统领导者的未来提出了战略性建议。 Ambrook的总体使命是将基于Stripe的会计、支付和银行业务整合到单一平台中，以帮助美国农业家族企业实现经济与环境韧性。 (0:00) 农场运营涉及极其复杂的多损益表、多实体和高频交易，但它们往往缺乏获取贷款所需的基础财务记录或结构化资产负债表。 (0:00) 美国农业呈现极端的幂律分布特征：绝大多数商业农场的年销售额低于500万美元，却承担着与更大型企业相当的运营复杂度。 (5:37) Ambrook通过提供灵活的多维标签、交易拆分，以及专为田间一线经营者而非专业财务人员打造的AI移动收据工作流，成功从QuickBooks等传统软件手中争取到了客户。 (13:20) 进行复杂的农业单位经济效益分析需要原生数据架构支持，例如精准计算每英亩成本指标，以便快速做出土地扩张决策。 (15:32)

Ambrook CEO Mackenzie Burnett argues that sustaining American family farms requires purpose-built vertical software and financial tools capable of handling complex operations without relying on subsidized adoption. By combining native multi-entity accounting with integrated payments, the company seeks to reinforce farm balance sheets, enable generational succession, and foster rural resilience. Serving the Underserved Middle of American Farming (5:37) Out of roughly 2 million farms in the United States, only about 10,000 produce more than $5 million in annual revenue. Ambrook targets the middle segment: producers generating between $250,000 and $5 million annually. Burnett notes that these operations often carry the operational complexity of a $15 million company—spanning multiple locations, heavy inventory, and distinct side businesses such as trucking, custom services, or direct-to-consumer sales—yet they operate without a CFO or routine financial record-keeping. Agricultural lenders frequently have to drive out to farms to manually assemble balance sheets at kitchen tables. Because enterprise resource planning systems like NetSuite or Sage are too costly and cumbersome for operations of this scale, while generic software like QuickBooks lacks native agricultural workflows, Ambrook developed a cross-platform application on React Native. This infrastructure directly accommodates the one-third of its customer base that handles all bookkeeping exclusively on mobile devices while working in the field. Moving Producers Up the Managerial Accounting Curve (34:54) Burnett divides agricultural accounting into four progressive operational layers: cash, accrual, enterprise, and managerial. While most farms file taxes strictly on a cash basis or track expenses through paper receipts, critical long-term decisions—such as evaluating whether to acquire an adjacent 100 acres—require unit-economic visibility into exact cost per acre or cost per pound of milk. Traditional accounting platforms rely on rigid classification systems that force producers into complex external spreadsheets or add-on software. Ambrook's underlying data architecture uses flexible multi-tagging, transaction splitting, and automated receipt and check categorization driven by AI. This system allows producers to segregate business lines, such as separating cattle from hay, and assemble professional balance sheets for credit applications without requiring formal financial training. Replacing Paper Checks Through ERP-Integrated Payments (16:32) During the zero interest rate policy era, Ambrook deliberately chose not to offer subsidized below-market loans or free payment processing to artificially inflate growth. Burnett concluded that financial subsidies conceal true product-market fit and undermine building a business with durable 70% gross margins. Consequently, the company focused on building high-utility accounting software before expanding its credit and embedded fintech products. Financial integration remains critical because approximately 90% of US agricultural payments are still conducted via paper checks, driven by the prohibitive cost of digital transaction fees for low-margin producers. By integrating payments and banking capabilities through Stripe Treasury directly into the accounting system, Ambrook aims to facilitate instant, fee-free intra-network transactions. Executing transactions directly inside the ERP allows a seller's invoice to map automatically to a buyer's bill, eliminating the friction of manual accounts receivable and accounts payable reconciliation. Grounding Environmental Stewardship in Financial Realities (31:55) Burnett connects Ambrook's software mission to rural resilience, arguing that balance-sheet health is vital for counteracting rural flight and facilitating multi-generational succession planning. While practices like rotational grazing deliver notable soil and fire-management benefits, they remain labor- and capital-intensive. These operations face ongoing strains from agricultural labor deficits caused by tightened immigration enforcement and shortages of skilled field labor. Ecological initiatives must also satisfy strict financial criteria to achieve scale. Burnett explains that carbon credit programs face low adoption among Ambrook's customers because their 10-year commitments and clawback provisions limit necessary operational flexibility. Producers report needing a 3x to 4x financial payback to justify adopting conservation programs. Additionally, while many producers in conservative areas implement regenerative soil practices, they often avoid politicized climate terminology, necessitating a pragmatic economic framing rather than ideological branding. Ambrook's strategy relies on proving that vertical SaaS can achieve durable economics in agriculture by resolving deep structural friction rather than distributing financial subsidies. However, long-term efficiency across rural finance continues to depend on broader regulatory factors, including the implementation of open banking rules like Dodd-Frank Section 1033 to open bank API access, and the streamlining of federal farm incentive programs.

农业财务管理软件 Ambrook 联合创始人兼 CEO Mackenzie Burnett 阐述了公司如何通过垂直 SaaS 与金融基础设施切入美国农场市场。她指出，传统中小农场缺乏专业记账体系与数字化工具，Ambrook 放弃零利率时期的补贴打法，转向深耕工作流与底层数据架构，以增强乡村产业的经济与环境韧性。 切入农业复杂性与市场长尾 (0:00) 美国农业呈现显著的幂律分布：在全美约200万个农场中，年销售额超过500万美元的仅有约1万个。绝大多数商业农场的年营收位于该门槛之下，但其运营复杂度却不亚于大型企业。这类农场通常涉及多地块、重资产库存、多元化借贷以及跨业务实体运营，甚至需要兼顾货运或直接面向消费者（D2C）的电商业务。在疫情期间，许多家庭农场因缺乏常规财务记录而无法提供获取纾困贷款所需的资产负债表，农业贷款机构往往需要亲自驱车前往农家餐桌协助手写整理。 面对这种复杂性，通用记账软件 QuickBooks 难以承载深层多维度分析，而 NetSuite 或 Sage 等重型 ERP 软件对于中小农场而言又过于昂贵且难以维护。Ambrook 将目标锁定在年收入介于25万至500万美元之间的农场，定位于轻量记账与重型 ERP 之间的市场空白，并通过 React Native 构建跨平台应用，以适配约三分之一完全在移动端进行记账的田间经营者。 垂直数据架构重构农场核算 (13:20) 传统通用软件依靠刚性的分类体系，农场主在分析具体业务时往往不得不依赖外部电子表格。Ambrook 从底层构建多维标签与交易拆分架构，将记账划分为四个渐进层级：现金流层、权责发生制层、业务实体层以及管理会计层。这种架构让农场主无需具备专业金融背景，就能直接完成关键的单位经济效益分析，例如快速核算每英亩成本或每磅牛奶的生产成本，并在购地或扩张前迅速生成专业资产负债表。 针对行业长期存在的“鞋盒装发票”习惯，平台引入移动端工作流，结合 AI 自动化处理发票与支票的照片识别、分类及对账。通过减少农场主的日常操作摩擦，Ambrook 试图让使用者自下而上掌握深层运营数据，从而做出更精准的商业决策。 支付直连与乡村支付网络演进 (16:32) 当前美国农业领域中仍有约90%的款项通过纸质支票结算，其核心原因并非农场主思想守旧，而是数字支付的手续费对于低利润率的农业生产而言过于高昂。这导致大量资金在漫长的邮寄与跨行 ACH 清算过程中处于闲置状态。Ambrook 基于 Stripe Treasury 网络推动应用内交易，使发票与账单能够在软件内部自动匹配对账，从而省去繁琐的应收应付往返处理。 Burnett 区分了初创企业的两阶段发展路径：前期分发在于逐一签约网络节点，后期分发则侧重于在区域密度形成后构建免手续费的即时结算闭环。她主张通过开放银行法规（如多德-弗兰克法案第1033条的推进）强制金融机构开放结构化 API，让农场主掌握自身数据资产的访问权，同时建议 Stripe 等基础设施平台探索无许可网络与稳定币应用，以降低生态中的中介流转成本。 务实环保与乡村经济韧性 (19:03) Ambrook 提出“务实环保主义”理念，认为环境可持续性必须建立在坚实的经济回报之上。以碳信用项目为例，这类计划通常要求生产者在长达10年的周期内保持完全一致的土地管理模式，且附带严格的回扣条款，这种刚性约束限制了农场应对市场变化的灵活性。受访农户反馈，可持续项目需要证明能带来3至4倍的回报率，才具备落地吸引力。此外，许多保守地区的农户虽积极践行轮作放牧等水土保育措施，但更偏好务实表述，普遍回避使用政治化的“气候”标签。 农业具备长期且未被市场完全定价的正外部性。如果农户因缺乏继承规划或财务压力只能将土地变卖给地产开发商，将加速乡村人口流失。通过帮助农场建立多代传承的财务管理能力，软件不仅能提升单个家庭农场的经营生存率，也为乡村社区保留了智力与经济根基。 抗拒零利率补贴与深耕真实需求 (38:47) 在零利率政策（ZIRP）盛行时期，不少金融科技企业通过提供低于市场利率的借贷或免手续费支付来迅速扩张规模。Burnett 认为这种补贴模式掩盖了真实的产品市场匹配度（PMF），如同补贴型的 MoviePass 一样不可持续。因此，Ambrook 在早期坚持不提供财务补贴，而是专注于打造具备70%毛利率空间的高净推荐值（NPS）SaaS 软件，优先解决农场复杂繁琐的日常记账问题。 在确保用户因实际工作流价值而留存后，公司再依托核心软件系统拓展信贷与金融服务，构建健康的商业模式。Burnett 表示，其创业初心亦受到自身家庭跨国奋斗与公共服务经历的影响，希望通过技术基础设施赋能难以接触风险投资的传统行业实干者，实现可持续的财富积累。 访谈展现了垂直 SaaS 与嵌入式金融如何重构传统农业等非标行业，但其模式的全面推广仍取决于监管层在开放银行 API 上的推进力度，以及农场端在低利润率环境下对数字化支付网络的真实接纳意愿。

[0:00] Mackenzie Burnett: not to give away free money [0:00] Mackenzie Burnett: get access to the problem [13:20] Mackenzie Burnett: a thousand tiny paper cuts [13:20] Mackenzie Burnett: shoebox of receipts [24:14] Mackenzie Burnett: You can just call up a local farmer and most likely they'll figure out a way to sell you half a cow. [26:36] Mackenzie Burnett: It's their data. And all we're trying to do is get the data from someone else and give it back to them. [30:30] Mackenzie Burnett: They're going to be extremely sticky [31:55] Mackenzie Burnett: pragmatic environmentalism [31:55] Mackenzie Burnett: locks you into a plan [34:54] Mackenzie Burnett: walk up the inside curve [38:47] John Collison: This is how a lot of founders fool themselves that they have product-market fit [42:14] Mackenzie Burnett: There's just a lot of dead money sitting in the economy that's just for some reason in transit between middlemen [42:14] John Collison: captain of a sports team [47:08] Mackenzie Burnett: the company changes under our feet [47:08] John Collison: you can't meme your way to a product being good [49:35] Mackenzie Burnett: from 40,000 feet to 5 feet and back up to 40,000 in the same sentence [53:13] Mackenzie Burnett: co-production of actionable science

[0:00] We decided actually early on [0:01] not to give away free money. [0:03] So that was a— [0:04] Controversial in startup land. [0:05] And I think it actually was controversial at the time. [0:08] Sure. [0:09] And we grew slower in the beginning because of it. [0:11] We ended up butchering the pig at the end, [0:13] and we took home that meat. [0:15] It was like 50 pounds that we carried on the Amtrak. [0:18] You're the person that people love [0:19] to have sitting next to them on Amtrak. [0:21] 90% of payments in US agriculture [0:24] still go through paper check. [0:25] And it's not because they're behind the times. [0:27] It's because digital payments can be expensive [0:29] for a lot of these producers. [0:30] What are things that people should buy directly [0:33] from farmers as opposed to in the supermarket? [0:35] You can just call up a local farmer, [0:37] and most likely, [0:39] they'll figure out a way to sell you half a cow. [0:43] How long did it take you [0:44] to pour a perfect pint of Guinness? [0:46] How many quarts? I'm not sure I would claim [0:47] these are particularly perfect, but— [0:50] Better than the first couple episodes. [0:52] Yeah, for sure. [0:53] Not that I want to blame the keg, [0:55] but it was all the keg's fault. [0:58] Mackenzie Burnett is the CEO and cofounder of Ambrook. [1:01] Ambrook provides financial tools for farms [1:03] to help them stay independent and build better businesses. [1:06] Cheers. Cheers. [1:09] I just want to start with Ambrook. [1:11] Many people who are not in farming [1:13] will not know what Ambrook is. [1:15] Tell us the Ambrook product story and how you got here. [1:20] Yeah, so Ambrook, we build financial management software [1:24] for farms, ranches, and increasingly other, [1:27] I would say, industrial mom and pop shops. [1:29] So these are more complex businesses [1:32] typically family-run in the US. [1:35] What financial management software means [1:36] is it's accounting software, payments, and banking. [1:41] A lot of that is built on Stripe's infrastructure [1:46] and is made a lot more possible [1:49] to be able to bundle a lot of that. [1:51] I think you had sort of the bundling, the great unbundling, [1:54] and now you have the great rebundling that has been enabled [1:57] by a lot of embedded infrastructure tools. [2:00] But that is what we build. [2:02] The broad mission is [2:03] how do you help American family businesses [2:06] become more profitable and more resilient, [2:08] and resiliency is both economically [2:11] and environmentally resilient. [2:13] And we had started by trying to help a lot of farms [2:16] access working capital during the pandemic. [2:18] And then we pretty quickly realized [2:20] that while we could help them [2:21] with these one-off pandemic relief programs, [2:23] which are actually designed [2:24] to be extremely simple to apply for [2:26] and simple to get the money, [2:28] even then a lot of businesses were struggling [2:29] to get those checks. [2:33] We found that trying to help them [2:35] with the more routine working capital, [2:39] whether or not through through public [2:40] or private lenders and grant givers, [2:46] basically people didn't have, [2:48] a lot of these businesses [2:49] didn't actually have the financial record-keeping [2:51] that you needed to. [2:52] And it wasn't because [2:53] they were behind on technology necessarily. [2:56] It's because their businesses have a level of complexity [2:58] that you would see... if it was a startup, [3:00] it would have a CFO. [3:01] Yes. [3:01] That was a big unlock in realizing that a lot of... [3:04] when we were asking, [3:05] "Oh, you, you actually do have all these tools [3:07] that are built for a lot of these SMB [3:11] accounting software," [3:13] and they still weren't able to put together their balance. [3:15] They couldn't produce a balance sheet [3:17] which you need for a loan. [3:18] Okay, so farms are very complex businesses. [3:21] You started off helping them [3:22] with COVID stimulus, essentially, [3:24] and then as part of that you realize [3:26] that it's very hard to understand the farm's finances, [3:29] which got you into financial tooling. [3:31] Yeah. Exactly. [3:32] And we spent the first year and a half [3:34] just trying to access the problem. [3:35] I think that's what I talked to the team about is like, [3:38] "Your first job as a founder [3:40] is to get access to the problem," [3:42] and sometimes people get it right pretty quickly. [3:45] And sometimes it takes a little bit [3:46] to get access to the right problem. [3:47] So the first thing was just get access to the problem [3:49] talking to hundreds of farmers [3:52] and the whole ecosystem around them. [3:53] So we would talk to a bunch of ag lenders and we're like, [3:55] "Well, how do you do it?" [3:56] And they're like, "We drive to the farm, and we put together [4:00] the balance sheet." And see what, like what, [4:01] they're like "Yep, a lot of fences." [4:02] They actually drive. [4:03] No, so they drive to the farm [4:05] and they sit down in the kitchen table [4:07] and they actually put together their balance sheet [4:09] with the producer. [4:10] I see. [4:11] So as an ag lender, you have to actually get in there [4:14] and help them understand the finances. [4:15] Yeah, exactly. [4:16] And I would say that's more typical than not. [4:20] There's actually a level of complexity here for farms [4:24] and a lot of these types of... [4:27] I would say resource-intensive businesses [4:30] where you're dealing with locations, inventory, [4:33] loans. [4:34] So you're dealing with a balance sheet heaviness of it, [4:37] and it's what we call multi-P&L. [4:39] So you have multiple business lines, [4:41] multiple PIN-out payment methods, right? [4:43] Even the rise of the pandemic, for example, [4:45] I think increased... accelerated the complexity [4:48] of a lot of these businesses, [4:49] because suddenly you could actually have an online shop. [4:51] Totally, yeah, yeah. [4:51] We've got a lot of Snake River Farms steak [4:54] during the pandemic. It was really good. [4:57] Exactly. Yeah, no, exactly. [4:58] And I think, and that is a nightmare to bookkeep for. [5:01] Yes. Yes. [5:02] Because of individual transactions, [5:04] it's not just one supplier. Exactly, exactly. [5:05] You need to reconcile it against [5:07] what actually hits your bank account. [5:09] And so yes, it's great. [5:11] All these tools have accelerated business' ability [5:13] to do business, [5:15] but it's also increased the complexity of business, [5:16] and a lot of these businesses, because [5:17] they're so low-margin, [5:20] have tons of pressures on both sides [5:21] in both input suppliers and the market... [5:24] the marketing side of things, [5:25] that are squeezing margins for a lot of [5:27] these small businesses. [5:29] They have to diversify in order to be able to... [5:31] it's smart business to diversify, [5:33] but it also makes it a much more complicated business [5:35] to actually figure out where are you making [5:36] and losing money. [5:37] Okay, so I have so many questions. [5:38] I want to ask questions about your business and Ambrook. [5:41] I also want to ask questions [5:42] about the general direction of agriculture in the US. [5:45] But maybe let's start with, [5:47] what segment of the market are you addressing? [5:48] Can you guess how many farms in the US [5:51] make more than $5 million a year in annual sales? [5:54] There's 2 million farms in the US, so that's 1.8 million. [5:59] How many make more than $5 million a year [6:00] in annual sales? [6:05] 10,000. [6:06] Yeah, so it's about 10,000. [6:08] Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. [6:09] Which is an extreme power law. [6:11] Right, so 10,000 out of 1.8 million [6:14] means that the majority of commercial farmers [6:18] are doing somewhere south of that. [6:20] And so they have a level of complexity [6:22] that might be the $15 million business, [6:25] but they are at $500k in annual sales. [6:28] Okay, so you're mostly targeting farms [6:30] that do up to $5 million in— [6:33] So we started there, [6:34] and now we're starting to work with farms that are larger, [6:36] but if you just go out and market a product to farms, [6:39] you are going to get the majority of producers [6:42] that are in that range between the $250k a year [6:46] to about $5 million. [6:47] And do the products work for everyone? [6:49] Almond farms in California and dairy farmers [6:53] and the huge crop farms in the Midwest. [6:57] Is there any kind of particular segment? [6:58] No, yeah, totally. [6:59] We actually deliberately started pretty broad. [7:02] It's unusual if you think of us as ag tech software. [7:04] It's not unusual if you think of us [7:05] as just financial management software. [7:08] Yeah, yeah, QuickBooks is not specific [7:09] to any one industry, yeah. [7:10] Exactly, and we were pretty deliberate in the beginning [7:11] to make sure that we were working with some ranchers, [7:14] some row croppers, [7:16] some more diversified veggie producers [7:21] to make sure that we weren't accidentally building something [7:23] for just one— [7:24] One vertical. [7:25] One vertical of that. [7:26] And actually, I think the thing [7:27] that was a really happy accident [7:29] that was a example of customers pulling us [7:32] into a much broader TAM, or part of the market, [7:35] was our second customer was a cattle feeder operation [7:39] in Arizona. [7:40] And we drove... [7:43] this was when our [7:44] first 10 customers [7:45] we onboarded by hand. [7:46] It was a big deal when we moved to video onboarding, [7:49] but no, [7:50] and they're about two hours outside of a regional airport. [7:53] We drove there, and we got them onboarded, [7:56] and they were like, "Great, [7:58] really happy to be onboarded. [7:59] Now can you help us with our other four entities? [8:01] And by the way, none of them are farms." [8:03] And so you had a trucking entity, [8:04] you had like a custom service entity, [8:06] which actually just looks sort of consulting [8:08] or very invoice-heavy business. [8:10] And so we immediately realized [8:12] that in order to well serve agriculture, [8:14] we actually had to serve [8:16] and think about a lot of these other industries, [8:17] which now is enabling us to expand [8:20] to a lot of these adjacent [8:21] or just other types of industries. [8:23] But in the beginning we kind of realized [8:24] that we had built something that could help [8:28] a husband and wife couple [8:30] be able to handle a five-entity business. [8:32] That's, as you know, pretty complicated. [8:35] Yeah, like for an ERP system, [8:37] multi-subsidiary support is a pretty advanced feature [8:40] for something like a NetSuite, [8:40] and what you're saying is you need that [8:42] even for your clients. Exactly. [8:43] Right now we're going... I would say, [8:44] the main competitive software that folks are switching [8:49] from us is Intuit software. [8:52] Eventually, that will be something more like a NetSuite, [8:54] but I think the thing we actually realized [8:58] was that there wasn't something in between. [9:00] We are building for those businesses [9:02] that have effectively outgrown QuickBooks, [9:05] but don't have the teams or resources [9:06] to onboard to a Sage or a NetSuite, and the things— [9:09] Are there farms that use NetSuite? [9:11] There are farms that use NetSuite, yeah. [9:12] They're in the north of the $5 million. [9:16] That's a big farm, yeah. [9:17] It's a big farm. [9:18] It's when you have teams of people [9:19] who can afford to implement and then maintain. [9:21] Right, right, right. [9:22] Right. That type of software. [9:23] So that's really getting into kind of agribusiness type. [9:25] Yeah, exactly, [9:26] and so they tend to be much more vertically integrated, [9:27] they'll have a processor component, [9:30] or something like that. [9:31] You kind of realize that actually I think [9:32] to go against something like an ERP [9:34] because you can't go... it's a huge feature floor. [9:37] If you talk to most of those businesses, [9:40] even the really complex ones [9:41] that are using something like an ERP, [9:43] are only using 10% of the features. [9:45] And so the game becomes what is the 10%, [9:47] and what can you pull down for a different audience type? [9:51] I think one of the key differentiators [9:53] we decided to build toward, I think, correctly [9:56] in the beginning was instead of building [9:58] for the financial professional, [10:01] we built for the business owner. [10:03] When you think about it, [10:04] it's funny that ERPs became so horizontal [10:09] because, for context for people, [10:11] ERP is enterprise resource planning software, [10:13] which doesn't really tell you anything, [10:15] but my understanding, [10:16] tell me if you think this characterization is correct, [10:18] is it is a combination of financial software [10:21] where it's the three financial statements, [10:23] and a huge amount of automation around the stuff needed [10:27] to produce those financial statements. [10:28] And so if you think about it, if you run a factory [10:30] to be able to produce the balance sheet, [10:32] you have a bunch of inventory, [10:33] but to be able to know what should be in that inventory line [10:35] in the balance sheet, [10:36] you actually have to know how many widgets [10:37] you have sitting in bins in the facility in Cleveland. [10:41] And so it becomes this like all-singing, all-dancing [10:45] multi-tentacled system with very complex implementations [10:49] and everything like that. [10:50] And I'd say really grew up in a manufacturing paradigm, [10:53] and yet Stripe has an ERP system [10:55] and lots of regular companies have ERP systems, [10:59] and so it feels like it'd be much better suited [11:01] for them to be vertically specific [11:03] where there should be farming ERP [11:04] and there should be manufacturing ERP, [11:06] which is much more the traditional design center. [11:09] I think the modularity is what hasn't actually been brought [11:12] to the SMB level. [11:14] It does exist at this much larger enterprise level. [11:18] And I think... I do think that [11:21] as software becomes easier to build, [11:24] and that's not just from AI, [11:26] but it's also from a lot of the embedded infrastructure. [11:30] There's tons of reasons why it is much easier [11:32] to build the version of what we're building today [11:34] than it would've been 20 years ago. [11:35] Even cross-platform, [11:36] a choice that we made really early on was [11:38] to build on React Native, [11:39] which immediately just gives you, [11:41] it means that we don't, [11:41] we have not had actually a full-time mobile engineer [11:44] on the team, [11:46] because everyone has just learned React Native. [11:48] And you immediately get cross-platform. [11:50] I presume you have a huge amount of mobile usage [11:52] because people are walking [11:53] about all day. Yes, actually. [11:54] So about a third of our customers [11:58] use exclusively mobile [12:01] to do all of their bookkeeping and accounting, [12:02] which is insane [12:04] for the level of complexity that they're dealing with. [12:06] Totally. Yeah, yeah. [12:06] For doing accounting, [12:07] that's a laptop kind of activity. [12:09] Totally. [12:11] And so I think very early on [12:12] we built for the type of person [12:13] who was not necessarily financially... [12:15] didn't have a lot of financial professional training [12:17] who was spending more time in the field [12:19] than in the office, [12:20] who is dealing with a level of complexity [12:22] that typically these ERPs were better suited for. [12:26] And we brought all that into a package [12:29] that was affordable and accessible, [12:31] and we also do a ton of like financial literacy training [12:35] and education. [12:36] And we wrap a lot of what would otherwise be [12:40] a custom journal entry in these types of workflows [12:44] You can really think of an ERP [12:47] or this system is like get the data in, [12:50] do something with the data, get the data out, [12:52] and the get the data in... [12:54] It's a thankless task. [12:55] Yeah, it's a hard task. Those are all the workflows. [12:57] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. [12:58] And so you walk up to a farm, [13:01] you're off in Visalia or somewhere, [13:05] and you are visiting a farm [13:08] and they're on QuickBooks or they're on Sage or sorry, [13:13] maybe not Sage, [13:14] and you say you shouldn't be using your existing system, [13:17] you should instead switch to Ambrook. [13:20] What is the wow feature? [13:21] What gets people to switch? [13:22] What's the point in the demo where they're like, [13:24] "Okay, I'm in"? [13:25] Yeah, totally, so there's a couple of things. [13:27] There are what's in the software [13:29] and then there's the advantages we have [13:31] of just being a startup that can care harder. [13:33] In the beginning, you can just care hard about everything. [13:35] But a couple of the core things [13:39] that we have built differently... [13:40] The first is that when you look at the software, [13:41] it just looks cleaner. [13:43] It doesn't sound like that's a 10x feature, [13:46] but we solved a thousand tiny paper cuts [13:49] so that when someone looks and interacts with Ambrook [13:52] for the first time, [13:53] it's a little bit of a breath of relief. [13:55] The second thing is that we enable [13:57] a type of like multidimensionality in the software. [14:00] So QuickBooks has a concept called Classes. [14:04] We enable essentially a type of multiple tagging system [14:09] and splitting of every transaction [14:11] in a way that you can slice and dice your data [14:14] without having to kick that out to a spreadsheet, [14:16] and you can do it in your own language. [14:17] And so we help folks set up, [14:19] okay, this is my cattle enterprise, [14:21] this is my hay enterprise... This is in their own language, [14:23] and it's very clean in the interface of how to do that. [14:25] So again, it's the get the data in, [14:27] we made a lot simpler and cleaner, [14:28] but they're actually doing quite complex analysis [14:30] when they're doing that type of work. [14:33] And the last thing is actually mobile. [14:35] It's like the number of conversations that we had [14:39] with producers who would describe [14:41] an actual shoebox of receipts [14:43] that they would take at the end of the year [14:44] to their accountant, [14:45] and that was their financial management system. [14:47] We built a lot cleaner workflows [14:49] around receipts, around paper, basically. [14:51] Receipts, checks, those types of things, [14:53] so that you can take photos of things, [14:55] categorize them immediately. [14:57] That is actually one place that we're using [15:00] that folks are really using a lot of like AI features [15:02] to do a lot of that type of matching [15:03] and categorization of those things. [15:05] But those are sort of the breath of fresh air [15:08] when you first see the software, [15:09] and then it's what it enables you to do. [15:11] It's the simple but powerful workflows. [15:14] What's an example of a kind of analysis [15:16] that someone might not do on their farm, [15:18] but for this software? [15:19] Understanding your cost per acre is extremely challenging [15:23] to get to in something like a QuickBooks. [15:26] And so there's a reason [15:28] why there's a whole category of startups [15:29] that are funded to do FP&A on top of QuickBooks. [15:32] You don't have to do that with Ambrook. [15:33] It's built in, and the reason why those startups exist [15:37] is because QuickBooks did not actually [15:38] have the underlying data architecture [15:41] in a specific way that we chose to do native [15:43] in the beginning. [15:44] So we can do way more complex unit economic analysis [15:47] and those types of things in Ambrook, [15:49] and I think essentially without requiring someone [15:51] to have financial professional training. [15:53] Okay, so I'm running a farm, [15:54] and there's a hundred acres for sale across the road. [15:57] The decision as to whether I should buy that hundred acres [16:00] really depends on what is my cost per acre right now, [16:03] so I know what is the outlay until that becomes productive. [16:06] But I can't work that out [16:07] unless I know my existing cost break, [16:09] which I probably don't know. [16:10] Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly right. [16:13] And it's can you put together your balance sheet [16:15] and stuff in time in a professional enough way [16:16] so that you can convince your lender, [16:18] your banker to be able to give you the loan [16:19] to buy a hundred acres across the road. [16:24] Got it. [16:25] Okay, so this better accounting [16:28] is a significant reason people [16:30] are coming to the product today. [16:32] What are the other reasons [16:33] that people come for the product [16:35] or maybe will come to the product in the future? [16:37] I think about startups [16:38] as you have pre-distribution opportunities [16:41] and post-distribution opportunities. [16:42] And the pre-distribution opportunities [16:44] are what can you do to convince enough nodes [16:47] to join your network, [16:48] and the post-distribution opportunities [16:49] are what you do when you have enough nodes. [16:51] Yeah. [16:52] Ambrook is just now crossing over in some regions, [16:55] because we have enough regional density [16:57] with some of these nodes [16:58] to get into a post-distribution role [16:59] for some of our customers. [17:01] But in that world [17:03] of you have enough nodes in the network, [17:06] it should be instant and free to transact [17:09] within the Ambrook ecosystem. [17:12] And I think a lot of what we are doing [17:15] or the vision is to be able [17:17] to keep more capital in local communities. [17:20] And that has been something [17:22] that I've become increasingly passionate about, [17:25] which is, for example, [17:26] 90% of payments in US agriculture [17:30] still go through paper check. [17:32] And it's not because they're behind the times, [17:35] it's because digital payments can be expensive [17:37] for a lot of these producers. [17:38] And I think actually something that we're building [17:41] because of the Stripe Treasury network [17:43] is the ability to do these instant free payments [17:46] within the deposit ecosystem. [17:48] And ideally, and those are, [17:50] when they're within sort of the ERP system, [17:52] they have the context in both sides of the ERP. [17:55] So you don't, my invoice is your bill, [17:57] you don't have to actually do the ARAP shuffle, right? [17:59] Everything is reconciled on both sides. [18:01] Like in the future we could say, "Okay, [18:03] this category in your system actually maps [18:05] to this chart of accounts category [18:07] in this system." [18:09] You can imagine... what could you do [18:10] when you actually have really rich metadata [18:13] that's going through the network? [18:15] We think about this distinction a lot. [18:18] I think it's a very good one for startups of [18:19] pre-distribution versus post-distribution. [18:21] How do you get people using the products [18:22] and then how do you make it better [18:23] when they're using the product. [18:24] And when we started Stripe, [18:25] we were very much building Stripe in a single player mode [18:28] where you have your Stripe account [18:29] and the fact that other people use Stripe is, [18:32] well they didn't at the time, we were small. [18:34] Whereas now a big part [18:36] of how we can make the products better is the fact [18:38] that there is so much internet commerce running on Stripe. [18:40] I mean a very simple one, [18:42] but it's really started working, is Stripe Radar, [18:43] where just it is now the case [18:46] that most credit cards on the internet we've seen before. [18:49] Yeah, yeah, totally. [18:50] And so we know it's suspicious [18:52] if a credit card comes to us from a totally new device [18:54] and totally new IP address and things like that. [18:56] But that's the kind of post-distribution thing [18:58] where you can't build that product initially, [19:00] but when you have scale it becomes very significant. [19:03] I think one of the most rewarding things [19:04] about building for small businesses [19:05] is that you are able to build these real relationships [19:08] with people who are entrusting you [19:11] with their numbers and their future. [19:14] And what can we do when we are translating [19:15] not just in the individual context [19:17] of the single player world, [19:18] but the multiplayer world is communities. [19:21] And I've just been thinking a lot about that, [19:22] which is what does rural resilience mean, [19:25] what does economic resilience mean for a lot of people? [19:27] What does rural resilience mean? [19:29] Where I think there's a general view [19:31] that the economics of US agriculture are really hard [19:36] and it's challenging from a labor point of view. [19:38] There's all these different challenges. [19:39] And so maybe you can talk about the landscape and [19:43] that rural resilience. [19:44] I think rural flight, [19:46] which is I think the opposite of rural resilience, [19:48] which is what you're seeing in a lot of places, [19:50] so you're just seeing a brain drain [19:51] from a lot of rural communities around the world, [19:53] does impact local communities. [19:55] But I think the thing that is usually under-discussed [19:59] is how it impacts national or global communities as well. [20:03] But when it comes to rural resilience, [20:05] what I mean is when you have [20:07] nodes of family businesses [20:12] that can sustain multiple generations [20:16] of passing down the business, for example, [20:19] or people want to stay in the local communities basically. [20:22] I think that is something that we're really interested [20:25] and we have seen worked well. [20:27] For some of our customers, they're actually able [20:30] to make the succession planning work, right? [20:32] They're able to build a business [20:33] that can be passed down and through multiple generations. [20:36] As in you think we need to be more serious [20:40] about preserving farming [20:42] as an important part of the US economy? [20:45] Yeah, absolutely. [20:46] I think sometimes the free market optimizes [20:48] for too small of a unit, [20:51] and if we instead optimized for a community unit, [20:55] for example, [20:55] how would that change the way that we made decisions? [20:58] And that community unit, I think, actually [21:01] is what sustains local economies through time. [21:06] If you are just optimizing for the very short term [21:09] turnaround, [21:11] which makes total sense actually [21:12] for an individual to say, okay, [21:14] that this is my only sort of retirement [21:16] is to sell to this developer, right? [21:18] And I think that's a world that I would love to be able [21:22] to build more business resilience [21:24] so that they don't have to feel like [21:25] that's their only option. [21:27] You're saying farming produces positive externalities. [21:29] Like if you know the cartoon-villain private equity, [21:32] slash and burn costs, [21:33] and make the products worse and raise prices. [21:35] If that's at the full negative externalities [21:38] end of the spectrum, [21:39] farming is much more at the positive externalities [21:40] end of the spectrum. [21:41] Yeah, I think there's a lot [21:42] of positive externalities for it that under-accounted for. [21:49] John, stop. [21:50] We're going to do a lot of practicing. [21:51] How do you make a medium-sized farm work [21:54] in the United States? [21:55] Pick your favorite example, whether it be crops [21:56] or dairy or beef or what have you. [22:00] What is required to make, because again, [22:02] it's a hard business. [22:03] What's required to make it work? [22:04] So I'll take a cattle ranch, for example. [22:07] For a cattle ranch to work in the US, [22:10] you have to... a couple of things. [22:11] One, it's a lot of farming... are these boom-bust cycles, [22:15] right? [22:16] So they're subject to commodity markets. [22:18] They're also subject to input prices, [22:20] inflation, those types of things. [22:21] And so you do see this boom-bust cycle [22:23] throughout the economy. [22:25] So one, there has to be a resilience [22:26] and ability to weather that. [22:28] That's one piece. [22:30] I think the second piece is to get access [22:32] to the inputs perspective. [22:34] So you can think of inputs as like access to grazing land, [22:37] access to feed, [22:39] access to a lot of these other things. [22:41] A lot of ranchers ranch on BLM land, right? [22:43] The government leases, which helps get access to the amount [22:46] of land you need. [22:47] Exactly, for context, ranching... [22:50] cattle ranching requires quite a lot of land. [22:52] And there's a way to do it in a way [22:53] that is actually better for grasslands management. [22:57] Why is it better for grasslands? [22:58] Oh it's fire management? [23:00] Yeah, so it can be. [23:01] There is such a thing as like overgrazing, right? [23:04] But I think a lot of what people talk about, [23:06] it's called rotational grazing. [23:08] Just a lot of labor to like move the cattle every day, [23:11] to be able to do that. [23:11] But it actually does build back up the soil [23:14] in a way where the cattle graze, and then they poop, [23:19] and then the poop becomes better soil [23:21] and you can move throughout, [23:23] and there's a lot of interesting and virtual fencing [23:25] to be able to make that easier. [23:26] But there is a way in which good, healthy, [23:28] livestock management also creates healthier soils. [23:31] And it is possible. It just is technically [23:34] you have to be trained and understand how to do it. [23:36] And there is some capital barriers [23:38] or labor barriers to be able to do that. [23:39] So there is access to the type of capital [23:41] that would incentivize... [23:42] sort of create the incentives [23:43] to be able to make that possible. [23:45] And then you have on the other side access to markets. [23:48] Historically, if you're just doing wholesale, [23:50] you're going to get wholesale prices. [23:51] This is where you see the rise of D2C really help. [23:54] And when you're able to have access [23:56] to higher-margin markets, [23:58] a lot of online payments actually has helped that a ton. [24:00] It just is also, you need to be able to manage your books [24:03] in a way that can actually make that easier to manage. [24:07] What I'm talking about is diversification, right? [24:10] And whenever you introduce diversification, [24:11] you also introduce complexity and risk. [24:14] Can any farm do D2C? [24:15] I would've thought maybe it requires [24:17] some minimum scale to make sense or, [24:21] it's just reasonably labor-intensive. [24:23] The packing and shipping of individual shipments [24:27] to individual customers. Yeah totally. [24:29] There's actually a whole spectrum [24:30] of different ways in which you can make it work. [24:31] You can do it all yourself, [24:33] but there's also a lot of co-ops basically [24:34] in which you can share infrastructure. [24:37] It just requires a shift in incentive structures, [24:41] infrastructure, those types of things. [24:42] And so it requires... [24:43] and that sometimes can require a lot of public investment. [24:46] What are things [24:47] that people should buy directly from farmers [24:50] as opposed to in the supermarket? [24:51] There's some things that travel pretty well. [24:53] Beer travels pretty well actually, [24:55] and so you don't need to brew your own beer [24:57] for quality purposes. [24:58] You may want to just because it's fun. [24:59] I was surprised, I thought the steak in the supermarket, [25:01] I assumed would be pretty good, [25:02] I would say meat. We have local supermarkets, [25:04] but yeah, the direct-to-consumer meat was really good. [25:06] Veggies as well. [25:08] I think the local stuff will be better [25:09] than the long supply chain stuff. [25:10] I think you'd be surprised, [25:11] you can just call up a local farmer [25:12] and most likely they'll figure out a way [25:16] to sell you half a cow. [25:17] We'll have to find an easy online payment solution. [25:20] Yeah, exactly. [25:21] No, I think actually the biggest thing people [25:22] don't really think about is freezer storage or something. [25:25] Yeah, half a cow is bigger than people expect. [25:25] Yeah. [25:28] That is like that feeds like a full family for a while. [25:31] Actually there's a lot of things you can buy direct. [25:33] But what should you buy direct? [25:35] I think meat is a big one. [25:37] That makes way more economic sense [25:38] to buy direct if you just are willing to go— [25:40] Not just economic sense, gastronomic sense. [25:42] That's what I'm talking about, yeah. [25:43] No, it's so much better too. [25:44] Something that I did with my team, [25:46] that one of my teammates found and suggested [25:48] which was really awesome, [25:50] was, have you ever been to a traditional pig harvest? [25:53] I have helped butcher a pig once. [25:55] And that was quite an experience. [25:57] I think we didn't see all the steps, but yeah. [26:00] So yeah, we saw all the steps, [26:02] and so that was a really interesting experience [26:06] of participating in that. [26:07] Then we ended up butchering the pig at the end [26:09] and we took home that meat. [26:10] It was like 50 pounds that we carried on the Amtrak. [26:16] You're the person that people love [26:17] to have sitting next to them on Amtrak. [26:21] That was awesome. [26:21] It was by far the best pork I've ever had. [26:23] Annoyance level one is [26:25] people playing music without headphones on their phone. [26:27] Annoyance level eight. [26:28] Carrying half a cow [26:29] and half a pig. [26:30] Is carrying half a pig. [26:31] Yeah, that farmer I went to is a customer now. [26:33] So yeah, I think— [26:34] It worked. It worked. Yeah. [26:36] Yeah, yeah, okay, [26:37] so direct-to-consumer's a big thing. [26:38] But sorry, I'm trying to rewind to where we were. [26:40] We were talking about [26:41] the economics of farming in this day and age. [26:44] Labor seems really hard. [26:46] Yes, labor is especially hard right now [26:50] but it's hard for a couple reasons. [26:52] I think there's a lot of immigration-related issues [26:54] that a lot of folks are facing right now. [26:57] But the second actually— [26:58] Sorry, and that is tightening of immigration, [26:59] meaning less labor? [27:00] Yeah, so tightening of immigration means [27:02] that you have less labor [27:05] because a lot of farms rely on seasonal labor. [27:09] Farms and processing facilities actually, [27:11] which people don't think about. [27:11] Which is if you can't sell your product then, [27:15] for a lot of livestock, for example... [27:17] and that was the issue in the pandemic, too, [27:19] is a lot of processing facilities shut down, right? [27:22] But the other side is actually skilled labor. [27:24] It's not just seasonal labor [27:25] but it's particularly skilled labor, [27:27] has been harder and harder to get, [27:29] even before the pandemic was a real challenge. [27:32] So what's an example of some of these kind of specialists? [27:34] I think it's just, [27:35] there's actually quite a lot of skill [27:36] in knowing how to pick a crop without bruising it, [27:40] for example, at the speeds that you need. [27:42] Or for example, like animal husbandry, [27:45] or a lot of these other types of skills that, again, [27:48] this goes back to like how do we make it [27:50] so that there isn't so much rural brain drain [27:53] and rural flight? [27:54] A lot of the labor, [27:58] the people who might otherwise be doing that, [27:59] might not actually want to live or work in those areas. [28:02] Even if they're not seasonal immigrants. [28:05] From a policy perspective, if you were in charge... [28:09] if you were running, I don't know, USDA. [28:10] Both your parents worked for USDA. [28:12] Yeah. [28:13] What would you be waving your magic wand to do? [28:15] Oh, interesting. [28:17] I think there's actually two. [28:17] One of them is outside the USDA. [28:19] One of them is within the USDA. [28:21] I'm really interested in a lot of the stuff [28:22] that's happening with open banking regulations, [28:26] because I think actually the cost to a lot of [28:28] what we're seeing or doing is the lack of... [28:31] Accounting software is just an attempt, [28:32] like all we are doing is trying [28:33] to get external data sources in [28:35] and make them all make sense. [28:37] And what we were talking about with the metadata [28:40] and all that before, [28:41] like there's so much information [28:42] that could actually be really helpful for our customers [28:46] that is not being shared [28:48] or is really expensive and difficult to get. [28:50] Yeah. [28:51] And so that is something that I am super interested [28:53] in how things are developing there. [28:55] So you're saying concretely there, [28:56] like in many countries it is mandated [28:58] that banks provide structured access [29:01] to financial data for their customers [29:04] because they say it's the customers' own data. [29:06] Banks have to give it on request [29:08] and via API formats and things like this. [29:10] It's actually a very live topic in the US right now [29:12] and there's lots of debates over this. [29:14] Rule 1033 and things like this, [29:16] but you're saying it would be very useful for Ambrook [29:17] to have some open banking mandates [29:21] where you guys can reliably get data in a sensible format. [29:24] Yeah, it is not just useful for Ambrook, I mean, [29:27] for our customers... [29:28] like that is ultimately who we're trying to serve. [29:31] Yeah. It's their data. [29:31] It's their data. [29:32] And all we're trying to do is get the data [29:34] from someone else [29:36] and give it back to them actually, [29:37] which is kind of a crazy thing [29:39] that we have to fight for that. [29:40] But yeah, no, I think that would be... [29:42] that is something that if I could wave a magic wand, [29:44] honestly, I think that would actually help [29:47] more than people think. [29:48] And I know that you asked the question about the USDA, [29:50] but I actually think that that would be— [29:52] That's your top. [29:53] That would be my top, [29:55] but I think on the USDA side, [29:56] there's a lot of hoops that people have to go through [29:58] in order to be able to get access [30:01] to funding or programs that might be useful [30:04] for the type of incentive structure alignment [30:06] that I was talking through. [30:08] And I think the simplification of a lot of that, [30:10] which I think a lot of people want, but— [30:11] We have our thumb on the scale, [30:12] but we could at least do it in a more efficient way [30:14] across the board. Totally. Yeah, yeah. [30:15] Would you tweak farm subsidies up or down? [30:20] To be honest, I think farm subsidies are so sticky [30:25] that what I would do instead of tweaking up and down [30:28] is I would just be extremely deliberate [30:30] about when we just choose to introduce a farm subsidy, [30:33] like what are we doing? [30:34] And if this was still around a hundred years from now, [30:37] would we be okay with it? [30:39] When you are designing these incentive structures, [30:41] there's whole livelihoods and politics [30:44] that are built around them, and they last through decades. [30:46] And they're going to be sticky, yeah. [30:46] And they're going to be extremely sticky. [30:47] So it's more like be careful what you wish for [30:51] is I think actually the response I have to that. [30:58] Ambrook is a window [30:59] into one of the most underappreciated stories [31:01] in the internet economy: [31:02] Vertical SaaS. [31:03] As Mack is explaining, the finances of a modern farm [31:05] are complex, [31:06] and generic accounting software just doesn't work. [31:09] So Ambrook is building SaaS from the ground up [31:11] to solve deep industry-specific problems [31:13] that generic tools can't solve, [31:15] like crop-specific profitability [31:17] or specialized agricultural lending. [31:19] And Stripe then is the platform for these platforms. [31:22] Stripe powers tens of thousands of these [31:24] from Ambrook for farming to Mindbody for gyms. [31:27] And collectively those platforms [31:28] power millions of small businesses. [31:31] The best vertical SaaS platforms [31:33] become an all-round system of record for their customers. [31:35] They offer payments and loans and spend management [31:38] and subscriptions and invoicing [31:39] and tax automation reporting, [31:41] all of which you can get from Stripe. [31:43] There's now 95 platforms on Stripe [31:45] with more than a billion dollars in GMV. [31:48] So if you are building that indispensable system of record [31:51] for your industry, [31:51] come talk to us at Stripe. [31:55] Are carbon credits a big revenue line [31:58] for a lot of your customers? [32:00] They're not the biggest revenue line [32:03] for our customers. No, but just [32:04] a relevant revenue line for a lot of your customers, [32:06] because if you get into forestry stuff, [32:08] or a lot of land management. [32:09] So for many of our customers, [32:12] they do participate in carbon credit programs [32:14] but it's not as many as you might think. [32:16] It still is a relatively small part of US agriculture, [32:19] despite them being kind of really big [32:22] in the public consciousness. [32:25] Carbon payments are on very long timeframes [32:28] and they require you to maintain the same behavior [32:31] over about a 10-year period, [32:33] otherwise you get clawback provisions. [32:35] And so actually I think it— [32:37] It locks you into a plan. [32:37] It kind of locks you into a plan [32:39] when you might actually want to be adaptive [32:42] or versatile in that. [32:43] And I actually went to a sustainability... [32:46] an ag conference last year [32:49] and something that one of the producers there said [32:52] really struck me, which was, [32:55] it's not enough to have a 1x payback. [32:57] You have to prove that these programs [32:59] can have a 3-4x payback. [33:01] Otherwise why would they do it? [33:03] They should just do something else [33:04] that is going to be able to [33:05] better improve their bottom line. [33:07] And I think that that just goes back to a lot of our thesis, [33:10] which is this idea of pragmatic environmentalism. [33:14] You are not going to see the level of change [33:18] that you might want to see or need [33:21] unless it makes sense for the bottom line. [33:23] Yeah, climate is a very politically charged topic [33:26] in the US. [33:27] You studied climate security at Stanford. [33:30] Most of your customers are in red states [33:33] or the red part of blue states such as in California. [33:37] But I also think that people's views on these topics [33:40] tend to be pretty nuanced. [33:41] I bet San Franciscans [33:43] couldn't effectively steel-man [33:46] the views of your customers on such climate topics. [33:50] So what do your customers think on climate topics? [33:52] It's a great question. [33:54] Our customers think a bunch of different things [33:56] so I wouldn't be able to summarize [33:58] with just one statement, [34:00] though I will say that one of my favorite articles that [34:04] "Offrange," which is our editorial independent [34:09] media publication, published [34:10] was an article titled [34:12] "Where Soil is Holy but Climate is Seldom Mentioned." [34:16] And I think that it's like [34:19] talking about climate sometimes [34:21] feels like talking about politics or money. [34:24] And yet these producers that this article talks about [34:28] and a lot of the producers that that we work with, [34:29] or just around the US, are actually doing the type of things [34:33] that you would put under a climate umbrella. [34:35] Yeah, they're just not branding it as such. [34:37] They're just not branding it as such. [34:39] And I think a lot of actually [34:40] what I've learned from our customers [34:42] is that a lot of people want the same things. [34:45] They just aren't talking about it in a way [34:47] that might feel familiar to someone who grew up [34:51] around San Francisco, for example. [34:54] We're talking a lot here about the insights [34:57] into the business that Ambrook allows. [34:59] One of my favorite books about accounting [35:02] is "The End of Accounting," which talks about how [35:06] GAAP is basically poorly suited to this day and age. [35:10] And one of the things it points out [35:11] is that accounting is trying to do many jobs, right? [35:14] If you're an equity holder, [35:16] it's trying to help you figure out [35:18] what the future returns on your equity might be; [35:21] If you're a debt holder, [35:23] it's helping you figure out will you lose all your money [35:26] or will you get paid back; [35:28] if you're the IRS, [35:29] it's helping you figure out how much taxes [35:30] this business owes; [35:31] and then this kind of management accounting, [35:33] which is helping you understand, like you were saying, [35:35] the P&L view of hay [35:39] or the dairy side of the operation or something like that. [35:43] And so it's kind of helping management [35:45] make better decisions, [35:46] but in particular people tend to have a view [35:47] that there is this God-given truth of just [35:53] what the business is. [35:54] Whereas, in fact, accounting is a tool for a job. [35:59] And the job you might want to do with accounting [36:02] actually really varies. [36:03] And so I'm curious how you think about that, [36:05] where, which are the jobs that you want to help firms do? [36:08] Like are you helping them pay their taxes? [36:10] Is it all about making different decisions, [36:12] and yeah, just that idea [36:14] that accounting is a bit overloaded these days [36:16] with the tasks. Yeah, totally, actually, [36:17] I think the way that we talk about it internally [36:19] is there's four types of accounting: [36:21] The first layer is just cash. [36:23] It's like if you did a snapshot of what's happening, [36:26] and actually many businesses in the US file cash basis. [36:31] The second layer, which I think... [36:35] which a lot of startups are subjected to [36:37] because they meet the threshold of requirement [36:40] for this is filing accrual, [36:42] which is we suddenly introduce the idea [36:44] of time into accounting. [36:46] So the idea of accounts receivable, [36:48] accounts payable, ARAP, et cetera. [36:50] The next layer is enterprise accounting, [36:53] which is that idea of your entire... [36:57] a business line basically. [36:58] So hay, cattle, et cetera. [37:01] And then the final layer is managerial accounting, [37:05] which is truly unit economics. [37:06] It's like, "What is my cost per acre? [37:08] How much should it cost me for a dairy [37:10] to produce a pound of milk?" [37:11] That type of accounting. [37:13] And the way that we think about it is [37:15] we have customers who come in at every layer. [37:18] And I think actually the beauty [37:20] of building accounting software is that it can scale. [37:24] Yes, GAAP might be sort of overloaded, [37:28] but at least it is standardized and it scales. [37:31] And so we have folks who come in [37:33] who are coming off of actual pen and paper [37:35] and a shoebox of receipts [37:37] who are interested in adopting software for the first time [37:40] to do their accounting to just get tax prep [37:44] to be done easier, [37:45] or maybe go from cash to accrual. [37:48] And then we have folks who are at the, [37:50] they're at the accrual or even enterprise layer [37:52] who are interested in actually getting [37:54] to the unit-economic analysis. [37:56] I mean I've seen, [37:56] so dairies are extremely complicated businesses. [38:00] They're like a cow-calf operation, [38:02] which is your typical cattle ranch and then some. [38:05] They're like a very complex cow-calf. [38:06] And I've seen dairies hire ex-bankers [38:10] to get to that level of the managerial analysis. [38:12] Yes. Yes. [38:13] And I think that that is what we are building for Ambrook [38:17] is we have customers able to get to all four layers [38:19] of accounting [38:21] because of the way that we just architected [38:24] the data structure in the beginning [38:25] and the way that we are trying to wrap and de-jargon [38:30] a lot of the complexities of doing your books correctly. [38:33] So you want to walk people up the inside curve? [38:35] Yes, yes. [38:37] And take wherever they're currently operating, [38:38] and just make it easy for them to reach the next level. [38:40] Exactly, and it's okay. [38:42] We consider customers to be successful in Ambrook [38:44] if they just hop one level up. [38:45] Yeah, that makes sense. [38:47] People might think of you as a software business, [38:50] but I get a sense that you identify [38:52] in a significant way as a FinTech business. [38:55] Is that a fair characterization? [38:57] And maybe you can expand on that. [38:58] Yeah, for sure. [38:59] I typically think of FinTech businesses [39:01] in two different ways. [39:03] The first way is just are you sort of facilitating payments? [39:06] And so there's a sense of like, [39:07] are you in the payments flow? [39:08] The second way that folks typically [39:10] talk about FinTech businesses is like, [39:12] do you hold deposits? [39:13] Do you lend, basically? Deposits and lending. [39:17] Maybe also cards I think would be part of that. [39:19] And so for us, [39:21] we actually from the very beginning, [39:23] saw them as inseparable. [39:25] Like we were just interested [39:25] in solving our customer's problems, [39:27] and in order to be able to get more accurate data [39:31] into the ERP, [39:33] being in the payment's flow [39:35] just made it a lot easier to be able to do that. [39:37] And I think building with a lot of the FinTech optionality [39:42] enables us to, yeah, to have a lot more of the options [39:45] to solve more of the problems with capital [39:48] that we were talking about earlier. [39:50] So yeah, I think about that as inseparable. [39:54] I think that the choice that we didn't make though is, [39:57] and we are just now getting into credit. [39:59] We decided actually early on not to give away free money. [40:02] So that was a— [40:03] Controversial startup plan. [40:06] And I think it actually was controversial at the time. [40:09] It was, and we grew slower in the beginning because of it. [40:13] And I think that the thought that I had was that... [40:18] and we had raised in the very beginning [40:21] it started during ZIRP. [40:23] And so the thought that I had was, [40:26] basically what I did it was I just, [40:27] I did all these like financial models and I was like, [40:30] "I just don't see how this makes sense actually. [40:33] if I'm trying to get to a healthy-margin business." [40:37] I don't see how the math— [40:38] The free money part makes it challenging. [40:40] Exactly, I don't see how this works [40:41] if interest rates change even a little bit. [40:44] A piece of advice that I got that [40:45] that I thought was really, really helpful [40:47] and helped me shape this. [40:50] I wanted to actually get the hard parts right first, [40:52] which I think is the SaaS side of the FinTech side. [40:54] And I wanted people to be adopting us [40:56] because they like the software [40:58] and we got the workflows right. [40:59] Not because we are giving away free money, [41:02] because we can always give away free money. [41:03] We can turn that on when we want, [41:05] when we have enough of the partners to be able to do that. [41:08] And I think because we actually did the slog [41:11] of build accounting software that has a high NPS, [41:14] that people actually like using, [41:17] we now have way more optionality [41:19] to be able to leverage the FinTech side of the business. [41:22] And when you say free money, [41:24] do you mean below-market loans? [41:26] Do you mean free payments? [41:28] Do you have a specific free money you mean? [41:30] Oh yeah, I mean below market anything. [41:33] So below market anything, right? [41:34] I think that you can give away free payments [41:38] that actually cost you money. [41:40] So it's anything that like requires you to have [41:44] negative unit cost— [41:45] This is how a lot of founders fool themselves [41:47] that they have product-market fit when they don't. [41:49] Are users coming for the product [41:50] or are they coming from the subsidy? [41:51] You can build movie pass, [41:52] and movie aficionados love unlimited free movies, [41:55] but the economics make it challenging. [41:57] Yeah, and I think maybe it would've all worked out [41:59] if I was willing to do that. [42:00] I just— [42:03] You're old-fashioned in that way. [42:04] I'm just old-fashioned. [42:05] I was like, "I thought we were supposed to be building [42:07] for 70% gross margins." [42:09] And so that's like what I was doing. [42:12] That was what we ended up building the business around. [42:14] You seem unusually passionate about instant money movement [42:18] compared to most people I know. [42:22] 99th percentile of instant money movement. [42:25] Is it a reflection of what you're hearing [42:26] from your customers, or? [42:27] Yeah, I think it's also a first principle. [42:29] Like the idea of... [42:32] if I'm actually thinking about solving the problem [42:34] for what we're trying to solve, [42:36] it seems like actually a lot of the issue [42:37] is that money movement is slow and expensive, [42:40] and context-less. [42:41] So it's instant money movement [42:43] and high-context money movement, [42:46] and I think there's just a lot of dead money [42:50] sitting in the economy [42:52] that's just for some reason in transit between middlemen. [42:55] We're too accepting of that. [42:56] Yeah, it's something that people are used to, right? [43:00] But I think if you think of a check sitting in the mail [43:03] for like 10, 14 days, [43:05] I guess maybe it's kind of floating, [43:07] someone's ability to get that. [43:08] And so it's cashflow management. [43:10] I think that's a legit thing [43:11] that I think you have to solve for, [43:13] if you're saying, not everyone actually wants... [43:16] not every business wants instant money movement [43:20] but I do think that there's also a sense [43:21] of having to go through any set of ACH hops [43:25] doesn't make sense. [43:26] Yeah. [43:27] I was joking with Jackson on our podcast... [43:31] the takeaway I had from Stripe Sessions [43:33] was instant money movement. [43:35] I was like, "Alright, that's going to be a solved problem. [43:38] What's the next problem we can solve?" [43:41] And I was talking to some Stripes afterwards, [43:42] and they're like, "No it's actually still really hard." [43:44] And I was like, [43:46] "I'm thinking five years in the future, [43:47] you guys have got this." [43:48] Yeah, no I think we will make [43:50] a lot of progress there. [43:51] It feels like many things are coming together. [43:53] 12 and 16, 28 and 31. [43:56] So. Okay. [43:57] Okay. Fair and square. Good game. [43:59] That means I got some complimentary lettuce [44:01] at the next lettuce party. [44:02] You do, yeah. [44:03] I'm curious... well maybe you can explain briefly [44:06] how you guys use Stripe to set up my actual question, [44:09] which is if you were running Stripe, [44:10] what would you do differently? [44:11] I think you guys are doing a great job running Stripe. [44:13] No, no, but actually. [44:16] I wrote a whole document. [44:17] I know, I read it. [44:19] My sense is that Stripe's strategy in the long run [44:23] is to figure out how to transcend the constraints [44:30] of traditional money movement. [44:31] Like how much do you participate [44:33] in the traditional financial institutions [44:36] that have been set up [44:37] and how much do you transcend that [44:38] and build something novel. [44:40] I think a lot of what actually Stripe is doing [44:42] with building its own payments network, [44:45] somehow building its own deposits network, [44:46] which I think you'd still need to partner [44:48] with banking institutions on to do that. [44:51] So you're still are kind of anchored with that. [44:52] But I think that's actually where stablecoins [44:54] becomes quite interesting, because it's permissionless. [44:57] And so it's like who does Stripe need to... [44:59] I think the way that I would kind of think about it [45:02] is who does Stripe need to get permission from today [45:05] in order to exist in the way that Stripe wants to exist? [45:08] Yeah, I think the thing that we think is interesting [45:10] about financial infrastructure [45:12] is it's, by its nature, multiplayer. [45:16] You look at old e-commerce systems [45:20] and you know ones that even might have been on-prem [45:22] or just the software is very outdated, [45:24] and Shopify came along and built an amazing product [45:28] and said, "Here's a much better way [45:29] to manage your e-commerce store and manage your inventory [45:32] and build a nice storefront and everything." [45:33] And they were able to really [45:35] clean up a significant part of that market [45:38] because you could replace your old e-commerce system [45:42] with Shopify. [45:43] What's interesting about what we're doing is payments, [45:49] and to a large degree, financial services [45:51] are by their nature multiplayer [45:54] where every payment is with some counterparty, right? [45:58] And even if it's not, even if it's something like, [46:02] where do you store your money, or how do you do AP [46:05] or something like that. [46:07] There are lots of banks out there [46:09] that people have their deposits with, [46:10] or people wave their hands and say, [46:13] "Oh, crypto will obviate this," [46:14] but when people have money in crypto, [46:17] they will store it in Coinbase or in Binance [46:20] or what have you. [46:21] And so our view is that for whatever job is being done, [46:26] there will be a whole bunch of other counterparties [46:29] that we are going to integrate with and work with. [46:32] And so an interesting part [46:33] of running a business like Stripe [46:36] is that you're working with all these partners, [46:39] and you can actually pull things along [46:41] and make them way more modern. [46:43] We've done that in a bunch of areas, [46:45] but it's much more of you're the captain of a sports team [46:50] as opposed to you're Alex Honnold [46:53] doing solo rock climbing. [46:54] It's a different kind of sport. [46:56] Totally, but there are players [46:59] that Stripe will just be deeply competitive with [47:02] who will not want to play on your sports team. [47:05] I think there's a difference between [47:06] who do you partner with, [47:08] and who do you generally have to like run through [47:11] in order to be able to build like a better version [47:13] of financial infrastructure that is open, [47:17] does actually move on modern rails, [47:20] is actually ultimately net better for everyone, [47:22] is not incentivized by value capture. [47:25] But I think there's a lot of sense of, [47:26] how can you get more of the ecosystem cheering you on? [47:29] It's the transcendence from [47:31] Stripe as the upstart startup [47:33] to Stripe as the champion that's pulling everyone [47:35] into the future. [47:36] Yes, so maybe what you're saying is [47:39] Stripe previously provided easy access [47:42] to the existing financial system, [47:44] and now we've gotten to a point [47:47] where Stripe can actually have some voice in shaping, [47:50] and has the scale, [47:51] where we can have some voice [47:52] in shaping the future financial system. [47:54] And you're saying that we have to take that seriously, [47:57] that is now where we are, [47:59] as opposed to being a passive participant in, [48:01] I guess, this industry exists. [48:03] Totally. Yeah. [48:03] And I think this is the thing that, [48:05] I mean, we're at a very different scale than Stripe [48:09] but the thing that I have been talking about lately [48:11] with my team is like, [48:12] the company changes under our feet. [48:15] It's like, one day you wake up and you're like, [48:16] "Oh, it's like the rules are different actually." [48:19] People are caring about different things [48:20] than they did before [48:21] and the voice that we have in the ecosystem [48:23] is different in these types of things. [48:25] And I do actually think [48:27] that Stripe is pretty clearly a leader [48:30] on a lot of these axes, [48:34] but I haven't heard as much of the voice [48:36] in terms of like, what is the vision [48:38] in which we want to build. [48:41] I see a future in which there is a vision of the world [48:45] that I want to exist, [48:46] and Stripe is uniquely in a position [48:49] to be able to make that vision true. [48:51] And I want to sign up for that vision. [48:53] Yeah, I think maybe also, [48:55] you've probably picked up on this, dispositionally, [48:59] we're just not naturally drawn to pre-announcing products [49:03] before they're anywhere close to... [49:05] we like to do a thing and hopefully we get it right. [49:09] And our view is you can't meme your way [49:10] to a product being good. [49:12] You put out a version of it that's imperfect, [49:14] and then you gradually iterate on it over time. [49:16] And so maybe also we've just been a bit too leery [49:20] of what we think are grandiose statements [49:22] as a product development methodology. [49:24] Yeah, I think that's the piece of [49:27] what feels missing is a sense of the painting the picture [49:31] of what the world could look like if Stripe wins. [49:35] What is your answer to this question? [49:36] What does it look like if we win? [49:40] I want more people to believe in the American dream. [49:44] My grandfather believed in it when he immigrated [49:46] from India to the US. [49:51] He built up his own... he was an entrepreneur, [49:54] he built his own engineering practice [49:55] and that was sort of what put his five kids through school. [49:58] My mom believed a version of it when, [50:01] she immigrated when she was eight here with her family [50:04] and with my grandfather, [50:05] and went into public service [50:06] because she wanted to... [50:08] she told me a couple years ago [50:10] it was because she wanted to give back [50:14] to a country that had served her, [50:16] had given so much to her, [50:18] and I'm doing a version of it. [50:20] Because, I think, [50:22] I went to a school that got me involved in tech [50:25] and then I moved to San Francisco, [50:26] and I became familiar with capital markets, [50:29] and I have access now to a version of that, [50:31] but I see so many of our customers [50:33] that are trying to live a version of that [50:34] and are struggling. [50:36] And I want there to be many different types [50:39] of American dreams that are possible. [50:41] When you say making the American dream accessible, [50:45] you're in particular talking about where Ambrook can help... [50:48] is making entrepreneurship [50:51] and wealth-building broadly accessible. [50:55] Yeah, broadly accessible, [50:56] and not just for folks [50:56] who know how to raise venture capital. [50:58] Right, for tech businesses. [50:59] eah. [51:00] Who have you learned from [51:01] as you've built this business? [51:03] I think two of the people who come to mind are... [51:05] one of them is Josh, who— [51:08] At Thrive. [51:08] Yeah, Josh Kushner at Thrive, [51:10] who took a really early big bet on me [51:13] and the vision that we were building for the team, [51:16] And I think the thing that I really [51:18] have always really admired about Josh [51:20] is he's so precise. [51:23] If you ever talked to Josh, [51:24] he's thoughtful in all of his words, [51:26] but he is enormously ambitious. [51:28] There's a level of quiet ambition in what he does. [51:32] And he has, over the course of [51:33] even the past couple of years, [51:36] become much more widely recognized [51:39] in terms of his ability to put his finger on the macro, [51:44] I think. [51:45] Yeah, I mean he came from... [51:49] Thrive was founded how long ago? [51:51] And now they're one of the leading multistage [51:53] venture firms. Multistage firms. [51:54] Yeah, exactly. [51:55] So I think the thing that I've learned from him [51:56] is the sense of you can be quietly ambitious [52:01] and that fits my style much better, I think. [52:04] I think the second person actually [52:05] that I've learned a lot from is Dylan Field, [52:11] who just led a big investment in Ambrook. [52:13] And Dylan is so... he's so able to like if you ever, [52:17] are having a conversation with Dylan [52:19] is one where he can connect the strategic to the tactical [52:22] and back up in the same thread. [52:24] He can go from 40,000 feet to 5 feet [52:26] and back up to 40,000 in the same sentence [52:28] in a way that that doesn't create any whiplash. [52:31] And that I think I've actually found [52:32] that to be extremely rare in both investors and operators [52:36] to be able to do that. [52:37] People are either in the weeds or they're at the— [52:39] They're either in the weeds or so— [52:40] 50,000 foot view. At the 50,000 view [52:41] that it's like not very helpful. [52:43] And Dylan is able to go back and forth [52:45] between the two in a way that I've learned a lot from [52:48] and I think I've gotten a lot better at. [52:49] Is that dispositional by him [52:51] or because he is running a public SaaS-scaled company? [52:56] It's a good question. [52:57] I've met a lot of founders and operators who can't do it. [53:00] So I think that probably [53:03] his ability to build Figma [53:04] has probably taught him a lot in that. [53:06] But I also think that [53:08] there must be something more dispositional about it. [53:10] Yeah. Last question. [53:13] Why are you building Offrange, your media property? [53:16] Offrange started out as an experiment [53:18] called Ambrook Research. [53:19] It was before we had built anything [53:21] that we could really show people. [53:23] And so I wanted a way for two reasons: [53:26] One, I wanted a way to kind of talk about our brand [53:28] and put something valuable out there that would be useful. [53:31] And so we started out by just doing some... [53:34] We published a couple of, in the early days, [53:37] research articles with academics [53:39] using some of our early anonymized data [53:42] from a lot of the work we were doing. [53:44] And then it turned into actually [53:46] this editorial independent media publication [53:48] that has become wildly popular in its own right. [53:51] I've always wanted to build some sort of my own version [53:53] of a research or academic journal. [53:57] A lot of the research I did [53:58] when I was in grad school on climate security [54:00] actually, in particular, was looking at the co-production, [54:03] it was called the co-production of actionable science, [54:06] and it's how do you build... [54:08] how do you create knowledge in a way [54:10] that involves all the stakeholders [54:13] and gets them all on board [54:14] and the knowledge that is created, [54:16] and so it's not just creating these ivory towers. [54:19] And I always thought that if I could, [54:20] I wanted to build something [54:22] that would evoke that type of ethos, [54:27] and Offrange was my attempt at doing that. [54:32] And it now is sort of stewarded [54:34] by a really wonderful editor, Jesse, [54:36] and has its own life in that. [54:38] But in the early days it was really this idea of [54:40] I wanted to create actionable science [54:42] that would be useful for people [54:44] to be able to make better decisions. [54:48] What piece are you most proud of? [54:49] If people want to check it out, what should they go Google? [54:52] Well, I already said I really love the piece [54:55] that we wrote. Eve Andrews is the author, [55:00] "Where Soil is Holy, but Climate is Seldom Mentioned." [55:03] I love that piece. [55:04] Yeah, that's an old but good one. [55:05] It's one of my favorites. [55:07] Okay, well, Mackenzie, thank you. [55:09] Yeah. Thank you.