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and now onto the show. From Data Reels, this is FPNA today.
Hello everyone, welcome to FPNA today. I am your host Paul Barnhurst, aka the FPNA guy.
FPNA today is brought to you by Data Reels, the financial planning and analysis platform for
Excel users. Every week we welcome a leader from the world of financial planning and analysis.
Today we have a special guest that I am delighted to introduce. We have the CEO of Data Reels with
us, D.D. Garfunkel. D.D, welcome to the show. Thank you, happy to be here.
Well, we are really excited to have you. Let me just start by giving a little bit of an introduction
and then I will give you an opportunity to tell us more about yourself and your background.
So he is coming to us from Israel. He is the co-founder and CEO of Data Reels. He earned his
bachelor's in computer science and an MBA. And so as I mentioned, we are thrilled to have him.
Why don't we start with you telling us a little bit about yourself and your background?
Again, thank you for having me and it's a pleasure to join your fantastic podcast.
In my, I started my career as a software engineer. Actually, I started at a very early age of 11
grade. I studied the computer science and I started to work as a software engineer in a gaming
company. And for 10 years, I developed software, team leader, director, VP R&D.
And then I moved to a more management positions. I started as a COO in a mid-sized company.
And then this company acquired by Cisco and I served as a GM general manager in Cisco,
here in Tel Aviv, in Israel. I managed a business unit of 250 people.
Thanks. I appreciate learning that. And then from there was your next opportunity to be,
did you become CEO of Data Reels? Was that kind of the next step?
Yep. In 2015, I started the data reels together with my co-founders, Yalena Dead, and we founded the
data reels. Great. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that story, kind of, how it came about,
you know, a little bit about that data rel's journey. Would love to hear the background to that
story. I started to work in Cisco. I envisioned Cisco as the biggest IT company in the world that
everything will be automated. End of month, you click on a button and you see all the data
populated, graph charts. And the reality was set of spreadsheets. A lot of manual work,
spreadsheets go back and forth between the My subsidiary and the headquarters in California.
And at some point, I thought about a different, maybe a concept or a different angle to try and
solve the, what we call the Excel hell problem. And instead of the traditional typical angle to
solve this problem by replacing Excel based processes with vertical, SaaS solutions, I came with
the concept to try and let the organization keep using spreadsheets and keep using Excel,
but try to transform the Excel from being a personal tool into an enterprise application.
And my idea was to connect the organization as spreadsheets into one centralized database.
And to develop the capability, the algorithm to take the Excel data and transform it
from a semi-structured data into a structured database. And that was the idea and we started
data rels with a very, very wide vision, without even a specific use case or specific vertical.
But let's offer a platform to connect all the organizational spreadsheets into one centralized
database. Got it. That makes a lot of sense. And I've heard a little bit of this story before
and I think it's great. So how did you come to the conclusion that finance was the right vertical
for this tool? How did it go from being kind of a general purpose? We're here to make Excel
an enterprise application, as you mentioned, too. This is really an enterprise application for
FPNA. How did that come about? So it was a long journey. Three, four years of looking for a
product market fit from a very wide solution, offering try from selling to large banks,
financial institutions, insurance companies, all these giants that use spreadsheets all over
and try to find use case that can be repetitive, that can be scalable. We try different approaches
and today it looks like that it makes a lot of sense, but it took us like a year or two to
identify and to convince that the way finance people look at Excel is totally different from a way
other business users look at Excel. Finance people love Excel. They see it as a essential tool
kind of from operational system. You can say a canvas, you can say even kind of a skill that
and every finance people needs to have in order to succeed. So the finance department was the
first focus or the first people from the organizational tool to a financial tool. And once we identified
the finance department, the FPNA use cases are the classic consolidation challenge because every
FPNA process starts from collecting data from multiple sources in different structure,
different shapes, different systems and here our capability to transform semi-structured data into
structural data and came up with a very, very strong competitive edge, very strong capability that
enables us to take manual processes and automate them in a very, very short time. So the FPNA was the
additional focus that we performed and the last pivot that we have done in the beginning of 2020
and since then we are succeeding and growing in a very, very high pace, becoming one of the leaders
in this market. Thank you for sharing that. I'm not surprised to hear you say finance views
excel different than the other parts of the business, right? As the saying goes, you'll have to
pry it out of our cold dead hands as some people say. Excel seems to be the definite tool of choice
for the average finance professional. As you mentioned, there's a lot of those challenges because it's
not great at consolidating data. It's not great at serving as an enterprise tool, collaboration.
Many of the things that finance needs to do, but at the same time it's great for modeling and it
meets a lot of needs for that analysis. So bringing something that marries that and brings that
together is really important. And I think it's an interesting journey you mentioned the five years
of finding product market fit kind of starting in 2015, 2020, really getting turned to FPA. And it
sounds like today you're seeing a lot of growth and you've seen a lot of adoption in the marketplace.
How is kind of data rails being received and how is the kind of that growth journey going at this
point? We since we started to sell to the FPNA solution and we focus on small, medium businesses
companies between 50 employees. Once you have some level of complexity in your financial
department until 500 or maybe 1000 employees. This is our spot. We speak directly with the C4
or the decision maker and the promising is to take all the models templates, all the processes
that you have today. And first, automate the processes and save a lot of time, a lot of mistakes and
make everything automated. This is one. Second, the ability to analyze the data because now everything
is in our database. So you can analyze the data in a way that you couldn't do it with just
spreadsheet because now we have database beneath this spreadsheet. So analyze and visualization.
You can share the data. So we actually provide a full product offering with automation analysis
and visualization that everything is built around your existing models and existing processes.
This promising is very appealing. So we are able to sell the product and to grow in a very,
very impressive way, regardless of the situation in the COVID and not COVID. The economy,
we sell in different prices, different price structure. The product market fit is super,
super strong and we are growing in double figures every year and we continue to invest a lot,
a lot in the technology, in the growth itself. And we are adding, we are not
a stay with what we have. We are adding more and more capability, focusing now and probably we'll
talk about it later about the new world world map. Okay, the AI or specifically the Genie that we
believe is the next phase, the next thing in the business software at all. But in the CFO, software,
the CFO tools, we believe that it's a game changer. Great. And yes, we'll definitely get to AI
here in a minute and talk a little bit more about that is it's transformed our world over the last
year to really see it become mainstream. I mean, it's been out there for years, but we've seen
that mainstream adoption at a level we've never seen before. But before I jump there, I just want
to ask one more question. Obviously, it sounds like one of the biggest challenges you face as a
company is finding that product market fit. It took several years and I imagine there were some
real challenges during that. But what are some of the other challenges you faced after finding
product market fit? What are maybe some of the biggest challenges you faced as you've tried to
scale the company? So the biggest challenge that we hit was efficiency. In the end of a 22,
together with the entire SASS world, we wake up in the morning and we understood that it's great
that we sell like crazy. We increased our top line in an amazing pace, but we burn too much money.
It sounds like ridiculous, but that was the situation. I mean, we had a mindset of
growth at all costs and we had to shift the entire company mindset to keep the same pace,
but to do it with 50% of the budget. And it was a journey of 9 to 12 months in each department
from marketing sales, product, R&D, every department in the company changed dramatically and we
have succeeded. Now we are growing at almost at the same pace with 50% of the expense, which is
it makes me look at the past years and say, what have we done? But now we are we we we succeeded to
improve the unit economics dramatically and to be much more efficient and it makes a lot of sense.
Well, yo, as I've often heard it said, necessity is the mother of innovation, right? Exactly,
it's so true. Be innovative or run out of cash when all of a sudden all the money dried up.
So any insights or lessons you can share, particularly for our finance audience from that journey,
you know, how can they support companies that are going through that? Because that's not going
away. I think we've kind of shifted mindsets now and we'll continue to see that in the future
of the importance of balancing cost with growth versus that mentality we had when money was free
of, you know, grow at any cost, right? So any advice you'd offer to our finance audience of how
they can support the business if they're going through that transition, that journey.
I think that the advice that I'm going to share is relevant for especially for tech founders that
leading a SaaS company. That I think we tend to follow benchmarks and KPIs to think of the
world from the investors or the potential investors point of view. It brings you to the wrong
sometimes to the wrong path because if you start to think about your business as a business,
forget about benchmarks, forget about just look at the business, the unit economics,
does it make sense? Can you take what you have today, put it in a spreadsheet and see how it goes
to the 100 million ARR, 1 billion ARR, it makes sense to you. So it makes sense. Regardless of
benchmark, I think this is the shift in the mindset that we did and helps us to make the right
decisions and fix peace by peace, powered by power with this mindset and then the entire organization
shifted to the right direction. Got to appreciate that. So if I heard that right,
it sounds like sometimes just stepping back, ignoring the benchmarks and all the things,
looking at the unit economics, looking at the business and say, is this scalable at these
numbers and how do we do that? And focusing on the true business measures, not the investors,
not the benchmark, not the metrics, what kind of true to who you are and how you would
scale it. Is that what I'm hearing? Exactly. Great. Think that makes a lot of sense. So thank you
for sharing that. So now I want to get into a subject that I'm sure everybody is excited to hear
about AI. We've all seen it over the last year. So can you share your thoughts on how you see AI
impacting the Office of Finance, the Office of the CFO? I look at the AI or we mix AI and
Genie AI, but let's call it AI. I look at it as two different approaches or two different directions.
It's like the hands and the brain. You can use AI to extend your hands, to have more employees
or by automating processes, by making things a faster, by reducing headcount,
shortening time to deliver. Which is amazing, right? We use it a lot internally in data
res. It's amazing, but it's not a life changer. If you have a, if your business is good and you
have a good business plan, so they get between 10 employees in the financial department to
employees or five employees, this is not what will save your business or make it successful.
Other part is to look at the AI as an extension to your brain. And here I think this is a life
changer. To let the CFO or the FPNA manager to have a tool that can be like an extension to the
FPNA brain. And the extension can be by take the same, let's say, analysis, the approach that you
try to analyze your business, but let the AI to run it in a scale with all your historical data,
with all your, with all the dimension in your organization, with all the, sometimes the data
can be internal data in the company, but can be external data. For example, in the tools that we
developed in data res, the AI look at, for example, your customer base. Okay? Let's say that it's
very common that you see 20% of your customers responsible for 80% of your revenue. Let's say that
from this 20% of your customers, something interesting happened for this company. You see in the news,
they had some good news, bad news, something happened from currency, from I don't know a disease
in China, I don't know whatever. And you as the CFO or the FPNA manager, you cannot hold and process
all this data. You can use this data. You can direct the machine, but you cannot run all this
endless information. And AI can take and can be this multiplier that can take a good CFO
and make them the amazing CFO with this capability. And I think this is a life changer. This is a
game changer that can change the industry, can change the way CFO works. And this is the
direction and the path that we take that are its products. So let's unpack that a little bit.
Can you talk about how you're implementing that vision at DataRells? What are you doing in the way
of AI? And how are you thinking about incorporating it in your product? So as I said, we do not look
or we do not use the AI for the productivity part in the product. We let the product run the
automation, the consolidation, generating the reports, everything DataRells know how to do it
before and after the AI. This is we don't need the AI for that. But once the data is consolidated,
the reports are ready. Now this is the time that the CFO is consuming the results. Right? The
CFO look at the data and I will try to improvise the conversation between the CFO and the FPNA
manager by the end of the month. The FPNA manager get into the room of the CFO and the CFO,
okay, tell me what happened this month? Anything interesting? Should we change anything? Something
relevant that I need to know that happened in the finance department, maybe in the operational
side of the organization, maybe something that happens in the business world that they should be
aware of. Right? This is the type of the question that the CFO asked the FPNA manager and the FPNA
manager should provide. And this is exactly what we build. We are already providing very
interesting capability but we invest a lot of main power and brain power in this direction
to make it the perfect, we call it the virtual FPNA assistant that can answer exactly these
questions. Thank you for sharing that. I think virtual assistant is a good term for it. I've
heard some people refer to some of those type of things as almost like an intern or a junior
analyst. You still sometimes have to validate things but it gets a lot of work done for you,
gives you good insights and gets you started on that journey and really can make things a lot easier.
And so I appreciate you sharing that. I'm curious, you know, you're taking how do you as a CEO
look at your finance and FPNA department? Like what do you want from them? What's your expectations?
So first we use data res in data res. So the FPNA I experience the same experience that like
each one of our founders of customer that use the system. First the basic ask from the FPNA
department is to have the data accurate, organized, consolidated. Before that you cannot do anything.
Second I want my ritual information. I want every day to see this, every week to see that,
every month to see that. And I want my dashboard and above that I want the exceptions. I want to know
what's going in the wrong direction. But to know it on time, once it started, before it's
getting something that it's already a problem, I want to know before the problem is arrived. I want
to know if something happened behind the scene. I can see that the revenue is going up. But maybe
something changed not only in the revenue, the total, but something happened under the hood.
Maybe the customer territory can be maybe the industries. If there is any trend that I'm missing
to make sure that I'm not missing something that at the end of the year, we look back and see
we miss that. The way we develop data res, we also use it of course in data res. So if something
happened in data res and in the company and the data res product couldn't identify or let me know
ahead of the human FBNA. So I know that we need to improve more and more parts in the product.
So my idea results is that I get the push from data res that I need to pay attention to this
or to that. Got it. It's great that you use it internally and it gives you that opportunity to
see how customers use it, right? As you're using yourself and how to push that. And obviously,
as you mentioned, you want to see all your financial reports, the baseline is those table stakes of
hey, getting the historicals right. So then we can predict going forward.
You know what it is like? 13 different spreadsheets emailed out to 23 different
budget holders, multiple iterations, version control, errors, back and forth updates.
You never really feel in control of the consolidation and collection process.
Yep, I've been there. Stop. Breathe. Data Rels is the financial planning and analysis platform
for Excel users. Data Rels takes data from all your company's disparate sources.
No organization is too complex, consolidating everything into one place secured in the cloud.
Now all your data finally talking to each other. Everything is automated back into your report in Excel.
Cash flow, FX conversion, intercompany transactions. Now automated, up to date. Drill down and
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I'm curious. What advice would you offer to finance professionals,
CFOs that are listening? If they want to start implementing AI and not just in an FPNA tool,
but just in general, how should finance be thinking about implementing AI within their functions
as a whole? Any thoughts there are advice you'd offer?
I think that to look at AI, because we know that we are in a very early stage of this revolution,
I think that everyone needs to look at AI not as today, but to look at the 2026 or 2025.
And plan the path to get there with the right tools, the right technology that can get you to the
real, the core of the AI revolution two or three years away. I think that for the CFO today
is pretty confusing today. I can imagine the CFO goes to the, I don't know, some conference
from Ernst and Jan, PWC, they go to a conference and they hear AI, Gen AI, but they go back to their
companies and they have the day-to-day, there's very many details, numbers,
spreadsheets, so there is no connection. I think this is what stands behind your question,
right? This is no connection and you cannot do the revolution in one day, but you can think of
the path. And now you need to choose the right partners or the right technology stocks that will
take you in the right approach. Because what we have today is very impressive, it's just the beginning.
Yeah, that's what's amazing is to think, hey, you know, we're at the beginning of this journey
in that we'll be doing things in a couple of years that we haven't even thought of yet today.
I think we really, you know, will continue to push the envelope and see real leaps and bounds.
I mean, if you just think, you know, when Chatchy PT came out with 3.5 and everybody's getting
examples of all kind of the mistakes it's made, how much progress it's made to today with adding
code interpreter or, you know, adding the internet, adding images into it, you can take photos and
being more accurate. Now, that's only going to increase with more time, more data, more focus,
more, you know, investment. So I agree with you're at the beginning of the journey and I think every
seat, see if I need to chart out their path, they need to think about what makes sense, what's that
journey look like? How do I benefit my team with the resources I have? So appreciate that. So
this next section we have, we like to call this to get to know you section is just a couple
questions to help us get to know you a little bit better and kind of have a little fun. So the
first one here is what is something interesting or unique about you that not many people know?
One thing maybe is that I dropped out of a school at the 10th grade. I was a computer nerd. I
wanted to do coding. So I left school and I continue by myself. So maybe this can be an interesting
point to the other kids that haven't get troubles and can't find themselves in schools and in some
with all the discipline and school is just a phase. Doesn't say anything about you, about yourself,
about what you're going to do when you finish school. Everything is possible.
Great advice there. So I'm curious. I'm going to ask a follow-up question here. What was the first
coding language you learned? Basic. It was with the numbers 10, 20, 30, 40. It was each line
has a had a number and then a Pascal and then a C++.
That makes sense. My daughter does, she's 10 and she goes to a coding class. They start with scratch
and she's been enjoying learning the basics of coding. So I think it's definitely a valuable skill.
You know, and it's one that I think, you know, it's good for everybody to know at least the basics.
So this next one is a fun one we like to ask everybody. If you could meet one person in the world,
get her alive. Who would you want to meet and why? This is a tough question. One for sure is
this guy, Michael Jordan. I don't know if you can see the picture. I can. We talked about that one
earlier. Why Michael Jordan? I think that he was an exceptional in the way he competed. The way
he competed, it was exceptional. He saw nothing else but winning. And I'm not saying this is the way
to perform and this is the way, but it's something to, I don't know if to admire, but it's something to
see how far can you get with the right mindset. So this is Michael Jordan. I really like
or admire people that with a vision that you look in retrospective and think how the hell they
knew how they had this courage and this vision of it and this capability to think ahead. So maybe
the first prime minister of Israel, David Deben Gouillon, this is one person that you can say how
he was such brave and such a long-term vision to think about how to build the foundation of this
successful country as we are today with all the things that you look retrospectively and think,
wow, this is amazing. There are definitely people like that, like you said, first prime minister
of Israel, Michael Jordan obviously going 6-0, winning six titles, never losing in the finals,
winning the MVP every time. I mean, those are amazing accomplishments, amazing athletes.
I wish you would have been 4-2 being a jazz fan, but I do have to appreciate his greatness.
So, you know, I won't hold it against you that you like Michael Jordan. I think he's the greatest
NBA player of all time and an amazing winner. He was truly amazing to watch. So I will totally
agree with you there. So this next one, this is a fun one because we, as we talk about gender to
AI, we like to ask people, what's the lasting they, their Googled looked up on YouTube, you know,
are used, gender to AI, what's the lasting you asked it? And in particular, if it's related to
finance, that'd be great, but if not, you can give us a different area. But the lasting either
Googled looked up on YouTube or used gender to AI to answer. So I took all the questions that you
gave me ahead and I put it in chat GPT and asked, what would be the perfect answer for these questions?
Actually, I had a guest do that. It was pretty funny because we had a discussion about budget.
And he asked chat GPT to write all the things you consider in a budget. And he sent it to me.
And the answer was actually pretty good. So kind of speaking of that, we kind of relapsed
about it. Chat GPT is amazing and for people like me that English is the second language,
I required to sometimes send emails and convey messages that should be sometimes deep and
complicated. So I use instead of translating text, I use chat GPT to translate and improve,
which is amazing. I use it 10 times a day at least.
Yeah, I use it quite a bit to summarize transcripts. Like, you know, our conversation here,
it's like, I can go listen to it again for 40 minutes and two months when I need to post about it.
Or I can ask chat GPT to summarize it, help refresh my memory, look at a few things and edit the
post versus half an start from scratch every time. So it's saved so much time. It's great at those
type of things. By the way, the chat GPT is amazing with text, amazing. And the challenge is to take
these capabilities and transform it to numbers, which is a different story, a different story.
And this is part of the reason I think that you don't see many companies like Datarers that
were able to productize chat GPT, open AI capabilities in the product is because the challenge to
take large language models and use it in finance in numbers when you need to be accurate term
ministry. This is something that it's a very, very challenging. Yes, I know dealing with numbers
in chat GPT is a real challenge versus processing text. I know that's been one of the, I've
asked it enough finance questions. I know that. That's where, if I have a financing, if it's using
code interpreter, I trust it a lot more that it's just returning an answer from the, you know,
the language model. I agree with you 100% there. So this last one, this is a favorite question of
ours. We've done this since episode one. I think it's the only question we've asked in pretty
much every episode. Favorite Excel function or favorite thing about Excel? People 100%. I people
everything. I people everything. And my hobby is to teach people to use people but not tech people,
to show it to you know, like the people outside of the tech, how to use people and to see the
surprise and the amazing in their face. This is, I think, this is amazing to bring the
this strong analysis capability to everyone. This is something that Michael Sof did so well.
Yeah, the pivot table. I can't even begin to think how many hours I've spent using a pivot table.
And I still remember the first time I was trying to figure it out. I was sticking like text stuff
in the values. I had no idea how to use it. I'm like, what's the benefit of this? But then once
I actually figured out how to use it, it's like, oh, wow, this is really cool. And you know,
today I'm like super excited about a month ago, Microsoft announced it's in beta. They haven't
released it, but they have, they've now created a pivot by function and a group by function.
So you can create that same, you know, with dynamic arrays, you can basically create dynamic pivot
tables. You don't even have to run it through a pivot table if you don't want, right? And there's
some benefits of why you do both, but it's just exciting to see more and more ways to analyze your
data within Excel. I'm excited for the continued development that comes. And yeah, I'm a huge
user of pivot tables. So I can appreciate that answer. Last question here before we let you go.
You know, if someone wants to get a hold of you or maybe learn more about you, what's the best
way for them to do that? Come and play Biscuit Biscuit Biscuit with me.
Give me a plane ticket. I'll be on my way.
I used to play a lot. My kids playing, I think it's a game that brings many, many skills
together, you know, the way to walk in a team, individuals, walk under pressure, came back from
failures. So I think it's a, you can see the entire life cycle of the entire life in a Biscuit
Biscuit game. Yeah, there's a lot of truth to that. So we'll put in the show notes. If you want
to meet them, ask them to where to join the basketball game. So, you know, really appreciate
you carving out some time for us today and getting the opportunity to chat with you and just learn
a little bit more of the backstory. And, you know, we wish DataRells the best of luck as they continue
to grow and scale the company. We know this is a market where people have a lot of options and
it's always a challenge to constantly trying to grow and innovate. So we look forward to,
you know, continued progress to best serve FP&A professionals because, you know, we all need as
much help as we can and having an important and the right FP&A tool is important for us. So
thanks for being one of those that serves the marketplace. Appreciate it. Thank you for inviting me.
