Brett Turner of Trovata On 5 Things You Need To Succeed In The Modern World Of Finance & Fintech
An Interview With Jason Hartman
It has to be a team game — You will only go so far on your own — you will always be better as a team. What’s even more optimal is to have a diverse team with people from a variety of backgrounds who have different opinions. Getting everyone to act as selflessly as possible, allows team unity to be achieved through mutual respect and trust. When team chemistry is achieved, the magic begins to happen.
As part of my series about the “How to Navigate and Succeed in the Modern World of Finance”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Brett Turner.
Brett is the founder and CEO of Trovata. He started his career as a CPA at Deloitte and then spent his early years as a financial reporting & GAAP specialist in Controller roles prior to his time at Amazon managing its SEC reporting. After leaving Amazon in 2005, Brett developed a strong track record for building, financing, and growing tech startups as a CFO. Prior to starting Trovata in 2016, he raised over $100M through equity and debt financings with successful exits at 3 enterprise startups generating over $500M in shareholder value. Outside of work, Brett enjoys time with his family, the beach, playing golf, and watching the Seahawks.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
Of course! I began my career in financial services in 1995 while working at Deloitte as a CPA. Since then, I have been involved with seven startups and have held multiple c-suite roles including, COO, CFO and now CEO of Trovata, a next-gen platform for finance professionals to better manage their business operations through better cash flow visibility and cash management. Throughout the course of my career, I have been in charge of overlooking the finances of many companies, and it’s an incredibly tedious process because it requires you and your team to traverse between your accounting system, planning tools, and a lot of manual work using spreadsheets, especially when it comes to cash forecasting and other cash workflows like managing cash, investments, and liquidity for the business. On top of that, tracking a company’s cash flow requires a heavy emphasis on attention to detail. You need to have an incredibly close eye on the ins and outs of your company’s finances, which is a lot different than managing your personal checking account — people rely on you to understand the overall financial status of their business, and as such, the stakes are a lot higher. That’s why a lot of businesses use an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to manage their books and unify their data. The downside is that ERPs close the books and then the finance team can generate reports, which requires data translation and a high-level of assumption. The result is manually curated reports that lack richness and are difficult to analyze because they don’t happen in real-time.
So, over time, I began to brainstorm ways to streamline this process and make it easier and more intuitive for CFOs and treasurers. When I started my first CFO role, I started experimenting with categorizing bank transactions to get a better look at the company’s cash flow and banking trends. I quickly realized that I was just using a basic cash accounting system, the simplest form of financial management, and by doing so I was getting the most accurate and real-time information that was available. There was no need to predict the financial status of the company — it was a straightforward cash in and cash out system. I knew the next step was to automate the process through building out APIs or “direct connections” to the large corporate banks. That was the spark that helped launch Trovata.
Trovata is a tool that automates cash reporting, forecasting, analysis, and money movement, and it has become an invaluable resource for startups and corporations alike to gain insights into cash flow to facilitate better business decisions. It uses bank balances, transactions, entities, FX rates, and a simple search-based categorization method called “tagging” that lets you automate cash flow reporting and treasury workflows into a single platform. Trovata is backed by J.P.Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Capital One, and the company manages $100 billion in cash for hundreds of mid-market & enterprise customers, including Square, Eventbrite, and Krispy Kreme and nearly 200 other customers. My vision is that every business should have visibility into their cash flow data and be able to easily understand the financial health of their business. Trovata makes this possible while also providing tools for large corporations to manage their data with multiple banks at scale.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
My first 2–3 board meetings as VP Finance at World Wide Packets (WWP) after leaving Amazon.com in June 2005 were very challenging. WWP was a turnaround with new investors coming in to restart the business. I came in on that wave with new investors and a new executive team. As a result, all the investors — those who were early and those who were new — all were asking questions about how cash was being spent. How was it being spent? Where was it going? Were we being efficient with the money that investors were give us to rebuild and grow the company? These seemed like easy questions to answer, but without clear visibility, they were very difficult as any CFO knows. After being the hotshot finance person from Amazon, I was quickly humbled in those first couple of meetings. I quickly built out the tools to deliver those answers, but they were incredibly difficult to build. After I had them, it was a complete game changer in how I could manage the business and advise our senior team and the board. I will never forget the valuable lessons it taught me — you must gain leverage through automation if you are going to be taken seriously as one who can add strategic value to the business.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
I’m really excited about Trovata AI, which we recently launched in May. It is the first generative AI tool in the world designed for corporate finance and treasury. Machine Learning (ML) and AI have been a significant part of our product engineering program and DNA and vision of our company from the very beginning.
While we’ve launched Trovata AI as an automated assistant two months ago using OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4.0, AI is a big part of our search-based categorization of bank data and within our forecast modeling algorithms for several years. As a result, this allowed us to quickly build out our new genAI tool and make it available to our customers.
In working with ChatGPT however, we quickly realized like many others have come to realize since, that ChatGPT could not reliably or accurately perform mathematical equations. It also isn’t secure, so giving it unfettered access to your company data is a non-starter for companies of any significant size (>$5M in revenue). Given these shortcomings, we set out to create a best-of-both-worlds solution.
In April, we had our breakthrough and filed a patent. In May we released Trovata AI to some of our largest customers for early access. In June, we launched Trovata AI live in production on the Trovata platform for all customers to use. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive as customers begin to discover its game-changing potential.
Trovata AI leverages the power of ChatGPT without accessing our customers’ data. Instead, Trovata acts as a middleware by allowing customers to ask questions or input commands while it uses Trovata’s own tools securely to deliver accurate and reliable results. Trovata AI utilizes a patent-pending formulation methodology for prompting, allowing ChatGPT to take advantage of Trovata’s analytics and data APIs to provide users with accurate calculations and answers. By integrating ChatGPT with Trovata’s analytics and bank APIs, users can complete financial scenario planning, answer complex financial questions, or compile financial reports nearly instantaneously.
Gone are the days of “what if”. Now, everybody will be able to navigate their finances, quickly and effectively. We are thrilled for more people to get their hands on it.
Thank you for that. Let’s now shift to the central focus of our discussion. Extensive research suggests that “purpose-driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its WHY, its purpose?
The purpose of Trovata has always been to make the tedious parts of finance easier so that the team is less focused on compiling outcomes as opposed to delivering, explaining, and executing on those outcomes. The latter is about being strategic and value driven, whereas the former is necessary, but in and of itself, does little to bring in more business, save money, improve the business. Finance and treasury teams are desperate for technology to automate with everything more digital all around them. As an end-to-end fintech platform for managing cash, Trovata synthesizes all of your bank or financial data and automates your workflows so that you can focus on what matters most for the business. We help finance and treasury teams better visualize, analyze, and forecast cash flow so they can invest, move, and manage it in the most optimal way for their business. This makes finance and treasury more dynamic and integral to helping the business move forward, faster in driving success where these things aren’t just important, but quickly becoming required.
Do you have a “number one principle” that guides you through the ups and downs of running a business?
As a CEO, you need to have a maniacal focus on details to ensure every day counts. When you’re running a business, you are impacting the trajectory of the startup and redrawing the pattern of the company every day. And if you are not making positive changes daily, the business will become stagnant. When that happens, your employees will not feel safe or secure in their jobs because they won’t be seeing positive results. Running a business is about managing your team as much as it is about managing your business.
If a fellow business leader would ask you for advice about whether to bootstrap or to seek venture capital, how would you help them weigh the pros and cons of that decision?
It depends on the business — what timelines and resources are required to hit milestones that you could be used as a measure for your success. You might not need to raise a lot of money. Either way, it’s always about the team and your ability to execute in the market. Having a clear business roadmap and then staying focused to deliver results is key.
What measure do you use to determine the value of a company? What advice would you give to other leaders about how to get an optimal evaluation of their business?
Most likely, business owners have a very subjective view of their performance — they are living and breathing their company and it can be hard to take a step back and think critically about operations. To combat this common pitfall, it’s critical that you frequently request feedback from your investors. This type of unbiased feedback is extremely valuable. Not only does this anchor your business in real and honest feedback, but your investors are also able to share a point of view on the market as a whole. That way, you’re not only getting feedback tailored to your business, but you’re able to evaluate the market and what might have an impact on your business.
What would you advise to a founder who initially went through years of successive growth, but has now reached a standstill? From your experience, do you have any general advice about how to boost growth and “restart their engines”?
If you are a founder that has found success in the early stages of your company, it might have given you a false sense of security and confidence. If you have fallen stagnant, I wouldn’t worry. I think that failure is crucial for growth — you learn to be humble and gain a perspective on the shortcomings of your business from real-life experience. If and when you fail, simply re-adjust your focus back to the basics. If you complete small tasks every day, you will slowly begin to regain your confidence and re-establish the ground beneath your feet by taking small steps. Eventually, you will look back and realize how far you’ve come.
What are the most common finance mistakes you have seen other businesses make? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
I think it’s an easy pitfall to believe that your idea is infallible. A great way to avoid that is to make a financial operating plan that acts as a business roadmap that forces you to have goals and think through every aspect of your business. As a business owner, you will always be using 100% of your resources, so you have to be very realistic and disciplined about taking on a partner, developing new features, and managing spend. Without a plan, you are operating blind. With a roadmap, you know where you stand and how you can best influence every day to best control your outcomes.
Ok, here is the main question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to succeed in the modern finance industry?
Focus, focus focus
Any time you build something you’re passionate about, you can easily get distracted by shiny objections or even an early win. You have to remain focused on your goals and remain level-headed to succeed.
Maintain balance
As a business owner, you will turn over a lot of rocks without knowing what’s underneath. You need to have a healthy balance between exploring new opportunities and not being pulled in too many directions. That way, you can remain focused while also finding new ways for your business to grow.
Be flexible
Remember that everyone operates differently. It’s important to be flexible with your work style and communication style, depending on who you’re working with, so that everyone feels respected and heard.
It has to be a team game
You will only go so far on your own — you will always be better as a team. What’s even more optimal is to have a diverse team with people from a variety of backgrounds who have different opinions. Getting everyone to act as selflessly as possible, allows team unity to be achieved through mutual respect and trust. When team chemistry is achieved, the magic begins to happen.
Be transparent
Operate with transparency and integrity. Keep it real with your broader team and share insights about the company’s performance and always communicate goals and objectives for the business. People will join you in taking risk to be a part of building something special, but you want to let them in to truly be a part of it. You have to trust they will handle the ups and the downs well. Share more info, rather than less, so everyone feels connected and helps you shoulder the many challenges you will face. Over communicate. If you don’t know, then be open and convey just that. By letting everyone in the company be a part of the journey build resilience, brings people together, and helps you shoulder the weight of working through challenging times.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
The best way to avoid burnout is to over-communicate. No matter how good the process might seem, everyone operates differently, and you need to be able to lean on one another. That can’t happen if no one knows how you are feeling.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I would love to empower everyone to lean into their area of expertise and drive change where they can. Practice being aware of the things in your sphere of influence and take action. If there’s an area of need in your community, roll up your sleeves and make an impact!
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can check out our website, trovata.io, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @Trovata_io.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: Jason Hartman is the Founder and CEO of Empowered Investor. Jason has been involved in several thousand real estate transactions and has owned income properties in 11 states and 17 cities. Empowered Investor helps people achieve The American Dream of financial freedom by purchasing income property in prudent markets nationwide. Jason’s Complete Solution for Real Estate Investors™ is a comprehensive system providing real estate investors with education, research, resources and technology to deal with all areas of their income property investment needs. Through Jason’s podcasts, educational events, referrals, mentoring and software to track your investments, investors can easily locate, finance and purchase properties in these exceptional markets with confidence and peace of mind.
Starting with very little, Jason, while still in college at the age of 19, embarked on a career in real estate. While brokering properties for clients, he was investing in his own portfolio along the way. Through creativity, persistence and hard work, he earned a number of prestigious industry awards and became a young multi-millionaire. Jason purchased a California real estate brokerage firm that was later acquired by Coldwell Banker. He combined his dedication and business talents to become a successful entrepreneur, public speaker, author, and media personality. Over the years he developed his Complete Solution for Real Estate Investors™ where his innovative firm educates and assists investors in acquiring prudent investments nationwide for their portfolio. Jason’s sought after educational events, speaking engagements, and his popular “Creating Wealth Podcast” inspire and empower hundreds of thousands of people in 189 countries worldwide.
While running his successful real estate and media businesses, Jason also believes that giving back to the community plays an important role in building strong personal relationships. He established The Jason Hartman Foundation in 2005 to provide financial literacy education to young adults providing the all-important real world skills not taught in school which are the key to the financial stability and success of future generations. We’re in a global monetary crisis caused by decades of misguided policies and the cycle of financial dependence has to be broken, literacy and self-reliance are a good start. Visit JasonHartman.com for free materials and resources.
