Tell me a little bit about that truth bit.

I want to be clear when I say truth, I don't mean as opposed to lies, but as opposed to things that are just made up along the way in terms of running the business.

And I'll give a couple examples, but just going back for a moment, I was trained as a theoretical mathematician.

And that means we're really focused on identifying that one plus one equals two.

It never equals three and really deriving things from first principles.

And I think that is often missed in businesses.

You have a lot of gut feel ways of running businesses or making decisions.

yeah look it's so you've got somebody who's in in business or going into business there's some rules in there right that you've you have discovered for yourself you might read it in books but you've discovered it on the i can tell on the ground floor you've actually discovered give me the facts and that takes a certain courage to imagine when you're starting out or you just arrive at a company have you had any stories like that you could share with us

Mm-hmm.

Most people think CFO analysis or strategy or, uh, what's called FP&A, financial planning analysis, is bespoke.

Meaning that it's done new every time.

Um, that's half true.

The situation that a great CFO finds himself i- in all the time is often very new, but the actual analysis they do is pretty regul- is pretty, is pretty similar.

What our technology does is we've built a set of technologies that do three things really well.

They, number one, they eat data from any format, whether it be an Excel file, whether it be your accounting system, whether it be your marketing data, whatever.

Mm-hmm

So, Nick, there's a Pennsylvania law that hinders how the city acts on certain 3-1-1 calls.

Correct.

Both Pennsylvania and Philadelphia laws.

But here's kind of the story.

When I was living in North Philadelphia, the house next to me was totally collapsed, right? You know, the roof was gone.

Several windows were shattered.

L&I had a big block on the door that this building is unsafe to inhabit.

Yes, it is.

Or are you just leaning more heavily into letting agents run?

So no to the latter half.

If you let agents run, they basically make stuff up or head off in the wrong direction.

Or my favorite thing, sometimes they miss the forest for the trees and sometimes they miss the trees for the forest.

And they do that consistently.

So look, let me attend the tech stack and then I'll go back to kind of some of the design principles.

Our tech stack is really five pieces, only two of which use AI in any way.

How did you nail down that market? What did you say that said, hey, fractional CFOs need a tool like this?

So I'm wondering for you guys, how did you make those decisions and what is your stack without giving away any, you know, secret sauce proprietary information? But what's the approach you guys took to this is hardcore just Python or math that we're doing standard here, and this is where we're putting AI in? Or are you just leaning more heavily into letting agents run?

So no to the latter half.

If you let agents run, they basically make stuff up or head off in the wrong direction, or my favorite thing, sometimes they miss the forest for the trees and sometimes they miss the trees for the forest, and they do that consistently.

So look, uh, let me attend the tech stack and then I'll go back to kind of some of the design principles.

Our tech stack is really five pieces, only two of which r- use AI in any way, and not ag- honestly, not agentic AI, although Dan and I personally do most of our work using agents.

Our client work and the software and technologies we offer to our customers tend to be- True.

Um, basically software solutions that leverage AI rather than, uh, agents.

How, how did you nail down that market? What did you see that said, "Hey, fractional CFOs need a tool like this"?

Or are you just leaning more heavily into letting agents run?

So no to the latter half.

If you let agents run, they basically make stuff up or head off in the wrong direction.

Or my favorite thing, sometimes they miss the forest for the trees and sometimes they miss the trees for the forest.

And they do that consistently.

So look, let me attend the tech stack and then I'll go back to kind of some of the design principles.

Our tech stack is really five pieces, only two of which use AI in any way.

Which hat fits best and which one did you find the hardest?

So I'm wondering for you guys, how did you make those decisions and what is your stack without giving away any, you know, secret sauce proprietary information? But what's the approach you guys took to this is hardcore just Python or math that we're doing standard here, and this is where we're putting AI in? Or are you just leaning more heavily into letting agents run?

So no to the latter half.

If you let agents run, they basically make stuff up or head off in the wrong direction.

Or my favorite thing, sometimes they miss the forest for the trees and sometimes they miss the trees for the forest, and they do that consistently.

So look, uh, let me attend the tech stack and then I'll go back to kind of some of the design principles.

Our tech stack is really five pieces, only two of which r- use AI in any way, and not ag- honestly, not agentic AI, although Dan and I personally do most of our work using agents.

Our client work and the software and technologies we offer to our customers tend to be tr- um, basically software solutions that leverage AI rather than, uh, agents.

Which hat fits best, and which one did you find the hardest?

Will they, A, still be able to do that? And then what's the flow and effect once you can produce a film for so much cheaper and their likeness is potentially up for grabs now? You know-If we do have these studios producing, I don't know, 100 films for the cost of one previous film, does that just flood everything with so much stuff that it's almost overwhelming for people? Where do you think that that Hollywood example or that related industries plays out before we get into just the focus on cost efficiencies?

Hollywood's a great example because we're thinking about Hollywood the way it is today, where you have actors who, you know, command g- uh, giant salaries, actors or actresses.

But l- if you roll back the clock on Hollywood specifically, American Hollywood, uh, go back about 100 years, actors were not extr- they were famous, but they were not rich.

Because what happened was their, uh, they were developed like products by a studio, where a studio would hire a young actor, begin promoting him or her, but then they would basically be locked into 10- or 20-year contracts that, with that one studio, so they could not just go work for another studio.

So what that meant was who owned the actor, the actor was basically an asset or an owner, not a free agent, of Hollywood.

They couldn't just go negotiate with the studio next door and say, "Uh, Warner Brothers is not paying me enough for their, this movie.

How about you pay me something, a, a bigger number for that movie?" Now what happened somewhere in the...

Mm-hmm.