00:12:28 · Kevin Hettrich, CJ Gustafson
They're like, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah And then after that, I was like, okay, fine. I'll give you one back. We are off of five orders of magnitude. Is it impossible that we can innovate our way there? But seems kinda hard. And then I left, and then our CEO, Jagdeep, pulled me aside. He's like, listen, Kevin, that was incredibly valuable to identify at this point. We need to dedicate kinda bandwidth to kinda making our special component far more effectively than conventional means. So that's an example where I wasn't a content expert anywhere, but I was able to kind of create a structure, gather the evidence into kind of a logical format where we could kinda make decisions, and then be able to present it and to get people on the same page. So that was kinda my my teeth cutting moment at QuantumScape in in the first few months. [00:13:12] S1: That's an amazing story because it just shows that you were able to use comps of... It's it's all you're calling somebody's baby ugly. Right? You're saying the... This is what the market will bear. This is what average looks like. This is what good looks like. This is what world class looks like, and this is where we are. Okay? Take the emotion out of it. What do you think about this?
00:13:12 · CJ Gustafson, Kevin Hettrich
[00:13:12] S1: That's an amazing story because it just shows that you were able to use comps of... It's it's all you're calling somebody's baby ugly. Right? You're saying the... This is what the market will bear. This is what average looks like. This is what good looks like. This is what world class looks like, and this is where we are. Okay? Take the emotion out of it. What do you think about this? [00:13:31] S0: Yeah. And let's choose the lowest risk path. Do we want to try to incrementally improve on this method and close that type of gap? Or alternatively, do we wanna look for a different way of doing it that has development risk but might significantly derisk kind of running that equipment later? And we we end up choosing that that second path. [00:13:49] S1: Kevin, something you mentioned is speed of learning. Can that be a metric?
00:13:54 · Kevin Hettrich
[00:13:54] S0: Absolutely. Cycle time of learning, we we track it. What is the speed with which you have an idea until you get data back and kinda go into the next piece? It's effectively a measure of cycle time, and that's very valuable for two reasons. One is that you want that to be compressed, and then maybe the why is that you can make kind of micro adjustments as you go. Our chairman of our board tells a story about the Apollo missions, and when JFK is like, hey. We're gonna fly to the moon. Very bold idea. Couldn't even conceive about probably how to do it, but what did NASA do? They they chopped it up into a dozen plus steps. It's like, Apollo one, let's work on the rocket. Apollo two, let's show that we can get a capsule up. Apollo three, let's put an animal in the capsule and make sure. A great scientist or a great engineer will take a daunting problem, chop it up into small pieces, and as quickly as possible, try to get data on that piece, incorporate the learning, and readjust. And that's also part of the answer to question you asked earlier of, gosh. You were there early. If you think about it from, like, hey. Is... If the if the endpoint is, like, mass commercialization of electric vehicles and data centers, like, lithium metal batteries, yeah, it is kind of a long point. But if you chop it into, like, hey, does a material exist? Can you get to a component? Can you get to a single layer? Can you initiate product development and customer engagement? Then get into late stage, then do a vehicle demo, and then start a pilot line. Those are kind of more more kind of tractable things where you can clearly be judged on am I am I winning or kind of losing? Is everyone willing to continue on the journey? Customers, investors, our own employees, etcetera.
00:15:31 · CJ Gustafson, Kevin Hettrich
Ad[00:15:31] S1: You are what your gross margin says you are. Sorry. My kids are tired of hearing me yell that at the kitchen table. Dad, I'm two. I don't know what cloud costs are. Well, I do. And cloud infrastructure is the second largest line on most tech P and Ls. Ad[00:15:45] S0: And
00:15:45 · CJ Gustafson
Ad[00:15:45] S1: yet, most finance leaders couldn't tell you how it's priced. And as a CFO, I understand there's a nonlinear impact to your company's valuation when you improve your gross margin, and the path of least resistance is through your AWS or GCP bill. Because like anything you buy, cloud gets cheaper when you buy in bulk. In fact, you can get the rate down by 20%, 30%, even 60% in some cases. The flip side is getting saddled with a bunch of capacity you never touch. Happened to me once, I think I still got some megawatts in the kitchen cupboard somewhere. That's exactly what Cloud Capital solves. Cloud Capital underwrites the risks so you can realize the same savings of a deep long term commitment, sends the downside. Oh, and it takes no engineering work. Bingo. I've known Edward since back when he's just starting the biz and it's incredible how much they've saved customers on their cloud bills. That could be you too. So head over to cloudcapital.co. That's cloudcapital.co and find out how much you could save. When somebody asks, how is business? What they're really asking is, how are your finances? Because every single decision a company makes is inherently a financial one. I've said it a thousand times. Finance isn't just keeping a tally of what went down. You are not the person piecing together what happened the morning after in the hangover. You're the person deciding whether bringing Mike Tyson's tiger back to the hotel is a good capital allocation decision, which means your team can't afford to be living in the past, policing a $30 software charge or slogging through a close that drags on for weeks. Remember, there's a tiger in the living room. That's why you need Brex. Brex built an intelligent finance platform that combines global corporate cards, expense management, banking, bill pay, and travel into one system with real time controls. AI handles the grunt work, enforcing spend policy at the point of sale and reconciling continuously so your best people can chase growth instead of chasing paper receipts. Defense handled. Terry Tate office linebacker style. So go play offense. Throw the ball deep. Thousands of top companies, including Anthropic, DoorDash, and Coinbase already run on Brex. Join them and take back your team's momentum at brex.com/metrics. That's brex.com/metrics or just tell them CJ saying. Still in budget season?
00:18:01 · CJ Gustafson
AdMy condolences. If you're only on v 40 of the plan, you're doing better than I ever did. Keep it up. Here's what I'd want in the trenches right now. Something I can hand a question to that already knows the context of my business. Not a chatbot that's never seen my p and l and not a bunch of AI features that are hiding in five side panels that I really don't know what to click. That's what Abacum just launched. It's called Abra, like abracadabra. I hope they let me keep that in. And it's one agent for your whole finance team. Ask it something like, what happens to runway if we push ad spend 25%? Or what changes has my marketing leader requested to their twenty twenty seven budget? Abra pulls together your actuals, your models, and your business context, calls in the right agent to model, analyze, or draft the board pack, and comes back with the answer, plus the trade offs in the next move. That's incredible. And for the control freaks, which is all of us, if we're being honest and you listen to my podcast, it shows its work. Abacum's engine does the math, not the AI. Abracadabra only sees what you're allowed to see, and nothing saves until you approve it. Here's the best part. It's included in Abacum as is. There's no extra charge, no add on. And I have known Abacum's founder and CEO, Julio Martinez, for more than three years. He and his cofounder, Jorge, came out of finance, and this thing shows their work. Most AI makes one person faster. Abra makes your whole team AI native. I could read you a short code to go type in, but honestly, just tell Jorge and Julio CJ sent you. They'll hook you up. Forgive me because I'm gonna sound like a caveman the way I ask this question, but do you look at it ever as it cost us this much to learn this thing?