#93 - Meet the Startup Revolutionizing B2B With Revenue Automation

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As a reminder, the Tech Optimist podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not personalized advice, and it is not an offer to buy or sell securities. For additional important details, please see the text description accompanying this episode. Think about this for a moment. Over half of all B2B invoices in the United States, 55%, are overdue. That's trillions of dollars stuck in limbo, creating massive headaches for small and medium-sized businesses. These delays don't just clog financial pipelines, they stunt business growth, drain resources, and leave finance teams buried in inefficient processes.

I am the founder and CEO of Tabs. We are a New York-based tech company focused on the office of the CFO.

But what if there were a smarter way to manage accounts receivable? Enter Tabs, our guest company today, an AI-powered platform co-founded by our guest today, Ali Hussain. And Deepak Bapat.

And so fast forward now, Tabs is the first AI-native revenue automation platform. Our ultimate mission is to help companies save time, collect faster, and report more accurately.

With a mission to reimagine B2B AR processes, Tabs uses cutting-edge technology to tackle these inefficiencies head-on. From automating invoices and payments to delivering insights that can transform a company's trajectory, Tabs is reshaping how businesses manage their cash flow. Ali Hossein, who previously scaled Latch from seed to IPO, knows these challenges intimately. Drawing from his experience, he's built Tabs to streamline operations and help finance teams collect faster, all while saving them valuable time. So today we're diving into how Tabs is solving one of the biggest bottlenecks in B2B commerce.

Broadly felt there was a lot to be desired on perhaps the most important part of finance stack, which is the flow of funds in and all things revenue. And about 2+ years ago, where me and my founding team saw AI was headed, we found it was like a— we relatively felt it was a strong moment for YNow for all things revenue, given the complexity of commercial records.

Today, we're diving into the career of someone who truly knows how to navigate the intersection of operations, technology, and innovation. Ali Hussain, this CEO and co-founder of Tabs. Ali's journey is nothing short of extraordinary, blending academic excellence, entrepreneurial spirit, and a knack for solving real-world problems. And his professional career took off at the Boston Consulting Group, where he honed his skills in strategy and operations. He then joined Latch, a smart lock company, as COO, growing it from its early days to a successful IPO. This experience exposed him to the inefficiencies in accounts receivable processes, inspiring the creation of Tabs in 2023. As CEO of Tabs, Ali has already led the company to secure $7 million in seed funding and a recent $250 million Series A, bringing innovation to the AR space with AI-driven technology. He's not just a leader, he's someone reshaping how B2B businesses manage their cash flow.

And the way we do that is our native platform takes all unstructured customer records. So think your contracts, MSAs, purchase orders, usage milestones and activates that to really powerful kind of operational workflows, whether that's billing, cash collections, revenue recognition, and provide a really, I think, powerful horizontal platform for finance teams in B2B.

Excellent. So any type of finance function or finance professional in a business that's generating revenue would kind of

Now let's shine a spotlight on Wesley Ewu, a partner at Alumni Ventures and one of the sharpest minds driving innovation and investment in today's fast-paced venture capital landscape. Wesley has been with Alumni Ventures since 2018, building his career through roles as senior associate, principal, and senior principal before stepping into his current leadership position as partner. Wesley also leads as a partner at Triphammer Ventures, a fund dedicated to leveraging the power of the Cornell alumni network to identify and support standout startups. At Alumni Ventures, Wesley evaluates investment opportunities, manages portfolios, and connects founders to the resources they need to thrive. Some of his recent investments include cutting-edge companies like Cytovail, Centaur Labs, and Operant, spanning diverse sectors from fintech to IoT and SaaS. Every startup starts with a problem, and Tabs is no exception. Ali shares the driving force behind his idea, a deep frustration with inefficiencies in finance workflows and the untapped potential of AI. From understanding the complexity of unstructured data to harnessing AI for revenue operations, Ali paints a picture of why now. Was the perfect time to launch Tabs.

Did you kind of found Tabs given personal experience, any personal challenges you had in your prior career that kind of led you to this aha moment that this needs to exist?

Yeah, I think twofold. I mean, I've been a COO, uh, for many years, and often the COO deals with the ERP stack. And so I've taken businesses from QuickBooks to NetSuite, And just saw the amount of just human capital and mental drain it takes to do this manually in a product like NetSuite or QuickBooks. And so that was highly influential in starting Tabs. And then on that was just a lot of time spending, doing my 10,000 hours with a bunch of other finance leaders to see, was this just Ali being a bad operator or is this a broader theme? And ultimately, Validated that the verdict's still out on my operational capabilities, but it is at least a consistent theme seen amongst hundreds and hundreds of other B2B teams that I was able to speak with.

Yep. And you, you've been a former startup executive prior to this. You were at Latch for a number of years, pretty, pretty much started from the early days and all the way through kind of when it became a public company.

Yeah.

How has your prior experience as a startup executive impacted how you build Tabs as a, as a new company?

Absolutely. I think as an operator and just getting to be a great ride, like I got to at Latch, is you get to learn a lot about how companies are built. And ultimately doing that, I kind of over my career fleshed out like 3 themes that I think are actually what matters most in terms of being a founder or a entrepreneur. One is you go after a large TAM. And so the number of companies that are B2B in the US and just globally is massive that rely on finance stacks like an ERP that need to do workflows like billing, rev rec, collections, payments. Like that is a fundamental operational use case in a very large TAM. So that's theme number one. I learned. The second is, if you go after a large problem, the number one thing that matters is what is the technological change that's happening in this space? And how do you tie that to that problem with a ton of focus? And so that's number 2, which is like, technology goes through waves, the general problem stays the same. How do you really focus at the intersection of the why now against the really big Problem or opportunity statement to go after. And the third one is the team just matters. Like, if you can pull together a bunch of superpowers that you, that are bigger than yourself and, uh, get them to be excited to work together, collaborate, like that mental capacity that is far greater than yourself working together and compounding with focus. Can, can really build something really interesting and, uh, and really compelling. And I think that's the way I like to build products. And, uh, I've, I've been very fortunate to see that kind of play out in the last year.

Yep. And successful companies are obviously built by successful teams. Obviously you're the co-founder and CEO, but you brought great people along for the ride with you as other co-founders. Kind of touched upon it a little bit in the previous question, but Uh, why did you choose your specific co-founders? Maybe what are their key skill sets? How do they, uh, coordinate with you to help make Latch success— uh, no, sorry, not Latch, uh, Tab successful?

Yeah, I think a few things. I think when I think about company building, like ultimately as the CEO, you have to understand what you're strong at and where you need really intelligent and powerful minds to kind of help things come together. And so When I think about company building, you need to drive demand. You have to build supply. Demand meaning like, is there a customer for this? Are they willing to pay? That is a combination of forms of marketing, sales, sometimes customer success. And then there's a massive supply component. How do you think about the product you create? How do you, with velocity, build software or engineering around that? How do you Provide the operational know-how or the implementation know-how to kind of bring it all together. And so when I thought about my founding team, what I was really looking for were what were some of the skill sets that I as a non-technical founder, and oftentimes I don't claim to be a visionary product founder either, need to have in my kind of day-to-day like. Collaboration to help that all happen in parallel very quickly. And so I needed someone who could be as good, if not better than me on the demand side, so that we could be with customers 10 to 15 hours a day and really understand the demand and the insight. But then I needed really thoughtful product and engineering minds so that as we drove the insight and we thought more about what's happening with AI today, we could both quickly design and ship product because a lot of the early days is velocity, especially if you're going to bring out a B2B product where you're asking for high, kind of often 4 or 5, 6-figure ACVs. And so that together kind of worked really well. The other part is you need a group of people who are willing to be very collaborative and create a very psychologically safe environment so that there's really good deliberation. and alignment so that people can kind of go then and divide and conquer and come back very aligned. And I'd say that formula was really important in how we designed the team and is incredibly important in how we've been able to keep up the momentum, uh, 24 months later.

All right, this seems like a good time to take a break. So here's an ad and we'll be right back.

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Raising capital in today's market is no small feat. But Tab secured investments from industry giants like Lightspeed and General Catalyst. Ali discusses the importance of simplicity in storytelling, building investor trust, and why founder recommendations are the ultimate game changer in the fundraising process.

You guys have been extremely successful in raising capital, not only raising capital, but also from, from great investors around the table, such as Lightspeed, General Catalyst, for example. What has been kind of the reason for that success? How are you able to sort of navigate these, these, this tougher environment, so to speak, from a fundraising perspective?

Yeah, I think, um, I'll talk about, I think, the things that matter the most and some of the tactical things that are also very valuable. I think one of the things the last couple years a lot of founders kind of overcomplicate is in the world of AI and all these technologies, they start creating a lot of talking points that sound really good to themselves and their teams, but can be incredibly confusing when they try to communicate their value prop, like externally. And I'd say the number one value or thing I found to be the most helpful is simplicity. And so though we're all excited about the very complicated technologies we're building and AI and all of that, I think coming back to a really simple first principles way in which you communicate kind of your mission statement, like what is the problem you're solving? What's the why now moment? How are you doing it today? And where does that go? Doing that in a way where almost anyone can understand, not just a venture capitalist or a technologist, but your aunt or your uncle or your cousin or your friend who has no interest in technology. Can be a really good test on how you communicate very simply. So I'd say number one is just like very simple communications, and in that deep trust that within what you are doing today versus over time, you are focused and customer obsessed, meaning you're able to deliver a solution that meets the customer where the puck is now, but is hyper cognizant of where the. puck is going and how the venture dollars will help you accomplish both, I think is the most important thing. The second piece, Wesley, and I think I see this all the time and it was hard for me at first too, is like revenue just matters, right? And even at the pre-seed, seed stage, a lot of founders, including myself in the early days, it's like, well, we have to build all this stuff and there's all these other things, but at the end of the day, The number one thing, particularly if you're the founder CEO, is you need to buckle down and show some real demand for the product. And at every stage, really aspire to drive the highest revenue targets and make no excuse about it. And I think the revenue word is more important than ever. Even if it's not like, it's not, it's not gonna be the highest revenue, but you have to be very pragmatic because all of the other things fit as a themselves out. Those are the 2 things I'd say. I think tactically, it's always important to run a process. Like raising a round is not rolling admissions. Be very thoughtful about when you're ready from your materials, your model, your data room, and then go hard over a 2 to 3 week process. Uh, do not just for the sake of it have a 9 month coffee socializing period. Like this is not rolling admissions. And then I've been very lucky. That you want your intros to come from other amazing founders. I think a lot of times people look for a direct connection or an investor to make an investor on investor introduction, but I think the most powerful momentum comes from a founder that has successfully worked with an investor to say, "Look, I know this other founder, or I've seen their product and it's excellent." Nothing drives the momentum in the flywheel. Like, uh, a founder, uh, standing up for another founder.

Yep, absolutely. I mean, for us, you know, we, we obviously have known you for a number of years, uh, prior to Taz. We kind of got to know you when you were still at, at Latch. Yeah. Um, that's kind of the way we got comfortable with you and, and kind of the vision that you kind of set out for, for your new company. So I think, I definitely think relationships important, introductions are important. Exactly. Put the right investors in place. Um, as investors ourselves, we've seen the, the bar for fundraising, I think, has been raised quite a bit. Um, and to your point, revenue traction, clear demonstrated product market fit is extremely important for an early stage company. So it sounds like you guys got that covered when it, when you guys went into the fundraising process on your side.

Totally. Um, and, and it was through, like, obviously Wesley, you and I talked, like, getting great mentorship on it. Honestly, nothing is stronger than really good customer testimonials too. Like, and I did see more than any time investors really doing diligence at the end customer side, like understanding who the customers were, directly reaching out, getting really intense conviction that there's something really real before engaging. I think all of those things are like first principle things that matter.

Absolutely. So 2024, I think, was a strong year for you guys. You know, new customers, fresh off of a Series A. What's kind of the near-term plan? We just marched into 2025 here. What's the near-term plan for Tabs and what's kind of your longer-term vision for the company?

Yeah, I think 2024 was a lot of fun. We were lucky to get capitalized. Build some really compelling products, and most importantly, like serve a very broad and diverse base of customers. And so in many ways, the most important thing is to rinse and repeat. Like, uh, we have a long way to go to build a category-defining company. And so when I think about 2025, my entire mantra was to the team, actually it was funny at an all-hands earlier this week, which is 2025, if it looks a lot like 2024, It's a really good year, meaning you stay focused and are maniacal about driving demand with the customer. You focus on the same ICP and you rinse and repeat. So that's number one. Number two is you continue to build product with intense velocity. Like I do believe ultimately, even if not everything is perfect, velocity is the number one driver towards our path towards more product market fit. Um, and so the tagline really was like, 2025 is a little bit more the same, except just doing it faster and bigger. Um, and that would be like 90% of the tagline for the next year. The parts that I'm really excited about is, as you kind of mentioned earlier, we've been lucky to be one of the first AI-native companies in this space. And a lot of our wedge was based around how we take unstructured to structured data. Now that we have a large population of customers and high throughput in the platform, the amount of more intelligence we can build for our customers within the platform that is unique to what a traditional system of record could have done is a part I'm really excited about. Obviously, like many other kind of AI-forward companies, we're all trying to figure out what's the best way to prioritize. And where to build versus partner. But I think, though there is a lot of noise around agencia, there will be some really cool things throughout the year, both for our peer companies that are in the AI space, not necessarily in finance, but in other categories, and us to start to truly bring more semi-agentic magical experiences within platform that help finance teams save time. collect faster and do more with less. And that is a broader category that not everything will get accomplished in 2025, but I think we'll see a step function of experiences that were otherwise not possible.

Yeah. Okay. You mentioned ICP earlier. For you guys, what's kind of your core ICP and why should that community be excited about Tabs?

Yeah, our ICP tends to be companies today that are growing fast, obviously have hit 7 figures of revenue. Like, uh, if you're still pre-product market fit, early customers, like you have other challenges you want to solve first before worrying about revenue in some ways. But like, once you start to gain traction and you start to hit 7 figures of revenue, we tend to be a great partner to come in to help you, uh, be more efficient in revenue administration from a finance standpoint. All the way up to the mid-market or early enterprise. Like that's our core customer. We tend to do really well in high-growth venture companies, private equity companies, growth-stage companies. All that are B2B tends to be within our ICP. I think the reason they're excited is most of those finance teams are either very nascent, sometimes even led by a fractional lead, or a very lean finance team. And I think particularly post the reset of 2022, a lot of finance teams are even more lean and are looking to a much more fine-tuned finance stack to do more with less. And so what we are seeing is companies are even staying on products like QuickBooks for much longer, or trying to be on a less buggy and services-based NetSuite or Sage or other ERP system, and are they heavily leaning on products like Rippling, Ramp and tabs to run a lot of the workflows that otherwise would have been highly relied on humans, spreadsheets, and services work. And so ultimately, I think why all of the B2B finance and just general operating teams should be excited about tabs is it's a time of growth again. Many of you are making investments across the business. Finance is an area where you can now officially lean more on. tooling and start to see some AI-native tooling that can allow you to keep the team's focus more on strategic endeavors and defer a lot of the more tactical things like billing, rev-rec, cash forecasting, renewal management to true operational AI software like Taps.

Great. Last question from me, uh, zooming out a little bit further. You guys are obviously a fintech company. Fintech as a whole has been a little bit more troubled the last couple of years as the environment has changed. Now that we're in 2025 here, do you kind of see signals that there maybe is a new renaissance for the category of the space?

I think so. I think there was, I think the area that's going to be really exciting about fintech, I think there was a lot of reset or competition or commoditization of like the actual technical elements of fintech payments and things that we've traditionally seen tied to fintech technology. I think the renaissance is going to happen in the things that make fintech adjacent workflows and work more efficient and more magical. And to me, I think in the renaissance of 3 years ago of fintech, what often got lost was the adjacent workflows. And human-related dependencies that I don't think made as many advancements due to the pre-AI era. And I think where the renaissance is going to happen, Wesley, is the magical experiences around the technical or commoditized parts of fintech, like payments, that help drive more efficiencies. And so, for example, in something like B2B payments in the United States, the vast majority of payments is still happening through non-digital or analog payment flows like ACH credit, wire, even physical check. And I think even in the move in COVID, like there's still a big stallment of moving to more digital types of payments. Where I think experiences get magical is where technologies like tabs actually can be highly influential on what ways customers pay. Because they drive insights. They actually tell a CFO, look, you should accept credit card payment, not because it's easier, but it brings down the average days to pay by 20 days, or your bad debt goes down. And like that level of intelligence to drive the why versus the what is going to be incredibly powerful, I think, in the broader fintech space over the next 36 months. And we're hoping to be a big part of that tailwind.

Fantastic. Well, Ali, this is great. Appreciate you taking the time to share insights, introduce the community to Tabs. Can't wait to see what's kind of in store for you guys for this year as well as the future as well.

Absolutely, Wesley. Thanks for being an amazing investor, partner, and excited for users to, or listeners to hopefully consider applying to be a part of the Tabs family as a team member or hopefully as a partner or customer. So Um, thank you so much for the time.

Excellent, folks. Thanks for joining us on the Tech Optimist podcast today. Stay tuned for, for future episodes.

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