Financial Modeling Insights for Startups Seeking Venture Capital with Andres Klaric

You go into the data room and it's all hard coded, right. So like you're trying to effectively rebuild their model but they're all hard codes, right. So that is kind of day one of suffering. My first job at high school was in sales. I paid for college selling cars at a dealership in Northern Virginia. And then I spent eight years as an investor. Right, like modeling and modeling. We raised millions of dollars in capital.

What are you trying to get the VC firm comfortable with when it comes around model and projection?

I think they're trying to first and foremost return the fund. You're asking for them for 20 million dol and their fund is like 2 billion. What they're trying to think is like is this going to be 100x? If you're building for someone, you need to really understand their business. They're building this model. You actually want to use it as a source of KPIs to drive the day to day business.

If you could offer one piece of advice to our audience to be a.

Better modeler, what advice would you give?

Welcome to Financial Modeler's Corner where we discuss the art and science of financial modeling with your host Paul Barnhurst. Financial Modeler's Corner is sponsored by Financial Modeling Institute. Welcome to Financial Modelers Corner. I am your host Paul Barnhurst, AKA the FP and a guy. This is a podcast where we talk all about the art and science of financial modeling with distinguished financial modelers from around the globe. The Financial Modeler's Corner podcast is brought to you by the Financial Modeling Institute. FMI offers the most respected accreditations in financial modeling and that is why I completed the Advanced Financial Modeler. I'm thrilled this week to welcome our guest on the show, Andreas Cleric. Welcome to Financial Modeler's Corner.

Hi Paul, thank you for having me here. It's an honor.

Yeah, really excited to have you. And just a little bit about Andreas. He's the co founder and co CEO of Fuse, a next gen loan origination system that simplifies lending for financial institutions through self serve customer customization, a low code API builder and a personalized agent portfolio. Over the last decade he's worked on Wall street investing in tech and business services. This gave him an acute awareness of the issues slowing down lenders from achieving their highest potential, ultimately leading to him starting Fuse with his co founder Mark Escapa. So Andreas again, welcome to the show. Thrilled to have you. Love the background. We like to start every interview with this question. Worst financial model you ever had to work with or that you've seen that horror story.

I think any sell side in which you're perhaps you're like the investor and trying to buy a company and you go into the data room and it's all hard coder, right. So you're trying to effectively rebuild their model, but they're all hard codes. Right. So that is kind of day one of suffering. If you think no matter how complex the business is.

Right.

Like you're just praying as an especially when you're very junior because you know you're going to have to build that. You're just praying that it's linked and all of a sudden it is not. So I would say 90 to 80% of the time it will not be a link model. So you will have to spend that entire day or so trying to reverse engineer. What do you know? Another analyst, sweat and tears were spent kind of doing. And you just need to put it together. Right. So I really look forward AI helping kind of rebuild that. Those kind of pre. Those models are already built and kind of infer all of that and saving that suffering from all of us. So I would say that every beginning of process was without a doubt one of the ones with the most anxiety.

Yeah, I can imagine. You open something? I got all the numbers, I got everything I need. Here's the model. Oh, it's all hard coded.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that would be painful. I'm curious though. Reverse engineering, I think is always a good way to learn something. Do you feel like that made you a better modeler, having to go through and figure out how to reverse engineer it or I mean, what was kind of your takeaway and learnings from those experiences?

No, no, it's definitely like you learn how someone else's brain kind of operates right. In the commercial space. But it has not been a easy journey.

Right.

Like it's been a long and hard work has been a sacrifice has been put into there, but I wouldn't change anything.

Cool.

You know, thank you for sharing. And it's always great when you start to figure out, okay, what's that? Right. Part product market fit. Like you said, you pretty quickly realized we're not B2C, we're B2B. Sometimes that takes a long time to realize and you know, the earlier you realize it, the, the better off you are. So I think, you know, that's great that you're able to recognize that and sounds like this is something you know, you'd wanted to kind of always do. And the pandemic hastened that and it all came together.

Yes. Absolutely. The pandemic was the cathartic moment, right. This godless moment for so many of us. And in a way, like, of course it was a lot of human tragedy, but I think for myself, all the pain aside that the world had to go through, it was a very fertile ground for innovation.

Yeah. I mean there are a ton of companies that came out of it. I think there's a lot of personal thought. I mean, obviously, would any of us want to go through it again? Of course not. But definitely can be learning during those adversities. And so, you know, before you started your own company, as you mentioned, you'd spent your career in private equity and investment banking, you know, had gone to Wharton. And I'm curious what interested you in that area? Why, why did you like kind of investment banking, private equity? What was the reasoning?

Yeah, I think we need to contextualize it. At what times? At that point in the late 2000s, early 2010s, the sexiest work was to work in finance.

Right.

Like tech was interesting, but more of okay, maybe.

Right.

It was not an obvious choice. It was still between bankers and consultants, like the most sought after type of jobs in college, right. And I started my freshman year like knowing that I wanted to end in Wall Street. And like the key selling points for me about Wall street was just like the learning curve, the fact that you effectively are going to work so hard that like you're going to get four years or five years of experience in two years that effectively no one is going to ever question your work ethic because it's just grueling rather, at least in the area that I was there. It was not an easy environment.

Right.

But I will not change anything out of it. It builds character, built resilience. It allowed me to under speak the language of investing.

It.

It in a way it also refined me.

Right.

I guess I was a kid, I raised in Bolivia. I did not have the polish background of some of the rose up, I don't know, New York City or some of the big kind of first world countries.

Right.

So for me it was a unique opportunity to kind of be on equal playing field. So some of the most sophisticated type of clients, it's playing in the NFL of finance.

Right.

And I learned a ton. It opened doors. It opened the doors certainly of Harvard. It opened the doors of having the type of investors that I have today. So I, if I have to go back in time, I remember getting my Goldman Sachs offer in February of 2010 and I do remember with a, a ton of gratitude Realizing how much of a step change it was going to be in my life.

Right.

It was. I can remember exactly where it happened. I. I interviewed in the old 85 Broad street building. It was kind of empty then because they were Moving to like 200 West. 200 west has been their headquarters since 2010. Finished that interview, got on the subway to see my sister at Columbia, and I got, by the time I got on the 1 train and 119, I'm on 112 street I got one train and I already had a missed call. And it was the headhunter for Goldman saying, like, I got the offer. And I was. It was a cold day, right.

February.

And I remember just my hand shaking.

Not.

But not on the cold. It's just like excitement that I was just going to go through that perhaps I had earned a ticket to that career.

No, that's cool. And I, I know you mentioned, you know, growing up in Bolivia. What age did you move to the.

U.S. i double my age. I'm almost 37 now. I came here when I was 18, so.

So you came with my knowledge.

Yeah.

And I cannot get rid of my accent, for the love of God, no matter how I'm hard. I try it just if you know.

Something that makes you lose your accent at this point, I've given up, you know, good luck. I don't. It's, it's, it's interesting because some people are able to lose it really easy and others pick up multiple different accents. Some never lose it. So good luck.

Yeah.

Cool.

So makes sense you've been here basically most of your life now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I'm curious. You know, you came to the U.S. you, you did the private equity investment banking. You talked about, you know, how it was kind of that ticket, all those learning experiences and just an opportunity to kind of being, as you said, the NFL finance. I'm curious, what's the greatest lesson or lessons you learned that help you as a CEO today? You took away from that, that time working in the industry.

No one's gonna outwork me, period. I'm wanting to put that make those ultimate sacrifices that I think as a business leader, sometimes you need to make. And I mean, it is hard, right? Like your family suffers, your relationship suffer or, or at least take a toll. But you're going to work hard, harder than, than anyone else.

Right.

And, and stamina tends to like, working smart's important, like being tactical. But in most instances that I've seen is the sheer determination that gets you through the finish line in most Instances. I am not discounting the importance of thoughtfulness but that of course is an obvious part of that equation. But if you don't, I'm not putting the hours. The thoughtfulness just goes to the trash.

Got it. You say kind of as I hear you, that biggest takeaway was really the work ethic.

Yes. The work ethic that you develop. There is just. No, you're never, no one is going to outward here.

Yeah, no, I know investment banking can be some very long hours. We had a guy that I think he said he worked the summer at one of the banks and most days he averaged you know, 19 hours a day and it was just for his internship. And I'm like, I don't know that I could do that.

So. Yeah, no, but you know that you sign up for that.

Right.

It's, it's not that they, you pay like you get paid a bad wage. You make a very nice. They pay very, very well. Right. So. But you also work very hard.

Yeah. I mean there, there are certain fields, investment banking, one of them, you know, consulting right out of school audit. There are others where you know, going in, they're going to be long hours, you'll learn a lot, they'll pay you well. But you know it's going to be very, very time demanding.

So.

Understood. All right, so I'm curious one things I want to dig into a little bit and spend some time on when it comes to modeling. You know, we've had a lot of guests that have talked about building financial models. But something we haven't focused on a lot is building those financial models. When you start a company, you know how it's different when you're a startup. Like when you start your company and you're like okay, we got to put together some financial projections. How did you think about that? How did you kind of get started the most?

You realize that like a three statement model is not like the expectation. The most important thing is to be able to the revenue waterfall. That's kind of like the detail that matters. And your kind of your cost structure.

Right.

Like people want to see how, what products you're building, how much it costs you to sell them and sell cycle for that. That is the most important kind of view. Also there's the saying that whatever you show folks, they're going to discount it. And that happens in private equity, hedge funds and all the places. But I think in ventures, just the extent to which they will discount your projections is significantly higher.

Right.

It's, we're talking about like more than 50% discounts on what I would consider like a management base case. Right. So I think the more thoughtfulness and also evidence based things you can show on, on that it's very important.

Right. Like.

So there's like a lot of macro components that come into it. But I would say that the model is just very. A small piece. Like there is just so much more.

Right.

The demos of the software, that kind of stuff I would say compared to the models that had to rebuild in pe. Like this is. You can rebuild in a couple, in an hour or so. That's complexity.

Sure. So simple models, not a lot of complexity. You mentioned a lot of around product demo. I mean kind of where do you start? Let's say it's a new industry or new thing you're creating or is it trying to figure out what the TAM could be, you know, how you penetrate, what are, what are some of the areas that you start with Kind of those base assumptions. Obviously there's going to be more macro. It's not like you have a bunch of internal data you can just plug into your model. You have nothing. Yeah. I mean if you're like.

Depends on the motion that you're running.

Right.

If you're, if you're a rip and replace strategy, let's say you're, you're. Let's say you were modeling Facebook and you're trying to. And let's say MySpace was a public company.

Right.

So what you will show is like hey, the total market in MySpace has 10%. They're growing at this stage and like I am taking market share from them at this space or something like that.

Right.

So that is one strategy. But if you're like completely the novel like creating an industry, I think those are significantly harder. So you need to kind of mirror and be able to show the analog of hey, in this industry this, these guys were trailblazers and they, they grew at this stake and the market was like a fraction of it with this kind of nuances. So you will show in our industry, we think it will grow at this stage. So you kind of like show them. You either use the power of analogy or you use the power of like a comp that's pretty similar to yours that is public. It kind of show why you're going to grow faster and justify from a product standpoint, sales cycles, implementations, things like that that like will allow you to build a succinct narrative on why you are growing faster and why you will continue growing faster and outpace them and things like that.

FP and a guy here and as you know, I am very passionate about financial modeling and the Financial Modeling Institute's mission. I have been a huge fan of the FMA MI for years and I was super excited when they decided to sponsor the Financial Modelers Corner. I recently completed the Advanced Financial Modeler certification and loved the entire experience. It was top notch from start to finish. I am a better modeler today for having completed the certification. I strongly believe every modeler needs to demonstrate they are are a qualified financial modeler and one of the best ways to do that is through the FMI's program. Earning the accreditation will demonstrate to your current and future employers that you are serious about financial modeling. What are you waiting for? Visit www.fminstitute.com podcast and use code PODCAST to save 15% when you enroll in an accreditation today.

And what do you see is the goal for that financial model for a startup? I mean obviously you're generally trying to raise capital, but beyond that what are you trying to get the VC firm comfortable with when it comes around model and projections? I'm sure product and technology and people are huge for the VCs and you have to have all that. But what are they really trying to get comfortable with when they look at your model?

I think they're trying to first and foremost return the fund, right? Like get enough conviction that like if you put, they put a multiple of revenue or EBITDA down the road on your business that whatever that amount ends up being and after dilution it's worth their entire fund, right? Like that's essentially. And based on that, if you're asking for them for 20 million and their fund is like 2 billion, they're trying to, what they're trying to think is like is this going to be 100x right? Like or more of that, right? So that's kind of the math that they're trying to get to and you need to show that thoughtfulness, right? That it's a, like in 10 years this is going to be worth this and your portion of the investment is going to be worth why? Because this is kind of the capital requirements of this business. And what they are need to be able to do is get comfortable putting a discount or whatever this kind. They don't tell you what discount they port, right? But I'm sure under in their investment committees they will say like you gotta believe that these two things go well and all the things go well. Even if you put a discount to what these guys have told us, we still will win.

Right?

And perhaps they've showed us 50 reasons to invest, but 48 of them don't really wait to work. We're really excited about this too. And the proof points, they're already getting this to very well on like XYZ reasons. So they don't necessarily always tell you why they invest in you.

Right.

Like sometimes they tell you afterwards once they invested.

Right.

But your job is to help them distill like key reasons to invest and why they invest some. You you will probably find out down the road.

Yeah, that's really helpful. What was, what was it like when you got your kind of first investment, first person, like kind of institutional investor? What was that moment like for you?

It's a very organized process. Right. It's not that you just wing it.

Right?

There's. I hope not. Yeah. The amount of preparation that goes into that. It's like you put together a deck. The deck is the easiest part. You need to be super strategic around who you actually speak to. So one of the most common mistakes as a first time investor, as a first time founder you'll make and like I was lucky that I had a co founder. There was like a repeat founder was a really you very quickly separate funds that like lead in funds they, they that don't.

Right.

Like immediately like you graduate into a new category of like okay, I know I need to check who leads the type of round that I am trying to raise. If you're series A, C, the pre seed B, so who has rewrites the type of checks that I'm going to need. Then you need to distill who invests in a company's like mine.

Right.

Like that's. And who isn't invested in my. In something that looks like a competitor. So you need to do all these levels of distilling then like who am I connected to of those people?

Right.

What is my angle?

Right.

What is the criteria to invest?

Right.

Am I too early? Am I too late? And then of course afterwards is who can introduce me to these people?

Right.

Or do I know them already?

Right.

Like, and then once you kind of narrow down, you probably want to have like a list of at least 50 to 100 people after you've distilled all of this universe of people that you probably want to talk to.

Right.

And you need to be strategic around how do you gradually get your name out there and kind of communicate to the world that you're fundraising without necessarily like taking like, like footballs.

Right.

Like, like you, you want to make sure you're not that your Narrative and like pitch and everything, your backup for everything is already pretty buttoned up by the time you have your first set of meetings. Of course, like your first set of meetings could, could be scratches, right? In the sense that like, you don't know necessarily how they're going to go. They could go very well or they can go very poorly, right? It depends. And the founder needs to minimize and relieve the least chance by virtue of practicing. But maybe you already went through the delusional phase in which you thought your baby is the most beautiful one and no one has told you up until you actually face someone that you're asking millions of dollars out of. So not until you actually finally have the real meeting. You will not know, but you can prepare for it. And like what you're trying to do is minimize that downside, Right. So that the elements are prices. You already have had enough to mitigate the potential downfalls.

Right.

But of course, as Mike Tyson says, everyone has a plan until they get beaten in the face. So.

Yep.

And you get punched in the mouth, everything changes. I appreciate you sharing that. And I'm curious, what advice would you offer? Let's say we have somebody listening. You know, they're building a financial model for the first time for a startup. If there's some advice you could offer them, what would it be?

Is it their startup or someone else's startup?

Let's say someone else's. Let's start with somebody else's. So they're modeling for somebody. Somebody's come to them and said, hey, I need this model built for my startup.

Yeah.

In general, it's probably because it's, most founders don't know how to model.

Right.

So yeah, I think, I think that they, they need to spend a lot of time understanding the business. So for me, like the model part is the easiest part of my day to day job.

Right.

I would say for, for some founders, it's probably the thing they dread the most.

Right.

Because effectively they've never done it.

Right.

It's, it's, it's like asking me to do like SQL, right. It's just not something I'm used to.

Right.

I'm, that's something my, my co founder would be far more technical than I am.

Right.

So if you're building for someone, you need to really understand their business.

Right.

Like spend time and for them explaining you how their kind of business model operates. Right. Because you're obviously going to have a model that they want to show investors and you also want to help this management team to run A business. Right. So the first clear question is like, are you building this model to kind of like project the business to the future or you actually want to use it as a source of KPIs to drive the day to day business? Those are very different models. Right. Like one is an operations model and the other one's a financial model. I would say understanding that out of the gates for that person will be important because the operating model is something that they will not be there to update every month when the new numbers come in. So they need to kind of guide that founder in terms of how do they actually get a sense of where the company is going by virtue of like updating that every month. So the financial model that they use for investors, it probably doesn't get used that often.

Got it? No, I, and I agree with you with what you said there about, you know, understanding whether it's financial, operational, really understanding the business. As you said earlier, you know, the complexity of a startup model is nowhere near some of the, I'm sure big M and A or LBO or you know, large deals you do in investment banking. And that's. And it doesn't need to be. It's not about that.

I mean, you can make it. You're not going to get any extra points for that. It's going to be on the margin. Like no one's going to be like, wow, look at this model.

I mean, you've never had an investor go, wow, your, your model's so slick, I now want to invest. Right. It's not how it works.

Yeah, but I think to some extent that applies elsewhere. It just more, it is just, I would. The percentage ascribed to the model relative to other later stage investment rounds is just significantly lower. Right, sure.

Yeah. I mean, if you're dealing with a big huge deal that has the large LBO and you know, you're looking at a bunch of different discounts, flash flows or whatever, all those numbers and percentages, they can make a big difference in the final deal. Where.

Yeah.

Your brand for us is binary.

Right.

The outcome is either going to work or not.

Right.

Like I think later stage deals, it's more like the size of the return and then hurdles and all of that. And that means that your model needs to be more sophisticated. For us, it's like, is it going to be or not? This company is going to fail. That's kind of it.

Yeah. Can they be a unicorn or are they going to fail? Okay, well, they have a chance of being a unicorn. All right, we'll put them in the portfolio. Hopefully one or two of these hundred pay off and we get our return.

Exactly.

Yeah. Very different from if I buy this company. I need X, Y and Z to make this amount of money.

Exactly.

Makes sense to me. So these are a couple kind of standard questions we ask and then we'll move into what we call a rapid fire section.

So the first.

What's your favorite Excel shortcut? Do you have a favorite?

There are some defunct ones and I have to admit that I made the biggest cardinal sin and I switched to a Mac in the last five years.

Sorry, I gotta hang up on you now you're out.

I miss so much on my PC. Like my PC keyboard. It is a shame that the Macs have not been able to figure out a keyboard that is as good as the PCs. If there's anything that PCs have is an amazing keyboard. Right. So there's just so many shortcuts in Excel.

Right.

Like I just miss like not having to like merge cells or things like that to do like just to put like an underline, an accounting underline over like three boxes below and like not have to merge or do it in a way that I could just do it with shortcuts. Those. Those were great. Like edit links. It was ltk. I don't remember that. That's still the one. The one in the new Excels. But all that whatever facts it back had it back in the day were coloring everything in blue, green, everything in the model just made you look like such a pro. I remember that being just really. I loving that.

Yeah. That's the biggest thing that's kept me from considering a Mac is I'm like I just can't do Excel in a Mac. So I. I get it.

It.

I mean Macs are great computers, but that's one area shortcuts and some of those things that are just. They're just not as good.

Yeah.

Removing grid lines. Fundamental. Like I remembering grid lines has to be one of the things that like it annoys me so much when someone sending me something with grid lines.

I'm not sure how you feel about grid lines. I'm not a grid line. It doesn't annoy me if somebody sends them. But usually when I'm working Excel, one of the very first things I do is Alt V wg Turn off the grid lines that. That. I haven't listed that as my favorite shortcut but now you mentioned it. It has to be pretty high on my list.

And of course freezing the column sometimes it does out. Wff.

Yes. Yep.

Yeah, I still remember then. Just not the same on a Mac.

Yeah, if you've done it long enough, they're just kind of muscle memory. Just unfortunately you can't do it on a Mac.

And of course paste unformatted. That's good. Pasting formats in selecting all the different.

Types of paste options.

Yeah. And of course the elevator.

Right.

Like there's. It's not a, it's not a real shortcut, but control down, control up just to go through the elevator. It's good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no I, I hear you. They're basically. Yeah, they're a shortcut over doing it with your mouse, but they're not a shortcut in the traditional sense. So I'm curious, coming back to Excel, what's the most unique thing you have created in Excel? Most unique model that you've done can be for your personal life? Doesn't need to be for work.

No, I've done like the net worth calculation that you mentioned earlier. I would say most unique one that I've done. I think I did a lot of like commodities one like calculating the value of like sugar mills. But like, but like going down to like the fields that they own and like kind of the conglomerate. How much would that be worth? That was fairly interesting, right. Because some sugar mills only produce sugar, but some of them also produce ethanol. So what will be the capex to turn into ethanol? And like the specific price subsidy for ethanol, each jurisdiction that that sugar mill was at, that was. And of course this is in Brazil. So they. On top of that you had fx, you have the price per pound of sugar. There were a lot of like forward curves on the contracts that we had to take. And of course like should we borrow in borrowing dollars? Should we borrow in local currency? Those were like super complex models. The weirdest one probably that I did though was for pension fund in Mexico and just that like working with actuaries and kind of seeing what kind of some of these pensions and some of this. Those were like super complex models. The weirdest one probably that I did though was for pension fund in Mexico and just that like working with actuaries and kind of seeing what kind of some of these pensions and some of this like life insurance assets will be worth. That was painful.

Right.

It's not like the type of model that you built just in a week. There's just a lot of back and forth and it's actaris trying to explain this to bankers and bankers trying to explain arteries and that I don't wish it to any my worst Enemy. Those are tough.

Yeah. I won't comment on actuaries.

Yeah, I mean, both parties have good, good points. It's just that you needed, you needed to compromise on something.

It's just. Yeah. Anytime you involve a lot of different groups, you're gonna have different opinions and coming together just complicates things. Doesn't matter how smart or who's right or who's wrong. It's just anytime you have a different groups, it's more work.

Yeah, indeed.

All right, so we're going to move to rapid fire next. So how this works is. I have about, I think it's about 12, 15 questions and you can't use the typical consultant answer. It depends. So you have to pick a side like yes or no in the majority of situations. Like I'll give you the first one. If I was to say circular references, yes or no. And you just have to provide one or the other. Then after I. After we go through all of them at the end, you can elaborate on one or two. Because I realize it depends on many of these. Right. There is nuance to them, but more seeing. If you had to pick one side or the other quickly, where would you go? Make sense. Ready?

Yeah.

All right. Circular references, yes or no?

Yeah, absolutely. Yes.

Vba. Yes or no?

I'm going to say no. I don't think I've ever used a vba.

Do you prefer horizontal model, lots of sheets or vertical? Kind of all your schedules on one sheet.

I like the months and years horizontally. When it gets too big, probably like the different schedules on. Yeah.

Dynamic arrays in models.

Yes or no?

Dynamic, like it. Where they spill. If you work with the spilled formulas now in Excel.

No. What is that?

So the formulas. Now, you know how they used to always operate in one cell. Today they will spill into multiple cells. So if you put an input into them, instead of having to adjust the formula, like let's say you have 12 months, you change it to 13. If it's a dynamic formula, the formula will move out to column 13. So the formula lives in one cell, but it can adjust. And let's say you reduce it to six months, it will reduce to six. You haven't had a chance to work with those.

Then I'm.

Yeah, you've been running your own business, I think since that come out versus modeling. But that's When.

When did it come out?

It was released. I want to say 2020. It's in 365 and 2021. Excel.

I left the five years ago. So exactly like when it left at the wrong time.

2019 was beta. I think 2020 was when it got released or so and so it was the, it was a big huge overhaul. So you've missed that one. So you don't have. We'll go with no then.

Yeah.

No, no, I never, it was never an option.

Yeah, exactly. External workbook links and models, yes or no?

In general? No. It's not a good practice.

Named ranges. Yes or no?

Rookie. I, I seldom used it.

All righty. What about. Did you use a, a formal standard like Smart or Fast or one of those when you were modeling or just kind of follow some general principles?

General principles. All right. Perfect.

Do you think financial modelers should learn Python in Excel? Do you think it's needed?

Based on what you said about like the pre filled things, I think it's just becoming technology. At least my line of business is like local, no code.

Right.

Like so it's kind of like asking someone if they should learn the abaqus. I do think that probably like the type of modeling people are going to do in the future is going to allow them to do like far more complex modeling without necessarily the nitty gritty of our good old days. Right. Like for example thinking about the min function and all those things like that. And when you're trying to do the cache sweeps and for like LBO models I'm sure that we're going to have to think about the stuff that is complex now but with formulas that are far more powerful and completely not care about things like finding your model crashing because of circularity. I think hopefully Excel fixes that and like all that refing.

Yeah, I got it. Makes sense. What's your thoughts about will it, about Excel? Will it ever die? Do you think it will ever go away?

Not in my lifetime.

That's a common answer I have. My favorite one was people say yes, but I hope not in my lifetime. Do you think I will build the models for us in the future?

The first draft for sure. It already does.

All right. So do you believe financial models are the number one corporate decision making tool?

Corporate finance for sure.

Okay, that works. And then what's your favorite lookup function? Like your lookup function choice. You like index match, Vlookup xlookup?

I've seen some like some product we look ups at some point. Those, those look pretty fancy. What was the one that I, the one that you use for kind of changing scenarios. I'm, I'm forgetting and it's a, it's not choose. I've seen. I, I, I'VE seen another one Switch. No, it's. I think it's. You kind of move it so that it's kind of move. Horizontal, move to. Right. Oh, offset.

Is that what you're talking about?

Offset?

Right.

There you go. Yeah, that's definitely one you can use. There's a lot of them.

Yeah, offset is the one that I used to like. I always forget how to use it. Then you use it and it's like, oh, this is awesome.

Yeah, no, I've had formulas like that. It's like if I ever have to use indirect, I can never remember the syntax if I'm referencing another worksheet. AI has been fabulous for that because I just say write the formula to do this and it gets all the syntax right. And then I could just check it and make sure, you know, it works in my spreadsheet. But I. I hear you sometimes. All right, so we're gonna go ahead and wrap up here in a minute, but anything else you want to say on Rapid Fire? Any of those you want to elaborate on or any. Anything you want to add?

No, I think I learned a lot, so. Especially about that one. To release in 2020, I would have. That would have been nice to have.

Yeah, it's. It's fabulous. If you go to my YouTube, there's some videos and different things. Right. I did an entire webinar about Dynamic Rays. Big fan of. If you could offer one piece of advice to our audience to be a better modeler, what advice would you give them?

Version up.

I like.

Although I know that now, like, you can actually check versions without. But version up. Always.

Got it. Appreciate it. If our audience wants to learn more about you or get in touch, what's the best way for them to do that?

LinkedIn. Get in touch with me through LinkedIn. I've had great mentors through my life. I owe them a debt of gratitude. So if I can pay it back, helping others would love to do that.

Thank you. I appreciate that a lot. Enjoyed having you on the show, Andreas, and good luck building Fuse. Like I said, it's a lot of work for a startup. I know you work a lot of hours, so wish you the best of luck with that and thanks for joining us on the show today.

Thanks, Paul.

Financial Modeler's Corner was brought to you by the Financial Modeling Institute. This year I completed the Advanced Financial Modeler certification and it made me a better financial modeler. What are you waiting for? Visit fmi@www.fminstitute.com podcast and use code podcast to save 15% when you enroll in one of the accreditations today.