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With Scott Orn

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Scott Orn

Scott Orn, CFA

Ted Bojorquez and Steve Tessler of California of the Bank of Commerce

Posted on: 09/07/2021

Ted Bojorquez

Ted Bojorquez

Executive Vice President, Silicon Valley - California Bank of Commerce


Steve Tessler

Steve Tessler

EVP, Director of Sales - California Bank
of Commerce


Ted Bojorquez & Steve Tessler of California Bank of Commerce - Podcast Summary

Ted Bojorquez and Steve Tessler of California of the Bank of Commerce stop by and chat about how they help the businesses they serve succeed in a constantly evolving and dynamic business world.

Ted Bojorquez & Steve Tessler of California Bank of Commerce - Podcast Transcript

Scott: Hey, it’s Scott Orn at Kruze Consulting and welcome to another episode of Founders & Friends and before we start the podcast, let’s give a quick shout out to Rippling. Rippling is the new cool payroll tool that we see a lot of startups using, Rippling is great for your traditional HR and payroll, they integrate very nicely, but guess what? They did another thing, they integrate into your IT infrastructure, they make it really easy for when you hire someone to spin up all the web services in their computer. Which sounds kind of like not a huge deal but actually we did the study at Kruze, we spent $420 on average just getting a new employee’s computer up and running and their web servers up and running, it’s actually a really big deal, it saves a lot of money. And the dogs are eating the dogwood, we see a lot of startups coming in to Kruze now using Rippling, so please check out Rippling, great service, we love it. I think we have a podcast with Parker Conrad, you can hear it from his own words but we’re seeing them take market share so shout out to Rippling. And now to another awesome podcast at Kruze Consulting’s Founder & Friends. Thanks.
Singer: So, when your troubles are mounting in tax or accounting you go to Kruze from Founders & Friends. It’s Kruze Consulting Founders & Friends with your host Scotty Orn.
Scott: Welcome to Founders & Friends Podcast with Scott Orn at Kruze Consulting. And today my very special guests are Steve Tessler and Ted Bojorquez of California Bank of Commerce, welcome guys.
Steve: Thanks, Scott.
Ted: Thank you. Thanks for having us Scott.
Scott: My pleasure. So, Steve and I we’ve been friends for a while but we became super close during the PPP COVID era of 2000 when I was texting and calling Steve pretty much every day to find out what the government had done that day on PPP so Steve was very gracious.
Steve: Yeah. And I had to tell you Scott, I had no clue based on Mr. Mnuchin’s announcement on Wednesday that you could make your application on Friday and you’d have money in your account and I said, “Oh my God.”
Scott: I think we both complained quite a bit about the government’s, hey, the money’s going to run out so you better hurry up, messaging which destroyed all of us and was very tough but we made it through. And I always like to say that the best relationships are built in tough times so Steve was awesome. And then recently Ted came on board at California Bank of Commerce. So maybe Ted you can start by retracing your career and then we’ll get to Steve and your background, who you are and what you bring to the table when working with startups.
Ted: Yeah sure. And Scott you forgot, I knew you back when you were working on the dark side, right?
Scott: That’s right.
Ted: You were a venture debt lender way back then, so we do go back some period of time. But so yeah, just kind of, thanks for having me, this is great and I’m happy to be here at California Bank of Commerce. But sort of retracing my steps in my career and kind of how I got here and I always go banker, entrepreneur, banker. I started out in banking out of college at Union Bank and I was credit trained there and spent five years underwriting deals. And we’ll get my age back in the early ’90s and I was a young guy and tech was a little bit big, it was a little bit different as far as tech, it was bigger tech public company tech and they said, hey, you’re a young guy, you probably know this stuff, so fortunately for me I got to underwrite a lot of the technology deals which was great. But at the time startups were getting a bit big and everybody was dumping capital into the market and so I’m a young kid and I said, hey yeah, let’s go do this. So, after five years of underwriting deals, I left and entered into my first startup. And I love to say that I learned something in each one of my three startups that I was in, I did have a third successful exit at the end of 2007, allowed me to take some time off, sort of, I actually started a fourth startup with some friends of mine in the golf business which was great and that was a lot of fun but more of a labor of love. That transitioned into more of a labor of love than a successful business model, so which is, I learned a lot about markets and verticals and which ones you can really access and become successful at. And then I got a call in late 2008 which is crazy when the banking world was imploding, my old boss who hired me out of college, said, “Hey, at US Bank we’d love to start our technology lending practice, what do you think about coming back to banking?” And I said, “Well, let’s give it a shot.” And so that was the first thing, and that started an eight-year run. And so, we build out a technology lending platform, granted a little different, they were larger corporate deals, somewhat cashflow breakeven type deals and so then that led me into this whole process of banking. My background for having been on both sides of the table, on structuring debt deals as well as negotiating debt deals, put me in a good place to really build out platforms for other banking institutions that didn’t have technology lending platforms. And so, I’ve done it for US Bank, for HomeStreet and then now for most recently for California Bank of Commerce which I’m really happy about. So yeah, it’s been great.
Scott: That’s amazing. And you and I met when you started at Union Bank or right around that time.
Ted: At you at US Bank.
Scott: Sorry, US Bank. Sorry.
Ted: No, that’s okay. I started at Union Bank back in the day but yeah, when we first started to get together that was at US Bank and that was a very specific model. You remember in 2008 everybody was flight to quality and that sort of thing, we had a very strong balance sheet, lots of capital and so we were the crazy kids on the block. I remember going in and talking to CFOs and going, “Hey, we’re out here starting a brand-new group and we’re lending money,” and they’re looking at me like, have you read a paper recently? The banking industry is imploding. But it was a good opportunity where we got a lot of sort of later stage pre-IPO deals because we had a big balance sheet we could put a lot of money to work and it just worked out, it was a good run at that stage in the market. So.
Scott: You remember Lighthouse was the same, we had just closed the fund and it was unbelievable, maybe it might be the best investing lending time of my career. So good for you guys for having that.
Ted: Yeah and I know it was great.
Scott: And then awesome to see at California Bank of Commerce, you’re starting up a whole new venture inside the bank and I’m very excited about it so that’s why I wanted to have you on the podcast. So.
Ted: I appreciate.
Scott: And Steve, do you want to give your quick background?
Steve: Absolutely. I loved one of Ted’s counsel about labor of love. My labor of love after college was racquetball and I was really passionate about it and I played a lot of it and I played competitively and I thought that was going to be my career until I had a rude awakening, I found out there are actually people that are better than I am. But I’d say the reason I share this story is because it was a great experience for me and helping me develop my career in the sense that it was competition, I enjoy competition. We all enjoy winning, I mean, there are winners and losers, as you move up the food chain you find out that things get more competitive and you have to enjoy it, and that’s one thing I really enjoy. I mean, I’m very passionate about things and I think it’s important to be passionate, I think that’s one thing that’s emblematic in California Bank of Commerce is that we’re passionate about business. And so that passion has always been part of me, that competitiveness has always been part of me. And so, after I had my epiphany in racquetball, I said, well, I jumped into something more mundane like accounting, being a public accountant, becoming a CPA, geez, that’s so different than being on a racquetball court. But for me it was really an education and it was a great learning experience because you got to see businesses from, not only different types of businesses, but you got to see what makes business run and what makes business not run on some days and run better on other days. And so, it was a great foundation for me but the thing that was always present in my DNA was this sort of competitiveness and that to me is kind of emblematic of what I do today and that’s really focused on sales and marketing. And so, I wanted to steer my career in public accounting and eventually in banking towards the sales and marketing aspect of it. And that was a bit of an uphill battle because accounting is not used to sales, because we get business through referrals and we do the same thing in banking, a business through referrals and certainly that’s critically important. But what I realized over time too is that sales and marketing are an important part of what we do in accounting and what we do in banking. And so, the ability to translate that into and to perpetuate my career has been really predicated on being able to blend the two, the passion for business, the competitiveness, the desire, the drive, but also the fact that it’s an integral part of what makes business run and what allows businesses to grow, but I’ve always been oriented towards business.
Scott: I’d add one other thing which is, what really struck me when we really got to know each other during the COVID stuff was, you guys are competitive and you built a great business, but there’s a lot of compassion at California Bank of Commerce, people love their lenders when things are going well but when things are tough, that’s when those relationships are really tested. And you and I, I remember talking through those, those were some really tough times for a lot of businesses that you guys banked and you were there for them and I remember you talking about restructures and making sure that they could survive and get them through COVID. And I saw you doing that and I heard you doing that and so, I mean, that’s just another reason why I’m excited about you guys getting in the venture debt world is that you have that foundation of compassion and working with the founders and bringing that to venture debt is awesome, that’s what we’re looking for in a partner.
Ted: Well, I think a lot of it for me, Scott, is having almost 10 years of being in startups. I was there, I mean, I did credit card roulette to see who was going to help make payroll, or do credit card roulette to say, hey, we need to do this. It was a tremendous learning experience to go through and while there’s high levels and high degrees of stress as you’re going through it’s just such a learning experience and that’s what I love about it. And going back to Steve’s point, I mean, we’re obviously passionate, we’re obviously competitive, and having gone through that process has only made us better as we become bankers. And I think one of the other things we talked about is, why did you come here? Why did I come to CBC? And I think the cool thing about CBC when I had left some of the other institutions, they were all larger banks, right? Larger banks, not from Silicon Valley and coming here, these are local people, guys and girls who started this bank, they’ve had successful exits for banks. But what that means is they started from scratch, they started from zero, so they’ve built a business, right? And so, they’ve experienced it. And Steve being one of the founders here and earliest guys, has seen this grow. And so, I think that’s the important part is we’re not just a banker who’s always been a banker, we’ve actually built businesses and even the bank that we have here at CBC is something that has been built and is being built. So, we’re kind of going through some of the same sort of trials and tribulations that our clients are going through or the other entrepreneurs are kind of going through.
Steve: Scott, if I can jump back in for a sec.
Scott: Yeah.
Steve: I would say that Ted is spot on and that relationships are created and they’re created and they’re nurtured but the value of them isn’t really realized until companies hit a speed bump, a challenge, have something that they need to get through and they need support, they need help, and that’s when the relationships are truly tested and to me, that’s when they’re cemented. I mean, I think we cemented a lot of relationships over the past 18 months because our clients knew we were there for them and it wasn’t lip service, it wasn’t, Jean, now that I really need you, I can’t reach you, that’s not what this is about. It’s hard to measure the value of the relationship when things are very rosy, when all the arrows are pointing up or pointing up and sort of sideways, but it’s hard to measure them, but it’s really measured when things start going a direction that needs to get corrected.
Scott: I totally agree. And you guys both have the operating background, Steve is a very, very early team member at California Bank of Commerce and Ted with your startup experience. I mean, I’ve gone through it too, I got to say, when I worked at Lighthouse I didn’t fully appreciate the entrepreneurial journey and how difficult it was and now I really do so that is a real feather in the cap. And then also California Bank of Commerce, the bank has had tremendous growth. So, the cool thing about getting the venture debt practice going now is that the capital is there, the bank is big enough to do these loans, to handle it, you’re not kind of over your ski tips, the financial success of the bank has allowed you really probably to get this practice going, right?
Steve: Yeah. And I would say that the one thing that Ted does exceptionally well is he realizes, as we all do in the bank, that banking is not all science, it’s a blend of art and science. And it’s like the painting behind Ted on the wall, it’s not going to be uniform and the same every time and you got to take each case on its own merits and that’s one thing that this bank does exceptionally well, the exceptionally.
Ted: Yeah. I think we’ve done a good job. I mean, Tom Sa, obviously not here, Tom Sa was one of the founders of Bridge Bank, helped build that institution, he’s the CFO for our bank here. So he does a good job of optimizing our capital and that’s why I think we get narrow and deep in certain industries, technology, venture debt. What we’re doing here is important so we’re able to take those levels of capital and really optimize on them because we’re focused. We find the right group of folks, we find the expertise, we built a strategy and a plan around it and then we execute on it. And I would say the other part of it too is executing what the capital is, making sure you’re entering the market at a specific spot. So, I said when I was at US Bank, we were a trillion-dollar institution, we were OCC regulated, we were based in Minneapolis, to say, hey, we’re going to go through early round growth capital right after an another round, that wasn’t going to fly for them, right? Not because they felt like, oh gosh, it was so risky, or we just don’t understand it, it was optimization of their capital, right? We needed to put big numbers out and so we wanted to put 15 out and 20 out and 25 out or syndicate a large deal, so we operate a little bit differently on the food chain from that standpoint. And I think here being a $2 billion bank, and like I said, we’ve accelerated to two billion pretty quickly, the optimization of our capital while it’s in a different stage of growth, it’s still us trying to optimize the capital and get it out and utilize it, and so, meaning, we’re here, we’re open for business and we want to do deals and I think the institution, Tom and his team, has really done a good job of doing it and having the experience of doing it before is always helpful.
Scott: Yeah. Also, I got to say Ted, you and I have had this conversation separately but the thoughtful entry points into the market is so important because I’ve seen over the years people enter the venture debt market kind of guns blazing, not a lot of discretion, not a lot of oversight, not a lot of thinking about what could happen, and they blow themselves out in a year or 18 months and as they’re collapsing, the clients, the people that borrowed from them, are really hurt. And so that’s one of the things that I really like about your team’s approach is that you have a ton of experience in the market so that’s not going to happen. That actually gives me pause recommending new entrance into the market because I’ve seen, kind of for folks who don’t know, if an institution retreats, they’ll typically just kind of clamp down and not do restructures or not facilitate more capital or things like that and so the startup that took the loan is in a tough spot. And I have a ton of faith that even if you guys hit a speed bump or whatever happens, or the economy hits a little speed bump, that you’ll have staying power and be able to work with the companies through that, it’s so, so important.
Steve: Yeah.
Ted: Agreed. And that’s why we try to be… Sorry Steve, I’ll let you do it.
Steve: All right.
Ted: That’s why we try to be thoughtful about it. I mean, again, Steve and I have been in this market for a long time and we’ve learned, we’ve watched, I mean, it’s not like we haven’t made our own mistakes, right? But we’ve learned from watching others in the mistakes they made. And I think ultimately when you are just getting out and just trying to capture market share and not really thinking about sort of the overall risk profile, not just of the company but also of the bank and what you’re getting into, to your point Scott, the only people that truly get hurt are the entrepreneurs, they just get really, really in a bad spot and again, having our backgrounds, that’s not what we want, and so we want to be thoughtful. And, I mean, I’m pretty frank with equity guys and say, hey, here’s where we play and think about us, maybe we get further down earlier in the growth stage but right now we’re just a little bit north of pre-revenue or something like that. And so, we’re trying to be smart about it so we don’t put ourselves in a position where we impact any of the equity sponsors, but more importantly, the founders and entrepreneurs.
Scott: Hey, it’s Scott Orn of Kruze Consulting and before we get back to the podcast, quick shout out to ChartHop. ChartHop is one of my favorite new SaaS tools on the market and basically what ChartHop does is it puts your org chart in the cloud. And I always like to say, it brings transparency to your organization and so everyone in your organization can see who they report to, they can see the full org chart of the company and how their group relates to other groups. It also has a lot of information on the individuals in the company and so you can click on the ChartHop profile and just get where people live, their experience, Slack handles, all this kind of stuff and it’s just a really great tool. The other thing is, ChartHop has started doing some cool stuff around compensation and budgeting planning and so you can actually start seeing what the cost structure of the company looks like during certain kind of scenarios. So, I’m loving ChartHop, check it out at charthop.com. We use it at Kruze, we really like it and I can’t recommend it enough. All right, back to the podcast. Ted maybe take a second to just kind of talk about your target client, who you’re looking for, that way some of the founders who listen to this can also self-select and know where you play.
Ted: Sure. Yeah. So, we kind of look at it from the standpoint of, we’ll say anywhere from a million to 10 million is sort of our deal size, we’re going to structure predominantly to the market. It’s kind of interesting and not to digress but I get this question all the time, what’s your differentiator? And it’s a loaded question for me because for the most part banking and specifically technology banking, it’s fairly commoditized, I mean, the structures are the structures, SVB kind of dictates pricing and dictates structure. And so, our differentiator is our willingness to participate in the game, like Steve said, we’re willing to compete. And when you said certain banks come in and they just want to do a little bit, or we only want your deposits, or we don’t want to do pre-profit so they’re not willing to compete in the lifecycle. So, let me step back a little bit, we can do from the earliest stages, pre-profit lending all the way through the later stages, okay? That being said, we’re equity sponsor agnostic, which I think is a differentiator. So, we are really okay with bootstrap companies, we’re okay with angel backed, we’re okay with friends and family or family office, right? There are so many great equity sponsors out there that have fantastic relationships with SVB, Comerica Bridge, the other institutions, and that’s awesome because those banks had spent many years developing those, right? We’re not quite there yet, so we’re a little bit more equity sponsor agnostic. On the earliest stages, we’re not pre-revenue so we do want to have some revenue, we want to see some growth and some traction in the product and the acceptance of the product and we’ll do MRR software deals, we’ll look at hardware deals. We’re a little bit industry agnostic to some extent, I wouldn’t say we’re going to do white space lending, we do want to have viable products that have a viable market that they’re accelerating into, and again, one to 15 million, 15 on the high side. And then I would say structure, structure is going to be your standard structures, we’re going to do an RML covenant and we’ll have a variance to plan covenant.
Scott: What’s an RML? All right Ted, real fast, I’m not familiar with that term or the abbreviation.
Ted: Remaining months liquidity.
Scott: Okay. Yeah.
Ted: So remaining months liquidity. And there’s different formulas and again, this might be getting a little bit too granular, but remaining months liquidity basically is, how much working capital do you have on the balance sheet, which would include cash and your AR and everything, relative to your burn, and we want to keep it within a certain month, right? And the whole concept there is we need to have enough liquidity on the balance sheet for you to have time to raise the next round, or you have time to get to break even. A lot of times it comes around like, oh, you got RML because you only want me to borrow my own money, no, because at the end of the day, you as an entrepreneur is you don’t want to have zero either, right? I mean, none of us wants to have zero, I mean, so let’s just all agree on that. Nobody wants to have zero cash or negative cash, we can all agree on that, right?
Steve: We agree because we both want to stay in business.
Ted: Exactly. So, let’s just set a limit that says, hey, at this mark we need to have more conversations of, how do we raise more money? How do we do more things? And then I would also say that, a lot of times with RML calculations, again, this is getting very granular, some banks don’t include availability of the debt that we provide, so we actually include availability of the debt that we provide. So, I’m saying, yes, you can use our money to make your covenant, you can use our money to get that, that’s the whole reason, right? But the whole fact is it can’t be zero, right? Because we don’t ever want to get to zero. Sorry, I’m getting close to the camera. And so that’s the remaining months liquidity. Variants plan is also a very strong covenant for us simply because it keeps us all on the same page of where the company is going. I think it’s important as a venture lender for entrepreneurs, the equity sponsors and the bankers to be in alignment of what the ultimate goal is and how we’re going to grow this business and so that’s where the plan comes in is really important.
Scott: Very well said. And I was just going to say the remaining months liquidity and variants and other covenants, like you said, you’re just trying to have the conversation. And I think sometimes, I don’t know how you feel about this, but sometimes I see founders who are not super sophisticated who push back on some of those terms not realizing that they’re borrowing from a bank, they’re not borrowing from a private fund that charges significantly more and which will take more risks. So, my thing is, banks have a tremendous cost of capital, they’ll work with you but they can’t take equity risk or a bank debt return. And so that’s one of the things I try to calibrate with our entrepreneurs is, your lending vehicle should be complimentary capital, it should not be what the company is running on, it should not be a life or death thing for the company, that’s what equity is for. But I think that’s where venture debt and California Bank of Commerce venture debt group can be so helpful is like, you’ve got your equity, you know what you’re going to do, and then borrow some complimentary capital to extend your runway. You’re not betting the farm on the bank deal, you’re using it to just extend three to six months basically, that’s kind of how I think about it.
Ted: Agreed. And I would offer up the other part of it. Because there are other institutions that will do no covenant deals that are regulated, again, but it’s based on, I have a certain equity sponsor that we always work with and so we have done maybe 100 deals with them so we kind of feel comfortable with that. And on the flip side of it, I would say, because we may put one of these covenants on there we realize that we’re reducing the amount of equity risk that we are having it henceforth we require less from a pricing standpoint on the equity side. And so I think we’re comfortable doing in lieu of deals or things like that because we know we’re not silly like, hey, we’re taking equity risk but we’re putting structure on, right? I realize that there’s a give and take and so those are the give and takes. But.
Steve: I was going to say too, I think sometimes the covenants can be viewed as punitive or a way for the bank to exit a deal and I think that’s not the appropriate way to look at covenants, I think they’re there for the benefit of the company too. They’re only meant to be triggers, say, has something changed in the business fundamentally that’s different than when we originally crafted this agreement, and to me that’s what the essence of it is. It’s to create an opportunity for dialogue if dialogue is probably happening already, but if for some reason it hasn’t, to foster dialogue and stop and look at the picture and say, what’s different now than it was when we set this 3, 6, 9 or 12 months ago. And it doesn’t mean that it’s a permanent change, it could be a permanent change, it could be a temporary change, but something has changed, something is different now. So, the question is, what’s different now than when we did this in the past?
Scott: And come up with a constructive solution that benefits everybody.
Steve: And it’s not meant to say, oh, by the way, we’re done because you violated your covenant and it’s time for us to leave.
Scott: Some people act that way that’s why I like you guys.
Steve: Yeah, I know. I would say the only time that it actually comes to that is when Scott we’ve called you for six months and we can’t-
Scott: Oh, for sure. That used to drive me crazy too.
Steve: … And we don’t have any other remedy at this point but to exercise [crosstalk].
Scott: Yeah. That’s a really awesome kind of meta point there, communicating with your lender is so valuable. Well, I operated like this at Lighthouse and I know you guys operate like this, if the dialogue is going, you get so much more leeway and oftentimes you can really help solve any problem as long as things are going well and there’s clear communication, it’s when radio silence happens when things get a little scary.
Ted: And it’s like, we talk about this all the time, actually, prior to starting this whole getting our policies and everything approved, I had written a white paper for the board and everybody to understand sort of the nature of technology lending, what you’re getting into, and one of the things we talked about going back to covenants, variants to plan being a strong covenant because it keeps us on the same page. And I said, but here’s the thing, many times a company will come to say, hey, I need to change the plan and, guess what? I need to burn a little more cash, but I need to burn cash, and I say, in a positive way because I need to develop product that is going to help escalate their revenue ramp or I’m getting new clients or I need to buy more of something else, so we’re comfortable with all that stuff. These positive influences that maybe even having burned more but then puts you in a better ramp rate, through communication we’re like, that’s fine, we’re totally good with that, right? That works out well.
Steve: I totally agree.
Scott: There’s one other, just to kind of change the topic slightly, that you mentioned when you’re equity agnostic which I thought is a really interesting trend which is you mentioned family offices and doing kind of direct equity investing into startups. And 10 years ago, I would’ve said like, ooh, that’s not a great way for family offices to deploy capital because a lot of the people who were doing the family office stuff didn’t have a lot of direct deal experience and things like that. But I’ve seen kind of a sea change over the last maybe five years where the family offices are getting more sophisticated so they’re hiring people who are great fund choosers and evaluators but also hiring people who are direct deal people as well. Are you seeing that? And is that what’s giving you more comfort on the kind of backing companies that have a family office component?
Ted: Definitely. And I wouldn’t say the level of sophistication, the diversification of where they look for return has happened. Obviously, these are family offices that have been around for a long time, they have sophistication in how they invest, but having deployed capital into different markets and that’s why they’re hiring people to understand some of these direct investments and you’re starting to see some good returns out of there. And it’s interesting, I’ve seen even some family offices that want to do almost like a fund to funds, right? They’re trying to find the right funds to get into and then that’s been difficult because you can’t always get into it so that’s when they start looking for deal flow.
Scott: That’s totally it. I’m seeing the same thing. Yeah. That’s really cool.
Scott: I really appreciate your time, thank you so much. Maybe you can tell everyone how to reach out if they’re a founder and interested in a direct deal or if they’re a venture capitalist listening to this and want to find a new partner; how can they reach out to you guys and get in touch?
Ted: Sure. Steve.
Steve: Sure. You can certainly visit our website at www.californiabankofcommerce.com, but I would say that the best way is to reach out to either Ted or myself directly. I can be reached at S-T-E-S-S-L-E-R, stessler@bank, B-A-N-K, cbc.com, so bankcbc.com is our domain name for email not for our website.
Ted: Yeah. I can be reached at tbojorquez, that’s T-B-O-J-O-R-Q-U-E-Z, @bankcbc.com.
Scott: Awesome. Thank you guys so much, I’m super excited about the venture debt initiative. And again, I felt like I was in a foxhole a little bit with Steve during COVID and you guys really helped me out and help the Kruze client base out so I really appreciate it.
Steve: It’s a pleasure.
Scott: We’re recording on August of 2021. Hopefully we don’t have another winter like that and chaos and so it’s all fingers crossed.
Steve: Hopefully not another apocalypse.
Ted: Well, thank you Scott, we appreciate your time and appreciate you having us.
Steve: And Scott, if there is one you know who to call.
Scott: Yes. I will text you like I did every day. Awesome guys, thank you so much, appreciate it.
Ted: Thank you.
Steve: Thanks.
Ted: Bye.
Scott: See you.
Singer: So, when your troubles are mounting in tax or accounting you go to Kruze from Founders & Friends. It’s Kruze Consulting Founders & Friends with your host Scotty Orn.

Find out why Kruze Consulting is one of the leading accounting firms in San Francisco and the US, serving funded, early-stage companies. Kruze clients have raised over $15 billion in venture capital and seed financing, and our research and development tax credit work has saved clients millions of dollars in burn rate and payroll taxes. Contact Kruze to learn more.

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