Episode 70: $100B in Platform Assets Arch Co-Founder, Ryan Eisenman on the Power of Solving Client Problems | What Matters in Raising Venture Capital | Why Founder-Led Sales is the Way
Subscribe to Billion Dollar Backstory on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
As co-founder and CEO of Arch, Ryan Eisenman is on a mission to take the hassle out of investment operations. Arch is a $100B tech platform that replaces the spreadsheets, manual labor, and outdated systems of old.
In this episode, Ryan and Stacy discuss:
Ryan’s backstory: How the strategy behind his grandfather’s variety store inspired his entrepreneurial modus operandi — give the people what they want
His sales secret weapon —K-1 cookies that end up in his prospects’ bellies instead of the trash folder in their email inbox
How he mastered sales without any formal training
How Arch surpassed their goal and raised $5 million in venture capital
More About Ryan:
With over six years as the co-founder and CEO of Arch, Ryan Eisenman brings extensive private investment expertise to the table. Before founding Arch, he gained valuable experience at eight financial service companies, including Deloitte, Routier, and TechStars. Ryan is well-versed in the evolving trends of the private investment sector and the transformative impact of technology on the industry. As private markets continue to gain popularity, Ryan remains dedicated to helping advisors and their clients easily invest in private markets and efficiently diversify their portfolios.
Want More Help With Storytelling?
+ Subscribe to my newsletter to get a weekly email that helps you use your words to power your growth: https://www.stacyhavener.com/subscribe
TRANSCRIPT
Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.
[00:00:00] Ryan Eisenman: Being really ingrained in the sales process, talking to thousands of customers and being like, Hey, would you buy this? Would you buy this K1 collection tool? And we'll follow up for your missing K1s. Is that interesting? And people are like, yes, but like, do you have a sock on it? Yes, but what's onboarding like?
[00:00:16] And is this painful enough? And what about these other documents that we also need to collect? And so in each of those conversations, if we got a client, we got a client and we learned something. We didn't get a client. We all almost learned even more. Uh, and that's how we like shaped. Okay. Like we need to build this next thing.
[00:00:33] And we're continually thinking about these statements of like, okay, well, if we did this, would that be enough for you to buy arch and would you pay X for it? So constant experimentation, constant testing. Allowed us to really understand our clients what they needed.
[00:00:49] Stacy Havener: Hey, my name is Stacey Havener. I'm obsessed with startups, stories, and sales.
[00:00:55] Storytelling has fueled my success as a female founder in the toughest [00:01:00] boys club, Wall Street. I've raised over 8 billion that has led to 30 billion in follow on assets for investment boutiques. You could say against the odds. Yeah. Understatement. I share stories of the people behind the portfolios while teaching you how to use story to shape outcomes.
[00:01:19] It's real talk here. Money. Authenticity. Growth. Setbacks. Sales and marketing are all topics we discuss. Think of this as the capital raising class you wish you had in college, mixed with happy hour. Pull up a seat, grab your notebook, and get ready to be inspired and challenged while you learn. This is the Billion Dollar Backstory Podcast.
[00:01:47] I'm a huge fan of learning from other industries, which is why my conversation today with Ryan Eisenman is so cool. Ryan is the co founder of Arch, [00:02:00] a fintech company. Arch is a digital first private investment management platform that solves the arduous tasks of allocating to private investments. In other words, they're making K 1s.
[00:02:13] Cool. And they've got a recent 20 million Series A and 100 billion in platform assets that shows just how painful the ops side of private investing has become. As Ryan says, Death by 1000 paper cuts. This is a great story about building a business from scratch in partnership with your clients. It's a glimpse into the tech world of founder led sales and capital raising, and the insights apply to us all.
[00:02:49] So let's dive in. Meet my friend, Ryan. Ryan, thank you so much for being here this morning. This is an honor and this is fun for me because [00:03:00] I know of you But this is our first official chat So i'm getting the backstory and talking through all the things along with our listeners and i'm super excited So thank you for being here.
[00:03:13] Ryan Eisenman: Same here. Stacy. Thank you for having me
[00:03:15] Stacy Havener: So let's start with my favorite. I alluded to it. We chatted a little in the green room. I want to get a feel for you as the founder of arch and. And maybe it's not a startup anymore, but it still has a lot of those vibes to it, which I love. I mean, people can't see the video, but your whole.
[00:03:32] Aesthetic and core of your DNA kind of harkens back to some of those really cool startup vibes. Tell me, let's go way back, Machine. Did you always know you wanted to be the founder of a tech company in the investment space? Like, was that your childhood dream?
[00:03:51] Ryan Eisenman: And in some ways, like revisionist history, yes, like without realizing it.
[00:03:55] I was always interested in like finance and investing and investment decision [00:04:00] making. And then also really interested in entrepreneurship, uh, had been keeping a list of ideas since 2013 on a, like a long Apple note that we founded the company in 2018. So it was kind of five years in that found the idea that ended up becoming my first real company.
[00:04:16] And so it is kind of this great intersection of personal passion, interest, and like enthusiasm around the space. That. allows us to pour a lot of energy into this and makes this a journey that we're happy to be on for for decades, not years.
[00:04:32] Stacy Havener: Love that last comment. So let's go back even further. You mentioned that you had a passion for entrepreneurship.
[00:04:38] Tell me a little bit about where that comes from. Like, did you come from a family of entrepreneurs? Was your family in the investment space? Like, how did it start?
[00:04:46] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah, I kind of grew up on the lore of entrepreneurship. My grandfather grew up in a small coal mining town in Kentucky of 700 people. Played basketball there, went to go play basketball at the University of Kentucky, which was how he kind of made it out of that town.
[00:04:59] And his [00:05:00] father was a small town, local entrepreneur, ran a general store in the town, sold everything from chickens and eggs and pieces of scrap and anything that people needed in the town. And it was, it was probably in subtle ways. People didn't really call it innovating then, but was continually thinking about like, what do our clients need?
[00:05:19] What do the people of this town need? It had really strong. Product market fit the current buzzword because there were only two general stores in a small town is him and his brother. And so they, they supplied everything, they had a monopoly and oligopoly, um, supplied everything that the town needed and loved those stores.
[00:05:38] That was probably like one of the first things I wanted to be when I grew up. One was a fireman and the other was run a general store. This isn't quite that, but it's kind of similar.
[00:05:46] Stacy Havener: I love that. So pull that thread forward. I mean, you said product market fit, which is such a buzzword. But like when you think about creating something that people need.
[00:05:56] Maybe it's not chickens and eggs and scrap [00:06:00] now today, but how does that thread pull forward into the idea for Arch?
[00:06:06] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah, we think that building a great company is about identifying a need and then just finding like a great way to solve that need. So when I met Jason and Joel, the two Arch co founders, we're kind of uniquely and individually thinking about different things within this space.
[00:06:20] And my lens on this was, uh, how do people make investment decisions? Was thinking about the Groucho Marx quote of don't want to be part of any club that would have me as a member seems like a lot of people get offered investments and it's like, well, my only offered this investment because Sequoia Capital and Blackstone and all these professional managers already passed on this investment.
[00:06:40] Like, why am I uniquely the person that should invest in this company or this project? And so that led me to think there should be a system that allows you to like, track your investments, track your decisions, and maybe even work with co investors to diligent things together to make good decisions. And then on that [00:07:00] journey.
[00:07:00] We met this investor who was like, yes, and they're all these things are really painful, like K1s. Can you help solve the like operational pain points of being an investor? I get a spreadsheet for my account and it has 100 K1s I need to collect. I have to go to all these portals, death by a thousand digital paper cuts.
[00:07:20] If you could solve that problem, I would love to be a client and be an investor. And so that investor actually introduced me, Jason and Joel all together. Jason, Joel knew each other from MIT. Uh, the three of us met through this investor, and then he provided the early seed capital. So it was a lot of that ability to find a really good entry point into this market that allowed us to start working on it, uh, and go full time.
[00:07:47] Stacy Havener: It's so interesting. I mean, there's so many ties back to the general store. I mean, I just love that. I'm watching Little House on the Prairie right now with my seven year old daughter, and obviously there's a general store in town. So this is like so on brand for me here, Ryan, this whole [00:08:00] backstory. It's great.
[00:08:00] The operational pain of being an investor in private investments of any kind is so real and so big. And to be honest, to me is probably the, I don't know, maybe the more interesting part of this story. There are a lot of people talking about democratizing private investments. A lot of people have rolled products out.
[00:08:25] And so talk a little bit about that. Like differentiators is something I think is difficult for every business, but definitely difficult for firms in the investment space, because we want to differentiate on small numbers or features or benefits. And so when you think about differentiators and this DNA you have on the operational pain point, how much of the differentiator is around that piece?
[00:08:50] Yeah.
[00:08:52] Ryan Eisenman: I mean, in a sense, that's like at our core,
[00:08:56] Stacy Havener: Arch
[00:08:56] Ryan Eisenman: was built to solve these tough problems that every investor [00:09:00] that invests in private markets has. Every private equity fund, every hedge fund, real estate investment, venture fund produces a K 1. Many of them have capital calls and distributions. They send updates quarterly or monthly.
[00:09:11] They send all these different documents. So on average, a fund might send like 14 documents throughout the year. And those aren't just like nicely, neatly emailed to you or posted to like a single central portal. Now every fund has their own unique portal. So you have a unique username and password for these portals.
[00:09:30] These are not really nice consumer pieces of software. Oftentimes portals are afterthoughts. The private equity firm buys a fund administrator or CRM or an analytics tool, and it comes with a portal. So nothing within this value chain that can go on and on, because like each document has a workflow and there's a lot more that's here.
[00:09:49] Nothing here has been really optimized for the end client's experience. And so what we really care about is we care about the client experience, and that's what really differentiates us. And building a [00:10:00] great client experience on top of these really clunky and painful workflows. So it's like, okay, let's automate the workflows by automating workflows.
[00:10:09] And this is our version of Maslow's Hierarchy. If you're familiar with that concept, it's like this pyramid. So at its basis, we'll save people time. And remove painful processes by automating workflows out of that we were able to produce really high quality data that folks can then like use, leverage, understand out of that data.
[00:10:26] We're starting to produce insights and we have a new feature release that's coming on that in the next few weeks. And then out of insights, we can start helping people. Hopefully. Make better decisions and have better investment outcomes, and each of those layers stacks on top of each other. And so we're looking at this holistically over a long period of time.
[00:10:43] The best way to give you really good data is to give you a scalable way to automate your workflows that doesn't just touch your old state and your capital calls in your distributions, but also thinks about how do you you. Neatly route K1s to accountants and make sure that people that need to complete certain tasks are [00:11:00] notified in real time of the things that need to happen.
[00:11:03] Um, and then also give you like really interesting insights on your investments that are otherwise really hard to come by.
[00:11:09] Stacy Havener: Fascinating. And so again, like I come back to all the things. My eyes are like lighting up when you are talking about things like how do I get my, you know, route my K ones to my accountant in an easy way, like just real life issues that people are busy and have a lot of things going on are dealing with.
[00:11:28] And so when you think about target market, and this is something again, like in my role, working with investment managers, And fund managers, we, we think about this a lot. It's like identifying who you serve. And there are a lot of people in this ecosystem that you serve. And so when you think about that, like, is it the actual end investor?
[00:11:50] Like, is it Stacey Havener and my, you know, LP investments? Is it the advisor to a bunch of Stacey Haveners? Like, [00:12:00] who's the actual target market here?
[00:12:01] Ryan Eisenman: Yes, it's really both. And that's part of the magic here as well. So we serve the end wealth holder and those that support them.
[00:12:08] Stacy Havener: Okay. I love that phrasing.
[00:12:11] Ryan Eisenman: Thank you. I'll use it again. Yes. So, and the reason behind that is. It's not just a single like Operational pain point or Stacy Haven or pain point or investment advisor pain point. If you actually want a single source of truth that allows you as Stacy to work with your advisor, work with your accountant, work with the trust in a state attorney and be able to work off of the same information.
[00:12:36] And collaborate effectively and all save time effectively. So sometimes it'll be Stacey or a single family office. That will be the one purchasing Arch. Often times it's a multi family office, an investment advisor, or a bank. That's procuring Arch on behalf of their clients. In some ways our smallest clients are our biggest clients biggest clients.
[00:12:56] Stacy Havener: Fascinating.
[00:12:57] Ryan Eisenman: Cause like The ultra net worth [00:13:00] investor or the family office is really important to the bank, which is why we've now established relationships with four of the top 20 investment banks, mostly because it's been client driven. Clients have brought this to the bank and said, Hey, how do I leverage this?
[00:13:13] And so that allows us to scale really efficiently with a small sales team. But we really think about solving the pain points of each of those different users. So that there's something for whoever's doing treasury, and whoever's doing tax, and whoever's doing reporting, and accounting, and making investment decisions.
[00:13:30] Whether that's a single person is doing all those roles, or it's a team of a hundred and those roles are split across different sub teams.
[00:13:38] Stacy Havener: Wow. Okay. I want to pause here because there's a lot I'd like to unpack. So knowing how like startup and building goes, I'm sure there have been evolutions along the way, sort of like what you envision building on day one, it evolves as it should.
[00:13:55] And that's what you need to do to survive and build the right product. So I [00:14:00] want to talk and I have to make notes to myself here. So I want to talk about that a little bit because my gut says. And maybe I'm wrong that when you started, you may have envisioned like the investment piece being more of the story and the narrative and the gem than the operational piece.
[00:14:19] And I wonder how that's involved. Like, do you now see yourself more like, are you investment agnostic? Because when you're talking, that's what I hear. And how did that evolution go? Talk about that. Just the whole piece of that.
[00:14:32] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah, absolutely. So we're asset class agnostic and we can support any alternative asset class to your point.
[00:14:39] We also, in order to get to investment decision making, this goes back to that initial pyramid around my Maslow's hierarchy. You really have to, in our, in our view of the world, start with the workflows. And so we're like this pragmatic workflow driven company. Which means that like anyone that invests in private markets can get value out of and leverage Arch.
[00:14:58] It doesn't necessarily need [00:15:00] to be in, you could like already be leveraging an Adapar, Solovus, a Kaiisa, a Burgess, like all these other tools. And we have something that no one else is doing today and that can like work as like a Switzerland of
[00:15:13] Stacy Havener: typing
[00:15:14] Ryan Eisenman: data and supporting operations with all these different tools.
[00:15:19] And so that allows us to really have this like nicely carved niche and invest really strongly in it and build our business in partnership with a lot of other firms so that we like we want to help you have really good data in your reporting system, have really good data in your accounting system. And then no longer need to log into these portals to pull down documents.
[00:15:40] Stacy Havener: Was that always the case? And maybe pun unintentionally intended there. Was that always the case? That you envisioned being operations and workflows first and investments second? agnostic? Like, was that the vision from the get? Or did you kind of start like some of the other platforms have started, which is like, [00:16:00] let's pull together all the investments and give people access?
[00:16:04] Ryan Eisenman: Yes. We've never been around making investments and having access to investments. So. Okay,
[00:16:10] Stacy Havener: good. Love it.
[00:16:11] Ryan Eisenman: Nowhere in the case in that capital world. And when I wrote the initial Apple note, I did think a lot about like tracking investments and decision making around investments, which is. When we actually went to start the company, we started fully in workflows and operations.
[00:16:28] The only thing we did for the first four to six months was collect K1s, follow up with investment managers for missing K1s, and then make them permissionable to the accountants, advisors, and investors.
[00:16:39] Stacy Havener: So exciting stuff.
[00:16:41] Ryan Eisenman: Super exciting stuff. And in a lot of ways, that's why we have a business is like, we have this, like, this desire and willingness to do these like really unsexy tasks and make them interesting.
[00:16:54] Or we're like, we're trying to make K1s sexy again, or for the first time ever.
[00:16:59] Stacy Havener: [00:17:00] You're trying to make K1s cool. Yes, totally. I love that. Are you an investment boutique looking to grow your business and need a little help? If you feel like you're fighting for the spotlight and well, still stuck in the shadows of the bigs, join us in the Boutique Investment Collective, Havener's new membership community dedicated to the specialist in the investment industry.
[00:17:23] In the collective, we'll guide you through the billion dollar blueprint we've used to help boutiques add over 30 billion in AUM. You'll refine your story, focus on your ideal target market and practice your pitch. You'll rethink your marketing materials, rewrite your emails, and refresh your differentiators.
[00:17:40] We'll even help you step up your LinkedIn game and give your profile a makeover. You want to grow your biz? We've got your back. Learn more about The Collective, the curriculum, and the amazing coaches who will help you on your journey. Visit havenercapital. com slash collective. High five! Hope to see you in a coaching session soon.[00:18:00]
[00:18:08] So that's really different, Ryan, because I think the market has always needed what you have built. But it wasn't like you said, it wasn't this sexy part of the value chain, like the investments and the access and, you know, all the stuff that the cases in the eye capital have successfully built. That was really where so much attention was going and K ones were like, who's going to build a business around that?
[00:18:37] That's not the cool part, but I love what you're doing because it's the part that needed. a company built around it and you are making them cool again. So let's go to what you said about the small sales team and this idea of collaboration not competition and how that's really helped you grow because I want to use the arch [00:19:00] story as a little bit of a case study here for other investment firms and service providers to learn from.
[00:19:07] So you said a couple things. One is that you have a small sales team. And I want to talk about how that evolved. So when you started, like, how were you doing sales? What worked well? How did you end up with these banks? I want to go all the way through how you, how your distribution evolved as well.
[00:19:23] Ryan Eisenman: Yes. The thing we've done from day one is just follow our customers, and follow our customers to new products, and follow our customers to the next customers we serve.
[00:19:32] Um, so we spent a lot of time with prospective customers and current customers on like, what should we be building and what does the market need, which is how we got from collecting K1s to collecting all your documents to digitizing all your documents to giving you a view of, Oh, here's my commitments and unfunded commitments across all my investments.
[00:19:50] Same thing from a sales perspective, really hard to, from day one, go to JPMorgan or Goldman Sachs and say, Hey, we're a three person company with a big dream. You should use our product. [00:20:00] Um, we did try to do that with a few, like larger multifamily offices and private banks. And one of them lovingly referred to us as like two guys in a garage.
[00:20:10] Um, it was like,
[00:20:11] Stacy Havener: yeah,
[00:20:12] Ryan Eisenman: it was fine. It's okay.
[00:20:13] Stacy Havener: Hey, that's how all the great companies start.
[00:20:15] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah. Well, we were three in an apartment, but, um, Basically the same thing. So we had to like start with the end client, which I think was also really valuable because then we spent a lot of time with the investor or the family office.
[00:20:29] The folks that were earlier on that early adopter cycle would give us a chance for like, yes, it is really painful to collect our a hundred K ones. You'll do this for us. Great. We'll sign up for Arch, and that allowed us to really understand what that end client needs. So now when we're selling to big banks and selling to multifamily offices and REAs, we understand both their end client and their pain as a firm really, really well.
[00:20:54] Which allows us to, like, bring this multi stakeholder approach to those clients. And then the other part of following our [00:21:00] clients to sales is by serving our clients really well, our clients will give us the greatest gift they can ever give us, which is a referral. And over half our clients have referred us to a new client.
[00:21:11] All of our top 25 clients have referred us to someone new. So we have this, like, really nice inherent virality. Of if we just do our job well and serve clients well, then they will naturally help us build our business.
[00:21:25] Stacy Havener: And who was doing the sales? Oh, first of all, can we just talk about, yeah, for a second, I love that you're like, we're actually not two guys in a garage, we're three guys in an apartment.
[00:21:33] That is just like such a classic line. You probably never said it, but I'm going to say it for you now because it's so good. So you were doing the sales and that's something, so founder led sales is something that's talked about a lot. In tech and sass and other industries, but when you get to the investment space, like if you're a boutique founder and you're a portfolio manager, you're like, I'm sorry, what?
[00:21:57] And some of them rightly so like sales [00:22:00] is not their jam. It's not comfortable with them. So talk about that. Like, how did you decide? I mean, necessity obviously is part of it. You have a small team, but what was that like? And do you think that was an advantage? Because I definitely think it was.
[00:22:15] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah. So I did all of our sales until we did a little over a million in annual revenue.
[00:22:19] And then we brought on our first salesperson. It took a while to start to like get that flywheel moving. And it was about three years until maybe we didn't have to bring that buzzword back product market fit, but we had like a strong enough concept market fit that people would start to repeatedly buy from us.
[00:22:36] Um, and so that was like late 2020 and, uh, or beginning of 2021. Uh, and that's when we raised our first like real institutional round of capital, which was 5 firm called craft ventures. But to your point, being really ingrained in the sales process, talking to thousands of customers and being like, Hey, would you buy this?
[00:22:56] We do buy this K1 collection tool and we'll follow up for your missing K1s. Is [00:23:00] that interesting? And people are like, yes, but like, do you have a sock on it? Yes. But what's onboarding like, and is this painful enough? And what about these other documents that we also need to collect? And so in each of those conversations, if we got a client, we got a client and we learned something.
[00:23:16] We didn't get a client. We almost learned even more. Uh, and that's how we like shaped. Okay. Like we need to build this next thing. And we're continually thinking about these statements of like, okay, well, if we did this, would that be enough for you to buy arch and would you pay X for it? So constant experimentation, constant testing allowed us to really understand our clients, what they needed.
[00:23:37] And to prioritize features, it's like, okay, well, the next most important thing isn't digitizing the KY. Maybe that's interesting in the future, but that's like a whole can of worms. Next most important thing is, like, you need to know when you get a capital call. You need an email notification for it so you don't miss your capital calls.
[00:23:53] And like, that will allow you to buy Arch. So it's continually following our clients, figuring out what they need to buy, [00:24:00] and kind of increasing the value of Arch as a platform.
[00:24:04] Stacy Havener: Did the bell just ring?
[00:24:05] Ryan Eisenman: That'll just ring in our background. Um, what
[00:24:08] Stacy Havener: does that mean?
[00:24:10] Ryan Eisenman: Uh, we had two large clients sign yesterday So we have the sales team ringing the bell
[00:24:21] Stacy Havener: we have a bell to See old school is the new school Okay, sorry.
[00:24:26] That was so awesome. Like you can't make that up, but that just happened.
[00:24:30] Ryan Eisenman: And this office, which we just moved into came with a bell and it's like, yeah, it was perfect. We didn't even have to install it.
[00:24:37] Stacy Havener: Oh my gosh. I love it. Even better. Definitely the right space for you. Okay. So when you, I want to stay on this, cause this is big, Ryan, this is really big.
[00:24:45] Like we're going to sales school right now for so many founders and fund managers here and people in the service space too. So you got this biz. The three of you you say I will do the sales What do you [00:25:00] do? Like, what are you doing? Now you've got this, and you've got this investor who is essentially a client, and that's big too.
[00:25:07] I'm assuming that that seed investor client made some introductions for you. Like, how did you start calling? Like, did you just pick up the phone and start calling people?
[00:25:17] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah, we, we kind of did a little bit of everything and we were really lucky that we had these two clients from day one so we can work with them, really understand their pain points, build for them, and then when we went to the next client, it's like, Oh, look what we've done for people that are similar to you.
[00:25:31] Is this interesting to you? And we had like a few early conversations where we were talking to some larger family offices and they're like. You really understand us like this is painful for us. And what we found is in talking to a family office, if they invest in alternative investments, they have this pain point.
[00:25:49] And if the person we're talking to doesn't know about the pain point, then they're not necessarily involved in the work. So just finding the right person. But as we continue to build more features and more scope, then there is something for the [00:26:00] investment decision maker for like the investor, for the family member, for the tax person, for the opposite person.
[00:26:07] And so a lot of just the early process was lots and lots of phone calls, going to different conferences, different meetups, like asking people for introductions. And then kind of finding who are the right people to sell to. Um, and I'm, I'm certainly not a classically trained salesperson. Like we have many, many people on our team who are much better at sales than I am.
[00:26:28] But it's kind of just like, I think from my perspective, sales is just really understanding a customer and the problems that they have, and then being able to ask the right questions to Uncover their pain and say, okay, based on this thing, here's how we can help exactly that. And then when you, there's kind of this magic that, that comes in a conversation when someone describes something that's painful, and then you can show them like how closely you are listening.
[00:26:56] And also like how close you've been listening to every person that was like them in the [00:27:00] past to say, well, like we built this tool exactly for that pain. And that's, I think, when, when you like really unlock magic in a sales conversation.
[00:27:09] Stacy Havener: That is magic right there. And Ryan, I mean, I'm not a classically trained salesperson either.
[00:27:14] And you know what? I think that's actually part of our secret sauce or our superpower because we don't really know what we're supposed to do in sales. And so we don't do that. And it's that freshness and that approach that you just described in the conversation that I think really is endearing for somebody sitting across from you.
[00:27:37] It's like, they don't feel like you're selling them. And I'm not going to say they feel like you're helping them because that feels sort of like cliche and whatever, but, but you are, you're listening to them and you're asking questions. And that's actually where the magic is. I love that. So one last question on the sales piece.
[00:27:55] So now you've got people ringing the bell in the back. How many salespeople do you [00:28:00] have now?
[00:28:00] Ryan Eisenman: Uh, now we have seven and ahead of sales.
[00:28:03] Stacy Havener: Okay, amazing.
[00:28:04] Ryan Eisenman: Three months ago, four months ago, we were three people.
[00:28:07] Stacy Havener: Wow. Three salespeople and now you're seven. Yeah, three,
[00:28:10] Ryan Eisenman: three salespeople. Yeah. Okay.
[00:28:11] Stacy Havener: So you were three salespeople, now you're seven.
[00:28:13] And so along the way, what's your role been? Do you still come into a sales conversation? Like, is there still a place for the founder? How has that evolved for you?
[00:28:23] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah, I spent a lot of time with some of our more strategic clients and especially like clients at later stages in their sales process. I love working with clients and so it's something that I love being involved with and just like coming in with a Curious eye at the end of a conversation to be like, okay like one What will get you to use arch to what will get you to in six months or 12 months, say this was really successful.
[00:28:47] And then in like three or five or 10 years, where do you want us to be?
[00:28:51] Stacy Havener: And like, how do
[00:28:52] Ryan Eisenman: you want us to continue to power your business? And I think it's also just like, sometimes people want to know. Okay, what is the [00:29:00] intention of your company? Like, why are you here? And like, a lot of the why I think is really important because it governs decisions.
[00:29:07] We ideally want to be here in 20, 30, 40 years building a BlackRock, Bloomberg style generational company that can continue to solve the most pressing problems for our clients at the time. Like, hopefully in 10, 20 years, the core workflow problems around alternatives will have been solved. And maybe that will even be commoditized.
[00:29:29] But the reason why we want to be successful is the more clients we bring on, the more revenue we're able to generate, the more features and functionality we can build for the industry and the bigger impact we can have. And so I think it's like, if we're the one to be successful in this market, I think we will really safeguard our clients in a way and advocate for our clients.
[00:29:49] And I think there's a version of the world where we could become one of the most trusted brands for our clients and helping them steward their own financial interests. And being able to rely on us to give them [00:30:00] good data and good perspective and connect them to other people that they need to know and kind of think about this as like a really long term endeavor.
[00:30:07] And so sometimes just like speaking a little bit to that at the end of a customer conversation allows someone to get to have confidence that like. We're not going to be bought in six months or here for the long haul. And we want to continue to evolve, to meet their needs. And we typically under promise and over deliver.
[00:30:25] I'd say on average, clients are more satisfied after buying Arch with their experience. So maybe we should be a little bit better at sales of kind of articulating some of those things. But, um, we'll, we'll take this dynamic for now.
[00:30:37] Stacy Havener: Yeah, I think this is a vibe that is refreshing. It really, really is. I'm curious how, you know, the idea that you could be, you know, sort of sold or bought, you know, if you could be acquired in six months, is that a concern for people?
[00:30:51] I had not thought about that, but I get why people might be nervous about that with you. Talk about it.
[00:30:57] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah, um, people are nervous about this because this has happened [00:31:00] to them in the past.
[00:31:00] Stacy Havener: Yeah. And
[00:31:01] Ryan Eisenman: so it's like every term in a contract that people are outlining is something that like, you know, They've probably heard about or are concerned about.
[00:31:09] And so it's like, okay, well, I use this company and it was great. And then they were bought by XYZ and then the service went down and they, they stopped caring about that company and about that, that client base. And so that's something we don't want to deliver to these people that have put their faith and our trust in us and rely on us to support an important part of.
[00:31:33] Their workflows and of their businesses and other lives. And so I think it's, it's really important for us to give people that just like, here's what we're in to do. And like, we're really thinking about this long term and we want to be there with you in 10, 20 years and certainly evolve a lot over that time period, but still be focused on the same kind of industry in same areas.
[00:31:54] Stacy Havener: I love that. That's a great brand promise in some ways, especially kind of in the [00:32:00] tech, SAS, vibe we were in for the last few years where there was so much happening and so much cash sloshing around and so many people getting acquired. I think there's a hangover for a lot of people who rely on tech. And gosh, that was just a really great brand promise.
[00:32:17] conversation you had right there. So thank you for the sales stuff. I love when you riff because you pick up on things that you didn't think you'd talk about. And I, that was a great lesson. I want to stay with the idea of lessons because another thing I encourage clients to do, and it's not easy, is share some of the messy middle.
[00:32:39] On the outside, especially now in the age of social media and all the things that like everything is, you know, edited and rainbows and unicorns, but we know as founders that that's not true. Like the journey is hard and there are hard parts and there are lessons we learn. And so when I say that, like, Talk about [00:33:00] that for you.
[00:33:00] Like, what do you think your messy middle was?
[00:33:03] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah, probably some of it was middle of COVID. We had a few clients that were so close to signing. And we were like, basically chasing them for a signature. And we were like, we can't focus on this right now because the market is falling like 5 percent a day.
[00:33:21] And our clients have all these other needs. And we need to figure out like, How to address those and we felt like, okay, we're like almost on the cusp of onboarding some larger investment advisors and like really starting to bring in real revenue and, and kind of create traction. And then we went for a pitch with a like.
[00:33:40] Really large investment advisor, one that we'd been talking to since day one. And we revamped all our sales materials. We built a few new dashboards and things into the platform. We even talked about like, okay, let's get a stock audit. So we got our stock audit in the summer of 2020. Uh, cause we realized that that was important to sell to this client base.
[00:33:58] And then [00:34:00] they ultimately were like, no, we don't feel comfortable buying from a four person company. And so it has like, is this chicken or an egg problem? It's like,
[00:34:08] Stacy Havener: Yes.
[00:34:09] Ryan Eisenman: We shouldn't hire more people until we have like the business to support it, but we can't get the business when we have four people
[00:34:18] Stacy Havener: and you're
[00:34:19] Ryan Eisenman: thinking like, okay, like, do we need to like employ our mothers collectively so that, um, so that we can boost our numbers.
[00:34:29] Do what, how do we do this? Like, how do we get to a higher number of employees?
[00:34:33] Stacy Havener: Yeah.
[00:34:33] Ryan Eisenman: So it just took, it took a bit of persistence. We just kind of slowly started working. We hired our fifth person, brought in some smaller firms over 2022 or 2021. When we raised our seed round, went from five to eight people that year.
[00:34:47] The next year went from eight to about 22. They went to 60 over 2023 and just passed, uh, 100 people. I think today, actually. Oh, congratulations.
[00:34:57] Stacy Havener: Cause I, in your LinkedIn post where you talked about [00:35:00] moving, I think it said 90 people. Yep. That's fantastic. That wow.
[00:35:07] Okay. It's the hockey stick, isn't it? It's not just like hockey stick, uh, J curve returns in the investment, but as a founder, like so many things J curve. So when you think about that messy middle, What was actually the thing that you actually did to solve it was you refocused your target market. It sounds like you were like, even though we want that really big client that we talked to on day one, and we're so close to getting them, it's just not right yet for them.
[00:35:36] Like you still had to get more revenue from the right fit client. That was going to be okay with a five person team.
[00:35:43] Ryan Eisenman: Yes. And sometimes it's really helpful to go after that aspirational large client because we're like, okay, what do we need to do to be ready for them? And then in doing that, we just became a lot better at selling, had better materials, had a more compelling product, had a sock on it that a lot of other people cared about as well.[00:36:00]
[00:36:00] And then eventually that client came around, we onboarded them in Q1 of this year.
[00:36:05] Stacy Havener: You did?
[00:36:06] Ryan Eisenman: We did. Yeah.
[00:36:06] Stacy Havener: That was going to be my question. Congrats. That must have been huge.
[00:36:11] Ryan Eisenman: It was huge. It was a fun one. Um, I wasn't the one to sell it. We'd pass it on to a real professional salesperson at that point. Um, but it was a fun one to, to bring on board, um, in the culmination of a long, um, history of getting to know each other.
[00:36:25] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Isn't that true too, though? Are you surprised by how long it took?
[00:36:30] Ryan Eisenman: I think so in a lot of ways, like when you first start, you're like, okay, this is going to be easy. We'll be at a million in revenue by the end of the year. Um, so I think the beginning was a lot slower, but to your point around J curves and compounding.
[00:36:46] Like, I think probably when we started the company, I don't think we thought we'd be here.
[00:36:50] Stacy Havener: And
[00:36:51] Ryan Eisenman: so now I think we're able to do a lot more. It's like, you think you'll accomplish more in a day than you actually do, but then in a year you're able to accomplish significantly more [00:37:00] than you actually thought you did or could by just like each day pushing the ball forward 1%.
[00:37:05] And then that all compounds on top of each other.
[00:37:07] Stacy Havener: It's so true. I have a business coach who always reminds us to measure backwards because I think with entrepreneurs, you know, we're always like, we get to the goal and then we move the goalpost. Right. Cause we want to keep growing. And so it's easy to lose sight of how far we've come in any given time.
[00:37:27] And so like measuring backwards, like if you sat here today, so what is it? September 4th, 2024. And you even thought back to September 4th, 2023, it would probably be a lot different.
[00:37:38] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah. We were a fundamentally different company then we were 40 something people, uh, a year ago. Right. Yeah. And had a fraction of the business that we have today and hadn't signed a seven figure deal yet had like significantly less traction with major banks.
[00:37:54] We didn't have nearly as much word of mouth. There were just like so many things that were different and we hadn't produced the world's first K [00:38:00] one cookie, which we sent to our clients for tax day. Um, so tell
[00:38:03] Stacy Havener: me more about what is this?
[00:38:06] Ryan Eisenman: Um, so we really lean into the K1 as a company because it's kind of this like hated process that we're trying to make cool, of course.
[00:38:15] So for tax day last year, or this past April, we sent over 200 K1 cookies. Uh, they were created by this like great bakery called funny face bakery in lower Manhattan to our clients and CPAs and prospects with some chocolate chip cookies as well. And just kind of with like a note of. Like, have a sweet tax day.
[00:38:35] Stacy Havener: Oh my gosh.
[00:38:37] Ryan Eisenman: Just do things a little bit differently.
[00:38:38] Stacy Havener: I love that. Is the K1 cookie an actual cookie or just a concept, like a box of cookies?
[00:38:44] Ryan Eisenman: Actual cookie. It's an edible K1.
[00:38:46] Stacy Havener: Stop it right now.
[00:38:47] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah, we'll add you to the list for next year.
[00:38:49] Stacy Havener: Oh my gosh. Is there a picture somewhere that I can see?
[00:38:52] Ryan Eisenman: Yes, I will, I'll send you a picture.
[00:38:54] Oh my
[00:38:55] Stacy Havener: gosh. Okay, that's amazing. So like here's something else that I think people [00:39:00] need to really hear Ryan saying. It is okay to have fun, to laugh, to do cool quirky eccentric things like send a K1 cookie. Don't you think that adds something, Ryan? Like if you just walked around as some suit who came off of Wall Street, who, you know, wanted to solve the K 1s and you basically were like a walking, you know, briefcase, it wouldn't be the same.
[00:39:32] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah. I mean, we're, we're just like in it for more. Yeah. We want to create a great experience for our clients and have a lot of fun while we're doing it so that like. This is an enjoyable journey for us and our employees and our clients for the next 20 to 30 years. And I think it's like, it's a lot more of a mission than it is just like, show up, sell some software, go home.
[00:39:54] Uh, which, which justifies and like makes the late nights, uh, worth it.
[00:39:59] Stacy Havener: [00:40:00] Um, also I have to say this because you just made me think of death of a salesman, but I have to say this because it was such a cool phrase. Death by a thousand paper cuts. If you have not used that in your marketing, you need to write that down because that is so good, especially because how is the typical K one still deliver?
[00:40:20] I mean, I guess they email it now, but like, it's like a ream of paper,
[00:40:24] Ryan Eisenman: a ream of paper
[00:40:25] Stacy Havener: death by a thousand.
[00:40:27] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah, it's terrible, terrible.
[00:40:29] Stacy Havener: Make it better. It's so terrible. I mean, that's fantastic. Okay. Has anything else really surprised you? It could be positive or negative. And if, and if it's no, if we've covered them, don't like force it.
[00:40:40] But I just like, when you think back, what about the process of raising money? How was that?
[00:40:47] Ryan Eisenman: That was really fun for us, especially when we did our seed round in 2021. We were kind of at this point where we were just starting to sell software continually. And then all of a sudden we were getting all these introductions to investors [00:41:00] because we're raising capital and what our clients want to do, they like, they invest in things.
[00:41:05] And so. We, I probably had like two or three hundred conversations for our seed round and we ended up with a hundred people investing.
[00:41:12] Stacy Havener: That's amazing. Huge
[00:41:13] Ryan Eisenman: number. The lead, we were going to raise 2 million and we basically had like the whole 2 million spoken for. And then we were introduced to this firm called craft ventures.
[00:41:24] It's David Sachs and Jeff Fleur are the two main partners over there. Um, Jeff, who's the guy we work with, found a StubHub and he saw the vision of ARCH, he was like, this is really painful for me personally, immediately started using the platform, liked his experience, it was like, hey, would you consider actually taking more capital than you're planning to raise because we want to invest in the company and like we want to own a little bit more of the company.
[00:41:47] So we changed from two to 5 million, but we wanted to give one, our clients who had stood by us from early days, a chance to invest, and then bring on like really helpful angel investors and folks in the industry. [00:42:00] So then we ended up adding around 90 or a hundred people to the cap table in that round.
[00:42:04] And our series a was a little bit crazier. We ended up getting a preemptive offer. From first, like a multifamily office, a group of investors, and then from a venture firm. And so then it forced a really fast process. We didn't have a deck though. We weren't really ready to go pitch, but all of a sudden we were out there pitching firms, finding our next partner, and ended up with Menlo Ventures as our lead there, uh, along with like Citibank, their venture firm came in.
[00:42:31] A few other people in the industry. It was it was a great outcome all around.
[00:42:35] Stacy Havener: So that sounds surprising I mean that is in a positive like a positive surprise, um to stay with the investment lingo. I mean crazy Crazy, that must have been just such a an awesome experience. The other thing I love about that story.
[00:42:50] You just told ryan is when you think about your Clients investors, however, you want to whatever part of your um You [00:43:00] ecosystem for your company that you're thinking about. There's so much strategy to it. It's not just the money, right? It's not just the money. And I think, especially for fund managers, they're like every month, every dollar's green.
[00:43:14] I'm applicable. Like I'm for every investor and every investor is for me. And especially in the early days, isn't there so much thought around like, not just the dollars, but. The synergies, the, the culture fit, the, the, I think you mentioned like getting some helpful angels that could really, you know, be additive to what you're building.
[00:43:37] It's so much more than the money.
[00:43:39] Ryan Eisenman: It's thinking about like who can give us great strategic advice, how do we surround ourselves with people that are smarter than us, who are the investors that want to build something like really big long term. And aren't just in for a quick flip. And so it's like that cultural alignment and then kind of building our informal board of advisors, um, through people that have built FinTech companies, [00:44:00] built banks, built lots of things, which allow us to send emails to folks like Gary Cohn and, you know, And Mark Spilker and say like, Hey, like, how would you approach this?
[00:44:08] And do you have advice on that? And that's super valuable for us as a company,
[00:44:14] Stacy Havener: not being afraid to ask questions, like ask for help and ask for advice. And you know what? People love to help. Don't you find that? Like, what's that saying? Like ask for help, get money. Ask for money, you get help, right? Like
[00:44:29] Ryan Eisenman: we love that phrase.
[00:44:31] Stacy Havener: Yeah, it's so true. Oh, gosh. What an awesome conversation, Ryan. I want to end with some fun ones. It's inspired by Inside the Actor's Studio, which you will not remember because you're not old enough to remember, but James Lipton was this great character and he was a great, uh, persona. He was a professor. He would interview actors and ask them all kinds of questions, and one of the series of questions he would ask were inspired by Proust's questionnaire.
[00:44:56] So I like to do a little bit of this. It just helps us get to know you even more. [00:45:00] I'm going to start with hopefully an easy one. What book inspires you?
[00:45:05] Ryan Eisenman: Uh, I love the book Thinking Fast and Slow.
[00:45:07] Stacy Havener: Oh! Um,
[00:45:08] Ryan Eisenman: by Daniel Kahneman.
[00:45:09] Stacy Havener: Yes!
[00:45:10] Ryan Eisenman: I think it's like one of the most informative books I've read and kind of teaches you that there's like always more to learn about people and how people interact and I think it's a great read for everyone.
[00:45:21] Stacy Havener: It is a great read. Have you read, um, Uh, The Undoing Project?
[00:45:26] Ryan Eisenman: I haven't, but I've heard it's great.
[00:45:28] Stacy Havener: Yes, because it's about condiment, I believe, isn't it?
[00:45:31] Ryan Eisenman: Yes.
[00:45:32] Stacy Havener: I have a, I'm going to send you a copy. I have, looking at three, that was my book of the year one year. And I'm going to send you one.
[00:45:37] Ryan Eisenman: Can't wait to read it.
[00:45:38] Thank you.
[00:45:39] Stacy Havener: Okay. Fantastic. Thinking Fast and Slow, not an easy read. Not a beach read. Not a beach read, but you will be better for reading it. So so do it. Okay, so we're switching from books to places What place inspires you like what's your happy place?
[00:45:56] Ryan Eisenman: I love colorado. I think it's an incredible state [00:46:00] And because live in new york city not a ton of greenery here.
[00:46:03] You have central park and a few small parks But find a lot of inspiration in mountains hiking biking I think nature is pretty special. Are
[00:46:11] Stacy Havener: you are you like an adventure junkie like? When you say like cycling and biking, is this like you're going very fast down very steep terrain?
[00:46:19] Ryan Eisenman: Less the steep downhill.
[00:46:21] Like I love the painful uphills. Um, get a lot of satisfaction.
[00:46:25] Stacy Havener: Oh, how interesting. That's.
[00:46:27] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah.
[00:46:27] Stacy Havener: All right. I love it. Thanks for adding that. See, we're learning about Ryan here. Okay. This is my favorite one. You're going to give an inspirational talk about entrepreneurship in a stadium. Maybe it's Mile High Stadium.
[00:46:41] Maybe you're in Colorado. You're going to, you're walking out. You're going to take the stage to give this talk. It's going to be awesome. Thousands of fans. What song do they play for your walkout anthem?
[00:46:53] Ryan Eisenman: Great question.
[00:46:54] Stacy Havener: You gotta tell us the truth Don't think about what would be a good like you gotta say if it's [00:47:00] listen, I'm love 90s rap So like mine would be full of swears and I don't know how I'd deal with that But you gotta give us like the goods the real one Ryan.
[00:47:09] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah, it'd probably be some kind of like new disco rendition, like new rendition of a disco song, like something Purple Disco Machine.
[00:47:21] Stacy Havener: This is amazing. I love it. That, and you dance. You wouldn't walk out. You would dance out.
[00:47:27] Ryan Eisenman: Yeah. Walk, moonwalk, something like that.
[00:47:30] Stacy Havener: So good. The moonwalk. We're bringing it back. Okay. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
[00:47:39] Ryan Eisenman: Would love to, like, I think being like a chef or a cook would be really interesting, kind of similar idea around just like really understanding what diners are looking for,
[00:47:49] Stacy Havener: uh,
[00:47:49] Ryan Eisenman: connecting to nature and the seasons, like what's fresh, what are you cooking, new challenges around, like how do you incorporate certain ingredients into your food, and then that continual feedback cycle of like, [00:48:00] your own cooking.
[00:48:01] Um, impression of the food and then seeing kind of other people experience it, I think would be, uh, very interesting.
[00:48:07] Stacy Havener: So do you cook now? Like, is that one of your hobbies?
[00:48:10] Ryan Eisenman: Not often, but when I do, it's usually for like a dozen or so people, so like, hosting a dinner party and love it. Just don't, don't carve out a lot of time in current schedule.
[00:48:19] Stacy Havener: Also not easy to do, by the way. Like, easy to cook dinner for like, You know, two to four, not easy to cook dinner for 12. So, I mean, when you're doing it, you're actually doing something very challenging.
[00:48:29] Ryan Eisenman: To make some more fun. I like a challenge.
[00:48:31] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you like to ride bikes uphill, so we know that about you now.
[00:48:36] Okay. Flip side of that. What profession would you not like to do?
[00:48:40] Ryan Eisenman: I have a lot of admiration for teachers and I think they're like really incredible at doing what they do. Uh, I don't think I'd be that well suited to it. So it like makes me appreciate like the great teachers in my life that much more. Um, cause I think it requires just like a [00:49:00] huge amount of patience and a huge amount of like love for students and love for subjects.
[00:49:04] And so continually in awe of folks that take those jobs.
[00:49:09] Stacy Havener: Oh, me too. Me too. And it's first day of school here. I just put my daughter on the bus and my seven year old daughter just rode the bus for the first time. And that's so exciting. Yeah, I'm going to try not to start bawling. Yeah. Okay, so, last question, and this is a long time away, by the way, because we know you're building a legacy company, a multi generational company.
[00:49:31] But what do you want people to say about you after you've retired or left the industry?
[00:49:38] Ryan Eisenman: Probably that they just constantly, Evolved and iterated that we were, we like continually evolved and also like we're continually like extremely customer centric and so like hopefully it's just the stories and not even about like us as founders, but about like their interactions with members of the team and how our team really cared about them and how.
[00:49:59] The support team [00:50:00] solved their problems and the onboarding team got them started really quickly. And the sales team really dove in and understood what they needed and articulated it well. And our product team continued to build the next things that the industry needs. And so kind of having that reflection of like team just really understanding the market and what the market needs and creating great client outcomes.
[00:50:20] Stacy Havener: I love the evolution thing. And I bet your clients say that now, by the way.
[00:50:24] Ryan Eisenman: Uh, they
[00:50:25] Stacy Havener: I bet when your clients refer you, they say something like what you just said.
[00:50:30] Ryan Eisenman: Often times they do. We get really high marks on our client support team, um, in particular. If you like, send us a message through our in app chat, you get a message back in less than a minute, typically.
[00:50:40] And so sometimes when clients are doing reference calls, they'll call that out. They'll be like, Hey, consider, like, if everything else was, was equal, like why choose our, just the team, because the team cares. And it's like, that why drives every decision and kind of drives the way that we work and the way that we operate, um, and is really highly ingrained in, in our culture.[00:51:00]
[00:51:00] Stacy Havener: So it's cool because what you want people to say about you when you leave the industry, they're saying about you while you're in it. I don't know if there's a better mic drop moment than that, my friend. That is pretty awesome.
[00:51:11] Ryan Eisenman: Thank you. This
[00:51:12] Stacy Havener: has been a great conversation, Ryan. Thank you so much for being here and sharing so much of your story with us.
[00:51:18] Not just about what you're building, but the actual journey of entrepreneurship. Pretty special. I'm cheering for you.
[00:51:25] Ryan Eisenman: Thank you. Ton of fun. Thank you, Stacy.
[00:51:26] Stacy Havener: Okay.
[00:51:27] Ryan Eisenman: Love spending time with you.
[00:51:29] Stacy Havener: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
[00:51:35] The information is not an offer, solicitation, or recommendation of any of the funds, services, or products or to adopt any investment strategy. Investment values may fluctuate and past performance is not a guide to future performance. All opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm.
[00:51:54] Manager's appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacey Havener or [00:52:00] Havener Capital Partners.
You May Also Like
Resources
