Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. You're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Our next guest in the software space Sue Kinder Syncassidy,
Speaker 1: CEO of the cloud based accounting software maker Zero Trades
Speaker 1: in Australia. So Kinder, welcome back. It's it's nice to
Speaker 1: have you back on here. We want to start with
Speaker 1: everything that's been going on over the past few days.
Speaker 1: The concern that was really sparked by Anthropics Claude coming
Speaker 1: out with this tool that allowed legal analysis that for
Speaker 1: a long time was really the remit of specialized companies
Speaker 1: and it got this conversation started. Hey, some of these
Speaker 1: SaaS companies are really at risk. Some say because of
Speaker 1: what AI and AI tech can do, is your business
Speaker 1: at risk?
Speaker 2: We think for us, AI is a net TAM expander,
Speaker 2: including the tools offered by many of the power power ms.
Speaker 2: Now the question is why, I think when you think
Speaker 2: about companies like Zero, we are the system of record.
Speaker 2: We are the collector of data for the SMBs who
Speaker 2: work with us. So it is not just about the software,
Speaker 2: it is about the data you provide. It is about
Speaker 2: your domain expertise in your vertical It is about your
Speaker 2: ability to take the power of these tools and translate
Speaker 2: them for your customer, and your customer needs that. And
Speaker 2: of course it's about the trust privacy kind of layer
Speaker 2: that I would say the ninety nine percent of SMBs
Speaker 2: in the world who are not builders of technology will
Speaker 2: look to companies like zero to make accessible to them.
Speaker 2: So we see an opportunity for TAM expansion in our markets.
Speaker 3: And when you say TAM expansion, you're talking about total
Speaker 3: addressable market, and when you talk about SMBs, you're talking
Speaker 3: about those small and medium sized businesses which you guys
Speaker 3: cater to.
Speaker 2: Please go ahead, Yes, sorry, I sorry for the acronyms.
Speaker 2: And to your point, I think we see all of
Speaker 2: these powerful tools, including from the horizontal players technology we
Speaker 2: need to take advantage of, as well as building proprietary
Speaker 2: technology in order to make it understandable for the ninety
Speaker 2: nine percent of SMBs who don't go to work in
Speaker 2: the morning thinking I Am going to build text software.
Speaker 2: They're thinking about their business.
Speaker 3: To be fair, I mean everybody that we talk about
Speaker 3: with this impact that we've seen on some of these
Speaker 3: SaaS companies, the software as the service companies, And we've
Speaker 3: talked with our own mandeep Seing of our Bloomberg Intelligence team,
Speaker 3: who says software is not dead, Like, you know, let's
Speaker 3: have some perspective at the same time in terms of
Speaker 3: the AI spend build an impact. In particular, we're early
Speaker 3: on in this game and this change and this disruption.
Speaker 3: So is it fair to say that there is going
Speaker 3: to be some disruption that maybe some of what you
Speaker 3: do may be replaced by AI or some of these
Speaker 3: AI chat programs if you will.
Speaker 2: You know, I think I would. I would say it differently.
Speaker 2: I think that AI technology is something we zero also
Speaker 2: take advantage of. So we're you know, building our vertical
Speaker 2: domain LMS on top of the powerful technologies coming out
Speaker 2: today because what our customer needs. Again, I'm going to
Speaker 2: come back to we're financial operations backbone for small businesses
Speaker 2: who ninety nine percent of the day don't wake up
Speaker 2: think about technology or quite frankly, financial operations. They want
Speaker 2: to spend the majority of their time think about their
Speaker 2: business and for them, we need to be a forced multiplier.
Speaker 2: So think of us as a translation layer for that
Speaker 2: small business, taking advantage of both proprietary data and the
Speaker 2: power of these horizontal technologies.
Speaker 1: So Zero stock slid close to sixteen percent in Wednesday's
Speaker 1: session in Australia, bounce back a little bit today up
Speaker 1: one point six percent. Yesterday's sell off as an overconcern,
Speaker 1: was that overdone?
Speaker 2: You know? I think that the market right now is
Speaker 2: not distinguishing between the many types of software companies in
Speaker 2: the position they play with their customers. So I do
Speaker 2: think that the broad sell off does not really distinguish
Speaker 2: between the value propositions of different software companies. So for us,
Speaker 2: I mean, we did an investor briefing on Monday about
Speaker 2: how excited we are about using AI technology and being
Speaker 2: the layer that brings that to our customers with a
Speaker 2: domain specific use case that can be multiplied. We think
Speaker 2: with the use of this technology.
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting and there was I think it
Speaker 3: is Financial Review where you gave an interview and they
Speaker 3: did a story on you guys just this week, and
Speaker 3: in a presentation to investors, you were cited as saying
Speaker 3: that you used anthropics, clode coding claud excuse me coding
Speaker 3: tools to try to clone Zero. Tell us about that,
Speaker 3: tell us about investor reaction and what are the questions
Speaker 3: you are getting from investors.
Speaker 2: Sure, So, first of all, I mean I use all
Speaker 2: the tools. I think if you're a CEO in today's age,
Speaker 2: you know, use the tools, understand the power and the
Speaker 2: limitations of the tools today and how they're going to
Speaker 2: get more powerful. So when I used it, it was
Speaker 2: very easy to build a simple reconciliation. When I tried
Speaker 2: to do have multiple agents, they prompted me to go
Speaker 2: build much of the technology Zero has. A good example
Speaker 2: would be, Hey, it's great that you gave me your
Speaker 2: bank statement, but I need you to be able to
Speaker 2: plug in multiple bank feeds. Well, of course that's the
Speaker 2: data layer I'm talking about at Zero. So I like
Speaker 2: using these tools because I think my job, our job
Speaker 2: is to understand the power of this technology and harness
Speaker 2: it and not be afraid of it. Now, in terms
Speaker 2: of other questions, investors are asking us, look, we have
Speaker 2: had and continue to enjoy I think strong long term
Speaker 2: shareholder shareholders in Zero. I think when we gave the
Speaker 2: investor briefing on Monday, I think they were excited to
Speaker 2: hear us talk about our differentiators and excited to hear
Speaker 2: us quite frankly talk about AI adoption on our own platform.
Speaker 2: We use multiple lms behind Zero's own AI technology, we
Speaker 2: call it jacks, and we share with them the early
Speaker 2: adoption figures on Zero. Three hundred thousand of our customers
Speaker 2: are already using ai JENAI features we launched within the
Speaker 2: last year, and of course over the last twenty years
Speaker 2: we've used traditional AI and have well over two million
Speaker 2: customers using traditional AI at Zero. Again, all you know,
Speaker 2: all harnessing the powerful technologies being built, you know, and
Speaker 2: so I think this is again very critical in understanding
Speaker 2: our position in the market.
Speaker 1: So kinder, just in the last thirty seconds that we
Speaker 1: have with you, one of the reasons we like speaking
Speaker 1: with you is because you have these small and medium
Speaker 1: sized businesses all over as clients. What can you tell
Speaker 1: us just about the current health of their businesses and
Speaker 1: different areas of strength geographically in this economy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, Look, I would say small businesses are sharing,
Speaker 2: are showing durability in this economy. I'd say in the
Speaker 2: southern hemisphere where Zero was originated, Australia and New Zealand.
Speaker 2: You know, the last over the last year, our own
Speaker 2: data shows some final real time return to growth in
Speaker 2: the US. You know you've a remarkably durable SNBAS. You know,
Speaker 2: despite tariffs, despite uncertainty, the optimism index by the NFIB
Speaker 2: remains at close to all time highs, so we would
Speaker 2: see we see durability in in the UK where we operate.
Speaker 2: You know, small businesses continue to need UH and get
Speaker 2: a lot of support from the government on issue. H
Speaker 2: m HM