The VIP of SMB with BILL

Jerrid Grimm (01:40.495)

Well, I’m super excited. We have Matt Robinson from Bill.com on the show today. Matt, first off, having Bill.com, a four letter.com is a flex on its own, I think. I mean, I’ve tried to buy domain names for different ideas that I’ve had and I don’t think any of those exist anymore. So I guess, I guess my first question is how did this company get founded and how early on?

I don’t know if you know this, but how early on did they get the bill.com domain?

Matt Robinson (02:11.308)

man, I don’t know how long that’s been the domain. think we started as Cash View, which is kind of a weird little bit of trivia. And every now and then we still see like Cash View emails internally. It’s quite hilarious, but it’s been a thing. Our story, shoot, we started, it’s been a minute now, officially in 2008, but Renee Lassert, our founder and CEO, grew up in a family of entrepreneurs and bookkeepers. So he saw firsthand,

Jerrid Grimm (02:16.635)

Hmm.

Jerrid Grimm (02:22.864)

Yeah.

Matt Robinson (02:41.154)

how tedious and time consuming it can be to manage a business’s finances. And the vast majority of business owners aren’t good at it, frankly, and may not have a ton of time for it. So he wanted to help address that pain point and launched Bill under a different name, obviously, in 2008. And the whole goal at that time was simply to help businesses manage the way that they pay their invoices and just simplify that process.

It’s and it’s evolved since then, but the mission has always stayed the same, like make it simple to connect and do business. And now it’s kind of evolved into like, how do we give the tools that the fortune 500 use to the broader fortune 5 million?

Jerrid Grimm (03:25.115)

Very cool. I had a small business and I know the number one pain point that we had was around, I mean, when you’re a small business, a couple of things really matter. One of them is, you getting paid? Right? The lifeblood of any business is cashflow, especially like small, medium businesses, SMBs. And I know that firsthand. And you get so overwhelmed with everything else going on in the business that

Matt Robinson (03:37.048)

Yep.

Jerrid Grimm (03:51.269)

funny enough, the most important thing, which is getting cash in the door sometimes gets put to a back burner because it’s so much of a lift to like create the invoice and then send it out and follow up on it. So I felt that that pain myself as a small business owner. So I can, I can definitely have empathy for all those small business owners and an appreciation for what bill.com is doing. So started out in this accounts payable accounts receivable side of the business, right? Let’s talk what are the different product offerings. Started with that at the core and then you mentioned expanding from there. So maybe walk through the types of products that bill.com has.

Matt Robinson (04:19.758)

Yep.

Matt Robinson (04:32.526)

For sure. So Bill APAR is still what it was back then and has continued to evolve and is only continuing to grow. Since that time, we’ve also added what is now called Bill Spend and Expense, formerly known as Divi, which was acquired about four and a half years ago. But Divi is a free to use corporate card plus software to manage all of the spend on that card.

So it helps businesses get the credit that they need to continue to grow, but also gives them real time visibility and control into all of the spend on that credit and eliminates the awful expense report dilemma at the end of every month. So that’s another core product that we have. And then recently there’s been a lot of additions to the AP product with 1099.

Collection and issuance, procurement functionality that’s been added. Bill Cash account was recently announced. There’s three major partnerships that we just announced with NetSuite, Acumatica, and Paychex to where we’re now embedding Bill within those products. So all of those users have access to all of that functionality right within the tool that they’re already using. And then I obviously I have to talk about AI because everybody does.

But there’s been some new agentic releases on that front. One specifically to help manage the awful pain of bugging people for their W-9s and then validating those W-9s. And then just automating receipt capture and reconciliation for people. The whole goal, like when Renee started Bill, it was let us help you do the work alongside what you’re already doing.

Jerrid Grimm (06:17.21)

Hmm.

Matt Robinson (06:27.646)

and we want to move to let us do the work for you is ultimately the goal. So a lot going on. There’s still more to come, but it’s all really exciting.

Jerrid Grimm (06:30.554)

Hmm.

Jerrid Grimm (06:36.664)

Yeah, I mean, those are great products. The Divi one is really interesting. I know that’s where you came into Bill.com from. So tell me about your role and how you came about getting into this company.

Matt Robinson (06:49.922)

question. So I actually came from the e commerce world, I still very much an affiliate land. And a former co worker was at Divi and said, my gosh, you’ve got to get over here. This place is rad and it’s continuing to grow. So we made that jump and it’s been it’s been fantastic. The evolvement or evolution of, you know, working at a very young startup to being acquired by a publicly traded company in a highly regulated industry has been certainly a challenge, but ultimately a rewarding one and it’s been pretty great.

Jerrid Grimm (07:27.098)

Yeah, I imagine you get, there’s the good and the bad of being a part of a big organization. Resources can be unlimited compared to when, you know, you’re a small startup and you’re just trying to, trying to make sure that you’re making payroll for the next six months, right? And now you have some stability, you can think longer term. Uh, but yeah, maybe the, the quickness of a startup, uh, is it good or bad, sometimes the quickness of the startup, but the excitement, the roller coaster is less. So, I mean, I had a similar experience coming from my small company press board into a larger company impact. And there’s always going to be a little bit of good and bad. I think these product offerings that you have are really interesting as you expand them because they come out, they’re interesting to more audiences. I imagine when bill.com started, with AP and AR, there’s a finite amount of users of the organization that interact with that. You’ve got your collections department and your receivables and then you have your people that are paying them out. But now with with Divi, I imagine a lot of the employees are interacting with that having an expense card and their receipts. You have payroll, it sounds like integrations. So again, the payroll department might be integrating with your software. You’re integrating into big ERPs as well. So now you’ve got like the whole corporate accounting and controllers and the CFO. So more and more users, which does mean you likely need to expand the awareness of bill.com to more and more people out there in the world. So let’s talk about how your affiliate, your creator programs, your partnership programs, how does that serve a role within bill.com?

Matt Robinson (09:12.238)

It’s huge. mean, we have a lot of trust and scale already in the market. I think we have like just over 7 million network members that get paid via bill and we’re trusted by a lot of the top accounting firms in the US. So we have the recognition, we have that trust and that scale, but third party validation is super important and

The B2B buying cycle typically involves a slightly larger committee, especially as a business continues to grow. And those sales cycles can be a little bit longer. So for us, identifying long-term partnerships that share our same mission, speak our same language, and speak to all of the lovely finance nerds of the world, those are who we love to talk to, those types of partners that can get us in front of that audience are massive for us, and they help us reach potential buyers at every stage of the funnel, whether it be at the very top and just helping an awareness and understanding, okay, yeah, I’ve heard Bill or Bill.com before, they must do one thing, but helping them slowly move down the funnel and learn about everything that we offer is huge. And we have partners that can help address like every stage of that process. And ultimately the goal for us is like new user acquisition at scale both those programs are doing very well with it.

Jerrid Grimm (10:39.866)

Yeah, let’s talk about the programs. Let’s talk about the partners that you work with because it is interesting. It’s more of a B2B play. So I’m curious if there’s certain partner types or specific partners like go ahead and name names here that have helped, you know, get the build.com message across, acquire those new users, be able to talk to other SMBs or small businesses that are out there.

Matt Robinson (10:48.471)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Robinson (11:05.506)

Yeah, I love naming names. So a few of our OG partners, if you will, one would be NAV, which is kind of like a credit karma for small businesses. I think they might be our longest standing partner and continue to this day to be one of our top performing partners. And they’re actually like just that way in the same parking lot over here. Their building is right over there. So shout out to Joel at NAV. They’ve been obviously as we’ve transitioned, I started at Divvy, but as we’ve transitioned,

Jerrid Grimm (11:26.042)

Thanks.

Matt Robinson (11:34.894)

Divi from that to bill spend and expense and part of the broader bill like suite of products. There’s been a lot of ups and downs for sure. And they’ve been super gracious and helpful and flexible through all of that. So they’ve been great. Another one of our partners that we love to work with would be Alex and Andra at Efficient App who actually started as Divi customers and loved the product so much that they started like talking about it as they’ve grown their own business where they talk about a whole host of different business products that they use on their side. They review them. They’ve been like one of our loudest and longest supporters. So we love it when a customer can then turn into an advocate for us, which is absolutely huge. And then on the newer side of things for us, like the affiliate program started in the div year, the bill spending expense space, but adding the AP side of things and finding partners that can talk to that niche has been somewhat difficult. But over the past couple of months, we’ve had a lot of success with folks like Capital One Shopping or Goloot. And the other emerging channel for us would be the influencer or creator side of things. And I have thoughts and feelings about LinkedIn, but that’s the place we have to play with the B2B space. So we’ve been very fortunate to work with some excellent creators on that front and Josh.

Aronoff, Justin Mecham, Alana Gold, like that program continues to grow and help us tap into very unique places that they’re experts in and help position Bill as thought leadership, know, thought leaders in those spaces alongside those folks. So it’s been great.

Jerrid Grimm (13:22.968)

Yeah. It’s one of the things that I love about the, we’ll call it partnership economy is this idea that you have all these way different partners from each other. You’ll have, you know, review sites, you’ve got software comparison sites, and then you have, I think it’s funny, like a B2B LinkedIn influencer, which is the only influencer I even have a shot at being, which is like the nerdiest, the nerdiest of influencers would be a B2B. Can you imagine being at

Matt Robinson (13:47.086)

Go for it, dude.

Jerrid Grimm (13:52.719)

like Thanksgiving dinner and like, what do do? I’m a B2B SaaS LinkedIn influencer. Like, I don’t even know if you’d be invited back to dinner. It is a…

Matt Robinson (13:59.894)

It’s a thing. It’s a thing. And some of these folks are absolutely crushing it. I talked to an agent for one of them yesterday who was so stoked about the job and so stoked to help continue to grow that audience and just loved everything about it. Like his energy was infectious for it. So yes, there are a number of ways to go about being a creator and influencer. And it’s been really cool to see this one.

Jerrid Grimm (14:27.418)

Yeah. I mean, nerds are cool. Right. So it, I always think I’ve always been a bit of a nerd for, and I was for marketing specifically in my world. but I always think it’s just people that are super deep and passionate around this niche. And so it looks nerdy to everyone outside of that. They’re like, how can you spend that much time caring about accounts payable software? Right. yeah, for sure.

Matt Robinson (14:29.806)

100%.

Matt Robinson (14:50.486)

Right. There’s only so many ways we can talk about it, but we can’t stop ourselves.

Jerrid Grimm (14:57.306)

Well, that’s really cool. And so you use these partnerships, these creators, these review sites, different comparison sites, primarily to acquire new users. It sounds like, right. And how do you think about why partners should be attracted to bill.com? I understand why you want to work with people that are going to help educate and promote your product. Why should these partners work with you?

Matt Robinson (15:26.388)

Why us? Good question. I think to go back to a few of the things that I’ve already mentioned, like the product itself is great and covers a really broad depth of everything that a business has to do to manage their back office finances. um So whether that be your entry point with Bill as AP, but you can then expand into spending expense or you are a partner that can speak to procurement specifically.

Like there are options for you to talk about Bill because it’s not just one single product that does one small thing. There are several opportunities to find ways to partner with us. And second, I would like to think that myself and our team at Hampster Garage that helped manage the program are fun to work with. I would like to think that that we’re pretty great to work with. We’re dedicated, we’re responsive. We have a bias for action.

We’ll test just about anything. If we feel that you can reach our target audience, whether that be a handful of folks a month or several hundreds a month, we’re open to it. We don’t care what the scale is. We don’t care what channels work best for you. We want to help you continue to find success and joining in our mission and being champions for SMBs. So if there’s a fit there, we’re going to try to find it. And if it ultimately doesn’t work, we’ll shake hands. We’ll go on our merry way. But it was certainly worth the effort. And we made a new connection there. So for us, I think it’s the product, the size, and the scale that we have. And I would like to think that we’re pretty fun to work with.

Jerrid Grimm (17:08.43)

Yeah, well, that’s actually really important. People underestimate the value of these personal relationships that you have. It’s a highly people-based business, find, partnerships and affiliate and creators. What is it around this role that you have that gets you excited about your role, about the company, about the industry? What kind of gets you up and excited in the morning?

Matt Robinson (17:31.608)

Good question. To reiterate the people point, like that’s first and foremost, both internally here at Bill and externally. Internally, truly some of the smartest, funniest, greatest people to work with, like the marketing leadership team here is the best that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working for and with. And I love that. And externally, like I mentioned, I came from the e-commerce world.

And I tried, I immediately came in and was like, okay, I need to stand up a B2B affiliate program. I’ve never done this before. I’m still learning what the product is itself. And everybody that I reached out to and connected with, I was just super open and honest about that. And they were so gracious and helpful in essentially training me on how to do my job. So like I leaned on our partners super heavily for that. And everybody that I’ve connected with has been like super helpful and pleasant to work with. So that’s certainly one of the things that gets me stoked about the job. And second would be, it’s really just a big puzzle. I lead our emerging channels. I don’t know why I keep doing this when I say emerging, but that could be lots of different things. So for me right now, that’s affiliate, it’s influencer, it’s email signature, it’s website chat. It’s a whole weird grab bag of fun stuff that usually isn’t quite figured out.

Jerrid Grimm (18:39.576)

Yeah, yeah.

Matt Robinson (18:55.372)

or quite buttoned up just yet. So it’s a fun puzzle to go figure out, what is the proper setup? Who are all of the right internal stakeholders? Who are all the right external stakeholders? And taking an idea and molding it into something that I can then work with a broader marketing team to scale is super fun.

Jerrid Grimm (19:14.926)

Yeah. Well, emerging channels kind of explains this idea. Like these are channels that are emerging. They’re not fully mature, either internally at bill.com or externally. wonder when something doesn’t count as emerging. You’re, you’re almost the guy that has to go from zero to one. You got to figure it all out. And then once it’s working perfectly, that’s like where you have to pass it off to someone else. So you just get to stay in the mess, but I have a feeling that’s the part you really enjoy it coming from the startup world.

Matt Robinson (19:29.742)

I haven’t figured that out yet.

Jerrid Grimm (19:43.876)

being in emerging channels, I can imagine that this is an area that you’re flourishing.

Matt Robinson (19:50.222)

the ongoing mantra between my VP and I is the obstacle is the way. So there are nothing but puzzles and nothing but obstacles, but those ultimately become the stepping stones to where we want to go. once I changed my mindset around that, work became a lot more fun rather than it was like, my gosh, I find nothing but roadblocks. Turning those and leaning on partners to help clear those has been a fun challenge.

Jerrid Grimm (20:17.412)

Very cool. mean, build.com. said it at the beginning. Obviously it’s a leader. If you get the four letter.com, means right away. I say this as a, person that works at impact.com. know important getting that top level domain can be a lot of times, especially in like search and everything else, but it just, to me, it speaks to you guys are a leader in your industry. You have a diversified product mix.

Matt Robinson (20:30.312)

Yep.

Jerrid Grimm (20:43.8)

You have partners that can really perform for you of all different types. I know here at impact.com, we’re super excited to have bill.com as one of our brand partners. It’s been great speaking with you. And if you are a partner out there and you’re looking to work with a great piece of software and a company that works with SMBs and helps make, you know, the SMBs, which is the lifeblood of the economy, helps them do their work better out there. So, if you’re partner, come find them on impact.com.

Matt Robinson (21:15.534)

come holler at me. Please do.

Jerrid Grimm (21:18.692)

Perfect. Thanks, Matt. Appreciate you being on the program.

Matt Robinson (21:21.388)

No problem, thank you.

I’m Matt, I’m with Bill, and you can find us on Impact.com.