Intekhab Nazeer is a veteran of leading funding for young technology startups and assisting them in successful M&A exits. He currently works for a modern hot market company that provides infrastructure to companies running large-scale AI workloads. Simply put, WEKA's cloud-native data platform helps organizations manage GPUs to run more efficiently.
The 10-year-old company has been waiting for that day for a long time. WEKA raised $135 million in November 2022, and raised $140 million in an oversubscribed Series E round in May last year. The Series E post-money valuation was $1.6 billion.
Nazeer, who joined the company in 2020, was attracted to two things. One had zero customer churn and was rapidly “acquiring and growing” accounts, winning new accounts and expanding the use case for WEKA's customers in the same quarter.
What kind of foundation has Nazeer given the finance team since taking over? What technology tools does WEKA use internally to stay on top of this rapidly growing market? and other questions answered below.
Can you elaborate on the Series E round?It had a relatively unique feature.
The round consisted of $100 million in primary funding from existing investors, which will add capital to the company, and $40 million in secondary funding. $40 million was to provide a liquidity event for our long-term employees, with a discount of zero [employees could sell their common stock at the same price as the preferred shares]. This is the second time we have held an after-party for employees. The company is 10 years old and many of its employees have been with the company for five, six, and seven years. This was a way for them to share our successes and for us to thank them.
What is incremental capital for?
We still had money left over from our November 2022 Series D funding, but this market just exploded. To stay at the forefront of innovation, we needed immediate scale-up, including further investment in customer support and research and development. You need a scalable IT infrastructure so you can mimic the test environments and clusters of large customers. We wanted to strengthen our existing cash reserves; [round] It also gives you the option to scale your business and products to meet the exploding needs of your customers.
Was the decline in venture capital funding globally a concern in the process of raising the round?
There was active interest from investors. Companies affected by these trends aim for high valuations. You can ask for a high valuation or you can ask for a realistic valuation. WEKA sought a realistic assessment for several reasons. If a company wants a high valuation, it needs to grow. [into] That evaluation creates many risks. Then I looked around and saw a lot of newly minted unicorn corpses, so I wanted to make sure I did a responsible and realistic assessment. It wasn't a difficult round for us to close. The balance of not diluting it was very good. [investors] Too much will strengthen the company's cash reserves.
What strategy did you use to build your finance team and provide them with the right tools?
We have a global, lean and mean team across Tel Aviv, India, the UK, Asia Pacific and the US. The team basically consists of accounting, FP&A, and local accountants in those regions.
I've focused on processes, systems, and people, in that order. In four years, we have come a long way. After migrating from QuickBooks to NetSuite and improving our processes, we now close our books in 5 days. This year, we will be fully implementing a new budgeting tool, Adaptive Planning, and will hire more finance professionals in 2025 and beyond based on our growth.
Was budgeting software the next obvious tool to adopt, or was it a major pain point for your organization?
The annual operating plan is one of the most important parts of a Series E company. You can't improve what you can't measure. You need a tool that lets you instantly see how your department is performing against operating budgets and plans. This tool allows you to do that in real time.
In the “Experience” section of your LinkedIn profile, you say “Market strategically.” What did you do in the WEKA sales area?
When I joined WEKA, I worked closely with sales to help prepare the company's systems and processes for scalability. This includes generating ideas to improve CRM systems, implementing SaaS analytics tools like Sightfull, working with CROs to improve forecasting techniques, and helping sales teams optimize deal structures. Included.
We utilize at least 70% more functionality in our CRM systems than we did just four years ago. For example, to monitor growth, we now track TCV (total contract value), ACV (annual contract value), CARR (commitment annualized run rate), and ARR (annualized run rate) for each opportunity.
We also use an AI sales forecasting tool called Clari. Together with Salesforce, you can simplify and standardize the way you create sales quotes. All of this allows us to closely assess our sales performance and track the ROI of our lead generation efforts.
What do you think about the future use of AI in finance?
I'm interested in what happens in the future. Anything is possible. Useful for accounting audits, sales forecasts, etc. The third usage is: [adding] From AI to business intelligence tools. Once that happens, you'll have AI predictions for your budgeting model for the next 3-5 years that will include your company's performance and what's happening in your industry.
