Scott Matthews With Verusen

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Brought to you by on pay. Atlanta’s New standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Onpay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Scott Mathews with Verusen. Welcome, Scott. Thanks, Lee. For those who don’t know, tell us a little bit about Verizon, how you serving folks.

Scott Matthews: [00:00:49] Yeah, So what we are is we’re a supply chain company that helps large companies operate their businesses and manufacturing facilities with less inventory and not increased business risk. And we do it through artificial intelligence and processing data in lots of different systems. So that’s what our company does.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:11] So how recently there were all these issues in the supply chain? There’s probably still issues. How does Verusen kind of help in that manner?

Scott Matthews: [00:01:21] Yeah. So how we help is inventory is stored in hundreds of locations for large local companies, often named different things with different part numbers and different descriptions. And it’s hard for a company to get a handle on where inventory is, when is it needed, how do you plan for it, and how do you run it with the least amount of capital to make sure that your business operates 100% of the time? And with COVID and the complications of a supply chain, it became harder for companies to have visibility into their indirect materials, which most companies, large companies have hundreds of millions of dollars of inventory. So Verusen helps companies to have that visibility and to operate their companies with less inventory on hand without compromising a company’s uptime or delivery schedules for the goods and services that they make.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:22] So did this kind of crisis that we went through make it that much more easy for you to communicate? The value is that when everything became clear of what you’re bringing to the table?

Scott Matthews: [00:02:32] Yeah, it definitely amplified, you know, what the need was there before COVID, but it became even more of a requirement because lead times to buy products and services went through the roof for because companies were shut down. They didn’t manufacture enough, you know, ships were stuck in shipping lanes. And so the need went up. But, you know, it started well before COVID as as a need to minimize the investment in inventory and working capital to make companies efficient.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:05] So can you talk about how Atlanta is important to this story and why this is the place for Verizon and other supply chain organizations to be based and to be working in?

Scott Matthews: [00:03:19] Sure. So Atlanta is an awesome location for, you know, 50, 60% of where goods and services are made down in the southeast. And we’ve drafted from technology that’s resident in the Atlanta area. Georgia Tech has been a great feeding ground for us. We’re partners with Georgia Tech and we’ve hired lots of technologists that help us to write the artificial intelligence routines, the machine learning routines, the natural language processing routines that help us to understand the incongruencies of data and to make sense for customers. 65% of our employees are in the Atlanta metro area. It’s a it’s a great place for high tech and innovation, and I have no plans on changing that investment thesis. As far as being based in Atlanta, um, most of our customers are in the Southeast because that’s where manufacturing is most prevalent in the United States. So and we’re, we’re, we’re the backbone is in Atlanta and the future is in Atlanta for our company because the drafting zone for people that are innovative and are able to work at high tech companies like Verizon are plentiful, you know, in the Atlanta area.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:38] Now because of Georgia’s, I guess, unique, um, economic diversity, having a port, having a, you know, a well-established international airport, having those kind of university resources that you described, do you find that Georgia is becoming a hub for supply chain and a great place for others like yourself to be based and to tap into that infrastructure that’s here. And it’s very business friendly and it has so many resources that touch all aspects of supply chain and logistics.

Scott Matthews: [00:05:14] Sure. You know, we’re inextricably linked in the supply chain, and there are many companies that are synergistic to Verizon partners. That Verizon has in the supply chain that are based in the southeast. And it seems to be the right place at the right time with the right geographic location and the the the ample grounds to find employees with the talent that we need. So it’s very synergistic. You know, you don’t see these types of companies in the Northeast. You don’t see them out west. It really is. The southeast is where, you know, supply chain is headquartered for lots of innovation in America and how we grow internationally, you know, outside of this area.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:59] And do you find it by having kind of being a hub for supply chain and organizations like yourselves and others that it creates a cluster or some density where there is so much talent and people can go from one, you know, maybe a start up in supply chain and find another opportunity pretty quickly because there’s so many people doing work in that industry.

Scott Matthews: [00:06:25] Sure. So that’s that’s one way and a correct way to look at it. The other side is, you know, we’ve drafted employees from really large manufacturers in the supply chain in the Atlanta metro area that we’re looking to expand their abilities versus working for a $20 billion company. You know, let’s actually take a look at an innovative startup that’s disrupting something that’s been going on for a long time. So I would say half of our employees have come from really large, huge companies that these employees want a different paradigm to look at and how they look at their career versus, you know, working at a high tech innovation company versus, you know, Georgia Pacific or something, you know, that’s in our area. So we’ve drafted from that background because, you know, having subject matter expertise is important. Having conversational knowledge is important, having industry knowledge is important to apply the technology that we’re developing. So it’s actually bilaterally important on on that.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:32] So what’s your backstory? Have you always been involved in supply chain and logistics?

Scott Matthews: [00:07:38] Um, no, I haven’t. Um, my background is, is helping innovative companies reach scale. So I’ve been a participant of a number of startups that have reached some level of scale. And, you know, this is the right time to apply my talents to the co-founder of of Verizon, Paul Noble. Paul is not leaving the company, even though I’m a new CEO to Verizon. Paul is the visionary. Paul is the product backbone of the company. And Paul and I, together with my business expertise, my go to market expertise, coupled with Paul’s background, as is the partnership that I’ve struck with Paul and the investors in Verizon mean we’re a B round company. So that means that we’ve raised venture capital and we’re looking to grow exponentially over the next 3 to 5 years.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:35] So what does your roadmap look like? What what do you kind of foresee in the coming year or two?

Scott Matthews: [00:08:43] Um, so the roadmap is to actually expand the feature set to address a wider swath of problems so customers could use a service like Verizon to disintermediate manual process, to disintermediate manual decisioning, to disintermediate, you know, redundancies of inventory both on the shop floor or the plant floor, the inventory, the warehouses. And then where we’re going is actually deep integration to the suppliers of those goods and services to the manufacturers that we’re representing. So you’re going to find us to virally grow into the suppliers, the distribution up channels of the supply chain to provide an end to end solution for both suppliers, manufacturers and the consumers of those goods and services. So we have a very rich roadmap that we’ll be looking at over the next 3 to 5 years.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:44] So who is your ideal partner or customer?

Scott Matthews: [00:09:49] So it’s Georgia Pacific is, you know, one of our larger customers, the Southern company, you know, right in the Atlanta area. Right. Our huge customers and users of our technology, we’re blessed to have very large consumer packaged goods companies, names that are in the top three that you would recognize. Sometimes they don’t let us talk about their names. They’re protective of that. But it’s three of the top five consumer brands that you might see on a grocery store aisle when you shop down there. They’re using our product to make more efficient decisions in the manufacturing process and lower their cost of goods sold as they look at their supply chains. So traditionally, we sell to a very large customer set that has hundreds of millions of dollars of inventory, and they’re looking for ways to manage that inventory more effectively is the ideal customer that we have. Every one of our customers is global. In some cases we might start in another country, but you know, the headquarters is normally in the US that we’ve done business with so far.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:02] So what is that kind of pain that they’re experiencing where they should at least be inquiring?

Scott Matthews: [00:11:09] So probably $1 billion company is the, you know, the minimum amount of revenue that we could sell into that would realize the value and have the ability to execute on the software that we would provide to them. And if you look at verticals, it’s really any vertical that that makes a durable, hard good that has multiple manufacturing or plants. There are thousands of customers that are in our, um, I’ll call it the ideal customer profile that, you know, if properly represented and they have a desire to solve the problem that we solve should be a customer of Verizon and it spans many different verticals that we would sell into.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:57] And then when they’re working with you, is there a story you can share? You don’t have to name the name, but of, you know, once working with you that you were able to save them some money or save them some time or make them more efficient.

Scott Matthews: [00:12:09] One of the top three consumer brands that you would recognize, they don’t let us use your name, you know, has actually decreased inventory by $8 million a year by using our our software and not increasing any business risk because any plant manager can say, oh, I’m going to reduce inventory by X percent, but gosh, what if a line goes down? What if something breaks or something they can’t get in the supply chain? That’s that’s a bad decision to put your business at risk. So we help companies balance risk with the optimal inventory mix, but that’s one customer that just implemented us. Um, and the food and beverage industry in our area.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:51] So now, what was it about this company that said, you know what, I’ve got to find a way to be part of this team? You know, what was it for you that made you take this leap?

Scott Matthews: [00:13:05] Sure. So it’s an outstanding total available market, right? If you look at who we could sell to in in an extreme. You know, it’s thousands of companies that have this problem of optimizing inventory across a myriad of locations because the problem is inventory is not labeled the same thing. It’s not part number, the same thing. It’s bought through different sources. It’s bought on POS, it’s bought through bill of materials. So I’ll say it’s a very inconsistent inventory management problem. And then we help harmonize that dissimilar information in a way that a customer can make really efficient decisions about. I have this part in ten different locations. You know, the min max levels are this We can run this company with far less inventory and we help them to make that decision and to have far less inventory to continue the operations at 100% uptime. And that was an exciting opportunity because we’re doing it through modern technology, artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, and we’re applying those modern disruptive technologies to a problem that, you know, almost every company has for inventory management. So it’s actually a really, really exciting opportunity that we have.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:38] So you were excited about the market, but you were also excited about the solution?

Scott Matthews: [00:14:44] Well, yeah, because if the product is there and now I need to find who the customers are, my background is helping customers on go to market. It’s trying to figure out who are the ideal customers, what are the personas that we should apply our technology to, and how do those companies make decisions and how do they act on solving a problem? That’s actually my background and how I’m able to be a great partner with Paul because, you know, we’re pushing the accelerator down and we’re a very small company. You know, we’re a venture backed company that has raised tens of millions of dollars to, you know, start this company. But, you know, the outcome could be really, really exciting in years to come is why I chose to to work here.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:35] So what do you need more of? How can we help you.

Scott Matthews: [00:15:40] Find more qualified prospects who have this problem? And this is a way to do it, communicating through, you know, your program. But ultimately it’s awareness, right? For companies like ours that we don’t have multi-million dollar advertising budgets, we don’t have multi-million dollar marketing budgets. You know, we’re doing it through, you know, traditional methods of calling people and having conversations and, you know, telling stories about why we’re successful to other customers. And that’s, you know, more of what I try to do to to find the right customer at the right time that has the pain that they want to solve. So that’s actually, you know, my most important task is to figure out that top of funnel work about who we can sell to and who has the best product market fit to to use our products and services.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:29] And then part of the challenge is that you’re some of your largest customers don’t want you to tell anybody that you’re doing you’re helping them.

Scott Matthews: [00:16:39] It’s it’s a balance and they want to keep that proprietary. Right. Right. Why do I want to share that with my competitors? But ultimately, you know, it’s how high tech operates. You know, you know, they are customers and I’m a vendor, but you need to move to some level of partnership and mutual benefit. So, you know, because it’s not our company isn’t the kind of thing you hire for a month and then walk away from. It’s a multi-year process to reduce inventory and working capital to run your business more efficiently. And unless you have partnerships with companies with mutual trust, relationships fizzle and you won’t be successful. So there are some customers that let us use their names, like the ones I’ve already named, and there are some customers that, you know, it’s the shroud of secrecy because it’s their secret sauce about how they’ll innovate and how they’ll compete against their competitors.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:35] Right. And look, a partnership is great, but and being a best kept secret, you know, could damage the partnership over time because you need the resources to keep innovating and making what you’re doing special over. Time.

Scott Matthews: [00:17:52] Yeah, it’s a balance, right? And you know, we have case studies that I can publicly talk about their on our website. I’ve named the customers that allow us to talk about the mutual success that we have. Um, and you know, it’s how high tech operates. Half your customers will let you talk about it and half won’t. And you respect that because I’m not going to violate the trust at a strategic level on things like that. But, you know, maybe they’ll speak at a conference, maybe they’ll do a private reference for us, something like that, because, you know, they ultimately are vested in my success because if I’m not successful, they won’t be successful with us. So there is, um, there is an opportunity for marketing and publicity and how we’ll ultimately help each other at a corporate level.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:40] Well, congratulations on all the success and momentum. If somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what is the website or the best way to get ahold of you?

Scott Matthews: [00:18:51] It’s verizon.com ver us. Com And you know, we’re right on sixth street on in Tech Square in midtown Atlanta is the headquarters of the company.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:04] All right, Scott, Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Scott Matthews: [00:19:09] Lee Thank you for the opportunity.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:10] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.