The LeanScale Podcast · Episode 35

Operate Like You're Already Public

Stephanie Ucko on taking RevOps from a pre-IPO startup to a public company — SOX, quote-to-cash, and building to a post-IPO standard

Stephanie Ucko · VP of Revenue Operations, Intellum · Intellum Hosted by Anthony Enrico
Published Updated 00:27:37 26 min read 5,234 words
Revenue Operations GTM Strategy Sales Leadership
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Executive Summary

The one-paragraph brief, extended

Why this conversation matters — and who should spend the hour.

Most RevOps leaders will spend a career preparing companies for a moment very few of them ever actually live through: ringing the bell. Stephanie Ucko has. In this episode she sits down with LeanScale co-founder Anthony Enrico to walk through her first exit — taking revenue operations from a pre-IPO startup to a public company at Olo, the digital-ordering platform for restaurants, where she was the first RevOps hire. It's a rare, concrete tour of what actually changes when a private company goes public, told by the operator who had to rebuild the plumbing to make it possible.

Stephanie's thesis is disarmingly simple and hard to execute: operate like you're already public before you are. The IPO process, she explains, forces a revenue org to answer three questions over and over — Can we evidence this? Are we SOX compliant? What is our system of record? Those questions surface every place the business is held together by a manual process, a lone admin, or 'a Google Sheet somewhere.' For her team the biggest gap was quote-to-cash: a fully manual quoting, discounting, and approvals motion stretched across sales, customer success, onboarding, and finance. Formalizing it — ultimately with a Salesforce CPQ implementation — took a year-plus and became one of the defining projects of the journey.

The middle of the conversation is a practical clinic on public-company readiness. Stephanie explains what SOX compliance (the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002) actually demands of RevOps, why the appearance of recurring 'SOX meetings' on the calendar was the giveaway that going public was real, and how that painful, exhaustive documentation work doubles as a strategic roadmap — telling you what to fix first, from permissioning to data pipelines to whether everyone is even reporting the same metric the same way. She details the new operating cadence that follows: internal auditors as permanent cross-functional partners, and a formal change-management process in Salesforce where admins work in sandbox before production, and every change is logged, sampled, and pressure-tested against the system itself.

The throughline is her 'auditor's-eye view.' Stephanie now enters every role imagining an outsider walking in and asking, at a tactical level, 'How do I know what changes you've made in Salesforce? Where do I go to look? And how do I know it's accurate?' Building to that standard isn't box-checking — it removes human error, survives turnover, and, she argues, is often what makes the IPO opportunity exist in the first place. She closes with her own path into the work: from a direct sales seat at Revel Systems where she raised her hand and asked 'what's Salesforce?', through a cybersecurity leadership role, to owning RevOps soup-to-nuts at Olo. A self-described 'builder by nature,' she credits that early sales experience for the empathy that makes her build for her real internal customers — sales, marketing, and CS.

Who should listen: RevOps and GTM operators whose company might go public in the next six to twelve months, founders and revenue executives who want their systems to look like an enterprise long before they are one, and finance-adjacent leaders wrestling with quote-to-cash, data governance, and controls. The biggest takeaway is a mental model — build every process as if a skeptical outsider will have to verify it — that pays off whether or not you ever get to pop the champagne.

Key Takeaways

10 things worth stealing

The load-bearing ideas, each with the business implication and who should care.

01

Operate like you're already public — before you are

Stephanie's core lesson is to build startup systems to a post-IPO standard well ahead of any event. Companies that don't operate like a post-IPO organization will have a hard time ever getting there, and laying the groundwork early is often what makes the opportunity exist at all.

Why it matters: Design processes, data definitions, and controls now as if a public-company auditor will scrutinize them. It's a strategic advantage that compounds regardless of whether an IPO ever comes.

RevOps LeadersFoundersRevenue Executives
02

An IPO forces three questions: Can you evidence it? Are you SOX compliant? What's your system of record?

Going public introduces new vocabulary that RevOps has to internalize fast. Stephanie bucketed it into three recurring questions she kept hearing — how do we evidence for this, how do we stay SOX compliant, and what is our system of record — that a revenue leader has to dive into and answer.

Why it matters: Use those three questions as a diagnostic on your own org today. Wherever you can't cleanly answer them, you've found a manual process or a control gap to fix.

RevOps LeadersRevenue Executives
03

Quote-to-cash is where the biggest manual risk hides — formalize it early

The IPO highlighted that the company had no formal CPQ engine: quoting, discounting, approvals, signatures, and finance recognition were largely manual, with contracts reviewed by hand across CS, onboarding, and finance. Formalizing quote-to-cash — ultimately via Salesforce CPQ — took a little over a year.

Why it matters: Around Series B/C, start formalizing QTC/CPQ for scale — and especially if you're preparing for an event. It's one of the biggest, most laborious lifts, so start the evaluation before you're forced to.

RevOps LeadersFoundersRevenue Executives
04

SOX compliance is painful, but it becomes your roadmap

SOX (the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002) exists to mitigate fraud and enforce a rigorous financial-reporting model. The exhaustive work of articulating internal process for external validators, while painful, highlights exactly where to make impact — permissioning, data pipelines, reporting structure, and metric consistency — and guides the post-IPO roadmap.

Why it matters: Treat compliance work as strategy, not overhead. Let it prioritize what you fix first rather than experiencing it purely as a burden.

RevOps LeadersRevenue ExecutivesFounders
05

Recurring SOX meetings on the calendar are the tell

Before anything is official, the appearance of SOX compliance meetings and close work with external partners is the signal that going public is real. As Anthony put it, you don't go through SOX compliance for fun.

Why it matters: Read the operational signals. If compliance cadences are materializing, get ahead of the documentation and controls work rather than reacting once it's formally announced.

RevOps LeadersRevenue Executives
06

Use the auditor's-eye view to evaluate your current state

Stephanie now enters every role imagining an outsider asking, at a tactical level, how they'd know what changes were made in Salesforce, where to find them, and how to trust they're accurate. That lens exposes single points of failure — one person, one spreadsheet — and turns them into a roadmap.

Why it matters: Audit your systems as if a stranger must verify them without your help. If a process can't be independently followed and validated, it's a risk to formalize.

RevOps LeadersFounders
07

Post-IPO, change management becomes a system of record

Public-company rigor means a formal change-management process in Salesforce: admins ideally make changes in sandbox before production, and every deployment is documented — who made it, when — then sampled and pressure-tested against the system on a monthly-to-quarterly cadence.

Why it matters: Stop making untracked changes in production. Stand up sandbox-first workflows and evidence for change management before you're audited on it.

RevOps LeadersRevenue Executives
08

Don't just check the box — use compliance to actually improve the business

The IPO process forces you to document current-state process for a third party, but it also triggers self-reflection: is this the most optimal way to do this, and can we take human error out of it? The goal isn't only to reflect what you do on paper, but to genuinely make it better.

Why it matters: Pair every 'evidence this' requirement with a 'can we improve this' question. Compliance is the forcing function to remove manual, error-prone steps you'd otherwise never revisit.

RevOps LeadersFoundersRevenue Executives
09

Rigorous controls protect the business through turnover and change

Creating clear evidence of how a process gets completed, plus change-in-control management, isn't just for auditors. It gives the org visibility so that when people leave, others can understand what's happening and pick up where the last person left off — and lets you build efficiently.

Why it matters: Document controls for continuity, not just compliance. The same rigor that satisfies an auditor de-risks key-person dependency and makes onboarding faster.

RevOps LeadersFounders
10

Sales empathy makes you build for your real internal customers

Stephanie started in a direct sales role at her first startup and raised her hand to formalize sales operations. That early empathy shapes how she works today: she taps sales leaders and cross-functional contributors constantly, treating sales, marketing, and CS as her actual customers rather than dictating top-down.

Why it matters: RevOps that builds with its internal customers — not just for them — earns better roadmaps and adoption. Time in a sales seat is a durable advantage for an operator.

RevOps LeadersSales Leaders
Frameworks Discussed

6 named models

Every framework Jimmy names, defined and time-stamped.

Operate Like You're Already Public

10:50

Build a private company's systems, data, and controls to a post-IPO enterprise standard before any event — so a pre-IPO startup already operates the way a public company must.

Stephanie's guiding principle across her roles. Companies that don't operate like a post-IPO organization struggle to become one, and laying the groundwork early is often what makes the opportunity even exist. It reframes readiness as a continuous operating posture, not a scramble.

The Three IPO Questions

03:13

The three questions the IPO process forces a revenue org to answer over and over: Can we evidence for this? Are we SOX compliant? What is our system of record?

Stephanie bucketed the new IPO vocabulary into these three recurring phrases. They function as a diagnostic — wherever you can't cleanly answer them, you've located a manual process, a lone admin, or a control gap that needs formalizing.

Quote-to-Cash / CPQ Formalization

05:21

Move quoting, discounting, approvals, signatures, and revenue recognition from a manual, cross-team process into a formal, controlled CPQ engine (e.g., Salesforce CPQ) with product and discounting rules.

The IPO exposed QTC as the biggest manual-risk area, with contracts reviewed by hand across CS, onboarding, and finance. Formalizing it took a year-plus and required advanced approval models suited to a complex sales cycle — a defining pre-IPO project.

The Cornerstones of RevOps

13:23

A way to slice a growing RevOps team into its core components: systems and tooling, enablement, compensation/commission, and data.

Stephanie frames systems and tooling as just one component of RevOps among several. The IPO forced her to level up the rigor of systems and data specifically, but the mental model keeps the broader remit — enablement, comp, data — in view when deciding where to invest.

Formal Change Management as a System of Record

16:59

A documented, evidenced process for changing your systems of record: make changes in sandbox before production, log who deployed what and when, then sample and pressure-test those changes against the system on a recurring cadence.

A key post-IPO cadence Stephanie's team built with internal auditors. It answers 'how do we know what changed and that it's accurate?' and moved from monthly to quarterly review — a crux of maintaining trustworthy systems of record.

The Auditor's-Eye View

21:01

Evaluate current-state process as if a skeptical outsider had just walked in and must independently verify it — at a tactical level: how would they know what changed, where would they look, and how would they trust it's accurate?

The lens Stephanie now brings to every new role. It surfaces single points of failure (one person, one Google Sheet) and converts them into a roadmap, while forcing you to build controls that survive without your explanation.

Best Quotes

15 lines worth clipping

Pulled verbatim. Copy or share any of them.

“How do we make sure that if we are a pre-IPO startup, we operate as a post-IPO organization and enterprise business?”
Stephanie Ucko 10:50
“How are we gonna evidence for this? How do we ensure that we're SOX compliant? And what is our system of record? These are key phrases you hear going through that process that, as a revenue ops leader, you really need to dive into and understand.”
Stephanie Ucko 03:13
“What's interesting about going through this IPO process is it brings up and highlights all of those little or big areas where it's ripe for improvement and efficiency.”
Stephanie Ucko 06:02
“I'd like to think of our remit as really the backbone of a lot of the really important pieces — how we go to market as a sales organization, how we work through all of our contracting, and by large strides the entire quote-to-cash process.”
Stephanie Ucko 02:37
“Why are we going through SOX compliance if we're not going public? Just for fun?”
Anthony Enrico 09:06
“It takes you into a place of self-reflection — is this the most optimal way to do this? How can we really make this better?”
Stephanie Ucko 15:48
“Not doing that just to check a box, but let's use that to actually enhance what we're doing.”
Anthony Enrico 16:12
“I go into my roles these days thinking, okay — we're gonna IPO if that's our direction, or whatever exit you're looking at — and imagine the current processes under those pretenses.”
Stephanie Ucko 20:22
“Imagine someone coming in and saying, how do I know what changes you've made in Salesforce? Where do I go to look at that — at a very tactical level?”
Stephanie Ucko 21:01
“We had to formalize a change-management process in Salesforce and evidence for how you're actually deploying to production — and who's doing that.”
Stephanie Ucko 17:41
“A lot of people don't think about those types of controls. They're just adding things in production.”
Anthony Enrico 21:35
“I raised my hand and said, well — what's Salesforce? And how do we actually go about formalizing a little bit of this?”
Stephanie Ucko 23:26
“I'm a builder by nature, and that's really where I found my new home.”
Stephanie Ucko 25:36
“I get so much value from who are my actual customers — our sales team, marketing, CS, the broader organization as a whole.”
Stephanie Ucko 26:11
“We saw our huge logo all over the exchange and that was just really great — and those signs on the exchange are much bigger than you really think they are.”
Stephanie Ucko 12:48
Practical Advice

What should you actually do?

The playbook, split by the seat you sit in.

RevOps Leaders

  • Run the three IPO questions on your own org today — can you evidence it, are you SOX-ready, what's your system of record? Every place you can't cleanly answer is a manual process or control gap to fix.
  • Take a hard, honest look at current state and hunt for single points of failure: anything gated by one person or living in a Google Sheet somewhere. Then sequence the fixes into an actual roadmap.
  • Stand up sandbox-first change management: make changes in sandbox before production, log who deployed what and when, and sample-and-pressure-test on a recurring cadence so your systems of record stay trustworthy.
  • Don't just document to satisfy an auditor — use every 'evidence this' requirement to ask 'can we make this better and remove human error?'

Founders

  • Operate like you're already public. Building startup systems to a post-IPO standard is often what makes the IPO opportunity exist in the first place — companies that don't operate that way struggle to get there.
  • Around Series B/C, formalize quote-to-cash and CPQ for scale, and start the evaluation early if any exit is on the horizon; it's one of the biggest, most laborious lifts.
  • Invest in data governance and consistent metric definitions before you need them, so a third party — and your own future team — can trust how data moves from system to system.

Revenue Executives

  • Treat SOX and audit work as strategy, not overhead — the documentation exposes exactly what to fix first, from permissioning to data pipelines to reporting consistency.
  • Watch the operational tells: recurring compliance meetings and new external partners are the signal to get ahead of controls work before it's formally announced.
  • Build controls for continuity, not just compliance — clear evidence of how processes run protects the business through turnover and lets the next operator pick up where you left off.
Operations Takeaways

By function

The same conversation, filtered for RevOps, pipeline/marketing ops, and customer ops.

Revenue Operations

  • Operate like you're already public. Build startup systems, data, and controls to a post-IPO standard early; it's a strategic advantage that often makes the opportunity exist at all.
  • Three IPO questions as a diagnostic. Can you evidence it? Are you SOX compliant? What's your system of record? Wherever you can't answer, you've found a gap to fix.
  • Quote-to-cash first. The biggest manual risk usually lives in QTC — quoting, discounting, approvals, and rev rec. Formalize it (CPQ) before you're forced to.
  • Change management is a control. Sandbox before production, evidence every deploy, and sample-and-pressure-test on a cadence so your systems of record stay trustworthy.
  • Compliance as roadmap. SOX documentation is painful but tells you exactly what to fix first — permissioning, data pipelines, reporting consistency.
  • Build for your internal customers. Tap sales, marketing, and CS as your actual customers; sales empathy from an early sales seat shapes better roadmaps and adoption.
Metrics Mentioned

The numbers, with context

~10 years
RevOps tenure

Stephanie's time in the RevOps world; Olo was her first exit, taking her from a pre-IPO to a post-IPO company.

~300–400
Company headcount at IPO

Approximate size of the company when it went public during the height of COVID.

~1 year+
Quote-to-cash formalization

How long it took to formalize QTC and implement Salesforce CPQ from a largely manual quoting, discounting, and approval process.

Monthly → quarterly
Compliance / change-management cadence

The internal audit and change-management review rhythm established for SOX around system access and Salesforce change management.

~Series B/C
CPQ formalization stage

Anthony notes companies typically need to formalize CPQ around Series B/C — for scale, and especially when preparing for an event like an IPO.

Entities

Companies, people & tools mentioned

Auto-extracted and linked into the knowledge graph.

Companies

OloRestaurant Tech / SaaS

The digital-ordering platform for restaurants (headquartered at One World Trade in New York) where Stephanie was the first RevOps hire and went through the IPO — the pre-IPO to public-company journey at the center of this episode. They rang the bell masked, during COVID, around St. Patrick's Day.

00:41 · 11:27 · 24:50Company →
Revel SystemsRestaurant Tech / POS

Stephanie's first tech company — an online-ordering/POS platform for restaurants and other verticals — where she moved from a direct sales role into standing up sales operations after raising her hand to formalize it.

23:26Company →
IntellumEdTech / Learning Platform

Stephanie's current company, where she is VP of Revenue Operations, leading sales and RevOps and growing a team (per the episode show notes).

25:36Company →
LeanScaleGTM Operations

Anthony notes CPQ implementations are among the bigger projects LeanScale engages on, typically formalized around the Series B/C stage for scale or in preparation for an event.

08:26Company →

People

Stephanie Uckoguest

VP of Revenue Operations at Intellum; a RevOps builder who took Olo's revenue operations from pre-IPO startup to public company as its first RevOps hire.

VP of Revenue Operations, IntellumProfile →
Anthony Enricohost

Co-founder of LeanScale and host of The LeanScale Podcast.

Co-FounderProfile →

Tools & software

SalesforceCRM

The company's CRM and core system of record; the focus of the post-IPO change-management process, where admins deploy from sandbox to production and evidence every change for audit.

Website ↗
Salesforce CPQCPQ / Quote-to-Cash

The CPQ engine Stephanie's team selected to formalize quote-to-cash — quoting, discounting rules, and advanced approval models — a year-plus implementation replacing a largely manual process.

Website ↗
DealHubCPQ / Quote-to-Cash

Cited by Anthony as an alternative CPQ system to Salesforce CPQ when a company outgrows manual quoting in spreadsheets.

Website ↗
Google SheetsProductivity / Spreadsheet

The stand-in for manual, un-scaled process: Stephanie stresses finding what's 'living in your Google Sheet somewhere' and moving it into automated, controlled systems.

Website ↗
Methodologies referenced SOX Compliance (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002)Quote-to-Cash (QTC)CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote)Change Management (Systems of Record)Data Governance
Related LeanScale Services

Where this shows up in the work

Fractional RevOps

Embedded, field-facing RevOps leadership and execution — the operator model Jimmy describes, delivered as a service.

The whole episode is field-facing RevOps operator work — formalizing systems, controls, and process to a public-company standard — exactly what LeanScale embeds.

Forecasting & ARR Definition

Define a raise-worthy ARR and build a reliable consumption forecast across finance, data science, and go-to-market.

Trustworthy revenue reporting, consistent data definitions, and finance-grade revenue recognition are the data rigor LeanScale operationalizes.

Sales Enablement Build

Stand up a zero-based, sales-academy enablement motion sized to your span of control and sales complexity.

Enablement is one of the RevOps cornerstones Stephanie leans on as the org matures — a motion LeanScale stands up.

Frequently Asked Questions

Straight answers

Generated from the conversation, marked up for search and AI extraction.

What changes for RevOps when a company goes from private to public through an IPO?

The IPO introduces new requirements and vocabulary that force RevOps to answer three questions constantly: can we evidence this process, are we SOX compliant, and what is our system of record? In practice that means formalizing manual processes (especially quote-to-cash), standing up data governance, adding SOX-driven controls, and building a formal change-management process for systems like Salesforce. New cadences appear too — internal auditors become permanent cross-functional partners, and system changes are logged, sampled, and pressure-tested on a monthly-to-quarterly basis.

What is SOX compliance and why does it matter for RevOps before an IPO?

SOX is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, whose intent is to hold public companies to a rigorous financial-reporting standard and mitigate fraud. For RevOps it means exhaustively documenting how internal processes work so an external party can validate them — covering permissioning, data pipelines between systems, reporting structure, and metric consistency. Though painful, the work doubles as a strategic roadmap because it highlights exactly where a company needs to improve as it heads into and beyond the IPO.

How should you prepare quote-to-cash for an IPO?

Quote-to-cash is often where the biggest manual risk hides — quoting, discounting, approvals, signatures, and finance revenue recognition handled by hand across sales, customer success, onboarding, and finance. Preparing for an IPO means formalizing it with a CPQ engine (Stephanie's team chose Salesforce CPQ) that enforces product and discounting rules and advanced approval models. It's a large lift — a year-plus in her case — so start the evaluation before the event forces it, ideally around Series B/C.

What does 'operate like you're already public' mean for a startup?

It means building your systems, data, and controls to a post-IPO enterprise standard well before any event. Stephanie enters every role assuming the company may IPO (or pursue another exit) and designs current processes under those pretenses. Companies that don't operate like a post-IPO organization tend to struggle to become one, and laying the groundwork early is often what makes the opportunity exist in the first place.

Why do public companies need formal change management in Salesforce?

Because Salesforce is a core system of record, public-company rigor requires proof of what changed, when, and by whom. That means admins ideally make changes in a sandbox before deploying to production, every change is documented, and a sample is periodically pressure-tested against the system itself. Beyond satisfying auditors, this control gives the organization visibility that survives turnover — so a new person can understand the system and trust that the data is accurate.

What advice does Stephanie Ucko give RevOps leaders whose company may go public soon?

Take a hard look at current state — especially systems — and imagine an outsider walking in to scrutinize any risk, manual intervention, or single point of failure (one person or a lone spreadsheet). Turn those gaps into a roadmap, and build every process as if someone who's never worked there has to follow how data moves system to system and verify it's accurate. In short: know that you need to build for scale, but also build so it can be independently understood and trusted.

How did Stephanie Ucko get into RevOps?

She started in a direct sales role at Revel Systems, an online-ordering and POS company, where no one owned sales operations. She raised her hand — asking 'what's Salesforce?' and how to formalize the function — and moved into a focused sales-ops role. From there she took a leadership role at a San Francisco cybersecurity company, then moved to New York and joined Olo as its first RevOps hire, owning revenue operations soup-to-nuts and working through the company's IPO. She describes herself as a builder by nature.

Timeline

Jump through the conversation

Click any chapter to open it in the transcript.

00:00The pre-IPO to post-IPO journey 00:41Stephanie's background and the IPO during COVID 03:13The three questions an IPO forces: evidence, SOX, system of record 04:17Prepping ahead: data governance and manual processes 05:21Quote-to-cash: the biggest manual risk 07:11Choosing Salesforce CPQ 08:26SOX compliance and the pre-IPO audit 11:27Ringing the bell at One World Trade 13:23How RevOps changed post-IPO 16:32New cadences: internal audit and Salesforce change management 19:40Advice for RevOps leaders heading toward an IPO 22:43Career path: Revel to cybersecurity to Olo 25:36Building for your internal customers 26:46Close
Full Transcript

The whole conversation

Broken into chapters, searchable, verbatim from the audio. Speakers inferred (not diarized).

Transcript as markdown ↓ Whole episode as markdown ↓
00:00The pre-IPO to post-IPO journey

0:00 (logo whooshing) - Stephanie, thank you so much for being here today. I'm thrilled to go through the topic that we have prepared because it's something that a lot of the companies that we work with are striving towards, and that's going from being a privately held startup to reaching that point of an IPO and then going beyond. And there are very few people that have gone through that full journey, especially in revenue operations, and I'm just so excited to hear about the experience that you had and for you to share some learnings and things you wish you knew during that process. But I think just to kick it off,

00:41Stephanie's background and the IPO during COVID

0:41 we'd love to hear the story of where you were, how that process went, and then what changed? Pre-ringing the bell, post-ringing the bell, what was different about your role, the company, and anything else about your day-to-day? - Yeah, great to meet you, Anthony. Thanks for having me on today. I'm excited to talk about the topic. So, yeah, a little bit about myself. I've been in the RevOps world for about 10 years now, and this was my first exit from what was obviously a pre-IPO to post-IPO company based in the digital ordering space, and a super exciting moment. I think a lot of us strive for, as you head into these really exciting companies,

1:25 we're just doing a lot of cutting-edge things. So, yeah, where was I? We were sort of in the height of COVID, which was just an interesting time to sort of be going through this process as a company about, I think we were about three or 400 at the time. And so, to kind of back up a little bit, as these sort of things happen, internally we're sort of made aware that they're sort of coming up and things will be changing as an organization, but really leading up to the event, all everybody was excited about was to go and pop champagne and meet at the stock exchange and just take lots of pictures, so. - That's what I would be looking forward to.

2:01 I would be like, yeah, I can't wait. Share it with my mom, you know, the whole thing. - Exactly, yeah. So, that was just, I think a lot of people were just really riding the high and getting prepared for sort of the work that was ahead, but we definitely reveled in the moment, you know, the day of, masked and all, and just tried to kind of collaborate as a team and to celebrate the win. You know, but I think in the revenue ops world, especially, so much of what we do is so business critical and, you know, while we are sort of behind the scenes in terms of celebrating all of our wins as a sales organization, you know, obviously,

2:37 you know, I'd like to think of our remit as like really the backbone of a lot of, you know, the really important pieces, how we, you know, go to market as, you know, a sales organization, how we work through, obviously, all of our contracting and, you know, by large, you know, by large strides, you know, the entire quota cash process. So there's a lot there that really needed to be, you know, scrutinized and enhanced and sort of leveled up. And so I think some of the, while, you know, some of the changes sort of happened a little bit over time, you know, I started, you know, there were more, you know, more phrases and more vernacular that we really had

03:13The three questions an IPO forces: evidence, SOX, system of record

3:13 to kind of understand as a revenue organization. I kind of bucket these sort of three, into three kind of categories initially, and, you know, three kind of key things that I kept hearing over and over as we were being introduced to editors and, you know, the implement process was, you know, how are we gonna evidence for this? You know, how do we ensure that we are SOCS compliant? And, you know, what is our system of record? And there are these sort of like, sort of key phrases you hear as you're kind of going through that process that as a revenue ops leader, you really need to kind of dive into and understand,

3:42 well, you know, the way that we operate it as a startup, well, we always think about, you know, how do we scale this? You know, what is this gonna look like, you know, in some sort of exit? You know, if the time is here, how do we really start to just dig into that? So I'd say those sorts of things were certainly top of mind and sort of came across pretty immediately and, you know, the weeks and months to follow. - Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. How much time did you have to prepare? Like, was there, did you get three months, six months? Were you thinking something like this was gonna happen in the next 12 months? And was there anything you had to do

04:17Prepping ahead: data governance and manual processes

4:17 to just get prepped for the moment? - Yeah, I think there was, you know, there was some sort of, there was definitely some discussion around, you know, what this might look like and, you know, rumblings here and there. You know, I think some of the things that we'd sort of talked about from a roadmap perspective, from a system side was, you know, how do we start thinking about data governance, right, as an initiative and a strategy? That certainly was something that had been floated a little bit before, you know, we knew that we needed to go, you know, through the IPO process and, you know, evaluate again with those systems of record.

4:47 So there were a couple of tactical projects that we sort of needed to tackle and understand and sort of ideate on ahead of the IPO that definitely we benefited from post IPO. And those sorts of things obviously include, you know, how do you formalize your sort of data governance strategy? How do you ensure that, you know, we're able to sort of automate so many of what is currently those manual processes today, right? How do we kind of think about what's living in your Google sheet or here or there and sort of optimize that systematically with, you know, everything that's sort of out in the tech stack today. There was definitely a lot of discovery

05:21Quote-to-cash: the biggest manual risk

5:21 to do there as well. - Was there anything in particular that stood out where, hey, we have a very manual process and probably some risk in our data governance in this area of the business. And we really, really need to fine tune it. Was it like quoting? Was it measuring discounts? Was it calculating bookings or revenue? Like, was there an area where it just like, man, we have to figure this out and fill this gap. - Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think there are certainly, and you know, and I think that's what's interesting about kind of going through this IPO process is it kind of brings up and highlights all of those sort of little areas

6:02 where little or big areas I should say, where sort of it's right for improvement and efficiency. So I think you really, you know, you certainly hit the nail on the head in terms of one really key component of what are, what was our QTC process at the time. And we didn't necessarily have a formal CPU engine where we really understood, you know, the full life cycle of kind of how we actually go through, you know, the quoting process, the discounting process approvals, your signatures and signing process, as well as how we kind of recognize that on the finance side of things. So that was certainly a huge initiative that took us

6:36 a little over a year to really formalize, because, you know, at the time, everything was quite manual. You've got folks through customer success, onboarding out to finance, who are kind of looking at these contracts manually, which as you can imagine can certainly be, you know, quite laborious and something that's not optimal for obviously our, you know, our sort of like human resources, as well as, you know, the systems that we use. So I think it certainly was an area that we really needed to mature and sort of began that evaluation quickly. - Yeah, yeah. Was it living in cheats and you had to migrate it

07:11Choosing Salesforce CPQ

7:11 to like Salesforce CPQ or Deal Hub or some system like that? - Yeah, so everything was in Salesforce to an extent where we didn't, again, we didn't have, you know, formal controls around the products that we're using and the discounting rules that applied to those things. And so while, again, we had sort of a systematic process in place, it was really one in which we could, really needed to optimize, right? And so that's when we began the discussions around CPQ, understanding, you know, how we actually, we had, you know, advanced approval models, things like that, where just based on the complexity of our sales cycle in the business,

7:48 we really like the, just was necessary for us. - Yeah, did you pick up particular tool? Was it Salesforce CPQ or something else? If you can share. - Yeah, so we ended up, we did choose Salesforce CPQ. If you've been through one of those implementations, it's certainly. - There's so much fun. - There's so much fun. And so, yeah, it was great. And the implementation partner that we chose is great. So yeah, all is well that ends well, but definitely a large lift. - Nice. Yeah, no, we've gone through quite a few of those. And it tends to be one of the bigger projects that we work on and engage on here at LeanScale.

08:26SOX compliance and the pre-IPO audit

8:26 You know, we work with anywhere from seed stage companies to pre-IPO. And usually around that like series B, series C time is when you really need to start formalizing that. One for scale, but especially two, if you're preparing for some event like this. Was there anything formal that you had to go through before that moment, any formal audit processes, anything that was just something you had to go through before you went through the IPO process? - Yes, there were a couple of things. And as you kind of get into the requirements around, you know, SOX compliance, which for maybe listeners who might not be aware, is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002,

9:06 which essentially really the intention of this sort of compliance work is really just to, you know, adhere to public companies and train that, you know, we're mitigating fraud and understanding that financial reporting model in a pretty exhaustive perspective. So, you know, we started to see a lot of, you know, SOX compliance meetings pop up on the calendar and knowing that, you know, we were-- - That had to be a giveaway, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Why are we going through SOX compliance if we're not going public? Just for fun? - Yeah. And so at that point, you know, we've been really, really close with the folks externally

9:44 who were gonna be helping us kind of work through how we articulate a lot of our internal process, which was a really, you know, while it was exhaustive and, you know, painful at times, I think really landed us in a much better spot, especially from an operations perspective, because it really starts to highlight, again, the areas where, you know, we really need to make an impact as we go into the IPO process. Kind of guides a little bit of our roadmap as we're thinking about post-IPO. You know, what do we need to work on first in terms of, is it permissioning? Is it, you know, more stringent data pipelines between our systems?

10:16 You know, what does the reporting structure look like? Are we all speaking the same language in terms of the metrics that we're reporting? Are there nuances in the data that we need to be explained? You know, and if there are nuances, how are we actually evidencing for those things? Is there a way to take nuance out of those sort of those processes overall? So, you know, I think that was definitely an area where initially pre-IPO, we really needed to kind of go through that process. And again, while it can be, you know, painful in the beginning, ultimately that should really, from a strategic perspective, guide your roadmap around, you know,

10:50 how do we make sure that, you know, if we are a pre-IPO startup, how do we operate as a post-IPO organization and enterprise business? So. - Absolutely, absolutely. No, I think if you can lay a lot of that groundwork ahead of time, one, it puts you in a position to even have that opportunity because companies that are not operating like they're a post-IPO company, likely will have a tough time getting there. So, you know, the strategic advantages of getting the level of scale and just having the level of rigor on your data definitions will help make that process possible.

11:27Ringing the bell at One World Trade

11:27 What was the moment like? So were you, it was during COVID time. So I don't know if you had an opportunity to pop champagne. I went through, I was head of RevOps during an exit. That happened during COVID as well. I always envisioned the champagne popping moment. And I never even saw my colleagues again after that happened. So we never had that opportunity. But what was the moment like for you? Were you at home? Were you, was there a meeting? Like tell me about the story. - Yeah, yeah, it was a pretty fun moment. The company at the time was based in New York and at One World Trade. And so we were definitely, those who were local to New York,

12:07 we've all kind of taken in this moment, ahead of the bell ringing, they kind of let you into this sort of like, quote unquote, virtual rating area. And you can kind of go and kind of celebrate together and they kind of tee you up to kind of dial into the actual bell ringing. And the CO was there and got really excited and obviously introduced the company. And we saw our huge logo all over the exchange and that was just really great. And so at home with my husband at the time and then once we kind of got through the bell ringing, we went down to the exchange and met up with, I think it must've been a dozen or so of my colleagues

12:48 and definitely had a champagne moment there and enjoyed ourselves. It was right around St. Patrick's Day, I think. So that was just a really nice moment for everybody. And yeah, I've got a couple of pictures of us just all masked up and just trying to, you can see our smiles through the masks. So, which was really nice. And those signs on the exchange are much bigger than you really think they are. Shipping those things out is just a whole to do. That was just a fun moment too, just like how momentous it was for everyone. - That is so cool, that is so cool. I know so many people in the startup world, like that's what they're striving for.

13:23How RevOps changed post-IPO

13:23 And to just be able to go through that moment is so unique. What about after? So you pop the champagne, you have an amazing moment at the stock exchange. How did life change? How did revenue operations change or did it? - Yeah, I mean, I think that going back to sort of my points around the areas where we really needed to up level the rigor around our systems and data. I think if you think about the cornerstones of revenue operations as a whole, systems and tooling are really just one component of it. Generally enablement somewhere in there. There's maybe some sort of compensation or commission. Maybe there's data, you can kind of slice and dice

14:04 these growing revenue operations teams in a couple of different ways. I think one area that we really leaned into, just make sure necessity was really understanding how our systems were able to really remain compliant and to level up to the degree at which our processes were working as well. And so I think this kind of comes also back to, you know, current business process pre IPO is one thing, but then you think about post IPO and how does that motion actually impact your internal processes day to day? While there's more, again, there's more compliance, there's more of that that's happening and they're required of the business.

14:43 It also can influence like how you actually adjust your internal business process, right? Things may be working in one way, call it from the way that you actually quote your customers to who's made aware of that internally, how you do your onboarding handoff to us and ultimately how finance sort of ingest that and works out through the Rev Rec process. Well, you may have one motion there that is working or not working, but I think the IPO process in general sort of requires you to take a look at that and understand while we may have to now evidence, right? And think about how we actually reflect what we're doing to somebody on paper

15:19 and to validate this external person can validate that we've actually adhered to the compliance requirements we've set up. Does it also impact the business process and how you adjust that moving forward? And so that was an interesting moving target, I think as well, when we were kind of going through that problem saying, well, this is current state of the state today. Let's document all that and let's hope that some third party can kind of understand and ingest that in a way that makes sense to them as best they know our business. But then at the same time, it kind of takes you into a place of self reflection, right?

15:48 To say, is this the most optimal way to do this? How can we really make this better? And how can we take some human error or a human element out of that that we don't love our people but that we wanna kind of take this off of them and be able to say, great, we're operating this organization. How do we make sure that our processes kind of reflect that? - Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. Like not doing that just to check a box, but let's use that to actually enhance what we're doing. Were there any new operating cadences, new reporting requirements that you didn't have before, new meetings you had to go to, anything like that that happened post IPO?

16:32New cadences: internal audit and Salesforce change management

16:32 - Yeah, yeah, good question, Anthony. So yeah, as I mentioned, there was definitely, there was definitely a few more meetings on the calendar. We became quite familiar with some new folks internally who were really just in charge of our actual internal auditing process who we could work with our internal partners on. And they became just like inherent cross collaborators just like any others, as we're kind of going through

16:59 the auditing process and auditing prep. So we were doing, I think at that point we were operating on a monthly cadence. I actually think it was monthly and then it moved to quarterly cadence for establishing who your system admins, how were things changed? What does the change management process in Salesforce look like for you? How are you doing that? These are things where we could hire one person just to go through the process of making sure that we can adhere to some of the requirements that we have with Salesforce as an example. If you're a Salesforce admin, you're constantly making changes ideally in Sandbox. - Ideally. - Before you decide to plug that.

17:41 And you're working through that process internally in Salesforce. Salesforce obviously is like best of breed gold standard. They really helped us obviously address any compliance requirements and things like that. But we had to think about how do we formalize a bit of a change management process in Salesforce and how do we evidence for how you're actually deploying to production, who's doing that? And those were things that were iterated over time. We had to consistently be reporting on what were the changes that you made in the last month, the last quarter? How do we take a sample size of that and pressure test that against the system itself?

18:14 So it's pretty exhaustive. And so there was, again, definitely that quarterly cadence around establishing, okay, what does system access look like at the most basic level? And then how do we kind of assess and pressure test change management? Because that's also obviously a key crux to what we call our systems of record. And kind of making sure that we're on top of those things. So they were certainly quite familiar with our process and definitely something that we were doing, probably the same kids we were doing all hands. We were just needing to be that close to the process. And I'll say this too, I think organizations that have been IPO for a decade

18:56 or more, I can't necessarily speak to that, but I know that in those first few years that you've IPO, those are definitely things that are heavily scrutinized and we need to kind of work out those kinks in the beginning of things. - Yeah, of course, of course. And I know people are making investment decisions based on sales data, marketing data. So making sure that that is as accurate as possible and the processes make sense. It has a lot of implications. - Definitely. - If somebody is sitting in seat, they're ahead of RevOps, their company might be going public in the next six, 12 months. What words of advice do you have for them?

19:40Advice for RevOps leaders heading toward an IPO

19:40 - Yeah, I think that's a great question, Anthony. And I think the one thing that will, one, it's so hard to sort of think about just one thing, but I would say everybody talks about scale. Everybody thinks about how can we do this in a way that's not just going to get us through the next six months to a year. But I think taking a look at, a hard look at the current state of the state in terms of how you're specifically around systems works. Think about what somebody coming into the organization who would be scrutinizing any sort of risks or areas where there's a lot of manual intervention and things that are sort of needing to be addressed

20:22 by one person, again, or a Google Sheet somewhere. Think about how you strategize a way to move that into an actual roadmap. Think about how you wanna operate as an IPO company as a startup. I think that's probably, I'm trying to think of like an easier one-hit way to say this. - No, I think that's it. I know there's a lot to it. So it's tough to boil it down to just a couple things. - Yeah, yeah, again, like the way that I, and this is me looking back on my experiences, like I go into my roles these days thinking about, okay, we're gonna IPO if we're gonna, if we're going, if that's our direction, or even whatever exit you're looking at.

21:01 How do we think about the current processes, whether that's systems or otherwise? And imagine it under those pretenses, right? Imagine someone is coming in and saying, how do you actually, how do I know what changes you've made in Salesforce? Where do I go to look at that? Like at a very tactical level, right? I need to think about how we kind of present that in a way that makes sense while also like optimizing, obviously your internal business today, right? And this isn't to say only focus on that area and that needs to be your guiding principle, but I certainly like, that's how I go in sort of my new roles is understanding,

21:35 okay, we know that we need to build this for scale. We also need to build this in a way that if somebody was gonna come to the organization and say, hey, how do you do this? And if I've never worked here, I don't understand how the data goes from one system to another. Where can I go to find that? And how do I know that that's accurate? And we have controls around that, right? - Right, right. And a lot of people don't think about those type of controls. They're just moving, adding things in production. - Lighting it. - Lighten it up, throwing wrenches in the system every day. - We're all wearing a mask. - No, and I think it makes a lot of sense.

22:08 It's good for you to have that level of visibility too, because if there's turnover in the company, people can understand what's going on and pick up from where you left off. You can make sure you're building things efficiently. So I think, yeah, creating that evidence of how you do something, how a process gets completed, or having that change in control management, super important. So how did you go? I'd love to hear the story. None of these stories are usually super linear, but how did you end up being the head of RevOps in a company that went public, doing the type of work that you're doing today? How did that happen?

22:43Career path: Revel to cybersecurity to Olo

22:43 - Yeah, let's take you all the way back. - Let's go to Genesis. - Yeah, so I'm currently coming into you from Santa Barbara, California. I was born and raised in Virginia, actually. So I'm a native East coaster. Love the four seasons and miss it dearly. But made my way out to California sort of in my elementary school years and was really raised in the coast of Monterey. And made my way down to Southern California for college. Really thought I would go potentially into public relations or some other more communication space sort of like background and sort of area for my career. Quickly found that that probably wasn't for me

23:26 after being in LA for a number of years. Moved back to the Bay Area, actually. Got married and really wanted to kind of dive into the tech scene there. And found my way to my first startup, Revel, who does online ordering for all sorts of restaurant, businesses and other verticals as well. Kind of came in as an initial, actually in a sales role. And as you can imagine, when you're a smaller organization, no one's really owning sales operations. It wasn't even really something that I think the organization at the time had really thought, okay, we need somebody dedicated to doing this. And I sort of raised my hand and said, well, what's Salesforce?

24:06 And how do we actually go about formalizing a little bit of this? And kind of a shared responsibility among so many, as I'm sure lots of folks in robots can attest to if you're working for smaller organizations. So moved from a direct sales role into a focus sales operations role there. And brought what is now pretty like turnkey sales ops into my remit. And was with them for a number of years. Moved on to a cybersecurity organization also based in San Francisco. Leveled up into a leadership role, which is great. Completely in a different, obviously a different industry. But still in that SaaS model. And then people were definitely going remote.

24:50 Also moved out to New York City, where I found Olo. And that was just great. And that's really where I sunk my teeth into, really owning robots kind of stooped to nuts. Again, the first robots hire there. And worked really, really closely with sales leadership there on really just, moving through that process. And formalizing a lot of that sort of remit at Olo. Was there a post IPO? And then just now recently found my new role. And again, leader in sales, leader in robots. And looking to sort of grow a team. I definitely found my sort of cornerstone in building. I think there's lots of different times in which, in robots capacity, you can make an impact.

25:36Building for your internal customers

25:36 Seed, series A, series B, public company. I think I'm a builder by nature. And so that's really where I found my new home. And I'm definitely really excited about it. - That's great. That's great. I mean, probably having some of that sales experience, right at the onset of the career, helped build some empathy with what you're building. 'Cause that's often how it happens. It's like, hey, I'm trying to do this job and I have some systems here, but they're not really working for me. And then the operationally minded folks end up saying, "Hey, can I help change this so I can do my job better?" And it sounds like a similar trajectory happened too.

26:11 - Yeah, exactly. I think, you know what? I find that in the day-to-day work that I do, I'm tapping so many of our sales leaders and also just our interview contributors, just to give you feedback around kind of what we're thinking about. I think it doesn't necessarily have to be sort of a bottoms up or top sound approach to how we kind of work through a lot of things in a roadmap. So I get so much of great, great feedback and great value from obviously who are my actual customers, which is our sales team, marketing, CS, sort of the broader organization as a whole. I think it definitely, you know, gives me just a really good sense of perspective

26:46Close

26:46 and appreciation for the folks who are in Z. - I love it, I love it. Well, Stephanie, this has been really, really awesome. I was really interested to hear everything, pre-IPO, post-IPO, what changed day-to-day, all the specifics. A lot of people are just working towards that moment and, you know, what is it actually like? And I'm really happy, even though it was during COVID time, you got to pop some champagne with your friends and colleagues, 'cause it's such a special moment. So taking time to celebrate is important. So yeah, just thank you so much for sharing that and best of luck to everything you're doing now.

27:20 Hopefully we get to see you ring the bell again. Let's see if we can make it happen a second time. And as you're going through, we'd love to have you back to share everything you've learned along the way. - Love it, me too, Anthony, thanks so much. - Thank you.