Like, to level set it a little bit, like, let's just talk a little bit about Appian, because, like, you've been there for quite a while. We did the IPO together. You stepped out, back now. Mm-hmm. Like, if you think about that Appian journey, like, can you just kind of, to get everyone back on the same page, like, so where are we in terms of, you know, the starting point of being, having a tool and a BPM vendor local to, like, what Appian stands for today? Okay. I knew the four founders when we worked together at MicroStrategy, and they left in 1999, started Appian, and they bootstrapped the company. The first 10 years of the company's existence, they basically didn't raise any money at all. They came out with a personalized portal, and they came out with a couple other things, and you know, typical startups, pivots. I think their big success was they built out Army Knowledge Online, AKO, which is a huge portal that allowed the U.S. military families to communicate with each other, you know, back in the day in the early 2000s. What they ended up doing is basically with that portal, they had to deal with scale, they had to deal with security, they had to deal with some really meaty complex things. And so they were able to take a lot of that IP and layer it into a platform. And we originally started out with a business process management platform, BPM, that was at scale, that was very powerful, and then you could build things quickly with it. And then we kind of migrated over time into low code. So when we IPO-ed, we coined the term low code. I don't think any software vendors out there were talking about low code at the time. And then since then we're, you know, and we've always been process. Workflow and process is kind of our sweet spot. And so right now we're calling ourselves a, you know, process automation. But at its core, we've been doing similar things throughout the entire history of the company. Yeah. And since you were, like, kind of the main player on the low-code side, like, you know, when you sit in the board meetings, how do you define the market, in terms of, like, size? And also, what do you think about growth there? Yeah. I mean, I think the space itself is huge. Like, I think at our last investor day, we put together our TAM, and basically it was a $60 billion TAM, and so if we end up doing about $600 million in revenues this year, we're barely tapping into that TAM, so it's a huge opportunity, and the good thing is we've got, and you know, it's a biased opinion, but we feel like we have the best technology to solve these problems than any of us out there, and so it's a huge opportunity with a great product, gross retention rate of 99%, best in class, so we're you know just trying to take advantage of this opportunity. And then the, I mean, since you started, like, everyone kind of jumps on. So there's, you know, there's other guys that enter, like, "Oh, yeah, we, we do low code," and there's, like, guys that kind of say, "Oh, we have a platform." How do you, how do you see that competitive field playing out, or how, what do you see there? And, and who's kind of a real competitor that you actually see in deals, and who's just, "Yeah, yeah, we, we can do this"? So, you know, a couple of our key differentiators, right, is that we, we allow people to build processes or applications very quickly. So Forrester came out and said that it's a 90% reduction in the time to develop applications using Appian versus doing, you know, versus coding. The payback with Appian is less than six months, and you're allowed, and basically once we've automated that process, it's 95% faster and more efficient than it was before. So there's a lot of value, a lot of ROI that we, we deliver. From a competitive perspective, some of our key differentiators besides are the fact that we have this thing called Data Fabric, which is a patented technology that allows you to access any of your data throughout the enterprise. So a lot of our customers are large companies that have legacy systems that they don't want to rip out. It's just too expensive. So we allow them with Data Fabric to access this as a virtual database. And so you can go in, access the data, bring it to bear within that database, and then if you act upon it, it can write the data, write the information back into these databases themselves. And I don't think any other technology or any other company out there has the ability to read and write data in that manner. So that's a huge differentiator that we've got. And it basically essentially allows people to modernize their systems without a lot of pain and expense. We're in the cloud, we're on-prem, in the federal government, we're IL5 certified, we're, you know, gonna probably ultimately work towards IL6 certification. We've got all the security, HIPAA compliant, SOC 1, SOC 2, all of the compliance that you need. Our SLAs are 99.99%, so it's best in class. And the, The competitors. Okay. Sorry. Yeah, yeah. I know that's a good, good example. The biggest competitor candidly still is build it yourself, right? So, yeah, I got a team of computer guys. I'm gonna go build this project. And they realize they can't do it. It's too expensive, or it's too complicated, and so they bring us in. The biggest competitor aside from that is Pegas ystems. It's been that way for a long time, and it still is that way. Pegas ystems is great at building complex applications, but it's very hard to do it in Pega. So it takes a long time. So we have the speed versus the power. After that, it drops off considerably. You'll see ServiceNow. You know, you mentioned the fact that they're talking about workflow, Data Fabric, and stuff like that. Formidable competitor, but we don't see them that often. Salesforce we see from time to time. And even Microsoft, but frankly, if we see Microsoft, one of us probably should be there, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, like, that's the thing, like, if you look at the terms, they're all using the term, like, Data Fabric is like Microsoft has Data Fabric, you guys have Data Fabric. So that's it, but it's real, it's Pega. Yeah. Pega and custom. Exactly. Like, if you look under the hood at ServiceNow is Data Fabric, you know, it doesn't do all the things that ours does. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, it's a great company, right? So it's in, you know. Yeah. And then talk about, like, you know, we're talking about this big market, like, how do you kind of square that big market opportunity with kind of custom, you know, your customer account, and how should we think about that? What do you mean? Like, in terms of, like, you know, like, you know, you have, like, some of the biggest customers, but, like, your customer number is not, like, crazy. Oh, crazy. Like, so, how do I square that? Yeah. And so we've always focused on, you know, selling into the existing customer base as well as getting new logos. Part of it's, you know, there's brand awareness out there. So the reason why we went public, and you, as you know this, well, is, we wanted brand awareness. We wanted that recognition of being a public company, and we felt that that would be, you know, our coming out in. To a certain extent it's worked. Our logo acquisition could always be better. And I think our strategy with partners is gonna be, you know, acquiring more logos. So that's what, that's what we're leaning on our partners for, is to get the new logos. And then the beauty of that relationship with partners is, there's lots of services tied to, like, when you build an application, your service is effectively business. Partners are allowed to eat what they kill. So they bring us in. They identify some applications or some projects to work on. They actually do that work for the customer, and we get the software sale. How's that focus on new customers versus kind of selling more in the installed base? How's that evolved over the last few years? It's been consistent. You know, it is always easier to sell in the existing customer base than to get new logos. So it's been a consistent focus of ours. I think we kind of retrenched a little bit when we went through some downsizing earlier this year and said, "We're gonna focus more on the existing customer base than on new logos." We have a new CRO in place now, and he's gonna be focusing on both, right? So. And then, I mean, like, you have some large customers, like, including Barclays, like, it's some large guys there. Like, if you think that one question I get from a lot of people, and it's maybe because you're based out of Washington, D.C., or like, you know, Virginia, like, how much of a, like, corporate versus kind of government kind of mix do you have? Like, is that something that, you know, you know, helped you initially, but you moved out of it? Like, how should we think about that? Oh, I mean, initially it was almost 100%, federal government. Yeah. Like, AKO was a federal. Right now, about 30% of our revenues are federal government. Oh yeah, that's easier. So while the mic drop, you said 30%. Little mic problem here. Just kind of. The, 30%. It is 8:00 A.M. in the morning, so. Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, about 30% of the business is federal government, and that's been consistent over the past several years. And then, if you think about the, you know, on the government side, like, you obviously have, like, the new kind of department to kind of save cost, et cetera. Like, how do you know, it's more a bigger picture question. Like, how do you think about that kind of efficiencies within the government? And you guys actually, as a technology provider, should probably help there. Yeah, yeah. You know, one of our biggest solutions, successful solutions, is the GAM suite. So it's a contract writing with lots of different modules for government agencies. And so, for example, U.S. Air Force brought us in to do CON-IT, which is a contract writing solution, and they were able to save upfront initially $83 million in cost. So the ROI is huge with it within the federal government. So, you know, like, a lot of, we were kind of joking, half-joking earlier about, you know, you got DOGE walking the hallways of these agencies, what does that mean for Appian? And, you know, we're actually a good story to tell. Just because of the compelling ROI that we give these agencies. And so, we're not too worried about it. We think maybe there could be a little bit of a tailwind. Yeah. In fact, so. You know, in theory, I would see that as well. Yeah. And then the, you mentioned partners a little bit, like, and we've been on a journey. I remember, like, you know, when we started out post-IPO, there was a lot of services, you know. Now a lot more partners. Like, where are you on that journey in terms of, you know, where you ultimately want to end in terms of the partner mix? We are, you know, we want to continue investing in the partner relationship, right, so I've been a huge fan of partners because if you want to grow exponentially, the only way you can do it in software is through partner relationships, right? Multiplier effect, yeah. Exactly. Because you can hire a sales rep, you got to train them up, takes you six to nine months to be productive. It's a slog, so the partners give you the ability to go in, they have a trusted relationship with the customer, they know what problems they're trying to solve, they know which technologies can solve those. And so the sales cycles when partners are involved are much shorter as well, so it's a tremendous opportunity for us, so we're, you know, it will always be a focus of ours. Then we, when you say partners, like, how should we think? Is that like the Accenture, Ernst & Young? Is it more smaller guys? Like, the big boys? No, yeah. It's No, yeah. It's Accentures and, yeah, the big guys. We also have, like, former Appian folks. There's a couple of firms out there that simply do, you know, services work for us, that are certified as well. But, the big strategic relationships are with the big guys. Yeah. Okay. And then, I want to shift gear a little bit on the platform side. So if you think, you know, you kind of have this out-of-the-box solution versus, like, offering a platform to do something, like, how's your thinking evolved there? Well, we've always felt that solution sales are easier, right? Mm-hmm. So it's, you have a problem, we have the solution, let's solve it and move on. Versus selling a horizontal platform is harder, right? It takes more creativity. Yeah. You have to look for the right applications to solve, like, right, the right problems to solve within the enterprise that's best suited for the platform. So it's just a harder sale. So we've tried to augment it with the solutions. So at the end of the day, we want people to standardize on Appian. So the beauty of Appian is you can build mission-critical applications and you can build them quickly. And so, but you can also build lightweight applications as well. So over time, if you can solve lots of problems for that company, they'll just standardize. You know, Aon is a perfect example. Aon has been a customer of ours for almost 10 years. We originally went in there to help with their claims processing. And so they basically went in and they were processing about 75,000 claims on a monthly basis globally. And they wanted to centralize it, they wanted to streamline it, they wanted to automate it. And so they brought in Appian, we went in and basically redid the entire workflow. And they were able to accelerate the processing of the claims by 80%. They were able to accelerate the invoicing processing by 70%. And as a result, they started building out other workflows from the success of that. And they've been able to reduce their spend rate in technology by 70%. So it's been a huge success story for us. Yeah. And then, on that solution, I mean, like, look, in a way, if you want to offer the full solution, you need to have the domain knowledge, like, you know, to be able to kind of create something that kind of is readily adoptable. Like, where, I mean, like, where are you on kind of identifying, you know, this is where I want to sell out-of-the-box a solution versus, like, I'm probably better as a platform? We're continuing to evolve. Yeah. We have a senior executive in charge of solutions. His job is to look for which solutions are best suited for Appian. GAM is by far our biggest success, the government contracting solution. We've got other solutions in other verticals. Our big four verticals are, you know, federal government, financial services is the largest, insurance and life sciences. With insurance, we've got, you know, a couple of solutions, one's for claims processing and then one for underwriting as well. So, you know, we're looking strategically and, you know, those in particular, those four verticals as far as what solutions are best suited for our platform. Yeah. Okay, and then on the expansion, the other part of the expansion that you could think about is this: you have low-code, but then you have, like, RPA and process mining, et cetera. Like, how do you, how does that fit in? Like, having low-code, you know, having a starting point of low-code, how do you think about, like, RPA, for example? Yeah, so we look at, we have a workflow. We allow people to build and automate process, an entire process from end to end. And as you're going through a particular process, you may need certain types of technology to automate that process. And so we look at, for example, RPA. Is a piece of the process. Like, if you're going in and you need to access information out of a legacy system, you can probably have that bot go get that information for you in that, as a process that the RPA is doing for you. AI, everybody's talking about AI, agentic AI. These are all types of technologies that can make that process of the workflow, better, more efficient, more effective. And we feel that AI, in particular, within the confines of a process, will be best suited there. It'll be more powerful there because you've got guardrails around the RPA or around the AI. And more importantly, I think you have the ability to audit the processes that the AI completes. For example, you guys came up with a report on agentic AI, which was actually really good because you dumbed down agentic AI. Agentic AI. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You dumbed it down for me, so I now understand it. But in that case, like, you know, you have the ability to have this agent reason, get additional information, and then take an action, right? Uh-huh. And that action, sometimes that action may not be what you wanted it to do. And if you don't have the ability to audit what's happened, what has happened, you won't be able to retrain that agent accordingly. So keeping them within the process itself and having the ability to audit, that technology is really powerful. I mean, you mentioned that GenAI agentic part, like, is that, like, in a way, is that where a lot of the investments are going now? Are you, you know, as a CFO, like, to try to kind of nail that part down? No. I mean, we're leveraging other, folks. Yeah. AI, right? So we're using, you know, Bedrock with AWS. We're using, you know, Claude, their LLMs with Anthropic. So we're leveraging best-in-class technologies and plugging it, allowing our customers to plug that into our, into our platform. So for example, UiPath is coming up after us. Yeah. We have customers that, and we do RPA as well, but we have customers that have UiPath. They like it. So we allow them to utilize their bots within our process. Yeah. And so that's how we look at it. Oh, okay. So, you're the bigger umbrella compared to. We're there, yeah. And I think that's it from a competitive moat perspective. You'd rather be there because the hardest thing is that process workflow engine, right? Yeah, yeah. To have that, the point technology throughout it, it's a different thing. Like, even LLMs are going to commoditize over time. They're getting, the reasoning is becoming close to each other. You know, at some point, they're going to be about the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Makes sense. And then, you touched a little bit on the vertical strategy. Like, you know, like, and you mentioned your four big pillars of where you want to go. How do you think about this in terms of, you know, obviously it looks, you did it because your opportunity is very big there. But how do you think about it also as you evolve as a company in terms of resource allocation? So is that, could we see you as kind of getting more deeper in those four, or how do you kind of evolve? Yeah. We are already deep in those four. Yeah. We've kind of verticalized our Salesforce for those four. Yeah. Then we have broad markets for the other verticals. Having said that, in the other verticals, we've got some great quals in, like, education, manufacturing, and so forth. So, we're not ignoring those others, but these are kind of our sweet spot. They're, you know, if you think about it, organizations are very large, highly regulated, complex processes, and it's just right down our sweet spot for opportunity for Appian. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. The, if you think about it, like, now, let's think about, like, there have been changes in terms of the organization over, you know, I think it's just more, just before you started. If you think about it, like, where Matt kind of talked to us about, like, having a little bit more focus. Can you think about that evolution of that thinking process? Because it's something that we kind of discussed with you for a while. It's like, where do you want to go as a company? Like, what was, you know, Matt's thinking there or what are you trying to achieve there? In focus, you mean is. Like, where you want to compete, like, you know, like you had then a change in, like, how resource allocation. Mm-hmm. To kind of sell, et cetera. Yeah. I think, you know, we, like I mentioned earlier, we were bootstrapped. We had never raised any money. The only money we raised prior to the IPO was $10 million from a local VC firm. So we're like an anomaly compared to Silicon Valley companies. And then we decided to spend after the IPO to see if we could get, spend, use dollars to get growth, right? Mm-hmm. And so we tried that for a while and we realized we weren't very good at doing that. And so we wanted to get, basically, get back in control of our own destiny. And so we made some tough decisions, this past summer. And as you saw in Q3, we posted a positive adjusted EBITDA of $10.8 million. And we're committed to, you know, continued margin expansion going into 2025 and so forth. So we had made a promise to Wall Street that we would be break-even at the end of 2025, and we accelerated that promise by over a year. Okay. Yeah. So we're focused on doing more with less. And I feel confident that we can do that. With that, like, I mean, you were part of that journey. Like, if you look now, like, what you can, you know, what you want to do, achieve it, as you said, like, you want to do more with less. Like, how do we have to think about it? Because like, a lot of time, like, when other companies do that, then it just like, you know, growth gets cut because, you know, you've been growing through kind of. Mm-hmm. Just hiring more sales guys and stuff like that. How do, how do we have to think about what you guys are doing? Yeah, so we sat down and we wanted to make sure that we had a sufficient capacity and the right types of capacity. Yeah. For our 2025 plan, right? So you, as you know, you need to have the sales force in place before the year to actually execute in that year. So we feel confident that we have the capacity necessary to achieve our goals for 2025 based on what we've done. So I don't see a trade-off between margin and growth at all. We still look at ourselves first and foremost. We want to grow, but we also want to start expanding our margin as well. So. Okay. In the last few minutes, you know, because I know I'm going to get some questions, now that you're back in the CFO seat, like, how do we have to think about, like, quarterly performance? Like, if you, maybe we go back to last quarter, like EBITDA was very strong. Like, what are you seeing out there in the field? In terms of the end demand, like how you're selling. Yeah. It's consistent. It's good. It's, you know, there's a lot of excitement. People are still trying to figure out, like, there's tons of buzz around AI and agentic AI and all that. So, I think there's a lot of opportunities out there for us. And we know where we play within that arena, and we just got to focus and execute. I think the key for us is we've got the best mousetrap, right? We have a great technology, 99% gross retention. We just need to execute, which is a much better place than having, you know, some crappy technology and you're just trying to sell it. So. Yeah. And on that note, like, when you said execute, like Q4, there was like indications that there maybe is a bit more lumpiness in terms of deals, where you need to be careful. Like, what do you see? Like. No, I think it's just we're trying to get in the cadence of, you know, kind of the beat and raise, beat and raise cadence. So that's all that is. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. If you then think on that note, though, like, how do you guys think about, like, or what signals are you guys thinking about, like, you know, recovery? Because, like, that's kind of going to be a big theme here at the conference. You mentioned earlier, like, it's going to be like, yeah, we're kind of in a steady state scenario, and that's kind of what we're operating in. For you as a CFO, what are you looking out for to think like, okay, maybe it's better or I need to change something here and be more dynamic? Is that reading the Wall Street Journal? Like, reading, just reading, like, how does it go for you, like, when you're in the business? I mean, for me, it's all about, you know, the bookings and then the pipeline, right? So the pipeline is a leading indicator, the quality of the pipeline. And then the bookings, the success of the bookings, the linearity of the quarter, is it, you know, everything at the back end of the quarter? Is it coming in throughout the quarter, et cetera? So those are things I look at pretty closely. And then just, you know, qualitative things, talking to the salesforce, talking to the folks and getting a sense of what it's like out there, right? Mm-hmm. So what is, is there an increased appetite now for Appian and why is that and so forth? So. Yeah. Okay. And then, as you think about it, like, and as you, you know, I'm sure you just kind of, I guess, finished your budgeting for next year, I would think like at this point of the year. How do you think about the growth framework? And it's like, actually, don't take it as like, you know, for next year, but like, how do you think about Appian as a company going forward in terms of growth rates? Like there's this, you know, the cloud subscription part. Is that kind of for you guys still like a 30% grower in the long term without giving guidance? Like, how do you think about this? How do you see Appian? I see us as a grower. Yeah. You know, I'm not going to put numbers to it quite yet. Yeah. Yeah. We'll put numbers to it in a couple of months, when we give our guidance. But I see us growing, right? So we're focused on growing. We know that software companies are growing slowly. The better to just be, you know, significant cash flow at the bottom line. So we still see ourselves as a grower, but we see ourselves as a grower in a profitable manner. So. Yeah. And then you know, you mentioned kind of break-even, profitable. Like, is there also a change in the organization now that you know, if you commit to kind of cash you know, cash flow and profitability, is there a different focus within the organization if you start running it or if you start new projects or budgeting? Like, you know, that, okay, well, need more discipline, show me the return if you want to do make investments. Like you as a CFO must be in a very different seat now. Yeah. I think it was interesting because when I came back in, it was always. I felt like it was me versus the entire team. Yeah. As far as me saying no to things and then the entire team wanted all these things. And so it was like, it was very difficult, and tiring. Now it's the entire team is supporting the concept that we need to grow profitably. And so they're, you know, it's a unified team. And as far as we're going to be very strategic in the additional investments that we want to do, and we're going to say no to a bunch of things. And so it's been something that I've enjoyed, actually. Yeah. Yeah. I I can imagine. I didn't have to be exact or know all the time. So. Is it, and then so from the practicalities, like do the people that want to spend the money, do they need to prove the ROI better? Is it just less that you have less bets in a given year? How do you think about it? It's a process. They were requiring them to write up what they want, what additional things they need, why they need them, what's the payback going to be, and then we decide on whether we want to do it or we say, if certain things happen better than planned, then we'll release those projects, et cetera. So, it has been a, like, I think they spent the past two years coming up with a really good process. So it's great. It's good to see. Yeah. Yeah. And then, so, like, how's it? Like, last question from me is like, how was it back for you? Like, were you kind of out golfing and now? The big. How does it feel? Yeah. Yeah. The big shock for me was the five days a week coming back to the office. I'm like, oh, I don't know if I can do that. Yeah. Yeah. But after it was funny. After a couple of weeks, I was talking to my wife and I said, "It's weird. It feels like I'd never left. Like it's like, was I retired for a while?" So. Yeah. Yeah. It's been good. Like I've, you know, I enjoy the people there. I hired most of the people on my team. I enjoy working with the executives and the founders. So it's been better than I expected. What's the setup? So you're interim or like, so you're still looking in a way? Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to apply. No, no, but no. Yeah. Yeah. Matt knows for sure it's interim. So, my CEO. No, it's. I went in, you know. You asked us a personal favor and you can't say no to Matt. So, no, but there's a search that's ongoing right now. They started it, in fact, before we even started. And so there's a lot of candidates out there. So it's good. Like when I retired, it seemed like there weren't as many quality candidates out there, but it seems like for whatever reason, there's more out there. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Hey, I really enjoyed our conversation, Matt. That's great. Like, great to have you back. It was great. I didn't sneak the question in on the Commander. I was waiting for that. I know. Yeah. We do it afterwards. Yeah. Exactly. Hey, thanks for joining us again. Thank you. Thank you. Good to talk to you. Yeah. Thank you.