Next-Level Financial Modeling with AI and Automation for CFOs with Chase Wright
In this episode of Financial Modeler’s Corner, host Paul Barnhurst dives into the evolution of financial modeling with guest Chase Wright. The discussion focuses on modern financial modeling tools and workflows, particularly a new spreadsheet tool called Equals, and how it compares to Excel and Google Sheets. Wright shares his journey from a finance background to working at startups, where he developed innovative methods to streamline financial operations using cutting-edge tools.
Chase Wright is a seasoned finance executive with a decade of experience across startups and tech companies like GitLab, Instabug, and Red Hat. Currently the Head of Finance and Data at Uniqode, Chase has a unique blend of corporate finance, data science, and business management expertise. He’s also an advisor to Cacheflow and a limited partner at FOG Ventures. With an engineering background and deep experience in finance, Chase brings a fresh perspective on the challenges and innovations in financial modeling.
Key takeaways from this week's episode include:
How Chase Wright’s career journey led him to innovate in financial modeling
The role of modern spreadsheet tools like Equals in finance and data teams
How to use tools like Equals to automate reporting and financial analysis
The importance of balancing curiosity and necessity when developing career skills
The pros and cons of traditional modeling tools like Excel and Google Sheets versus newer alternatives
Here are a few quotes from Chase Wright:
“Equals is a modern spreadsheet for data and finance teams, connecting directly to your data sources.” - Chase Wright
“Financial models are incredibly helpful, but at the end of the day, it's the intuition behind the model that really matters.” - Chase Wright
“Slack integration in Equals makes communicating insights across the company incredibly simple.” - Chase Wright
“AI in Equals acts as a copilot, making things like summing columns or adding borders incredibly intuitive.” - Chase Wright
In this episode, Chase Wright shares his journey from struggling with complex models in Excel to embracing the automation and connectivity that Equals offers highlights the growing need for more intuitive and efficient financial tools. He emphasizes that the right tools, combined with critical thinking, can not only improve workflows but also provide deeper insights that drive business success.
Follow Chase:
Website - https://www.uniqode.com/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chasewright/
Blog - https://medium.com/uniqode-secret-sauce/an-operators-guide-for-managing-your-saas-startup-s-cash-flow-c1dbfc3a1e71
Follow Paul:
Website - https://www.thefpandaguy.com
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thefpandaguy
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@thefpaguy8376
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In today’s episode:
[01:45] – Introduction to Chase Wright and his journey
[02:54] – The nightmare of VBA models and lessons
[04:24] – Educational Path: Finance to Engineering
[07:01] – Equals: The modern spreadsheet tool
[15:13] – How Equals Simplifies Data Integration
[20:02] – Financial modeling: Critical Thinking in Action
[31:03] – Rapid Fire Segment: Excel and Equals
[39:37] – Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Full Show Transcript
[00:01:13] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Welcome to Financial Modelers Corner. I am your host, Paul Barnhurst. This is a podcast where we talk all about the art and science of financial modeling with distinguished financial modelers from around the globe. The Financial Modelers Corner podcast is brought to you by the Financial Modeling Institute. FMI offers the most respected accreditation in financial modeling, and that is why I completed the Advanced Financial Modeler earlier this year. I'm thrilled to welcome our guest to the show this week, Chase Wright. Welcome to Financial Modelers Corner.
[00:01:53] Guest: Chase Wright: Thanks, Paul. Great to be here.
[00:01:55] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I'm really excited to have you. One of the things we're going to talk about today, just to set the stage. And then we'll go through your bios. We're going to talk a little bit about a new spreadsheet tool out there. In addition to financial modeling called Equals that Chase is using. But before we get into that, let me give a little bit of Chase's background for you. Chase is an experienced finance executive with a strong background in driving financial strategy and optimizing operations for growth. Currently, he is the Head of Finance and Data at Uniqode. Chase has also served on the Customer Advisory Board at Cacheflow, and is a limited partner at FOG Ventures. With over a decade of experience, including roles at GitLab, Instabug, Red hat, and more. He brings expertise in corporate finance, data science and business management. He holds a master's in engineering from the University of Alabama, Birmingham. So welcome with me. Chase to the show. Chase, tell me about that worst model you've ever seen. Tell me that horror story.
[00:02:59] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah, so it was I was straight out of grad school and hopped into an IT consulting company working under their CFO, and I got connected to their main model. And the main model was basically all written in VBA. And I had no idea what VBA was at that time, how I was going to actually operate this model. And there was a lot of disconnect between the VBA code that was being written and what was being put into the actual spreadsheet. It was an absolute nightmare for somebody coming into more of a junior role trying to figure out how to understand VBA. But yeah, that was kind of like my first jump into, you know, the FP&A side of the house, so to speak. From a finance perspective.
[00:03:40] Host: Paul Barnhurst: That sounds like a nightmare model, all with VBA. What did you learn from that experience? What did you take away?
[00:03:46] Guest: Chase Wright: I think what I took away was, you know, this was an IT consulting company. All they did was really focus on working and helping customers out from a software perspective, and it actually helped me understand that you can do more with a spreadsheet than just, you know, Excel modeling and some keywords and stuff like that. That's in the spreadsheet itself. So I actually took away that there's different ways to solve problems, but the spreadsheet is kind of like the core place for all of us to do our thinking. And it's a really good way for us to build our storytelling.
[00:04:15] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I mean, it's amazing how fabulous the spreadsheet is as a prototyping tool, modeling so many different things you can do with it. So I totally appreciate that. I want to ask. I'm curious, you got your bachelor's in finance, then a master of engineering. How did that combination happen? You generally see people who are engineers. They often go back to MBA school, but you usually don't see the other way around.
[00:04:37] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah. So I think anybody that knows me will say that curiosity normally gets the best of me. At that time, it was really out of necessity and curiosity. I was working at the University of Alabama at Birmingham as an accountant. I was making $27,000 a year, and I was like, how? How am I going to actually figure out life? Like, what does life look like if this is what it looks like now? And the first thing, and it may have been ignorance. It was just simply like, I think I need to go back to school. I need to go to grad school, because that seems to be all that everyone else is doing that seems to be successful.
[00:05:08] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yep. I'm young. That seems to work. That's the path.
[00:05:12] Guest: Chase Wright: That was the path. Yeah. And I had met the program director there, Dale Callahan. He was an entrepreneur himself. He took me in with open arms. And at the same time, I'm a very frugal person. The University of Alabama, if you were an employee there, they subsidized the tuition. So that helped out tremendously.
[00:05:29] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yes. Anytime you can get most of your education paid for, it makes it much easier to make the decision, I'm with you. My wife would also say I'm a very frugal person. So how has that helped you in your work doing that? Master's of engineering? I mean, are you glad that's the program you took? How has it kind of turned out for you?
[00:05:44] Guest: Chase Wright: It was pivotal, like I think at different points in your life, you can look back and say, like, this was a pivotal moment of my life. That was 100% a pivotal moment in my life. I met a couple of friends that I'm still good friends with. This was, you know, ten, 12 years ago at this point, and I joined that IT consulting company. And at that point, you know, I went from finding core finance to finance. Slash I'm really interested in figuring out how to do this from a software engineering perspective. So I'd worked under their CFO for two years and I'd asked him, hey, can I go into the consulting pool? At that point, I learned SQL. I was still doing a lot of financial analysis, but I'd learned SQL at that point to help out some of these bigger customers that we were working with and that, you know, had I not had that education at that point, the curiosity that kind of drove me that way, you know, I wouldn't have been really where I'm at today.
[00:06:35] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, it's amazing how those pivotal moments happen that change your life. Frankly, I still remember the pivotal moment that seven years later led to me starting a business. You know, it was quite a bit later, but there was a pivotal moment that started to where I'm at today, and I'm incredibly grateful for it. And sometimes it feels like it was chance or luck or whatever you want to call it. But I'm grateful it happened. I am totally with you. All right. We're going to talk about Equals for a while. So how about we start? Can you give our audience an overview of what Equals is? I know it's because they billed themselves as a spreadsheet interface, but maybe you just give that one two minute kind of overview.
[00:07:14] Guest: Chase Wright: You know, when I look at Equals, it comes from a fundamental problem that I think a lot of us have. The spreadsheet is there. It's this blank slate, but we don't have any data associated with it. So like how we get the data and how do we actually make use of it. So it's not when you copy and paste and dump it into a spreadsheet, your spreadsheet doesn't crash. So Equals to me is very much a modern spreadsheet for modern either data teams or finance teams.
[00:07:43] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Okay. Got it. So what do you think of as the modern spreadsheet for data or finance teams? I know we'll talk a little bit more about it. I saw this week they just announced a warehouse component.
[00:07:52] Guest: Chase Wright: They did. Very exciting.
[00:07:53] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. And so we'll probably get into that for a minute. But first, how did you find out about Equals? Like how did you learn about it and what led to you implementing it. Because you know, so often in finance we hear it's Excel. Excel for everything. Right. It's like Excel is my hammer. And I don't care if I have a screw or nail, I'm going to make it work. And I think there's something to be said for that. But there's always different tools that can make certain things easier. So how did you find out about it and decide to use it?
[00:08:21] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah. So it was a few different things. The first one was when I was at GitLab. We were trying to have the CFO have a mandate for us to be able to get all the information from, from our core KPIs into our data warehouse, into our dashboard that everybody in the company could look at. And we were like, how are we going to do that from like a financial perspective? So it was me and two other folks came up with this idea. It's a tool that's still open source today, and I'll add it into the chat and you can maybe share that later. But it's called Cheat Load. And the simple premise of it was to take data, whether that was actually connected anywhere or not, put it into a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet then goes into the data warehouse and then is viewed by the front end tool that we had. So that was one area that kind of led me down this path to finding Equals. And I'll get to the main point in a second. The second point was Bobby had the same issue at intercom in the early days of intercom. So we kind of like going.
[00:09:22] Host: Paul Barnhurst: He's the founder, right?
[00:09:23] Guest: Chase Wright: Bobby. Yeah.
[00:09:24] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Bobby Pinero. I believe.
[00:09:25] Guest: Chase Wright: That's right. So he is a co-founder and CEO of Equals. And I think it was about a year or two ago. I was talking to one of my former colleagues that helped out with load, and she said, hey, check this new tool out. It's called Equals. They're trying to do something that we were doing at GitLab. One thing led to another. I talked to Bobby. I was like, I'm on board. Like I'm again, curiosity getting the best of me. Like, let's let's see if I can make this work for us.
[00:09:52] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Got it. And so that's how it started. You've done something similar, so it sounds like you're using it to help pull your data together. And so why is it a better tool than, say, Excel and Power Query or Google or what is it you like about Equals? That makes it easy to kind of bring your data in and be able to load it into reports, maybe talk a little bit about that.
[00:10:12] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah. Good question. So another fundamental shift for me career wise was 2014. I joined my first startup. I came on board and the CFO said, here's your Mac. And I was like, I've never used a mac before. I don't I don't know how to. And at that time, Excel didn't exist for Mac. So like, there was nothing to other to use than Google Sheets. So it came from like a necessity of me figuring out how to basically use something else outside of Excel. You know, I think the difference, you know, versus power BI or anything else like that is once you join kind of the Mac world, the Microsoft piece, or at least at that point in time it was not really relevant. Like if you had or used Excel, you were probably a Microsoft shop, so you had a PC, yada yada. So for me it was figuring out like, okay, I'm not using Microsoft, I'm not using Excel anymore. How am I going to make this work? And it really just became like me figuring out like, what tools can I use what's out there? And over time, you know, like I've just kind of stuck with it. Now, I think there's other tools out there that do just, you know, the same, but maybe service a different part of the industry. So like, you know, you got your Apple or Mac users, your, your PC users. It just works for, for us. And I think it works for a lot of the Bay area companies that I've worked for in my career.
[00:11:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. And if I'm not mistaken, I believe a couple things they're known for. From everything I've seen. I've talked to Bobby a few times and played with some is; one the way the SQL no code slash using SQL interface works and the data comes straight back. You can kind of see it all at once where a lot of systems, you may have to do all the work there and then pull it into the spreadsheet. Second is I believe they've added some dashboard components are really easy to take that data and visualize it. So a little bit like a spreadsheet slash BI tool and you can refresh those. Are those some of the things that you're really using it for and where it kind of shines, or am I thinking about it wrong.
[00:12:16] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah. So the where I use it and and I'll kind of take a step back here and talk about modern data infrastructure and where that didn't exist. You know, even prior to 2018, you know, the companies like Fivetran stitch, they all started to come out around 2018, which made it easy to get, you know, data from all of your source systems. We use stripe here for our billing. We use Salesforce. It made it really easy to get that information from point A to point B, and what Bobby did was say, hey, you know, I still have to be able to connect this data and figure out, like, analysis, whether it's my go to market team that we're focused on. How are our marketing campaigns, you know, performing X, Y and Z here, but you're still taking that viewpoint from a financial perspective. Equals is very much like we're not trying to reinvent the wheel here. We're just trying to make it a lot better. So the spreadsheet still exists today, but we're now connecting to the modern data infrastructure so you can connect, like all your source systems and then pull it into Equals and, and do your analysis. And you know, that used to take a lot of folks a lot of time. And you know, it's just me doing a lot of stuff on the side today. And it's like all I have to do is click five buttons and I'm connected and I'm ready to do analysis in Equals.
[00:13:36] Host: Paul Barnhurst: We are seeing that more and more where a blending of a kind of spreadsheet with data, right database. Data like the warehouse thing they've done, source table has something similar there. And the new tool I kind of say is similar to Equals. Rows is another. And we're seeing that connected not just connected, not just cloud, but kind of that ease of bringing in your data. And you want it to be just a click of a button. I think if you're doing a lot of transformation and you want to be able to shape it any way you want, Power Query is fabulous. But if you want a click of a button and just bring it all in, a lot of these new tools make that easier.
[00:14:15] Guest: Chase Wright: 100%. Yep. Agreed.
[00:14:17] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And so that to me seems to be their strength, especially if you're a startup, you generally don't have a data warehouse. You usually aren't investing in a BI tool, and getting your data all together in those early days is often a nightmare, and so feels like that's why you're seeing the startup. And what Equals is really solving right now versus necessarily being a powerhouse spreadsheet. Is that fair?
[00:14:40] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah, I would, I would say it comes from the necessity of being the first finance hire and knowing, knowing that pain and yearning for something more. Like, why isn't there something more out there that just makes my job so much easier? And a lot of the times like, and maybe you've dealt with this before, Paul, where you're, you're so far into the weeds on analysis that you get, you know, what's the, the saying like analysis paralysis and you can't, you can't pull yourself out and figure out, hey, what was the narrative that I'm trying to tell or figure out here?
[00:15:13] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. And so I'm curious, does your company also use Excel? Do you use Google Sheets or are you doing everything in Equals?
[00:15:21] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah. So it's a good question. You know, I think every place that I've been there is some mix of Excel. There's some mix of Google Sheets and there's some mix of maybe something else. It's the same case here. You know, I've been using Google Sheets almost exclusively since 2014. There's, you know, the last probably 2 or 3 years have been a pretty big outbreak in terms of like new modern tools that are coming out that makes things easier, like Equals. But at the end of the day, you know, Excel is still there and it's, you know, not going away. Now, do I use it often? Not really. I use it for, you know, downloading, basically downloading Google Sheets into Excel files and sending them to either our investors, or just because I need to be able to download something and send it to somebody else. That's generally what I'm using Excel for today.
[00:16:10] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So what are you using? Are you using Google Sheets? Are you using Equals to actually do your financial modeling? I'm assuming you're a startup. You're doing a three statement model. What do you think is best for that at least where you're at right now?
[00:16:23] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah. Good question. Equals and/or Google Sheets can do both. I use Equals today for our R reporting across the board. So we have two different Unicode has two different brands unicode.com and the QRcodegenerator.com. We have multiple product lines and we use stripe to do all of our billing, invoicing and payments. So I'm using all of that for our ERR reporting. It does a fantastic job. Just, you know, connecting Equals. I can connect to stripe, pull it in and do my analysis there. And there's a couple of other things that it does really well. So I'll give you two other examples. The second example is I'm able to actually curate a spreadsheet that I send to our senior staff. And our senior staff basically is the members that make up the revenue lines of the business. And I can tell them week over week, like, you know, here's how much air you've added to the top line this week. Here's where we're at this quarter. And here's the goal. And I can do that through Equals.
[00:17:24] Guest: Chase Wright: And I just basically connect Equals to slack and send that report out. And every Monday morning there's a fresh report that says, here's how we're performing. And we have a pretty good dialog around that. And Google's made it super simple to do that. The last piece is the restatement of financial modeling. Like that's I've got my three statement financials in there. And ultimately I want to be able to have a way that's just kind of it's just click through like here's where our top line information is coming from. It's all modeled in Equals and it's coming into the top line revenue numbers. And Equals is able to connect, you know, to GL accounts. So we use QuickBooks here for our US entity. I'm able to connect that and have a clear understanding of our Cogs and OpEx. And yeah. And after that you know it's just you write a couple of formulas just like you would in Excel or Google, and you've got your three statement financials somewhat automated. And it's pretty awesome.
[00:18:20] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I've analyzed their formulas. I think they have about 120. All the major ones, you know, they don't have everything. I know they're still working on some of the dynamic array stuff that has been big in Excel the last few years. Google's had for a long time, but you know, all the base formulas you'd need for your typical model are there?
[00:18:38] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah, 100%. And I'm not. I'm probably not the most definitely not the fanciest like Excel modeler. So I probably could yeah probably could speak to that. But they have everything that I needed there so far in terms of, you know, Excel commands.
[00:18:55] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Perfect. What is your favorite thing? Like if there's one thing you can't live without that Equals has or something you really like that you wish Excel and Google would adopt? Is there one one thing in particular that stands out?
[00:19:07] Guest: Chase Wright: A lot of startups use slack, and being able to, like, communicate a specific viewpoint or narrative around what you're trying to describe in terms of how the business is operating. And just post that to slack so everyone else can see is really easy to do. Now, could you do it in Excel and Google Sheets? Probably. But the way that that has made it, it's I mean anybody anybody could figure it out very quickly. It's so intuitive and useful, and it gets everybody on the same page of what we're trying to go after. I think that's a really powerful thing to do.
[00:19:38] Host: Paul Barnhurst: That intuitive nature, I'm sure, with Power Automate or some of the other things you could write, you could do it with Excel, but it's not a click of a button type of thing. It's not naturally integrated teams, different story. But again, startups usually aren't a Microsoft shop. It's usually a little less expensive to go another route. Typically what you see, at least in those early days.
[00:19:58] Guest: Chase Wright: That's right. Yep.
[00:20:00] Host: Paul Barnhurst: That makes sense. All right. So let's talk a little bit about financial modeling. What's your favorite part about building a three statement model? What do you enjoy?
[00:20:09] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah I think the thing that I love about it most when I, when I think about modeling itself, I love that I can just start with a blank slate. So I'll go into Google Sheets sometimes, or I'll go into Google and type in like, you know, sheets into the browser and I'll just start, okay. Like, what am I trying to figure out? What am I trying to articulate? And the thing that I think spreadsheets do really well is it helps you think through the problems very, very precisely. Whereas, like, you know, if you're trying to do something else that's a little bit more ambiguous, you know, you could go all over the place. I think spreadsheets, you have to be very explicit about what you're trying to do and accomplish. And I think that's what I love about financial modeling. Like, I have to put on my hat. I have to think critically. And financial modeling and spreadsheets make you do that.
[00:20:59] Host: Paul Barnhurst: FP&A Guy here, and as you know, I am very passionate about financial modeling and the Financial Modeling Institute's mission. I have been a huge fan of the FMI for years, and I was super excited when they decided to sponsor the Financial Modelers Corner. I recently completed the Advanced Financial Modeler certification and love the entire experience. It was top notch from start to finish. I am a better modeler today for having completed the certification. I strongly believe every modeler needs to demonstrate they are a qualified financial modeler, and one of the best ways to do that is through the FMI program. Earning the accreditation will demonstrate to your current and future employers that you are serious about financial modeling. What are you waiting for? Visit www.fminstitute.com/podcast and use code Podcast to save 15% when you enroll in an accreditation today. I like how you said, the critical thinking, you know, you didn't say anything about formulas or this or that, but that thought process, it sounds like that's what's challenging you is really thinking about how do I build this in such a way that it's valuable?
[00:22:20] Guest: Chase Wright: Exactly. And I think the thing that it helps you articulate as you go out and have conversations with, you know, different, different teams. I had a former CRO tell me, Chase, all you're doing is just a spreadsheet exercise. That's not actually how the business operates in general. And I said, you're right about that. But have you thought about all these different scenarios? And because I had that thought process of critically thinking about it, I wouldn't have been I wouldn't have been able to like, stand my own ground in that, in that regard.
[00:22:49] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I love that you're able to say, yeah, I get it. But here's these different scenarios and now let's talk about it because, right, a spreadsheet, the whole idea is to approximate the business. We all understand it's not the business. It's not accurate. As I always like to say, if I could be accurate and forecasting, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing right now. I'd probably be in the mountain, biking or camping or fishing because I would have made a lot of money in the market if I knew how to forecast that out.
[00:23:18] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. I wish I was that smart, but nobody wants to say 99% of forecasts are 100% wrong. And I think that's been true for me.
[00:23:29] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. Well, it's like if there's a quote I really like kind of along the same lines. But George Box, he says, you know, all models are wrong. Some models are useful, you know, and I just really love that idea because like, the idea is to be useful. It's not to be right. It's not not that's not the goal of planning. Yes. You have to be directionally correct if you're 50% off all the time, especially headcount or things that in a mature business that aren't really changing, you're going to lose your job. There's a threshold you have to meet, but there's still a lot of subjectivity, especially I'm sure you've done a lot of startup. You've always been right on your forecast. Right? Never had a problem.
[00:24:06] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah. That's right. Every annual plan that I've put together has been perfect. We've never missed anything. And, you know, that's why I'm. That's why I'm at my fourth startup.
[00:24:15] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And that's why you're making big bucks. I mean, you're living in a mansion there, right?
[00:24:20] Guest: Chase Wright: That's right. Yeah.
[00:24:21] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Gotta have fun with it. Yeah, we've talked about modeling the part you like. What's the key to building a robust financial model? Like, do you have a certain way you like to start when you're building a model? Or maybe talk a little bit of some of those key things to make sure you don't end up with what I like to call a Franken model or a useless model as George Box.
[00:24:42] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah, you know, I think it's really important to the longer that I do this, the more and more I remove myself of the modeling mindset and more like how how can I put myself in the shoes of others to kind of help them get to where they need to get to, right? Like the Jerry Maguire quote we were talking about earlier, like, help me help you. And then I can, you know, try to articulate that into some, some type of model itself. So I think it depends on, you know, what we're trying to go after. And I'll give you a recent example of what we're, what we're trying to accomplish here at Unicode. We are trying to figure out like our business is a fantastic business by all accounts today. But like we want to continue to grow. Like growth is sexy. And that's what, you know, VC backed companies you know like to talk about. And we want to continue to grow. So what we're trying to figure out and articulate is like, what are the big bets that we're going to go after this year.
[00:25:38] Guest: Chase Wright: What do they look like? And how do we actually materialize those into go to market plans. And then basically put some kind of financial analysis behind it that says, yeah, this feels right. I think we can, you know, hold ourselves accountable to going after a plan like that. So that's one example. I think, you know, another example that I could probably give is, you know, three statement financials. The thought process about that is, you know, how well is the business doing not only from a PNL perspective, but like the balance sheet, like how like, and most people don't talk about balance sheets a lot. And I think that those are one of the most powerful places to actually have a conversation, especially when you think about, you know, do we make an acquisition? Do we think about rolling out, you know, a product line on its own. So it helps me articulate that. And, you know, having that framework together in that sense, again, makes the conversation a little bit easier. So I can help. So I can help everybody else help themselves essentially.
[00:26:33] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Got it. I love what you said there at the end. Right. It's about it's all about helping the business help themselves. Models are there to guide, inform, and improve decision making. At least they should be. Unfortunately, sometimes we like to go with our gut and just willy nilly and ignore the model. And sometimes it works out. But there's been plenty of times where you're like, I think I told you so.
[00:27:00] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah, I try not to say that too often.
[00:27:05] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Agreed. Even though I want to say that too often. Yeah.
[00:27:07] Guest: Chase Wright: Even though I think about it quite a bit.
[00:27:09] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, exactly. All right, so next question. Favorite Excel shortcut. Do you have a favorite shortcut? I know you're on a mac for a while and Google, so you might not have one, but do you have a favorite shortcut?
[00:27:20] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah, so I'll keep it. You know, like I said earlier, I'm not the most elegant user. And I'll keep this in kind of straightforward, at least on a mac, it's command C, command V, copy paste.
[00:27:34] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Control C, control v. Yeah, that's the one I never did shortcuts I still did those. Those are just so helpful.
[00:27:41] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah. And I use it more. You know I think if I go back and look at all the, the, the really elegant formulas that I've written or shortcuts that I've done, that one's still, you know, I've got if I look at my computer, I've got basically marks of control Z control V here in my keyboard.
[00:28:00] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Do those work in Equals control C and control V.
[00:28:03] Guest: Chase Wright: They do. Yes. It's the same experience.
[00:28:06] Host: Paul Barnhurst: That's what I thought. I knew they had some similar shortcuts but I wanted to ask somebody to confirm that. All right. Next one. What's the number one lesson you've learned during your career that's helped you the most, other than being on this show?
[00:28:21] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah, Paul, this is the number one for sure. The number one lesson. The second lesson is just just actively listening. You know, I think a lot of times I don't know if everybody's personality is like, if you kind of have to stereotype, you know, for in general were very high execute people like we've got to get a lot of stuff done. And we generally have very lean teams. So I'm always like, let's go. This is what I think about it. And I feel 95% confident that I'm right about this. But more times than not, and the longer that I do it, I've been wrong. So like sitting down and actively listening to what people are actually saying, understanding what that means from a business and mechanics perspective. And that's 100% the older I get, the more and more I listen, and the more and more I keep my mouth shut.
[00:29:12] Host: Paul Barnhurst: There is something to be said for that. I listened to my first episodes or I listened to some of my episodes and I'm like, I think I talk more than the guest. Shut up Paul. There's some real value there. All right, so this is the first time we've asked this question. It's a new one. We've kind of added the funnest thing or funniest thing. What's the most unique thing you've created a model for in your own life? You know, fantasy football, whatever it might be.
[00:29:38] Guest: Chase Wright: So I've got a really interesting one. There is a gentleman named Felix Zumstein. He was the creator of Xlwings. Yes.
[00:29:47] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It has Python in it.
[00:29:50] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah. So he created this tool called Xlwings that connects to Microsoft Excel. And I was a big fan of the show called bloodline. I think it came out in 2015 on Netflix. And the one thing that I remember about bloodline is they said the F word like so much that it almost embarrassed me how often they said it. So what I did was like, I want to know how many times they actually said it. So I actually downloaded the script for each episode, loaded it into Excel, and then dumped it into Excel to do some analysis on the results. And the results were, I think like 28 F words per episode. So that was probably the funnest.
[00:30:35] Host: Paul Barnhurst: How long was the episode.
[00:30:36] Guest: Chase Wright: It was like maybe 30 minutes an hour. That's pretty high. Yeah, it was very it was. I think it was the most that I've ever heard, out of any TV show or sitcom that I've ever watched. So, I don't know if that was the funniest thing, but it's definitely, probably one of the dumbest things that I've done from an Excel perspective.
[00:30:55] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Hey, that works. We said unique as well. I like it. I think people have done probably similar things all in their own way. All right. We're going to move into our rapid fire section. This is one of our favorite sections of the show. There's a couple ground rules. We're going to do a little different. We've done similar to this before. I'm going to ask you the questions for Excel, kind of how you think about them. Then we'll talk about Equals. And you can either say it's a yes no or doesn't apply for Equals. It's a yes or no. For Excel you get no more than about 10s to answer. So the idea is to be quick. Then at the end you can elaborate because I get some of these can be it depends but we don't want to hear any. Depends. No. No consulting answers.
[00:31:38] Guest: Chase Wright: Okay. Understood.
[00:31:39] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Right. Ground rules make sense.
[00:31:41] Guest: Chase Wright: Understood. Yep.
[00:31:42] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. Perfect. Circular or no circular references and models?
[00:31:46] Guest: Chase Wright: No. No circular references.
[00:31:48] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Vba or no VBA?
[00:31:50] Guest: Chase Wright: No VBA.
[00:31:51] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I figured after your horror story you would say no VBA. You prefer a horizontal or vertical layout to your model.
[00:31:59] Guest: Chase Wright: I prefer horizontal for sure.
[00:32:01] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right, dynamic arrays yes or no?
[00:32:05] Guest: Chase Wright: No.
[00:32:06] Host: Paul Barnhurst: External workbook links.
[00:32:09] Guest: Chase Wright: If you can't help it. No, I mean otherwise. Yes.
[00:32:12] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. Basically try to avoid them at all costs if you can. Named ranges. Use them or not.
[00:32:19] Guest: Chase Wright: No. No name ranges.
[00:32:21] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Do you follow a formal standards board like some of those out there? Smart and fast and some of the others when you're modeling?
[00:32:28] Guest: Chase Wright: I do, yeah. I use fast for that.
[00:32:31] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So you follow fast. Perfect. Will excel ever die?
[00:32:34] Guest: Chase Wright: No, it'll be there with Twinkies and cockroaches at the end of the day.
[00:32:39] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You do know Equals is probably listening. They might be picking up the phone. Come on. All right. Will AI build the models for us in the future?
[00:32:48] Guest: Chase Wright: Perhaps. I think in the short term, they will be. AI will be fantastic for Copilots.
[00:32:55] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Makes a lot of sense. Do you use sheet cell protection in your models? Yes or no?
[00:33:01] Guest: Chase Wright: Yes.
[00:33:02] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. Do you believe financial models are the number one corporate decision making tool.
[00:33:10] Guest: Chase Wright: No. I would say, you know, at the end of the day, I think it's the intuition from all the inputs that somebody that what, what we, what I would call a directly responsible individual would, would make. So it's intuition at the end of the day. But it's, you know, I would say that financial models are a very heavily weighted part of that decision making process.
[00:33:32] Host: Paul Barnhurst: A big part, my favorite answer I've got, and I've got it a few times was no, it's politics.
[00:33:38] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah, that's a good one.
[00:33:39] Host: Paul Barnhurst: We could all relate to that one, right? We all get that one right. Favorite lookup function? Choose Vlookup, index match, Xlookup or something else.
[00:33:51] Guest: Chase Wright: Vlookup almost exclusively. Index match if I have time.
[00:33:56] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right, I like it. All right. Now we're going to run through those that apply. And you can say if they don't apply, obviously the last two we don't need to go through for Equals. So circular or no circular references that apply in Equals.
[00:34:08] Guest: Chase Wright: It does, but I wouldn't. Yeah. Again no, no circular references. Yeah.
[00:34:12] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I'm going to guess there's no a in Equals.
[00:34:15] Guest: Chase Wright: SQL. That's the beauty about Equals is being able to use SQL.
[00:34:19] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah I know they're big on SQL. Horizontal or vertical won't matter there. Do they have dynamic arrays in Equals?
[00:34:27] Guest: Chase Wright: That's a good question I don't know. Bobby is probably going to be upset with me that I don't know that, but I don't know.
[00:34:31] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. Fair enough. External workbook links, I'm guessing, aren't a problem, are they? Can you link to external workbooks?
[00:34:39] Guest: Chase Wright: You can. It's definitely something powerful that they have. Again, only if you have to do it.
[00:34:43] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. Same rules apply. Named ranges.
[00:34:46] Guest: Chase Wright: Named ranges. Again, I don't know, but I would say no. Like I think that one's a pretty specific thing in general, but I don't know.
[00:34:53] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Got it. Well, I think that kind of covers the differences. Before we head into the wrap up, anything else you'd like to, you know, mention to the audience any of these you'd like to elaborate on your answers.
[00:35:05] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah. I think one thing that I didn't say about Excel shortcut versus Equals shortcut. So Equals has the shortcut. At least on the Mac it's control K. And it's kind of like the spacebar on a Mac when basically you can search your entire MacBook. Control K or command K for Equals gives you the ability to basically ask a question to their AI and it's incredibly powerful to the point where like you don't have to do a handful of stuff, you just say, hey, by the way, sum up this particular column for me, or add a border around like this particular range for me. It's a really powerful concept that is getting into that next evolution of spreadsheets. And I've had a lot of fun with it.
[00:35:45] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So you're finding it's really helpful. How much time is it saving you? Do you find you're using it daily or how often are you hitting that control K?
[00:35:52] Guest: Chase Wright: I use it almost daily. If not, if not every hour. I found myself becoming more and more lazy. I don't know if that's a good thing for us as we like to.
[00:36:02] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Call it smart, not lazy.
[00:36:05] Guest: Chase Wright: Yes, but they have definitely made it a lot easier to do things that, you know, may take a little bit longer to do as you're clicking around trying to figure out, like, what thing you actually need.
[00:36:14] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I remember when they advertised they'd come out with the first AI based spreadsheet. They were, I think, the first one to integrate ChatGPT. And that's exciting that it's working well. It's amazing how generative AI is changing things.
[00:36:27] Guest: Chase Wright: It's a game changer for sure.
[00:36:29] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I know, I use it all the time. It's like summarizing transcripts for these podcasts. Fabulous to have AI do that before I'm writing out my thing and I'm listening to each episode. I couldn't do what I do today if I had to listen to every episode.
[00:36:43] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah.
[00:36:44] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Just summarize my like, okay, you give me the summary and then I'll go pick what I want.
[00:36:48] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah. You know, I think for us though, in the, in the finance space and you probably may agree with this, is that as an AI in general, AI becomes more and more popular, like the finance folks are still skeptical about, like, is this perfection that that's coming out of it, or is it kind of more just a copilot help us out with the jobs? I think we'll all kind of be skeptics in that regard, at least, like our cohort of folks that work in the business. But it should help us become more efficient, that's for sure.
[00:37:16] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Well, I mean, I think finance by nature, right? We're risk averse. We're skeptics. Everybody hates the black box. You want to understand it all. And I think that leads to a slower adoption. Now is that good or bad? Everybody can decide for themselves. I mean, the reality is either way, generative AI is here and we all need to figure out how we can best utilize it. But I agree with you. All right. So as we conclude here, just have two more questions for you. So if you could share one piece of advice with our audience to be a better financial modeler, particularly around modeling, what would be that one piece of advice?
[00:37:51] Guest: Chase Wright: Early on learn the fundamentals and it would be incredibly helpful had I had this where I could have taken, you know, a class like you have. Or another gentleman that I know, Carl Siedman. He's got a class. That's fantastic.
[00:38:04] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Great stuff. I know Carl.
[00:38:06] Guest: Chase Wright: So I went to Wall Street Preps for kind of a crash course, and that was incredibly helpful to kind of get me ready for what this was going to look like. I think the next piece is, you know, again, just taking a step back and trying to put yourself in the position of how is everybody else thinking about this business? What do we want to get out of it? So, you know, rather than going in and trying to model stuff really quickly, just what is the long term thing that we're trying to accomplish, and how do we put that into some framework that, you know, ends up being some type of spreadsheet?
[00:38:33] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I agree. Fundamentals. Everybody needs to get that. I wish I had learned some principles of how to design a model and how to think about it, because I developed quite a few Franken models, as I like to call them in my day, and I'm in, I look back now and I'm like, wow, that thing was terrible.
[00:38:51] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah, I think we've all had that. Had those experiences. Gosh, it would have been incredible to have a class like yours that, you know, I could have benefited from early on, but so is life.
[00:39:02] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I think we're all there. Today there's a lot more options, which is great for our staff. All right, let's get you a course. Let's go get you some advice from somebody who's been there, because sometimes that's just invaluable. Yes. The school of hard knocks and learning yourself has its value, but it also sometimes leads to really bad habits that are hard to break. And so you have to figure you have to know when that makes sense and when it doesn't. And someone who's in their early 20s first job, they have no idea. I don't know what the right answer to that is, and I think we can help guide them a lot better today with all the options that are out there.
[00:39:36] Guest: Chase Wright: Agreed.
[00:39:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. So if our audience wants to learn more about you or get in touch, how should they do that?
[00:39:42] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah. Good question. I'm not on social media. I try to stay off of it as much as possible, but I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me at, I think linkedin.com/in/chasewright. Otherwise, as you know, I'm working on building uniqode.com (https://www.uniqode.com/) out currently right now, so you can probably find me there to some degree. Otherwise I'm in. You know, I'm on some slack channels here and there. Yeah. And I think that's about it.
[00:40:05] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. Great. Well, I think LinkedIn is the most common answer we get, surprisingly enough, even if you're not on social media, most of us are on LinkedIn. That's because I'm not big on social media outside my business. So I get it. Totally appreciate you joining us today. Chase. I know you're getting ready to go on vacation, so we won't take any more of your time so you can go enjoy it. But thanks for carving out some time and chatting with us today. I've really enjoyed it.
[00:40:29] Guest: Chase Wright: Yeah, yeah. Likewise. Paul, can I give one shout out to Bobby and the team at Equals? So everybody, that is if you want to save a lot of time in learning or reporting or if you're not an expert already, they've got a book called The Ultimate Guide to ARR. I think you can go to https://equals.com/arr-book/ and get your copy. It's an incredible book. If you know had I known this and known about this in 2018, it would have saved me probably a year of my modeling life trying to figure stuff out. So it's an incredible book. Go check it out. It's going to be well worth it.
[00:41:00] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Love it. I had seen they'd come out with that. I haven't had a chance to read it. I might have to go download a version of it. So that's great. Thank you for sharing that shout out there, Chase, and thanks again for joining us.
[00:41:11] Guest: Chase Wright: Yes. Thanks, Paul. That was a lot of fun.
[00:41:13] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. Thank you. Financial Modelers Corner was brought to you by the Financial Modeling Institute. This year I completed the Advanced Financial Modeler certification and it made me a better financial modeler. What are you waiting for? Visit FMI at www.fminstitute.com/podcast and use code Podcast to save 15% when you enroll in one of the accreditations today.