Leaders in ERP: Nicolas Kopp, CEO, Rillet

Introduction: This is the ERP Advisor.

Shawn Windle: All right, thanks everybody for joining us for another Leaders in ERP. This is a really important series that we've been doing for almost a year and a half now. And we've been very fortunate to have some phenomenal people that are really changing the ERP industry from the inside out and all around. So very excited for our discussion today. Of course, you know me, Shawn Windle, founder of ERP Advisors Group, independent objective, and been in the market for a ton of time here. But I'm really excited to have Nick Kopp, who's the CEO and founder of Rillet with us here. So, Nick, why don't you say hi to everybody and then we'll jump in.

Nicolas Kopp: Hi, everybody. Really great to be here. Good to see you, Shawn.

Shawn Windle: Yep. Thanks again, Nick for coming too. So, we had a chance to meet a couple of weeks ago. You all had a great event in San Francisco. I happened to be there and came in and it was awesome to talk to a lot of the customers and partners, you've got a great ecosystem, Nick, that you've built up. You all have spent a lot of time, in a short amount of time, I may say, condensed sort of building out, really a startup, right, from the get-go, which, you know, ERP and start up is almost like an oxymoron, but that's not the case anymore. So maybe you could give us a bit of background into why you founded Rillet. It's a pretty interesting story, and, you know, it takes guts to disrupt such an established industry.

Nicolas Kopp: Yeah, thanks for having us. We love it. That's sort of the TLDR. We love what we're building. We love sort of the impact we have, what we create here. So, it's, but it's hard to your point.So, for everybody, maybe, and all the listeners that are not familiar with really yet. So, the short version is we're an AI native ERP. So, think of this as sort of a legacy cloud ERPs with some of their functionality plus a lot more reinvented for the AI era, truly. And so, we have over 300 customers today are powering some of the fastest growing companies in the world like the Mercore or Function Health of the world. And also... well-funded venture back by Sequoia, Andreessen, and Iconic. I've raised over $100 million there. And yeah, started a company four years ago here with this crazy mission and idea that we could rebuild the ERP for the modern age. So, I'm very excited to share the story and journey here.

Shawn Windle: Yeah, it's really fantastic. And I think it's great for, frankly, all of us in the ERP market to sort of just look here and say, like, we got to make things better and we got to do it. And I think you guys have done a great job with that. You know, maybe why ERP when you were looking back several years ago, like you have a really fascinating story. I read a little bit about it, but we'd love for you to share that.

Nicolas Kopp: Yeah, no. So, we are basically a group of accountants, finance nerds, building ERP software. So, I started the company four years ago with my co-founder. He's sort of a technical brain. I was on more the accounting and finance side of the house and a bit of all-rounder. I had to help build businesses before. So, the impetus was, at my previous companies. So, we helped build a fully regulated bank from the ground up. So we're a bunch of 20-year-old kids basically building one of the largest continental European retail banks from the ground up. Was one of the first to ever get a full banking license in like whatever it was, a decade or something. It was a really long time. And as part of that, I also helped run some of the finance and accounting functions. And so there, some of the key insights I had was that it just, it was exponentially hard to get the most basic of financial information. I would wait like four to six weeks in some cases with a super capable team. I want to start there. We had phenomenally capable people on that team consolidating between multiple different entities, trying to make sense of numbers, nothing tied. And so, I when we realized that we went out to the market to buy a proper ERP system like any company would as they grew up. Right. And so, what you saw there was just, you were confronted with a really old tech stack. You were confronted with a buying process that felt, and implementation process, that felt quite antiquated in many regards. And so, what we tried to do here, and we did the same to that in that bank that we built is like bring a consumerized fresh take on a stodgy old industry. And that's sort of what stuck with me and what sparked the idea to embark on that crazy, crazy venture. And then on the personal side, given to your point that it's so hard to build what we're building, you need a bit of like an emotional spark to really go pursue it because otherwise, rationally, if you just chart out the probability of success on a curve. Like it is so low, I think it's no trational to start a company. So emotionally, it was for me deep interest in the space and domain. Like what cooler thing is there to build it from the ground up, debits and credits, integrations, workflows, systems, reconciliations, everything soup to nuts. Shawn, you will know a lot about this world as well. And then the other piece is just, we can have a lot of impact here. Getting this right will mean foundational change for a whole profession. And also, companies that run on sort of the backbones of accountants and systems there to take better financial decisions. And so that's sort of our contribution to the world. And I think we will hopefully have a profound impact in the next five to 10 years.

Shawn Windle: I love it. I mean, being around the space for so long, we are seeing that a lot of our clients, like they're key people in the accounting industry are leaving, right? We have this gap in resources that's come about too. So, the automation is just going to help out everybody. So, I think it's great. I think it takes a lot of guts and I'm excited to see where you guys go for sure.

Nicolas Kopp: Yeah, no, and it's like sort of this debate that's currently ongoing in the wider sort of professional, white-collar professional of AI and the impact of AI. Like AI will have a profound impact on the accounting profession in the next couple of years. You see how the models get better and everything. It's really impressive. But I think the gap, to your point, Shawn, is so big between the work to be done and the people and the hours and the day to do that work that I think for a very long time, first of all, just fill that gap with agents and software. And then even from there, it'll just be an up skilling for the current population. So, I am not worried about accountants, futures and professions. It's more of a huge opportunity, I think, for all of us.

Shawn Windle: Yeah, and even today, right? I mean, we see a lot of AI coming in around advanced search and data visualization for sure. I mean, there's a ton of value in just that alone, if you think about the productivity of that. But with customers today, what are you seeing from an AI perspective on how they improve their core financial processes?

Nicolas Kopp: Yeah. So, for AI is a bit of a buzzword, right? Everybody throws around AI, slaps on AI and stuff. So, um, and, and also if you look at the accounting profession or the, the workflows that, that, that profession does, or like, like let's make it very tangible. The individual, maybe accounting manager or senior accountant would do it at month end. Um, we'd go through a lot of data ingestion going through unstructured data and we'd go through a lot of outputs of visualization, comparison, reconciliations of data. And for these two types of processes, I call them the bookends, sort of on the way into the ledger or before you perform the proverbial debits and credits, basically. There's a lot of unstructured data that needs to have gone through. And then after, at the end, once you have the data, there's a lot of reconciliation, checking, summarization of information. And LLMs are phenomenally powerful at both of these bookends. And then in the middle pieces, and that's sort of to maybe appease or calm the folks that are maybe a little bit more skeptical on AI, the middle pieces are very well run deterministically. So, a prepaid schedule, a deferred revenue schedule, revenue amortizations, all of this is very well done to deterministic model, very predictably, always producing the same output. But the things around that take so much time every month end close can truly be automated away with some of these models. And I'm happy to talk about use cases too, but like, yes, at a high level, that's where we see the biggest potential on these bookends.

Shawn Windle: Yeah, I love that, it's a good analogy. I mean, there's so much, like you said, that if we've got a month end close checklist, right? And it's pretty straightforward and people follow it month end, month after month, year after year, but yet it still takes a longtime. Like the real why in there, right? Like I think you're saying is if you can automate some of the tasks that are required to do that, I mean, you still need the key people to perform the function, right? Those don't go away.

Nicolas Kopp: Yup and also the way we deploy agents in our system, and we're sort of like in early stages. Everybody's kind of figuring things out. These models get better so quickly. There's an opportunity in 2026 specifically to set the blueprint for what AI and accounting truly means. It's a really exciting opportunity. And so, the early sort of use cases that we have and the agents that are performing active work, all of that work in, Rillet at least, and I would hope I hope that in most other systems out there is very much so well reviewed by humans. So, there is never an application of AI that will just book a journal entry without review or that will just perform an operation without a human truly having review edit. But the preparation steps they're off like a flux analysis is a great example where you compare period over period. The first draft of why these periods are different down to the line-item level, vendor summaries, everything else, that and AI with today's capabilities on January 30th, where we are recording, can do. And then a human can review and approve basically explanations and go through it. And so that's where you see the first basically manifestation of these agentic workflows and all of them still have a human in the loop and will for a pretty long time is my hunch.

Shawn Windle: Yeah, now I understand. I have to bring this in. It's just actually just coming across this even today, this idea of like the social media for the agents, right? Where the agents are coming together and starting to interoperate regardless of humans. Forget about the human in the loop. It's like the humans just like the audience watching all this. Like for real, when we talk about data security, which of course is a big deal for ERP, it always has been, it always will be. How do your customers, how does their data stay confidential and not get into models? Like how are you guys handling that? Maybe a high level. I'm sure you guys have a ton on this at a detailed level, but what would you say?

Nicolas Kopp: Yeah. So, the starting point of all of this, none of our customers' financial information will get shared out with any of the model providers that we use. Starting point of the whole discussion. So, we, and I can share a bit more about Rillet how we go about this. So, we have, we're working with all the foundational models. The models in themselves are like moving so quickly. So, we work with OpenAI, Anthropic, XAI, as well as Gemini, all four basically. And we are basically then using the models depending on the workflows. Certain models perform better on certain tasks, and then our sort of unique IP as Rillet is, how do you mix and match these models for separate workflows? How do you train these models on the individual accounting workflows and tasks that exist? How do you teach these models to withdraw information? Again, permissioned information that only lives on our side. We mix the intelligence into our systems. It will never go; our data will never go back out into the other systems but mix that intelligence into then produce certain outcomes and workflows for human beings. And that's really sort of the IP that gets generated, the tuning, the sort of context engineering that comes with that. That's where really the magic happens. But again, the data lives all in our systems. Which it does anyways already securely on the cloud before and would never get back into sort of the upstream data model providers that some of us don't trust, right? So, from that perspective, I think that's a really important starting point to your point. And it's really fascinating also; you made the introduction there on how these things work together. It's a little bit of an aside, but I get goosebumps sometimes seeing these agents collaborate and like, okay, I did this part, I'm passing off the work to that part, different models, seamlessly everything in the background, it is where the future is going. But yeah, security is really important as a backbone to all of this.

Shawn Windle: No, that's great. And I think this is why application vendors like you guys are like the last mile. I mean, it's a heck of a lot more than the last mile concept, but you spend so much time, and you're incented to by your customers, by your recurring revenue model with your customers to ensure that you've thought through these issues 10 times or100 times more than they ever would on their own. To go out and use a model on your own, you really, you're taking on a lot of responsibility. And I think that layer that you guys provide is, it just makes a ton of sense. And I can remember back to, years ago, this thing called the semantic web from Tim Berners-Lee after the internet, a couple, 20 years after it. But now that would, we'd have services talking to each other. And that is exactly what the agentic universe is. And we're there. And you guys are seeing it on a day-by-day basis. Do you think that your clients, would you say, do they like, are they really, they're focused on like the close, right? I think it's a big deal for you guys is to reduce the close down as much as possible. But are they, are they also like, you know, we are experimenting and doing things within the Rillet framework. Are they leaving that more to you guys? How does that sort of work today?

Nicolas Kopp: Yeah, it's a great question. So, we are, there's two strands to this. So, there is a set of customers that is just basically I'm closing, these are the couple of tasks I need to do. I'm closing my books, I need to reconcile my revenue, like consolidations of multiple entities. It's just like very execution oriented and are very excited about what we're building, but very much consumers of the technology that is being served. Full stop. It's like, cool, you have this same new thing. Does it help me? Yes or no? If yes, I use it. If no, I don't care. I move on basically with my current workflows. System works perfectly. I don't need the net new edition that we have. And it is a whole set of other customers, and that's maybe more interesting for your listeners to get a sense of, that are highly incented and curious about what's going on, and it has multiple flavors there, so that one flavor is we have some of our customers work directly with our engineering teams, so we have somebody, very intelligent, AI engineers on the team come from all the top schools and ran through all the programs, the research labs, everything else. And our own team likes nothing more actually than working with customers to get real use cases that they can kind of noodle on and sort of work through. So, there's a heavy engagement on that side that's really fun to watch also for me as a founder of like, it's magic. You bring sort of like the two people you like the most, like your customers and your team kind of together and they create something magic, then it's good for the company and what you're building. So that's sort of one big area. There's also an element of MCP. I'm not sure how familiar your listeners are with that, but it is, we have this basically MCP connection where you can, in your own workflows, then draw information into your own workflows, build charts, dashboards. We have customers that built their own ARR workbooks and dashboards, financial analysis into fully like fleshed out pages, web pages to reshare, permissioning, everything else off the back of that. So that there's a lot of tinkering that you can do there, which is really fun if you're into that type of stuff. And then, yeah, these are probably the biggest two sort of like thinkers and builders we have. We don't have people yet today that then there's a whole evolution of that where you could start building your own agents and so forth. But that gets pretty complex, and I think people would need to be enabled to do that a little more than the technologies available today.Basically, that's sort of the holy grail where this can go.

Shawn Windle: I love it. And I mean, we're always proponents of a gradient approach with enterprise software as, hey, let's go buy a whole bunch of stuff and it's all going to work and everything's going to be fine. It doesn't quite work that way, as we know.

Nicolas Kopp: You built the whole business around that, yeah.

Shawn Windle: Exactly, yeah, and most of us come from that big four background where we're doing those huge systems and some companies can afford that, but even those, it's tricky, right? So that I love that gradient approach, and I can see how, you know, as I mean, I could get pretty philosophical here quickly. I won't. But as a race, you know, humans, we can only take on as much change at any given time. Right. So, I see that you guys are providing like a pathway. Right. Because it is a tricky time to buy ERP right now. I mean, we have clients, we have people that'll call us.They might not even be the right we might not be the right firm for them and they're certain sizes or whatever. Say, we had a $2 million services firm call us recently and say, like, we need to do something around AI. We have no idea what to do, right? And we gave them some ideas, gave them your site, some others as well. But they really want this AI solution, which they're trying to figure out what the heck it is. So, I love the idea that you guys can give solutions today to like, the controllers, the CFOs, like, I got to get my books out. We're private equity backed. We're fast growing. The last thing I'm going to spend my time on is doing the close. I've got to figure out the next round of financing, et cetera, et cetera. Two, hey, let's collaborate a little bit around the lease accounting. I mean, there's so many problems, I think, in accounting that are just half solutions. They're not full solutions. They only solve half of it. Bank recons. I mean, I can think of many, many different things that we've struggled with clients and even promised clients in the past.Yeah, you're going to get this functionality on procure to pay automation and you're going to see these efficiencies and then we get into it and you run into something, right? So then having the ability to collaborate with you guys and go through some of those use cases, I mean, that's really cool. I'm really excited about that because I think you can have, I think the platform provides that kind of flexibility where you can start building solutions quickly and then spin them out. We went through the whole cloud evolution over the last 20years so that now you can push out those features to customers and they might not be ready for them, but at least they're there. So, I think that makes a lot of sense.

Nicolas Kopp: Yeah. And there's also a little bit of an evolution that I'm curious if you've seen the same thing here, Shawn, is like, yes, we have cool tech and I'm very proud of what we've built. But there's also a human element where I think some of the legacy firms or ERPs have started taking their customers really for granted because where else could they have kind of gone? And so, there's also an element of, I think, I just sense a sense of optimism in the profession basically around this where like, oh, cool, you're actually going to listen and incorporate my feedback. Oh, cool. I sent this to you and I don't need to wait eighteen months for an e-mail to say thank you for the feedback. It's like you've built it in three or four weeks or whatever it was. So, there is just an element of humanness and interaction that's really magic currently or kind of palpable around Rillet very thankful for it. But in general, as well, I think there's a lot of optimism that comes with it as well, which hopefully we can all sort of use to propel us into this future.

Shawn Windle: And hope, I would say. I mean, that's really what it comes down to, because, from the early days of cloud, we were supposed to do that from the beginning. And I think, when an organization is a certain size, it can be more nimble, has to be, like it actually, you have to be. And then over time, you get to a certain size where you don't have to be. And many customers, they don't like it. Now, they don't like switching ERP more than, you know, lower customer service. But I don't know. I mean, you all have really, made the market look and say, are there really other alternatives out there? And I'm interested in that. And I think it's, I mean, I get to sit kind of like the Switzerland of ERP. We don't really market ourselves that way.Maybe we should. So, I love seeing the competition. And I love seeing organizations that, you know, are well-funded, you know, from early stage and seated like you guys are to, you know, the ones, the incumbents that do have alot of capital. These guys have been just like raking in the dough for years on these recurring revenue models. So, it's great. I think I'm very excited for what you guys are doing and I frankly appreciate it. It's not just because oh, more companies are asking questions about ERP. No, it's that we've been selling these promises for years and we're getting so close to be able to do it that we're almost there.

Nicolas Kopp: Yeah, it's awesome.

Shawn Windle: Yeah, but maybe.

Nicolas Kopp: Beneficial for the customer at the end of the day. Like it'll be an uplift for everybody, basically, all the users. It's awesome.

Shawn Windle: I think so too. And that's whatI love the most. So then when we look forward, you know, maybe think about theERP market over the next, I mean, I don't even know, five years out, but maybe it's the next year or two or three. What will the market share kind of look like from sort of the likes of your incumbent ERP vendors, and we have you all coming into the scene. And we sort of have, the usual factors of companies outgrowing QuickBooks and other smaller apps, or they're on these large legacy apps, they want to get off. Like, are you guys kind of creating a new space between these more complex ERPs and base kind of bookkeeping software? It's like it's a brand-new category, would you say? Or is it more you're taking on market share from these guys or maybe a little bit of both? What do you think?

Nicolas Kopp: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's a question I get a lot. People put us in this, and that's where we started, like in this box of like, okay, only QuickBooks graduates or like, they're like abetter version of QuickBooks. That's what I heard a lot. And there's a big market there, so I want to start there. Like that market, there was a little bit of a complacency, I think, between some of the bookkeeping platforms that you mentioned and sort of the more mid-market systems, like NetSuite, Oracle, I think it's okay to mention them on the podcast here. And QuickBooks, for example, on the lower end as examples, there's a few others in both of these echelons or layers. And so that was a great starting point for us. It's just like a faster to implement more powerful version of QuickBooks and a multi-entity consolidation, multi-currency, some deferred revenue workflow. So that was sort of the starting point. And yes, there is a bit of a market that you could create and kind of take in as a company and build a business as a starting point. By now, though, what I see shifting and that's where sort of, I think general optimism in the industry, but also for me as a founder, it's very rewarding to see is some of the bigger companies are starting to take interest.So, what's happened since we started, we launched into market eighteen months ago. So, we're new as a company, built in stealth for like two years plus, launched the product, one and a half years ago. And then, yeah, it's been up until right since then. And what's happening now in the market most recently, especially in the last sort of three to six months, is we have very large corporations either buying Rillet, like coming directly from a NetSuite or a Sage Intacct. So 30% of our business are full mid-market mature systems that we're ripping and replacing today. While we still get 70% of our business from the sort of the rising cohort, so that is still a steady feed. We have public companies now on the platform, which is, again, was unconceivable for us even like frankly, six to twelve months ago. Some of them also larger companies that we're working with. And you have just some of the largest private businesses as well inbounding and taking interest. Not all of these folks will buy eventually, right? So, there may be gaps still in the platform or there may be things we want to build or specific use cases or it's too hard for them to rip out. But you literally have $100 billion plus market cap companies considering sending their whole teams in, considering to take a look at the software and sort of like what's going on here. So, there is something is moving that was distinctly different from even literally just three to six months ago.

Shawn Windle: Wow. Yeah, that really puts it in perspective. I think there just there has been this pent-up demand for just better ERP solutions. I'm going to say it. And we work with all those guys and everybody else, and we've had great successes with them, but it's just time for change. And I think you guys are at the right place at the right time, but you're also defining that, which I think is very exciting. Is there anything else that you would say? So, we have a lot of people that listen to our podcasts that are like, okay, guys, that's fine. But my job is depending on getting the right software that's going to set up my organization for maybe the next ten years.What would you say to those people that are maybe a little wary of doing something newer? There's always the safe, you don't get fired if you bring in law. Right, so, what do you say to those people?

Nicolas Kopp: I think there's two elements of this. Element number one is, at least that was, that was really the bane of our existence when we started, right? Like who else is using you guys, whatever else. I think by now you're, we can comfortably point to more than 300customers, references, back channels, partners, large top ten accounting firms working with us. Like we can point to a lot of social proof and references that already get some people in sort of isolation kind of over that hurdle, basically. And then, for the folks that are still a little skeptical, what I leave them with, cheekily, but I think there is actually some pretty strong bit of truth in it is, yes, you may look like an early adopter today buying Rillet. Yes, it may be a little unproven and it's not as perceived as safe as an Oracle or a NetSuite is. But think about the rate of change that's happening in AI and the innovation that's happening just in like in increments of weeks and months.You can feel it. How are you going to look with a long-term decision that is anERP, buy an ERP today that in five years will still look the same while everybody else is using something that's fully AI powered and helping to take, close faster, better reports, whatever else. There just will be a very big dispersion, basically riding a horse when majority of folks are starting to drive that car. And so again, some people it's early. I fully respect that. AndI also don't want to be oblivious to the difficulty of that decision. But I think there is something there with a rate of change, given how long-term these bank decisions are, where it may make sense to just take a bit more risk, maybe if you're a little skeptical, and see if it would work out.

Shawn Windle: Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. And so it might not be for everybody now, but I mean, to your point, you don't want to find out that it wasn't for you five years from now when your competitors and everybody else is in a position where they're able to leverage the more standardized processes and things are going to come out. But it really is an exciting time. And I think, Nick, I really appreciate your time. So of course, Nick Kopp, the CEO and founder of Rillet, thank you again for your time. This is the Leaders in ERP series. It's part of the ERP Advisor podcast that we've been doing for many years. And again, I really appreciate your time, Nick. Thank you for coming on.

Nicolas Kopp: Yeah, thank you for having us.It was awesome, Shawn. And for folks that want to follow along, we're pretty active on LinkedIn. Shawn and I sometimes go back and forth on comments and posts. So, like, yeah, feel free to follow us on Rillet on LinkedIn or myself as well. Feel free to connect. I'd love to hear from you.

Shawn Windle: That's great. Thanks, everybody.