How Summit’s Matt Wensing is challenging Excel spreadsheets and reinventing financial models

<p>As a serial entrepreneur, Matt Wensing is no stranger to managing the day-to-day operations and growing pains of new businesses. However, he was surprised that his dependency on the same, stale spreadsheets hadn’t waned by his third venture.</p><p>In 2019, Matt launched Summit to accelerate financial intelligence by replacing idiosyncratic, disparate spreadsheets with a collaborative modeling platform. His goal is simple: to create a forecasting platform that anyone, from CFOs to start-up founders, can leverage successfully. On this episode of The Modern CFO, Matt and guest host Stuart Balcombe discuss where Excel falls short and how Summit’s plug-and-play features are a leap forward in building companies within our globally connected world.</p><p><strong>Show Links</strong></p><ul> <li>Check out <a href="https://usesummit.com/">Summit</a> </li> <li>Follow Summit on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/usesummit/">LinkedIn</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/usesummit">Twitter</a> </li> <li>Connect with Matt Wensing on <a href="https://twitter.com/mattwensing">Twitter</a> </li> <li>Connect with Stuart Balcombe on <a href="https://twitter.com/stubalcombe">Twitter</a> </li> </ul><p><strong>Key Takeaways<br></strong><br></p><p><strong>1:12 - The question that started Summitt</strong></p><p>Matt was confident in his financial know-how, until he was hit with a question Excel couldn’t easily answer.</p><em>“The simple question was: if your sales cycles extend from what they are today, which is approximately 30-60 days lets say to 90-120 days, what's that going to do to your business? What's that gonna do to your capital needs, to your hiring plan, etc? And I remember thinking, that's really smart. He's seeing a trend, which sales cycles are extending, and he's buying into it, which is what I want them to do as a founder. But he's then saying, ‘If that’s true, then what?’ I remember going back to my Excel-based model and realizing that in order to answer that question accurately, it wasn't going to be s