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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Valley’s Rare Technology Pioneer Moving On

Therese Tucker is unusual. Not only did she start a company but – unlike many entrepreneurs – she successfully ran it for 19 years. What’s more, she’s a woman, and a pink-haired one at that, in the male-dominated tech industry. Earlier this month, Tucker announced that at the end of the year she will step down as chief executive of BlackLine Inc., a Woodland Hills financial software firm that automates the process of closing out the books and reconciling accounts. She will pass the torch to former NetSuite executive and Blackline Chief Operating Officer Marc Huffman as Tucker becomes executive chair. In this question-and-answer interview, Tucker, 60, talks about how she built up BlackLine and how she got “teary eyed” when the decision was made to transition out. She will leave the helm of one of the Valley area’s largest public companies with a market cap of more than $4.1 billion, and one of its most successful. Since she took the company public on the Nasdaq in 2016 with shares debuting at $17, the stock has enjoyed a more than four-fold increase and traded last week at around $75. This must be a profound change for you – how are you doing with it? It feels very natural and sort of gradual – it’s part of a multi-year succession plan. This company is my baby, and the nice thing is that I’m not just severing the cord and never looking back. That type of transition would be very difficult. This has been a big part of my life for a long time. How did you know it was the right time to step down as CEO? One thing about Marc Huffman is he was a software-as-a-service executive at NetSuite. I think he was there from when they were at $7 million to over $1 billion in revenue. He’s going to do such a fabulous job scaling BlackLine to that next level of $1 billion in revenue. That’s not something that I’ve done before. Did the coronavirus change anything about the transition? It did not change anything about the timing. But it gave me a great confirmation and confidence in my choice. Marc really stepped up his leadership game to handle business during the pandemic. You called BlackLine your “baby.” Is it emotional to hand off control to someone else? It was really emotional when the board actually passed the resolution to promote him to CEO Jan 1. I was surprised I got all teary-eyed. Of course, a lot of my identity is tied up in this company. But that only lasted a few minutes. This is the best for the company, and it’s going to be fun for me to watch it grow to its next phase. Tech, of course, remains an industry where women are overwhelmingly underrepresented. How did you break in and what was it like when you started gaining clout as a tech entrepreneur? The way you break in is to start as a programmer, which is something I still love. But being a woman makes you stand out. If you’re good at what you do, it can actually help you get noticed. I bootstrapped BlackLine up until the end of 2013. We started to pick up attention when we started gaining size, making noise about doing an IPO and getting in front of investors. Obviously, the IPO was a big moment. A woman with pink hair just rang the bell, you know? But I don’t love the attention. What I love is building a company. The results speak for themselves. Because tech has been so heavily male for so long, do you feel a responsibility to be a role model for women in the industry? Initially, I was always annoyed when interviews would focus on my gender. But I had a change of heart. I realized there are so few women leading tech companies – especially publicly traded ones. Younger women and girls need role models. Maybe they’re female. Maybe they’re of color. Maybe they have weird hair. I went from thinking it was a burden to thinking its an honor and a privilege. Since this is our last opportunity to ask – why did you dye your hair pink? I try not to lose a game of chicken if I can help it. My marketing people, almost five years ago, wanted me to do this horrifically boring video. We’re already in accounting software, and this was just going to put people completely to sleep. But they kept pushing back, saying, “we need you to do this.” Finally, I said, “Fine. I’ll do it, but I’m going to dye my hair pink.” What happened then? I found it’s an amazing sociological experiment. Everybody in the world feels like they can talk to you when you have pink hair. Little kids at the beach, goth teenagers in the bookstore – you just have so many more conversations with people. Did that quality extend to the business community? Internally, it sets the tone at BlackLine. We don’t care what you look like or how you dress. What counts is what you contribute. Now, not unlike being a woman in tech, having pink hair also makes you stand out. Thankfully, BlackLine has performed very well over last four years. We certainly stand out to investors as well. People readily recognize you, call out to you and remember you. I was kidding Marc Huffman he needs to dye his hair blue! If you could go back to the start of your career knowing what you know now, what would you do differently? If you asked me how many times I failed, it’s hundreds. But usually your mistakes are the things you learn the most from. I wouldn’t want to take away from any of that. What were some of your biggest learning experiences? In the early days, we had an employee leave and create a competing product and company. We were competing against each other for a client, and the client picked us. Then, a day later, they called us and said our competitor had offered to give them their software for free. My heart dropped. I got on a plane and flew to speak with their CFO. I essentially assured them we’d be successful and offered them some additional products, but I did not offer them a price break. They came back and still picked us. They said the reason was because a good deal has to be good for all parties and a free deal is not going to be good in the long term. We went home and cracked a bottle of champagne. Today, they are still a client. Anything else? The first three years of BlackLine I was building wealth management software. We completely pivoted at end of 2004. If it’s not working, make a decision to change and keep trying things until they work.

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