Tropic

Grammarly just rebranded to Superhuman. Not a rebrand. A survival play. They acquired Superhuman a few months ago, and combined with last year's Coda acquisition, they're not just going after Notion. They're trying to leapfrog them. Here's why this HAD to happen: Grammarly's business got totally upended by GenAI. Everyone now has access to a personal writing assistant with Claude and ChatGPT. Meanwhile, Notion isn't just winning. They're lapping the field every quarter. Grammarly, Superhuman, and Coda - all flat lines watching one rocket ship. This isn't a growth strategy. It's a survival strategy. Here's what makes it brilliant: - 16 years of language data and AI writing models (Grammarly) - The canvas where teams collaborate (Coda) - The inbox where work actually starts (Superhuman) They've built a genuine wedge against Notion - not just another collaboration tool, but one embedded in your daily workflow with differentiated AI underneath. The gap they're trying to close is massive. Do they have the technology chops to pull it off? Who knows. But I know what they were doing before definitely wasn't going to work. The AI game has accelerated a universal truth in tech: stay comfortable and die slowly, or make a bet that feels crazy and maybe live. Grammarly chose life.

While everyone preps for Halloween tomorrow, your finance team has been battling something much scarier... Budget season. Year-end planning. v6 of their forecast with no end in sight. This is your reminder: check in on them tomorrow and make sure they don't forget this crucial step in the process. The last finance team we knew forgot to review their levers and leakages, and they summoned haunted line items and ghosts of budgets past. 🤷♀️👻

Every CFO needs to bookmark this data right now. Pricing variability for some of the top suppliers. In other words: 1. How much wiggle room there is to negotiate on price 2. Which suppliers are worth your attention and effort to negotiate with Chances are, your team uses one, few, or many of these suppliers to run your business. Very useful as you engage in year-end budgeting and planning right now. Justin Etkin always says, “Many successful negotiations are actually mediocre deals in disguise.” Don’t let a done deal make you think you got a good deal. Reliable benchmark data is a nonnegotiable for doing financial stewardship in 2025 and beyond.

Save time and money on every software renewal contract you deal with 💰⏳ 👆 Happening tomorrow is a live demo of a new AI procurement assistant that will do just that! 📅 Oct 28 at 1pm EST 👉 Save your seat: https://lnkd.in/gVptczn6 Join the conversation with this team of procurement and finance leaders as they show and tell what we call Purchase Prep: - Scott Johnson - Sr. Director of Procurement at Ivanti - Jasmine Pope - Procurement Specialist at Everlaw - Tommy Noonan - Director of Product Management at Tropic - Russell Lester - CFO at Tropic Even if you can't make it, sign up anyways and receive the recording afterwards!

Who knew Tropic CFO Russell Lester was actually a ghostbuster? 👻 Budget season has a way of summoning all kinds of scary stuff - and with Halloween around the corner, it’s getting extra spooky: - Expenses that just won’t disappear - Variances rising from the dead - Forecasts that mysteriously “change overnight” Your finance team is deep in the trenches of year-end planning right now. Russell’s been there - he’s faced these budgeting ghosts as a CFO himself and lives to tell the tale. 👉 Bookmark his survival tips, send it to anyone in need, and stay safe out there: https://lnkd.in/ggZymvD8

We hired procurement experts years ago to gather negotiation data in the field. Investors called it crazy. OpenAI just hired 100+ ex-bankers to do exactly this. Turns out, if you want AI that actually works in complex domains, you need real experts teaching it what "good" looks like. Here's a recurring theme I'm seeing with AI companies: they use AI to generate outputs, then use AI to score those outputs. It's a circular loop that looks sophisticated but lacks the thing AI can't replicate - real-world context. At Tropic, our experts are the foundation of our AI engine. After processing $15B+ in spend, they've logged thousands of negotiation insights - the inputs and outputs of every supplier discussion. They review and score AI-generated strategies, benchmarks, and analysis to make sure our AI gets better every single day. Two years ago, our experts managed 30+ negotiations manually—pulling insights, sending emails, building benchmarks from scratch. Today, we've 5x’ed productivity because AI handles the straightforward work. It surfaces insights, delivers benchmarks automatically, and directly answers customers’ questions in common scenarios. But in complex cases? Our experts are still the tip of the spear. And that's the point. We're not trying to eliminate expertise. We're amplifying it. Our experts focuses on strategic, nuanced work that actually moves the needle. If you're building AI for complex domains, you need humans in the loop who actually know what good looks like. Otherwise, you're just building a very confident system that has no idea when it's wrong.

1 new way companies are eliminating procurement grunt work is by automating the preparation it takes for software renewals. See how a tool like this works with a room of finance and procurement pros through a free LIVE DEMO 👉 https://lnkd.in/gVptczn6 📅 Next week on Oct 28 at 1pm EST You'll hear from: - Scott Johnson - Sr. Director of Procurement at Ivanti - Jasmine Pope - Procurement Specialist at Everlaw - Tommy Noonan - Director of Product Management at Tropic - Russell Lester - CFO at Tropic And you'll learn how teams are using Purchase Prep to quickly prioritize high-impact contracts + automatically get price benchmarks, usage data, compliance checks...AND the negotiation levers to actually achieve those savings with almost any supplier. The need to manually hunt for all this info is gone...poof. If you can't make it live that's okay - sign up and play the recording back 🤝

Chances are, you’ve got some big renewals with big suppliers hitting the calendar this quarter. Don’t leave money on the table. Over 30% of renewals land in Q4 - and one thing’s for sure: there’s serious savings to be had. 💰 Here’s what some of Tropic’s customers achieved last quarter: BIG savings that turned into profit, R&D reinvestment, better software, and even new hires. As Michael Shields always says: You want to create OPTIONALITY for the business. That’s exactly what smarter renegotiations can do. The savings you uncover are found money that can fund the next move - whatever it is - to propel your business.