We spoke with the seasoned fintech investor about his latest bet on Tabs, which just announced its $55M Series B aimed at building AI Agents for billing & collections.
Over the past year, we’ve been covering how AI tools are entering the workforce in fits and starts. On one end are companies like Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab, securing around $2 billion before a product has even been designed — and on the other are a long tail of AI products facing end-user skepticism, who may question the utility of AI products writ large as user experiences fail to align with marketing copy.
Tabs seems to sit somewhere in the middle: offering a revenue platform for finance teams, using AI to automate part of the back office. It announced a $55 million Series B fundraise earlier this week, backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and others.
To make sense of where larger VCs like Lightspeed ($25B AUM) see AI technology heading next — especially as we potentially stand on the precipice of a downturn — we spoke with Justin Overdorff, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Tabs is helping automate a multi-trillion-dollar issue. But where’s the stickiness? What ensures Tabs stays on top in this space, versus a cheaper AI-powered competitor (e.g., a Zoho for revenue workflows) or a competing product suite from a larger incumbent?
Tabs touches every part of the revenue process — billing, collections, recognition — and sits at the intersection of contracts, payments, and compliance. That depth of integration makes it hard to replicate and even harder to replace.
What’s Lightspeed’s view on AI agents? Do you see agents’ utility as primarily in the back office?
We see AI agents as the next chapter in enterprise software — similar to what SaaS did for accessibility or APIs did for integration. Tabs is proving that when you apply agents to a deep, painful workflow like revenue, you don’t just improve efficiency, you unlock entirely new operating models.
Assuming you’re interpreting the current state of affairs bearishly, do you think a downturn offers a tailwind for Tabs’s growth, or a headwind?
With any kind of market or economic concern, CFOs tend to get laser-focused on efficiency. Tabs helps them do more with fewer resources while keeping cash moving. That’s not just resilience, it’s product-market fit under pressure.
What do you expect from Tabs as it continues to grow?
We see Tabs becoming the system of record for revenue operations. The team started by transforming billing and collections, but the move into revenue recognition and reporting opens up an even larger opportunity. Tabs is building with the kind of velocity and discipline you rarely see, and we expect that they will keep raising the bar.
