S2E24: NetSuite is where ERPs go to die. We're building the escape hatch | Jonathan Sanders (Light)

Jonathan Sanders watched two companies suffer through brutal ERP migrations that took 18 months, cost $200K+, and required constant consultant babysitting. At one point, a board literally told leadership not to migrate their ERP because it would be a massive waste of time with zero ROI. That's how broken the category is. So Jonathan built Light, a new type of smart finance platform that turns 18-month implementations into one-day onboardings by letting finance teams configure systems with plain English policies instead of paying consultants to write scripts nobody understands. In this conversation, Jonathan reveals how working with OpenAI months before ChatGPT launched shaped Light's entire product philosophy around "student assistants" that work 24/7, why they deliberately avoided the traditional channel partner model that made legacy ERPs successful, and the brutal truth implementation consultants told him about why their incentives are completely misaligned with customers. He also explains why they almost went full outcome-based pricing but didn't, the new skill emerging in finance teams (hint: it's writing, not coding), and why the ERP category is so meaningless that it needs to die. If you've ever suffered through a NetSuite migration, this episode will feel like therapy.