2nd Time Founder Building AI Quote-to-cash Platform for SLG Recurring Revenue Businesses - The SaaS CFO Recap

Podcast: The SaaS CFO

Published: 2026-01-15

Duration: 37 minutes

Guests: Michael Babineau

Summary

Michael Babineau, co-founder of Turnstile, discusses his journey from a software engineer to a successful second-time founder. He details Turnstile's mission to revolutionize sales-led recurring revenue businesses with an AI-native quote-to-cash platform.

What Happened

Michael Babineau's journey from software engineer to co-founding Turnstile is rooted in his experience with high-scale backend systems and his first company, Second Measure, which was sold to Bloomberg for over $100 million. Turnstile, founded in 2022, aims to address the complexities of sales-led recurring revenue businesses by providing an AI-native quote-to-cash platform that integrates CRM and ERP systems, thus simplifying the process of handling custom deals.

Turnstile's platform offers a self-serve experience and targets early-stage to mid-market companies, focusing on capturing 100% of deals with flexible support for custom contracts. The company prioritizes storing contractual information as structured data, which helps streamline quoting, subscription management, billing, and financial reporting.

Babineau discusses the nascent nature of the quote-to-cash space, where established players like Zora struggle with custom negotiated deals. Turnstile's competitive edge lies in its unique pricing model, which is $100 a month plus 0.6% of billing volume, compared to Stripe's 0.7%.

Raising capital as a second-time founder, Babineau and his co-founders secured funding from Burst Round to further develop Turnstile. The company's go-to-market strategy is shifting from a direct sales-led approach to a marketing-led one, emphasizing content marketing and social campaigns to increase awareness.

Turnstile's goal is to become an essential part of early-stage founders' toolkits, with the ambition of never being a system companies outgrow. This strategy involves catching businesses early in their lifecycle and providing low financial barriers to entry, making it accessible for startups.

As Turnstile scales, Babineau notes that the aggregate business running on their platform is a key metric, reflecting the value delivered to their clients. The company is fully remote with about 30 employees and is focusing on building awareness and expanding its customer base.

Key Insights