Therese Tucker sees no reason why her company BlackLine Inc. should be a success. When she formed it in 2001, she had no financial backers and no customers – in short, the 55-year-old said, she had no clue what she was doing. But with perseverance, a few good hiring decisions and some sales hustle, she grew Woodland Hills-based BlackLine into one of the premier software firms in the financial technology sector. Numbers tell the story. The company has more than 1,800 customers served by a workforce of 646 employees in 13 offices around the globe. BlackLine went public in October and has a market capitalization of $1.7 billion. “It’s not because of anything I’ve done,” Tucker said of BlackLine’s success. “It’s because I’ve had such a great group of people around me.” While giving credit to others, there is no question BlackLine remains Tucker’s company and reflects her personality. She admits that she has struggled to fit into standard molds and in turn she attracts unconventional employees. For example, she has pink hair – a standout style in the staid accounting profession. She began dyeing about two years ago as a marketing joke. She was going to appear in a company video that she found too boring. “I didn’t want a militant pink,” she said. “I wanted a conservative pink.” Flexible management BlackLine develops software that reduces the need for human accountants by automating the process of closing out the books and reconciling accounts. Its customers include Dow Chemical Co., Coca-Cola Co. and Costco Wholesale Corp. BlackLine started in wealth management software, a difficult market to break into, Tucker conceded, because Thomson Reuters had a lock on it. The transition to accounting software occurred around 2004. At the time, public companies were adapting to the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. Suddenly accounting processes received a lot more scrutiny to ensure accuracy around financial reporting. Mario Spanicciati, BlackLine’s chief marketing officer who has worked at the company for almost 13 years, recalled that there was a realization that no software existed to handle account reconciliation since everyone was still using spreadsheets. There had to be a better way, Spanicciati said. “That was what sparked the pivot for us and we have not looked back since,” he added. Tucker guided the company into accountingsoftware, a market where there was little competition. While automating accounting practices appealed to her, the subject matter was another story. “I could not stay awake in my 8 a.m. accounting class,” Tucker said. “I would not have made a good accountant for so many reasons.” If there are lessons that others can learn from BlackLine’s success, Tucker said, it is the value of persistence and a strong belief in personal success even when not shared by those around you. In the early years of BlackLine, Tucker had board members who didn’t think the company was going anywhere even as they loaned her money to keep it afloat. Another lesson is having the flexibility to adapt to market conditions. After the move into account software, a major turning point for BlackLine came with the hiring of Dominick DiPaolo, formerly an executive at software giant Oracle Corp., to head up sales in March 2008. He immediately brought on three salespeople, a move that Tucker said nearly gave her a heart attack. “I was still bankrolling the company,” she said. “I did not have the money to pay them.” But it turned out to be a smart decision as it put the company on the growth trajectory it remains on today. Another inflection point occurred when the company won early client Costco Wholesale Corp. Tucker related how after her company won the contract, the previous vendor offered its service for free if Costco would dump BlackLine. Tucker jumped on a plane and flew to Costco’s headquarters in suburban Seattle. She confirmed that its executives were sticking with BlackLine. Their attitude was that while a free service was nice, a sustainable business deal was one in which the vendor was paid, Tucker said. “When I got back to L.A. we opened a bottle of champagne,” she recalled. “That was a pivotal moment.” Genuine entrepreneur Tom Unterman, a founder of Santa Monica investment firm Rustic Canyon Partners and a member of the BlackLine board, called Tucker one of the best entrepreneurs he knows in terms of understanding her customers and their needs. She also has a collaborative management style. “She genuinely likes her team and her people and that comes through,” he added. Tucker said she doesn’t expect her workers to be yes-men. She actually likes it when they disagree with her. Spanicciati, the chief marketing officer, described Tucker as strong willed but open to hearing ideas and opinions. But when you challenge her, you must be prepared to make your case with a compelling argument and data. “If you are going to be contrarian, you have to be ready to back it up,” Spanicciati said. Wall Street also likes Tucker’s style. Rob Oliver, a senior research analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. Inc. in Milwaukee, said Tucker’s focus on customers, products and company culture resonates well with investors. “BlackLine has been one of our favorite stocks,” Oliver said. “They have done well.” The company went public seven months ago with a debut price of $17 a share. Tucker rang the bell at the Nasdaq in New York on Oct. 28 to mark the occasion. Since then, it has increased by more than 96 percent to close May 24 at $33.39. “In our work the account software market has been an underserved market relative to a lot of other growth areas,” Oliver said. Last month, Tucker received the CEO of the Year Award from the Business Journal at its annual Women in Business Awards event. Farm living The journey for Tucker and BlackLine started on a farm near Kankakee in east-central Illinois. She was the youngest of four daughters who grew up taking care of cows, pigs and chickens and learning to drive a tractor. It was an equal opportunity upbringing where there were no stereotypes that she couldn’t do some chore because she was a girl, Tucker said. After high school, Tucker enrolled at Illinois Wesleyan University, in Bloomington, Ill. Out of what she admits was laziness, she decided to take a computer programming class. Suddenly she found what she was meant to do in life. She loved programming so much that she transferred to the University of Illinois to get a degree in computer science. “It is the most amazing thing in the world to be able to write a list of instructions for a computer and it will go off and do that,” Tucker said. “That was like, ‘Wow.’” Degree in hand, Tucker came to California, where one of her sisters lived. She got a job with Hughes Aircraft working on surface ship sonar bulk detection firmware. It was a cool job in the beginning but then boredom set in. “It was good but one of the things I like is the intersection of people and technology and you don’t get a lot of that with firmware,” Tucker explained. So she left Hughes and bounced around doing freelance programming. She designed a real estate appraisal program for a startup she hoped to launch that didn’t get off the ground because she didn’t have any money. In 1989, now married and with a child on the way, Tucker went to work for ADS Associates Inc., a software developer for financial markets. She believes the company was taking a risk hiring her when pregnant so she was determined to show they made the right decision. On the day her son was born, she worked until 5:30 p.m. and four hours later gave birth. “I was in labor all day while at work,” Tucker said, adding she took two weeks off and then returned to the office. She did something similar when her daughter was born a few years later. Tucker gave birth on a Wednesday and was back at work on Friday. “They had put trust in me and I wanted to show that was not misplaced,” Tucker said. ADS gave her experience in sales that would come in handy at BlackLine. The company was acquired by SunGard Data Systems Inc. in 1997. As part of a larger company, Tucker learned about mergers and acquisitions and the due diligence associated with those deals. She left SunGard in 2000. When her wealth manager could not show her an analysis on her stock options, she figured it was something that she could create herself – and BlackLine was born. “I started it because I like to build software,” Tucker said. Outside of the office, Tucker is a certified yoga instructor but said she does not do yoga as much as she would like. She also enjoys spending time with her family – husband Brian and their two adult children. It is actually the second marriage for Tucker and her husband; they originally wed in 1987, got divorced and remarried in 2015. “I married my best friend the second time,” Tucker said. While her board of directors had no objections to Tucker dyeing her hair pink – probably thinking she wouldn’t go through with it – they drew the line when Tucker told them she wanted to get an eyebrow pierced. “Now they believe me,” she said.