Metronome Makes Tropic “A Quick Win” to Reduce SaaS Costs and Centralize Spend

About Metronome

Metronome is the leading usage-based billing platform that helps companies launch products faster. It powers billing for some of the fastest-growing startups and enterprises, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Confluent, and NVIDIA. The San Francisco-based company recently raised a $50M Series C and was named one of Forbes’ next billion dollar startups. 

Adam Klein leads finance and legal at Metronome, overseeing finance, strategy, accounting, legal, business operations, and revenue operations with nearly 20 years of experience across high-growth companies.

The Challenge

Build more efficient procurement without slowing the business down

Adam joined Metronome as the business shifted from scrappy startup to growth-stage business. Headcount was growing, budgets were expanding… but there wasn’t a formal process to manage their spend.

As new owner of Metronome’s finance, accounting, legal, and compliance functions, Adam found himself deep in files, email chains, and Slack threads just to get basic visibility into renewals and contracts.

“I came into Metronome at a certain time – a transition phase from a startup to the growth stage. Going through that process, some people affectionately call it the 'teenage years,'" Adam joked. “There are just a ton of growing pains."

He knew there was a better way because at a previous company, Adam used Tropic to save millions. So when the renewals began hitting his inbox in the first few weeks at Metronome, he didn’t hesitate to implement Tropic.

“There were 15 new vendor deals that landed on my desk in the first six weeks here," he explained, "I could do this one by one, or I could quickly set up a process with Tropic."

The Solution

Stand up a scalable process in weeks, not quarters

SaaS spend is the second highest OpEx expense at Metronome, so bringing structure to that spend was one of the fastest ways to drive immediate impact. 

Within eight weeks, Metronome had a single source of truth for their software contracts. Every purchase now flows through a system that auto-routes to the right stakeholders, ensures SOC 2 compliance, and enforces Metronome’s legal standards.

The time saved from eliminating the manual paper chase is valuable, Adam noted. “Especially for the G&A function, there's just so much admin work to do. Anything that cuts the time down is super helpful,” he said. 

Those confident in handling purchase and renewals themselves can take advantage of Tropic’s playbooks and pricing intelligence. Those who aren’t can rely on Tropic’s team of expert negotiators to get the best deal.

"Tropic was a quick win," he added. "While the finance role is so much more than savings and cost controls, with some light process and guardrails, I was able to start improving Metronome’s ability to reinvest dollars into growth."

The Outcome

Saved time is realigned to high-impact priorities

With a consistent process and less time spent on manual admin work, Adam can reinvest his time strategically leading high-impact negotiations, where the real savings live.

"Because we're a real-time infrastructure company, we have a heavy COGS tech stack,” he explained. "If you're focused on ROI, that’s the area for me to spend my time, working with R&D to manage the spend on those expensive infrastructure tools."

Automation and streamlined processes keep finance in control

As Metronome continues scaling, automation features like compliance checks and contract data extraction will help the team stay in control without getting buried in busywork.

"What’s cool about Tropic is that we set up the process and now we have a system that people use," Adam concluded. "It definitely makes my life easier through the scaling phase."