Taylor Otstot is VP of Finance at Dashlane, and former Senior Director of Finance at GoDaddy. He joined GoDaddy a year before their IPO and was there for eight years as the domain registrar and web hosting company scaled from $1.5 billion to $4 billion revenue. “By the time I left I was supporting about a billion and a half of that revenue and I was running a team of about 14", Taylor says. "So not only was I part of a business that was going through a lot of growth, but personally had to go through a lot of growth.”
In this episode Taylor reveals the psychological skills and strategy he uses to win in his career.
Insights from this episode:
- Printing Excel files (aka the worst budget he has ever experienced)
- Why every conversation in finance is really a conversation about tradeoffs.
- Letting go of what “made you great” when managing an FP&A Team
- Psychology learnings that have transformed my finance career and how you can apply them to your career
- Eight Lessons Learned the Hard Way, Reflection from Eight Years at GoDaddy.
- How a hard experience showed him that in finance “ titles unlock doors, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be invited in”
- Why I am a big fan of decision frameworks and breaking out of your “normal default positions”
- Burritos vs tacos and finance decision-making (with lessons for business reviews and business partnerships)
- Why the “safe choice” isn’t normally the right choice in finance
- Secrets to building a high performing team
- The big Sales comp revelation
Notes
https://taylorotstot.com/
Follow Taylor on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorotstot/
Creativity Inc, Ed Catmull
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
Reflections from 8 Years at GoDaddy
