In this episode, Avanish and Andrew discuss:
- Andrew's journey as an "operational CFO" from Sun Microsystems through ServiceNow, WalkMe, Lacework, and now Amplitude, being part of the team that built ServiceNow from $400M to $4.5B ARR
- Why CFOs must "play chess, not checkers" - thinking several moves ahead about decision implications and making strategic investment pivots for anticipated future growth
- The critical difference between multi-product and platform strategies: true platforms have definite customer adoption journeys where products aren't sold independently
- Recognizing platform readiness signals: when customers organically create their own workflows and use cases you never conceived, like hospitals using Amplitude for emergency room optimization
- Building effective teams by mixing "veterans with rookies" to solve problems rather than just "admire problems," and driving focused execution around single key investments
- The "fair exchange of value" approach to pricing and partnerships that emphasizes customer adoption, transparency, and simplicity over complexity
About Avanish Sahai:
Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and served as a Board Member of Hubspot from 2018 to 2023; he currently serves on the boards of Birdie.ai, Flywl.com and Meta.com.br as well as a few non-profits end educational boards. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.
About Andrew Casey:
Andrew Casey is Chief Financial Officer at Amplitude, where he leads Amplitude's General & Administrative organization, which includes finance, accounting, and legal. With more than 25 years of enterprise software experience, Casey brings deep financial expertise combined with extensive go-to-market strategy and business operations experience.
Casey joined Amplitude from Lacework, where he served as CFO and oversaw its successful acquisition by Fortinet. Prior to that, he was the CFO of WalkMe, where he led its Initial Public Offering (IPO) and transformed its enterprise sales motion. Casey’s career also includes senior finance roles with ServiceNow, Hewlett-Packard, NortonLifeLock Inc. (formerly Symantec), Oracle, and Sun Microsystems.
About Tidemark
Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.
Links
The Platform Journey 