As a serial entrepreneur, Matt Wensing is no stranger to managing the day-to-day operations and growing pains of new businesses. However, he was surprised that his dependency on the same, stale spreadsheets hadn’t waned by his third venture.In 2019, Matt launched Summit to accelerate financial intelligence by replacing idiosyncratic, disparate spreadsheets with a collaborative modeling platform. His goal is simple: to create a forecasting platform that anyone, from CFOs to start-up founders, can leverage successfully. On this episode of The Modern CFO, Matt and guest host Stuart Balcombe discuss where Excel falls short and how Summit’s plug-and-play features are a leap forward in building companies within our globally connected world.Show LinksCheck out SummitFollow Summit on LinkedIn or TwitterConnect with Matt Wensing on TwitterConnect with Stuart Balcombe on TwitterKey Takeaways1:12 - The question that started SummittMatt was confident in his financial know-how, until he was hit with a question Excel couldn’t easily answer.“The simple question was: if your sales cycles extend from what they are today, which is approximately 30-60 days lets say to 90-120 days, what's that going to do to your business? What's that gonna do to your capital needs, to your hiring plan, etc? And I remember thinking, that's really smart. He's seeing a trend, which sales cycles are extending, and he's buying into it, which is what I want them to do as a founder. But he's then saying, ‘If that’s true, then what?’ I remember going back to my Excel-based model and realizing that in order to answer that question accurately, it wasn't going to be simple. I couldn't just delay receivables. I couldn't just change the pipeline. So many things about the business needed to change to capture that distended sales cycle. It occurred to me as I was going through that wow, this is an extremely painful, but extremely smart question. And it's kind of crazy that in order to answer this, I'm going to have to spend hours and hours back in Excel."6:33 -  Messaging that hits homeSummit’s mantra is: speak quietly and carry a big message that pushes your users right where it (currently) hurts.“You are in a relationship with a tool that both simultaneously delights you and simultaneously frustrates and disappoints you. And in some cases betrays you when you want it to support you and have your back. There's this love-hate dynamic. And because of that, the H1 there says, ‘Tell your forecasting spreadsheet you're never getting back together.’  It's really directly appealing to the fact that it's not all love all the time. And you had your moments, maybe not today, but in the recent past, where you've thought about burning it down and starting again.”11:35 - Summit’s customer-led approachTo compete with Excel’s customizable model, Summit had to become a language - not a product.“I ended up realizing spreadsheets are a programming environment, not a database. And I think that the approach that you choose to take, when you're attempting to replace a spreadsheet, has to take a position on that. Am I going to replace this programming environment -  this language, if you will -  with a SaaS tool, which is effectively a product?  And I am the only one who can improve that product, my team improves that product and launches features? Or am I going to take a platform language approach and say, ‘I'm actually going to build a better programming environment that enables you to do everything that you can do today, but better?’...For Summit, I've chosen an approach of building a better language, a better programming environment for financial modeling, as opposed to just a product. Because I don't think you can build you can't beat a language with a product. You can only be the better language.”14:38 - The global market vs. ExcelEveryone’s got their own dialect of Excel - and that’s killing collaboration in a global workforce.“The more valuable a spreadsheet is to an individual, the less valuable it is to the group. So much individualism, idiosyncratic statements, dialects, ways of doing things, structures that are unique to my mental models, all get infused into the sheet. And that puts the ‘anything-goes’ approach to development at odds with the internet itself, in terms of collaboration and protocols that inter-operate with one another. You've literally created a lot of impedance around this very valuable asset. And it's this cruel irony that the more I invest into it, the worse it gets for you. That is fundamentally at odds with a world where you and I have an easier time than ever working together, even though we're separated by thousands of miles, the fact that this paradigm is not supportive of that or conducive to that.”16:07 - The challenge of new economic activityAs businesses rely more on subscription-based services, Excel spreadsheets don’t provide an easy way to model this new economic activity.“The other thing is the subscription economy, which I believe has put a lot of pressure on a need for standardization of certain representations within financial models. So cohorts, retention, subscriptions, plans, tiers and pricing and all of these - so much economic activity now is centered around subscription revenue. You can create subscription revenue in Excel, but the fact is that it's so hard to properly model cohort-based retention and retention analysis in a spreadsheet. Call it a difficulty level of 50 - and there's pressure for it to become a 5, because there's a thousand times more subscription revenue activity going on in the world than there was 30 years ago.”18:12 - VC’s growing interest in financial healthToday, presenting a financially sound business is more critical than unicorn growth when it comes to landing VC investments.“There's a long list now of funds and firms that are actually looking for a financially sound investment. They're not just looking for unicorns. Of course, they want unicorns.That's great. But they're actually very happy with what they call the long SaaS ramp of growth. And they're looking for this at very early stages, to make loans, to make investments with maybe even revenue based returns. So the IRR is great, but they need to look at your business at a much earlier stage than ever before. And they’ll make a decision not just based on the founders and the hotness of the markets or the market potential, but they want to make a decision based on the things we just talked about, which is how sound and strong your business is financially. And that means that founders and early-stage operators are being asked to produce models that are much more rigorous much earlier in their life cycle than they did 10, 20 years ago to get that $300,000 loan for a business doing $300,000 a year in revenue.”24: 21 - When growth hits the wallCompanies may get away with poor financial practices for a while - but most will reach a growth plateau. This reality demands re-evaluating the antiquated tools we rely upon.“Everybody hits this asymptote at some point in their growth. That asymptote is a painful relat...

Public practice accountant Martin Chee knows: no one likes wasting time on tedious data entry of the same numbers over and over again. That’s the gap he uncovered in the financial accounting industry — and the gap that his company Amaka fills seamlessly. Their accounting integrations software lets businesses capture their financial data and use it across all their systems, so there’s no double work. Martin talks with Andrew Seski of the Modern CFO podcast about the importance of data accessibility today and the evolution of Amaka, especially during an unprecedented pandemic, plus how parenting is good prep for running a business.‍Show LinksCheck out AmakaFollow Amaka on LinkedIn or TwitterFollow Martin Chee on LinkedIn or TwitterConnect with Andrew Seski on LinkedIn or TwitterKey Takeaways5:04 — A really, really clunky processA great idea — like Amaka — always starts with a problem, in this case the overly manual, time-consuming, and error-prone process for exchanging financial information.“This process around organizing finance was really, really clunky and antiquated and just deeply inefficient, and effectively what it was, was the exchange of financial information. So, you want to borrow money for the business. You need to provide the business’s financials and a whole host of other documents and information...What a lot of banks were doing is, they'd consume that information in a really manual way. Like you would email them a PDF or worse still, you'd hand deliver documents to them and then they'd give it to someone else. And they'd be like keying in the numbers into this piece of software, which would then spit out a result. And it was just a really, really long, time-consuming process. And it was really error prone as well.”‍‍‍10:42 — Same information, different systemsAmaka was carefully developed to capture the myriad data points from a single transaction (date, time, price, cashier, etc.) so they can be used across all systems.“We definitely put a lot of work into architecting something that made it really easy to understand the same information, but in different systems. Take a sale, as an example, can you just talk about generic attributes of a transaction? You might have the date of the transaction occurred, the time when it occurred, the day that it occurred, the employee that was responsible for it, the value of the items, the discounts that were applied on it — you can quickly see how much data is there just in a, in a simple transaction like that.”‍13:36 — Data liberationMartin and the Amaka team call what they do “data liberation” — they free data so it’s no longer tied to just one system.‍“One of the phrases that we kind of throw around at the office is data liberation. Like we liberate your data from whatever system you might have. Because as a business owner, you have this information there, but it's just not always easily accessible. We're really trying to solve that problem, so you can leverage the information that you have in a really, really easy way.”‍18:35 — Stay positive and knuckle downA strong team and honest, hard work is what kept Amaka going during the pandemic, says Martin.“We really just had to stay positive and knuckle down...We're developing new products and we're enhancing things and it's like, whatever was happening in the broader economy, in the broader market, macrowise — well, if you didn't have a positive outlook and you didn't think that this was going to be something that eventually was going to go away, then I don't know what the alternative really looks like. And no one was going to stick their head in the sand and just, like, ignore it. But at the same time, we had a full schedule of work to get through. And we just kind of knuckled down and focused on that. Rather than, you know, looking at the things that were happening, which were outside of our control anyway. And we knew other businesses largely anyway were having that experience. So it just didn't pay to do anything else, except that.”‍20:19 — Plan accordinglyAndrew shares a comment from a different interviewee that struck him; it removed all emotion from the equation and focused on just getting the job done.“One of the more insightful comments I've heard that just took me aback, as somebody who hasn't been through at least one pandemic through their lifetime, was that if the world is only going to end, plan accordingly. If you're confident that this is the time, that the world ends, then plan accordingly. If you don't believe so, plan accordingly. It was such a detachment from the emotion that was running through.”‍24:32 — An annoying distractionFundraising rounds, while essential, can be a distraction from the important work of growing and directing a business“There's a lot of components to the business as well, particularly when you're gearing up for a fundraising round — that is a really big, annoying distraction for the business, particularly from the leadership perspective. When you get dragged out to do pitches or prepare materials, answer questions — that is a really time-consuming process that takes a lot of the focus away from the important things that are adding value to the business (other than giving it capital, which is also incredibly important obviously). That’s always a challenging thing to be contending with, at the same time that you're trying to help your business grow and direct it accordingly and really make sure that you're gearing it up for success.”‍28:26 — So much changeEverything changes so rapidly in the startup world, says Martin. Sometimes even what you did last week is already obsolete.“The reporting side of things is always like a challenge anyway. At the best of times, with a startup — it's changing and pivoting. If I put together a business model, like two years ago, the one that we have now is like poles apart. Aside from just underlying assumptions changing, products have changed out, pricing has changed, revenue models have changed. So there's just so much change that's constant. Where, you know, you're always trying to spin things out that are relevant, and then, you know, a week later they could be totally irrelevant. And you really need that speed to be able to access that information. That's incredibly challenging.”‍30:52 — Going through startup lifeThe ebb and flow of living through a pandemic, Andrew observes, is a lot like running a start-up; priorities must be constantly reassessed and reset as conditions and variables shift at an exhausting pace.“In the startup world, which we are both endeavoring to navigate, it's almost as if there's a constant reprioritization process that occurs, and that it can ebb and flow with great ideas, great new clients, international clients, and just a number of variables. And I think that is almost a great analogy for the year th...

Cameron Hyzer is the CFO of ZoomInfo, a B2B database seeking to revolutionize the sales & marketing process. With over 2 decades of experience, Cameron is expanding the role (and importance) of CFOs in growing companies. Cameron joined me to talk about the evolution of today’s CFO, the best mentalities for success, and how ZoomInfo is changing go-to-market motions for good….even during a global pandemic.Show LinksCheck out ZoomInfoFollow ZoomInfo on LinkedIn or TwitterConnect with Cameron on LinkedInConnect with Andrew on LinkedInKey Takeaways1:24 - The many roles of a CFONumbers are just the start. CFOs are a critical link between growing companies and their investors.‍“I think the CFO's role is really being the steward of the company's both business model and capital, as well as the bridge between the management team and shareholders. As the CFO role has evolved over time, there is a lot that gets bundled into that. Everything from the ability to report and understand drivers of the business, to helping the management team itself improve and grow. As well as really working with the capital markets and various different transactions, whether that's acquisitions or sales or fundraising. And finally, making sure that investors understand where we're going and are excited about that.”‍‍‍2:57 - Profits first‍Cameron cautions against losing sight of the basics, like profitability and shareholder returns.“I do think that the transactional orientation of a CFO is really important: knowing what happens in an acquisition, whether you're acquiring or being acquired, understanding how to fundraise, and make sure that your capital structure is as efficient as possible…You don't want to be entirely focused on just capital structure and transactions, but that is ultimately what drives returns for shareholders. So having that point of view is important along with the ability to help the company grow and mature, making sure that you're making the right investments within the company to power growth or profitability over time.”‍‍‍4:50 - Driving sales with better data‍Cameron’s company, ZoomInfo, provides in-depth data to give sales teams critical insights into potential leads.‍“ZoomInfo helps sales and marketing teams, and recently we've rolled out products to help recruiters as well, understand the world around them and their prospects and customers. We do this by gathering data from literally millions of different sources, normalizing, and bringing the quality up of that data so that customers can identify their next best customers…We provide information about companies, everything from how many employees that are what's the revenue within that company to org charts within that companies and what technologies they use and what they’re planning to buy over the next 1, 3, 6, 12 months. With that information, a salesperson can identify who to talk to and figure out when, how to prioritize the different prospects that they have.”‍‍8:27- Pioneering the data trend‍Businesses have started recognizing that traditional sales & marketing need a modern overhaul, 14 years after ZoomInfo’s vision began.‍“Before the pandemic people were looking for better ways to engage with their customers... making their sales and marketing teams more effective and more efficient. And the natural way in our minds to do that is to use data to make better decisions. High-quality data drives better outcomes. And that's been our mantra for the last 14 years. So as companies got more acclimated to the environment, they started to determine that maybe they shouldn't be worried about conserving cash at all costs and actually looking to grow the business.”‍‍‍9:11- The ups and downs of 2020‍After the stalled markets of early 2020, ZoomInfo saw a surge in sales as traditional sales tactics disappeared.‍“That secular trend that we'd seen of people trying to improve their go to market motions became a much starker relief when you can't go to a conference and collect business cards anymore to figure out who to talk to when you can't take people out to golf outings or baseball games in order to get the inside scoop from the company when you can't shmooze people at dinners to meet other people in the company. Our platform allows people to do all of those things from their desk or home or whatever else. So we're really excited about that acceleration that we've seen of that trend in the second half [of 2020].”‍‍‍11:21 - Cameron’s key to navigating crisis‍Cooler heads prevail, as does a long-term focus that can see past today’s hurdle.‍“I think that the most important thing is that you need to be long-term focused. You can't be focused on what's necessarily happening right now and panic about whatever. You need to look past what the current hurdle is and understand what you are going to do to overcome that hurdle that isn't just a quick fix, but it's going to actually drive value for the company in the long term. Being calm in the face of pressure and being able to have that long-term view, no matter what's going on is the most important aspect."‍‍‍13:14 - Lessons from the pre-internet bubble‍Cameron’s early years in the workforce showed him that profit beats popularity.‍“I've had the luxury of seeing a lot of different things over time. Among the probably most formative things, I graduated from college in the late nineties and went into the workforce and worked for an investment bank that focused on technology companies in 1998, which was like the huge rise of pre-internet bubble, fast growth, multiple software companies changing the world. And I think that living through that era where everything was changing, everything was fast, everything was super valuable. And then going through the collapse of the internet bubble and always having a view that valuation isn't about how many eyeballs you make, but ultimately about how much money you can make in the long-term.”‍‍‍16:03- Two success mentalities‍The best CFOs are always learning new approaches and willing to get hands-on to solve problems.‍“I think that the most important thing that I see of CFOs that I really admire or are high quality is that they're always looking to learn something new. They're not just focused on ‘this is what I learned and how I approach it.’...Putting yourself in that situation where you're not just relying on someone else to solve it for you, but actually solving that problem. I think that that makes for people that are able to weather a bunch of different situations and able to drive value through the unknown. There's always going to be twists and turns in the road and you want to make sure you get to the...

CFO Mandeep Basra joined RentMoola right as COVID-19 was declared a worldwide pandemic. Little did he know that the company would be quickly pivoting to help landlords and tenants by offering remote payment options and micro-lending assistance. This digital innovation is just what Mandeep thinks the world needs in order to serve sophisticated digital customers as well as support under-banked populations around the world.Show LinksCheck out RentMoolaFollow RentMoola on LinkedInConnect with Mandeep Basra on LinkedInConnect with Andrew on LinkedIn‍Key Takeaways‍3:30 - Keeping tenants safeDuring the pandemic, RentMoola worked with property managers to keep tenants safe by offering fully digital rent paying solutions.“It was interesting to see our customers thinking about their employees and wanting to keep them safe. A lot of our property managers who have tenants that were paying by cash or check, they wanted to stop that because they didn't know how the virus was going to spread with paper and whatnot. So what we saw was an increase with our property managers and our marketing team, working together to market our solution to their tenants. And saying how to keep us safe, keep yourself safe. What we're going to do is we're not going to accept any checks anymore for the time being, we're not gonna accept cash payments. What we're going to do is we're going to utilize this tool that we have in place with RentMoola and make sure that you're able to pay your rent without the risk of getting sick.”‍7:29 - Micro-financing for rentersNo one should have to decide between paying rent or feeding their family. RentMoola solved this with a system of micro-financing.“There's right now, I believe there is 70 some-odd billion dollars in backrent that is outstanding right now for tenants, for apartment buildings and whatnot, condos. And what we've done, we've partnered with a few companies out there and we're offering kind of like a rent now and pay later solution. Where it's kind of like micro lending, micro financing, you can call it at 0% interest. So the tenants don't have to face any financial hardship in these times. And the property manager still gets paid. And there's no additional interest right now. It's a decision that people have to make. Do I feed my family? Or do I pay my rent is basically the state of the economy right now. So we're finding those kind of solutions to help our user base.”‍9:15 - FinTech at the forefrontMandeep thinks that FinTech will explode over the next year, as legacy banks struggle to meet growing user needs.“I think 2021, you know, for the next couple of years, FinTech is going to be the forefront in business. There's a lot of solutions out there. You know, obviously RentMoola is one of them and the banks, they have legacy systems. They can't support the current user base right now...my gut feel is within the next 12 to 18 months, these banks with their legacy system, they can't really develop and move forward. So there's, there's going to be a lot of synergies between the legacy banking systems and solutions like ours, where the banks will need to, or will be forced to work with companies like companies like ours.”‍17:25 - Data is your crystal ballWhile no one can predict the future, looking carefully at data can help uncover important trends.“I think probably from my side, the data is key. Is analyzing data. You know, so we can always see, like you said, if we had a crystal ball, a magic wand, we can predict it. You know, we can see what's going on a month from now and we can be ready for it. But we can prepare ourselves the best we can with the data that we have. So, you know, in the data right now, I'm not speaking about balance sheets and income statements and cash flow statements. It's actually you know, the trends that we see in our payment processing. And you know, we do dig down deeper. What do we see a certain customer of ours, what their tenants are doing and how that changes over time? Is it just a cycle? Is it just going month over month? Or is it, you know, seasonal? And that's the stuff that we need to get a handle on. And so we can kind of predict a future. For example, if we see in the summertime, you know, short-term rentals is very high typically. And then all of a sudden, we see a decrease. We need to figure out why that decrease is happening.”‍21:12 - Big bank partnershipsSoon, big banks will begin partnering with small FinTech companies to bring sophisticated offerings to their existing customers.“Like I mentioned earlier, I think there's gonna be a frenzy of M&A activity with banks, partnerships with big banks. I think it's going to be key there, and there's a lot of companies out there that are doing great things, obviously RentMoola included, that banks can benefit from, as well as platforms like ours. So, and I'm just using examples, like building the deck as an example, partnering with a bank, we can offer bill payment, utility payments, bill payments, to our user base. Cell phone bills or whatever other kinds of bills. On the flip side, their banks can offer rental payments. Which they cannot do right now, because basically they're not an aggregator. They'll do one payment here and there for people, but using platforms like ours, partnering with platforms like ours, it's kind of like a win-win situation. They already have the user base and they're just offering, whether it's a white label or a referral, partnership, with RentMoola.”‍23:34 - The RentMoola advantageTo explain the benefits of RentMoola, Mandeep described how you can spend weeks pursuing financing through a bank, versus 90 seconds on an app.“Let's go with micro-financing as an example. Right now you have to go into a bank, you have to make an appointment, that appointment can take days. And then you have to provide them with all your, your IRS tax returns, your W2's and whatnot. And we're looking at a week to two week process for a thousand dollars, $2,000 a loan to get you through to next pay period or whatever. But with technology like ours, it's all done through the app. You can apply for your micro-financing and you get a response back within 90 seconds. You have the funds deposited in your account within a couple of minutes, and it's at 0% financing. Whereas in the banks, they'll charge you 5-8% for that. Or on the flip side, if you're not going to go to the bank, you're going to a payday lender. And for those who don't know how challenging it is to be in a situation where a payday lender is your option, I can vouch that RentMoola’s no interest payment structure is a far more wise route.”‍25:37 - Profiting from processingIf RentMoola is helping people out and charging 0% interest in these challenging times, how do they make money? The answer is the elegant solution of payment processing fees.“So the way, high level, without getting in details and stuff, the way RentMoola makes money. And you know, this is all available online. So it's nothing that is secret here, is basically interchange fees, processing fees is where we make a bul...

In 2013 Luc Jodet first heard of Bitcoin, and dismissed it as uninteresting. Fast forward to 2018 and Luc found himself co-founding Arianee, a company that is quickly becoming one of the most successful businesses in the blockchain world. Today, Arianee helps provide luxury brands with non-fungible tokens, or digital passports certifying the authenticity and ownership of high-value, one-of-a-kind products. We chatted about Luc’s journey to the blockchain world, how the technology works, and the type of projects Arianee hopes to spearhead in the future. Show LinksCheck out ArianeeFollow Arianee on LinkedInFollow Luc Jodet on LinkedIn or TwitterConnect with Andrew on LinkedIn Key Takeaways 2:34  - Creating digital identities There are three main reasons to create digital identities for physical products.“The idea is to create a digital identity for physical products. And we started with products of high value, in particular in the luxury industry. And there's really three reasons you're creating those digital identities. The first one is really it's a proof of authenticity, meaning it's a way to figure out that your product is actually real because it was created by, the passport was generated by the brand. The second one is a proof of property, it's a proof of ownership that is. Because it's really transferrable from one owner to the other. And the third one is really the history of the product. Because every time something happens to your product you can record, you can notarize a new event in the NFT or in the passport of the product. So it's really like a digital passport for your product.” 4:07 - A decentralized CFOFor Luc, the role of CFO is expanded from the classic definition into one that encompasses the realm of decentralized finance. “Classically the work of the CFO is to manage. Then I'll do the bookkeeping and manage the books, measure treasury, have financing manage some of the, especially in the early startup managed a lot of the regulatory risks and in general deal with the corporate structure and how to manage this...Now we have an additional layer. Because of our blockchain and crypto infrastructure our architecture is that we have to deal with those crypto incentives and the life of a token. So the entire protocol is actually completely decentralized.”6:41- Educating the world’s brands  Several years ago, much of Arianee’s work was focused on crypto education. Today, executives are actively reaching out.“It's really like a financial innovation, the entire blockchain and crypto sphere. So a lot of our work is educating the different brands that we work with. And over the last, I mean the first two and a half years we were educating. But there was no craze, or no actual really strong interest...10 days ago when Elon Musk and Tesla announced that he had purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, all of a sudden I have a lot of corporate executives and directors who I speak with who actually now are actively asking me.”11:52 - Embracing Ethereum Bitcoin didn’t interest Luc, but Ethereum got his attention. Why? Because it added the element of a decentralized computer.“The real thing that got me to change my mind was when Ethereum was introduced in 2015. Because the theme was really the idea of creating more than just a ‘digital gold’ kind of like a store of value. It was actually building a decentralized computer. The idea being that I could actually write some code, push it on Ethereum and it would exist as long as Ethereum keeps on running. And there was no way to censor it. That was to me, fascinating.” 14:53 - The definition of a non-fungible token When you trade one-dollar bill or even one Bitcoin with a friend, the exchange is equal. But an NFT represents a physical product that’s one-of-a-kind.“When I take one Bitcoin and another Bitcoin, they're interchangeable. It's the same thing. Or if I take one Ether and another Ether, it doesn't matter if I have this Ether or this Ether. It's always going to be the same. I don't have any preference. It's the same thing as a dollar bill in a way. If you gave me this dollar bill and another dollar bill, it doesn't make a difference. It still has the same utilities, same value. A non-fungible token is the idea that actually one of those tokens is not exchangeable, is not the same as another token. So technically for us, for instance we work with Breitling and create a passport for every one of their watches. Every one of their watches has a serial number. So every one of their digital passports is unique, because it has a different serial number linked to the non-fungible token.”16:42 - The practical advantages of NFTsHaving a digital passport for your item isn’t just cool. It also allows you to insure or resell your item with ease.“We really see in the longer-term vision is the idea that a digital identity for every product actually enables an ecosystem of services. So what do I mean by this is the fact that you can prove that you own a real product, so you can prove that you own a Breitling watch for instance, you can then imagine having access to a lot of different services such as one-click insurance. Today, if you need to get insurance on a watch, you actually need to provide two or three documents…It's all paper-based. What we're doing is actually replacing it by a digital identity, a digital record.” 19:05 - Luxury resale is booming Arianee has been particularly successful because of the rapidly growing luxury resale market.“The resell market, secondhand market for luxury products is worth about $21 billion per year. And it's booming. It's growing really rapidly. But actually three quarters of it is linked to the watch industry. So reselling your watch is something that is, or your luxury watch, is something that's extremely developed. It's actually the product that in the luxury industry is the most resold. And what we're building here is really something that helps or fortifies that market.” 21:31 - Why blockchain won’t rule the world Some people say blockchain is the future of everything - but Luc disagrees.“You hear it sometimes, like ‘everything will be on a blockchain one day.’ I don't think so. And the reason why is because actually blockchains are slower than regular classical databases. And even though it's going to, scalability and all improvements are going to make it a little bit less clunky compared to what they are today, they will always be slower than a regular database...So regular databases will always be necessary.”23:19 - True proof of ownership A digital passport is the same as having a physical certificate of authenticity. Although it’s digital, no one but you has the power to delete or remove it.“When you're on a centralized database, you don't really ...

John Collins is the CFO at LivePerson and the very definition of a modern CFO in every way. His career journey spans a job at the New York stock exchange, grad school at MIT, inventing a fully automated trading platform that he wrote from scratch, managing the portfolio for a 10 billion AUM fund, co-founding his own company, and joining LivePerson. As CFO at LivePerson, John is passionate about the role of data in the CFO world, the possibilities of “conversational commerce,” and the vision of combining algorithms and social justice. Show LinksCheck out LivePerson Follow LivePerson on LinkedIn Connect with John on LinkedIn Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn‍Key TakeawaysJohn’s journey to LivePersonAfter getting introduced to LivePerson’s CEO Rob by chance, the compelling encounter led John to join the LivePerson team. “After I met Rob, he gave me his vision for LivePerson and how the company’s innovations are changing the way that we communicate and do business. And the value proposition really resonated with me on a deep personal and professional level. I mean, who hasn't experienced frustration waiting on hold or dialing 1-800 numbers to get some intent, some need resolved with the brand? So being able to send a message and then go about your day and feel confident that your need would be taken care of without putting you on the brand or the agent’s schedule is super compelling. And then leveling that up into what we call conversational AI and specifically conversational commerce was a really compelling vision that I was pretty sold on from the beginning.”Navigating data constraints John describes how the data that most companies collect is inherently messy. “I distinguish data from information. Data needs to be transformed in some way. It needs to be normalized. It needs to be cleaned in order to produce some kind of useful information for decision-making purposes. Many companies have a lot of data, but they have trouble accessing it. They have trouble reconciling. It's not clean, it's not reliable. I call these data constraints. And so there are many constraints you need to overcome in order to leverage data effectively.”Conversational commerceThe future of commerce is conversational: two-way engagement that takes place on the customer’s terms. “LivePerson is really a cloud-based platform that the largest brands in the world use to converse with their customers through messaging...You can, let's say, change your flight, order a burrito, arrange contactless, commerce services, like curbside pickup, all from the convenience of iMessage or WhatsApp or Facebook or any other channel that we prefer to use today. And messaging-based transactions like these I think represent a modern engagement model for brands and consumers that we call conversational commerce. The company has really evolved from synchronous web chat for customer care applications to asynchronous communications for a wide range of use cases, including two-way proactive notifications. So, no longer do you get this email that says “do not reply.” The LivePerson ethos and the essence of conversational commerce is that it's always two-way.”LivePerson’s vision The ability to converse with a brand in real-time will be a game changer, supplanting historical physical sales interactions. “The vision of the company is that conversational commerce will really supplant the types of commerce that we've seen: historically brick-and-mortar, sort of physical retail sales, e-commerce where you're pointing and clicking on a website. The ability to converse with a brand to get questions answered increases confidence, increases the satisfaction of the experience. And ultimately, as the results show, it drives more sales for it for brands.”CFO as a data scientist John sees data transformation as the primary goal of the modern CFO - a departure from previous perceptions of the CFO as purely a financial professional. “The CFO operates at the intersection of all the company's data flows, whether it's sales, product usage, finance. That's a vast sea of data. And fundamentally the role is to transform that data into useful information, right? As we mentioned for strategic decision making purposes, spreadsheets and traditional financial analysts are simply not capable of effectively utilizing the volume of data that's available in our increasingly quantified world. And from this perspective, the CFO sounds, I think, more like a job for a data scientist than a classically-trained finance professional.”Navigating information silosWhen information systems are fragmented, the entire company suffers. Creating efficient workflows is what allows companies to truly succeed. “Most large companies’ internal operations run on a fragmented network of siloed spreadsheets and enterprise software where humans actually perform the equivalent of ETL jobs - that is, they manually extract data from one system. They transform it in a spreadsheet combining with other data or whatever the case may be. Then they load it into another system. And that creates the link, the connection between systems to make, you know, to make workflows happen; to complete processes is incredibly inefficient...the result of all this is severely constrained flow of reliable data that renders even the simplest automations very hard to deploy. So in order to move faster, in order to be smarter and take on the kinds of challenges and opportunities that were presented to us by the pandemic, you have to solve these data constraints.”Statistically Sound DecisionsAs humans and companies, we are predisposed to do things the way they’ve always been done. Analyzing data can help reveal whether or not those patterns are valuable. “When you can bring to bear hard evidence that is statistically sound, it can change the way that we might be predisposed to think about a problem or an opportunity. You know, as humans, we have many innate biases, some of the most profound being availability bias. You know, what have we seen most recently that works? Well, let me just apply that same tool to this problem, which may not be the appropriate way or the optimal way to solve the problem. And so I think being more quote-unquote “data-driven” has allowed us to make more objective, higher quality, in other words more predictive decisions that ultimately lead to higher ROI.”The importance of empathy2020 was a year of stress. John says that recognizing that stress and supporting team members on an emotional level is a necessary task. “Empathy is a clear trait that is needed in times of great uncertainty and in times of emotional stress. And certainly many people in the world were experiencing uncertainty and emotional stress. And so I think that putting yourself in the shoes of your employees and empathizing with them in a genuine way to find solutions to their problems, not just ...

Kevin Appleby helps run GrowCFO, a community and development resource for finance professionals. A PwC alum-turned instructor, Kevin realized that what CFOs really needed was a support system. He joined me on The Modern CFO podcast to talk about the challenges facing CFOs today, the importance of seeking out mentors, and how to embrace imposter syndrome by conducting thoughtful self-assessment. Check out GrowCFOFollow GrowCFO on LinkedIn Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn ‍Key TakeawaysKevin’s journey: from CPA to the classroomKevin’s experience runs the gamut from CPA work to the chemical industry to working as a consultant for PwC. Ultimately he ended up in the classroom. When COVID hit, GrowCFO was the perfect segue. “I became a management consultant and ended up working for PwC, mainly doing finance transformation projects, my client would typically be the finance director, the VP finance, or the CFO and often working with his team trying to find information for the project. And I found over time there are lots of stuff that I knew the answer to, but the client's own finance team didn't. I ended up spending time in the classroom teaching a lot of that stuff.” ‍Creating a dedicated CFO networkAlmost every industry has numerous networking and educational resources. Kevin saw that the CFO world was an exception. “There's nothing really out there for CFOs, senior finance people to communicate with each other and to help each other solve problems. There's plenty of space here to go to the big advisory firms, but nothing really here to allow CFOs to cooperate with each other and share learning.” ‍Helping CFOs break through the glass ceilingA major challenge young CFOs face is breaking into the C-suite. GrowCFO helps prepare aspiring CFOs to succeed in the application process and beyond. “What we found was there's a big glass ceiling. It's very difficult to break through into the C-suite...95% of the roles out there are looking for experienced CFOs, right? How do you ever get through that? So we put together the Future CFO program. We've got it accredited for 40 hours of CPD, continuing professional development, and it takes you on a nine module or a nine-step journey between being a very good, very accomplished head finance professional through to landing your first CFO job, how to move into that job. And it finishes with creating the plan for your first hundred days in your new CFO role.”‍CFOs are asked to do it allNew CFOs are often in for a rude shock. The breadth and amount of work expected can be staggering. “Why does GrowCFO exist? One of the things that we're very definitely seeing Andrew is that the kind of breadth of skills that a CFO needs to have these days is huge. And there's no way that any one person can be expected to be rounded at absolutely everything. I think communication is one of those interesting ones that you've got a guy who's used to being in the back office, used to be behind his favorite Excel spreadsheet, he's used to running the finance team, become CFO. Suddenly, he's going to talk to customers, to suppliers, to investors, to shareholders, countless other stakeholders. He's gotta be the right hand man to the CEO. Now suddenly he's got a whole new world to play in.” Promoting inclusion and diversityStrong CFOs are often tactful and inclusive. Today, that means doing a quick check of your assumptions before communicating. “The equity house looks for people like themselves. You as the CFO you're constantly thinking of communicating to yourself...one of my regular weekly tasks in GrowCFO is to write the weekly newsletter. Normally I write it. So the last few weeks I've written on a Sunday evening with a schedule set to go at about eight 30, Monday morning. And I do find myself looking back on this and suddenly realizing, Oh, Kevin, you've written this for another male CFO. Go back, take out all the references to he or him or whatever, and realize that probably 40-45% of the people that are reading this newsletter are female.”Learn to specialize & delegateSince you can’t possibly do it all, what’s the answer? Kevin says the solution is to learn when to dig in - and when to pull back. “You can be weak in something. And part of it is recognizing you're weak and maybe getting somebody else to help you rather than learn the skills yourself...The CFO cannot be good at everything. But if you've got a few strengths, then strength is the sort of thing you can take the mastery. So why not put your personal development into stuff that you are good at, and become better at it? And that becomes your kind of specialism. I think that's a far more sensible way of approaching things. Especially since things that you're strong in, things you good in, tend to be the things that you enjoy doing as well.” ‍Dealing with imposter syndromeThe only way to deal with imposter syndrome is to face it. Kevin explained that admitting how you’re feeling is the first step to banishing it. “Nearly everybody that gets promoted to the top of your game, top of their game, whether it's to the C-suite, whether it's to partner level in one of the big four accounting firms, they get to a point that they're going to think, what am I doing here? I haven't got all the skills and the talents that are needed for this role. I'm going to get found out at some point.”“That's perfectly normal. And the first thing you're going to do with imposter syndrome is actually admit that you've got it. And that's a very hard thing to do, but once you've made that admission, then you can start to do something about it...The CFO suddenly has to be the man who understands business strategy, has got to be the man that understands the finance numbers. That's probably easy because he's done that all his time, but he's got to be able to communicate. You've got to know about investor relationships. I think in the CFO role the potential to have imposter syndrome is probably doubled over any other role in the C-suite.” ‍Finding a mentorOnce you’ve realized that you have questions to ask, a good mentor can help you think through the answers. “One of the things in GrowCFO that we passionately believe in is the role of a mentor. I think CFOs as well feel as though they should know it all and probably think, Oh, if I have a mentor, it's a sign of weakness. But actually again it's recognizing that you can't possibly know and know everything...One thing I loved about consulting was that we always had a consulting team of fellow, reasonably senior people. [If] we had a problem around a project - yeah, let's go have a beer and work out what we're going to do about this. I don't see the CFO having the same kind of peer group. So why not have a mentor?” ‍Embracing technologyNew CFOs have a unique opportunity to understand and embrace new technology in...

Rob Masson is the CFO at Hypertherm, a 50-year-old company that is a leader in industrial cutting systems. He’s also a former Naval aviator who learned critical leadership skills firsthand. Rob joined us on the Modern CFO Podcast to share his unique perspective on management and the ways in which empowered, confident employees helped Hypertherm weather the COVID-19 crisis. Visit HyperthermConnect with Rob on LinkedIn Key TakeawaysWeathering COVID-19The pandemic took an early toll on Hypertherm, but the company stayed true to its employee-centric values. “We suffered, you know, over a 30% loss in sales almost overnight in April, and that caused a whole chain of events...We're an employee-owned company. We all share in the success of the company. And so we're all committed to each other. We have a no-layoff philosophy. So a lot of the normal things you do in public company settings and others, we don't do. And we have a very strong passion for that. So we will cut costs. We're very aggressive with that. But in terms of commitment to people, we don't do that. We come together as a team and solve the problem.” Overcoming obstacles as a team Teamwork enabled Hypertherm to bounce back from COVID-19 amid global challenges.“It was quite a dramatic response from us internally to reset for the new norm. And then there were a lot of things on the capital structure side that we thought about with the treasury group and working with our banks, just to make sure we were secure from a cash flow and keeping that going...we serve some essential end markets. So we worked very diligently to keep our supply chain open, to make sure we had raw materials, stock, etc., since we source from all over the world. So it was really a team effort.” Crisis builds new muscles Once you go through a crisis situation, you are better equipped to face the future. “This year, actually, we really surprised the organization because our business came back quite strong and we really stepped forward and shared a lot of that profit back with our associates...When you go through crisis, you live through it, you gain new muscles. So I feel very confident. Hopefully we never have to face it again as a company, but we're now prepared more than we were prior. And I think we'd do even better the next time, just because of the response and teamwork of the company.”Navel experience in action Rob’s Naval background played a critical role in his ability to keep cool under pressure. “There's just a different experience you get as a Naval aviator than you get in other walks of life, and that's trained into you to compartmentalize and solve the problem. ‘There's no end until it's over’ kind of thing. And excellence is that way too. You demand a lot of yourself. And anytime I flew, we briefed as a team. We flew in the mission then we came back and we assessed what we did and how we could get better the next time...so it was a very critical look and that was all part of teamwork as well. And then the last thing is tenacity, which is what I started with. When you're in a crisis situation, you're not done until you've tried everything. And you don't let yourself think of anything but solving the problem and keeping with it. And I think that's the type of unique training I had as a Naval aviator that helps me in all sorts of situations.”The value of parallel expertise While traditional jobs require a one-track mindset, the Navy instilled in Rob the ability to adapt to new situations. “The Navy does that to you. They put you in and just when you're comfortable and you succeeded somewhere, they throw you in a totally different leadership situation and you learn to lead in situations where you're not the expert. Some cases you're the expert, some cases you're not the expert...I think that gives me a little bit different perspective. The normal business career is get out of college, get started as an individual contributor, prove yourself through your technical skill, and then start getting advanced into leadership situations. And I think with the Navy, it's a professional training organization and it's much more about parallel technical expertise.” Structural versus Operational CFOsRob sees himself as a leader first, and an operating CFO second.“I was an economics major in college. So the art and the science of economics always appealed to me. And I think it's more of that side of operational finance, and what does finance tell you about the operations of the business. So I'm much more of an operating CFO if you will. And those are really, if you look at CFOs, you either have a structural technical side or you have the operating side. And I definitely fall into the operating mode with my military experience...I think of myself as a leader first, it's my first passion. And I really enjoy the art and science of finance. So I choose to apply my leadership skills through the function of finance in that lens. But I always do come at things first with the grounding of leadership.”Commitment to the “triple bottom line” At Hypertherm, the company’s unwavering focus is on customers, associates, and the community. “We're really on the next S curve of growth at Hypertherm. And that's what's really exciting. We really see the opportunities in our end markets to add value with the types of investments we're making...We have a motto here. A part of our strategy of shaping possibility for our customers, our associates, and our community. And that's what we call the ‘triple bottom line.’ But what that really entails for me inside my function is okay, Hypertherm has been incredibly successful to where we are here. And all businesses go through transformations to get to the next level. We have to continue to evolve and advance. And so I'm focusing my team on re-looking at what we've done and where we've come from so that we can leverage the future.”Flipping the triangle Rob’s goal is for 80% of company time to be spend on insight & action, and 20% on transactional duties. “In most organizations, people spend their time on the transactional side of things on that lower end of the triangle. And that takes up the 80/20 rule applies here. That basically takes up 80% of people's time. And the insight and action, where they're really making meaty decisions and driving the value of the company, is sort of at the point at the top. The 20% or less of their time. And so the transformation we're going through is I call it flipping the triangle. We want to flip that ratio on its head...I want 80% of the time spent on insight and action. How do we drive the business forward? How do we meet our customers? How do we benefit our associates? And how do we hit the community with positive impact?”Breaking down barriers Rob believes that by empowering individual employees, the entire company benefits. “My job as CFO now is to make sure I'm getting input from everybody at the right time, at the right spot to empower them to make th...

Hello and welcome to the Modern CFO podcast.  I'm your host Andrew Seski. Join me as I go behind the scenes with top CFO's to share the stories of how this pivotal role is changing in today's business climate. The full show notes and every new episode can be found at nthround.com/podcast.