CFO THOUGHT LEADER

Ex-Intel CFO discusses aligning product development with market demands, learning and adaptability in career growth, and impact of finance background. Reflects on transitioning to Velocity Global, analyzing key metrics in SaaS businesses, team dynamics in finance, and AI integration. Prioritizing value creation and operational efficiency for the future.

Joining Intel Corp. in 1999 as a recent college graduate, David Freeman began his finance career as part of the tech giant’s plus-size finance team that supported various business groups. Looking back, Freeman finds that few aspects of the tech giant’s business were more influential in shaping his early career years than the company’s direct and “confrontational” culture.“They expected excellence,” he recalls. “They expected details, and they expected you to know your business.”Along the way, despite the many opportunities that Intel regularly offered him, Freeman came to realize that he wanted to open his next career door somewhere else.“I didn’t really love being at a large company, so—after 7 years there—I decided that it was time to move on,” continues Freeman, who opted to join a pioneering cloud company known as NetSuite.At fewer than 500 employees, NetSuite was aiming to be among the first SaaS companies to go public, and Freeman tells us that he ultimately had a hand in drafting the company’s S-1—a hands-on role that ultimately led him to spending 16- to 20-hour days at the printer.However, Freeman believes that the greatest takeaways from his time at NetSuite may have come from the exposure that he had to the decision-making done by NetSuite’s CFO during the IPO process.    “For the first time, I could see day-in and day-out what the CFO did, and this really gave me kind of a better sense of the role,” he remembers.We can see that as his career moved forward, Freeman’s pursuit of experience and opportunities left little doubt that he had the CFO office in mind as a destination. Still, when the head of sales at Nutanix invited him to step into a VP of Sales operations position, he didn’t hesitate to stray from what might have been a more traditional finance path.Says Freeman: “To be honest, I really hadn’t thought about this type of role that much, but I kind of felt like, ‘Hey, if there’s ever a time to do it, why not now?'” –Jack Sweeney

Exploring the global adoption of AI in financial planning and security concerns, including Microsoft's privacy-focused co-pilot tools. Insights into the CFO's decision-making and strategic planning at Beachbody. Navigating sales and finance challenges, emphasizing the importance of cross-departmental experience and utilizing data effectively.

Lessons from Craig Wert’s finance career reveal the power of adaptability, problem-solving skills, and the ability to seize opportunities in unexpected places.Having started his career without a clear road map to the future, Wert later found that his liberal arts background and early experiences in investment banking had laid a good foundation for a career that might have led in any number of directions.What began to set Wert apart, however, was his innate ability to troubleshoot. Throughout his career, he was frequently called upon to solve complex problems, whether operational challenges at RCN or financial crises at Vonage. This knack for troubleshooting didn’t just resolve immediate issues, though: It also began to reveal to upper management his maturing strategic acumen and resilience. Every challenge overcome was a stepping-stone that led to increasing trust and the opening of doors to new opportunities.Today, Wert’s evolution from troubleshooter to CFO of Jobber has proven to be a journey that has endowed him with the ability to anticipate obstacles and swiftly implement effective solutions. As Jobber seeks to expand its market presence and enhance its financial structure, Wert’s troubleshooter mentality suggests that the firm will likely be taking a proactive approach to growth, risk management, and innovation inside the competitive SaaS landscape.  

When PwC partner and relentless champion of shareholder value Marc Suidan stepped into the CFO office at The Beachbody Company in April 2022, intrigue was bound to follow.Certainly, a struggling fitness and health company may not be viewed by many as the optimal door-of-entry to the operations side of things. However, for Suidan—a 17-year PwC veteran—Beachbody was without a doubt an enticing challenge. As a seasoned advisor to management, Suidan had contributed shareholder insights to the turnarounds and restructurings of dozens of businesses. However, at Beachbody, he would be executing from inside the organization, where the levers for strategic as well as operational improvement would be within his reach.“Interestingly enough, half of Beachbody’s business is digital subscriptions, while the other half is the nutritional supplements that people who work out consume,” he reports. “People take energy drinks before working out and protein supplements afterward, so these are all part of part of the health supplements that we offer.” Suidan adds that the current turnaround effort has relied on three core pillars: dramatic cost-cutting, enhancing the digital experience around their top-tier content, and fixing the nutrition business.So far, Suidan tells us, two of the three pillars are already paying off.“We’re on track to have created over $200 million in savings in less than 2 years—I mean, it’s just crazy for a company of this size to find this much saving so fast,” comments Suidan, who notes that the company also revamped its digital platforms last March, a development that led CNN to name Beachbody’s consumer app the best in the fitness and workout app space this past December.During the coming 12 months, according to Suidan, energy drinks, protein supplements, and the diversification of Beachbody’s nutrition channels will be top-of-mind.“My two big pieces for the coming year are, number one, to finish that third pillar of the turnaround, and, number two, to get the message out—which is not easy, by the way, right?,” he concludes. “There are 4,000 public companies, but we need to talk about the two legs that we’ve already completed, so we should be able to get that message out.” –Jack Sweeney

On this episode of Controllers Classified, Brex’s CAO Erik Zhou is joined by Sowmya Ranganathan, OpenAI’s Controller. The conversation begins with a discussion on Sowmya’s career and her diverse experiences as an auditor and as a finance leader at both public and private tech companies, including Square and Rippling prior to OpenAI. Specifically, she highlights some of her insights for accounting during periods of business hypergrowth (i.e. when OpenAI launched ChatGPT) and the increasing need for technical savviness even as a finance professional (ex: Sowmya learned SQL as a way to manage the processing and analysis of a large data set of transactions at Square). She concludes her career overview with this advice: accounting leaders need to consider where their processes would break down if they were to grow quickly and focus their time and effort on making sure those processes are as scalable and automated as possible (hint: it requires building relationships with engineering).

It’s the type of story that we can’t resist repeating, and one that without question underscores Eric Jenny’s entrepreneurial spirit. Still, the entertainment value of his tale of zapping wasp nests with a homemade rubber band gun for a dollar a pop was at risk of eclipsing the more traditional milestones that populate a career path otherwise defined by strategic decision-making and an innate ability to identify and capitalize on opportunities.During his stints in public accounting and the tech industry, Jenny tells us, he enjoyed immersing himself in the dynamics of fast-paced technological advancements and entrepreneurial business growth strategies.At SOCi, CFO Jenny’s data-driven approach has led to pivotal decisions, such as focusing on enterprise clients, that have showcased his adeptness at steering the company through the complexities of the digital marketing landscape. Asked about his finance mind-set, Jenny recounts his commitment to curiosity and unwavering quest for greater efficiency. However, we’d argue that it’s Jenny’s entrepreneurial bent that most resonates with us—forever accented by those wasp nests. –Jack Sweeney

It was during a 9-year tenure at food giant ConAgra Brands that Alejandro Castro became involved in a companywide initiative that would forever alter his approach to leadership and strategic thinking.Born and raised in Mexico, Castro had begun his professional voyage at Price Waterhouse, where he launched a public accounting career from the accounting house's Mexico City office. After ConAgra came knocking several years later, he accepted a position within its Mexico operations that eventually led to a promotion involving relocation to the U.S. and the firm's Omaha headquartersCastro tells us that this move was pivotal, offering him exposure to the food giant's global operations and strategic involvement at a high level that included participation on a board of directors in Asia. Still, Castro's path took somewhat of an unexpected turn when ConAgra's CEO approached him to help spearhead an initiative designed in part to boost efficient decision-making across the company. In short, ConAgra management had sanctioned the companywide adoption of the GE Work-Out methodology, and Castro was to be stationed along the implementation's front lines.Division presidents, unit leaders, and factory workers alike all now came to be spending face-to-face time with Castro so that everyone together could identify existing behaviors or practices that were undermining efficient decision-making.Castro recalls: "We were able to fix issues that had existed within the company for years and years. We did this by connecting the people who really knew what was going on—the people who were close to the job—and this quickly made a big difference."Now, what might have appeared on paper to be but one career assignment among many suddenly began to accelerate Castro's own understanding of business operations while further establishing his reputation across the company as a leader known for fostering collaboration and driving meaningful change.Says Castro: "For me personally, it was the interaction with the people and talking about the different issues that really altered my whole view of the business." –Jack Sweeney

Not unlike that of many of her CFO peers, Rachel Stack's journey toward becoming a CFO has been punctuated by pivotal transactions.No single example of this turns out to have been more complicated or rich with lessons than what Stack refers to simply as "the take-private of Zayo."However, before the path forward for Zayo was made clear, there had been a moment of strategic recalibration that would test her resolve and shape her approach to future challenges.Reflecting on this period, Stack shares: "One big strategic moment has to have been when the attempted split of Zayo into two separate entities was being considered. We thought about splitting it into a fiber company and an enterprise firm."The plan, aimed at unlocking value and sharpening strategic focus, did not go as planned. "The market's response was immediate and clear," Stack recalls. "The stock was down, I want to say, by 20%."This moment of adversity, however, was far from a setback in Stack's eyes. Instead, it became a defining moment that refined her strategic thinking. "It was a clear message from the market that they didn't think that this was the way forward for Zayo," Stack explains. The feedback from the market, which was invaluable, led Stack and her team to reconsider their strategy and ultimately reconsider the take-private transaction."The take-private of Zayo was a significant turning point for me," Stack reflects. The complex negotiations, the building of relationships with different potential acquirers, and the ultimate decision to go with Digital Bridge and EQT showcased her ability to navigate through uncertainty and emerge with a strategic victory. "The whole experience was an entire adventure on its own," she muses, on the challenges faced during the transaction.This episode of strategic redirection, followed by the successful take-private transaction, exemplifies Stack's resilience and strategic acumen. Her journey underscores the importance of being adaptable, learning from the market, and maintaining transparency and honesty in all dealings.As CFO of Cologix today, Stack tells us, she has brought these lessons to bear, as she helps to steer the company through growth and change, while never losing sight of the fact that in moments of adversity, there always lies an opportunity for growth and strategic recalibration. 

Looking back on his days with GoDaddy, Sam Kemp recalls a pivotal page in the domain registry giant’s strategic M&A playbook.As he prepared to present to the executive team his analysis of a recent acquisition, he included a simple slide to convey data that would challenge the company’s conventional thinking around acquisitions and how—free from the limitations of this thinking—GoDaddy’s newest acquisition could serve as a strategic lever for the company at large.This driver, Kemp tells us, would challenge the high regard in which GoDaddy’s management team held new “profit pools” and the transactions that triggered them.Recalls Kemp: “We decided to do a very counterintuitive thing: to not have a profit pool for the latest acquisition—in order to achieve faster adoption vis-à-vis price competition—and instead to use it to establish profit pools inside other categories that were related to it. This turned out to be a very successful strategy, and something that scaled really nicely.”As the somewhat revolutionary slide illuminated the room, a collective focus sharpened among those at the table. Kemp then explained how the strategy would no longer be about short-term gains but about leveraging the acquisition to expand the company’s presence and to push profit pools into other connected categories.For Kemp, who had been appointed chief strategy officer after a stint running Investor relations, the gathering became a moment when strategy and numbers intertwined to offer a clear vision of how to move into the future. Going forward, GoDaddy management became dedicated to the idea that M&A was about not just making an acquisition work financially but also integrating it into a broader strategic framework that would enable the company to capture more significant market opportunities.Adds Kemp: “This slide, in this very simple format, was simply able to crystallize our perspective with regard to how we wanted to move forward as a business.” –Jack Sweeney