Avalara CFO Ross Tennenbaum remembers that back in 2018, when he was a managing director at Goldman Sachs, he had conversations with a number of senior executives from Slack Technologies, Inc. At the time, the fast-growing workplace messaging and communication platform was preparing to go public, and the company was making a special effort to […]
Defining Your Social Space
The Berlin headquarters of software developer Contentful occupies an old brick warehouse with heavy metal doors, broad functional corridors, and spaces native to its industrial past. Standing six stories high, the structure once accommodated its worker population with a miniature kitchen on every floor, a favorite employee perk perhaps first introduced by a coffee-loving tenant. […]
Shaping a Workforce Philosophy
Just as Michelle McComb was imagining that she would shortly be joining another Silicon Valley start-up as a finance leader, the CFO of Lucent Technologies helped to upend her plans. Back in the early 2000s, Michelle McComb’s first CFO tour of duty was coming to an end with the successful sale of her company to […]
Pulling a Post Merger Alarm Bell | Chad Cohen, CFO, Adaptive Biotechnologies
Among the different human capital moments of insight that Chad Cohen has experienced over the years, few are likely as memorable as the one that woke him up from a sound sleep.At the time, he was CFO of online real estate company Zillow Group, a CFO tour of duty that he completed just prior to […]
For CFOs, Turnaround Chapters Frequently Open Doors To Bigger Opportunities
This article was originally published on Forbes.com Back in 2015, after nearly two decades of diligent career-building across United Technologies, Paul Lundstrom fixed his career builder’s gaze upon the span of companies known as the Fortune 500. Like many seasoned finance executives who spend the balance of their careers inside large enterprise companies, Lundstrom had to confront the […]
Growth-Minded CFOs Weigh The Costs Of Forecasting Rigor
This article was originally published on Forbes.com Thinking back to his investment banking days at Deutsche Bank, Brad Kinnish recalls having had a number of awkward conversations with corporate CFOs about their finance teams’ forecasting rigor. Kinnish, who stepped into a CFO role at Aryaka Networks in early 2020, no doubt finds himself replaying these […]
CFOs Vow To Keep Workforce Ebb-And-Flow Top-Of-Mind In 2021
This article was originally published on Forbes.com Inside the realm of corporate finance it’s safe to say that the year 2020 has been unlike any that preceded it, and, as more employees occupied remote work spaces, growing numbers of finance chiefs told us they are more carefully monitoring the financial and cultural levers that influence […]
When It Comes to Divestitures, Operations-Minded CFOs Are Always In Demand
This article was originally published on Forbes.com When the door to the CFO office at tech-security company SonicWall swung open for Ravi Chopra, there was a chair, a desk, and over $100 million in customer revenue. What was missing, however, were fully-staffed human resources and finance departments. So it goes inside the world of spin-offs and carve-outs, where newly divested organizations frequently lose some of […]
IAC CFO Likes To Dig Deep Beneath The Deal-Making Buzz
This article was originally published on Forbes.com Like many of his finance leader peers, Glenn Schiffman, CFO of Internet holding company IAC, views the week that precedes quarterly earnings announcements as sacrosanct. “Because you have the backdrop of earnings, everyone takes your call and is ready within 10 seconds to produce analysis for you,” says Schiffman, […]
In Praise Of Public Markets: A CFO All-Star Pursues A Remedy For Wall Street’s IPO Blues
This article was originally published on Forbes.com “It’s not cheap to go public,” concedes CFO Steve Cakebread, echoing the oft-repeated refrain that founders and CFOs confront when considering the prospect of selling shares in their companies to the public. Concessions aside, it will come as little surprise to Wall Street and private investors alike that Cakebread—a […]
639: Thriving in the Deep End | Catherine Birkett, CFO, GoCardless
Back in the early 2000s, Catherine Birkett found herself being pulled into confidential meetings where her company’s senior management was discussing restructuring plans with the company’s largest investor. The company—a fiber optics telecom firm known as Interoute—was not yet 6 years old, but its days appeared to be numbered as the company sought to weather…
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CFO Says Savings Strategy Is Helping Ingredion Thwart Recession’s Bite
This article was originally published on Forbes.com It’s the type of business restructuring capable of striking envy in the hearts of many a company board member—and particularly those known to favor one oft-repeated bit of business wisdom: Never waste a recession. At food ingredient maker Ingredion, where the recession’s bite is directly linked to the eating habits […]