While COVID-19 and shelter-in-place ordinances continue to upend the go-to market strategies and sales projections of most companies, not all industries are being adversely affected. We recently asked Jeff Epstein, former CFO of Oracle and DoubleClick and currently an operating partner of Bessemer Venture Partners, whether certain industries will recover more quickly than others from […]
As The Pandemic Roars, CFOs Reveal Their Economic Scar Tissue
This article was originally published on Forbes.com In many ways, the economic ups and downs of the past two decades have played something of a supporting role in the careers of chief financial officers, who frequently enter office with at least 20 years of career-building behind them. In fact, many of today’s CFOs are able to […]
A Value Proposition Gains Added Luster | Dave Jones, CFO, Vroom
When automobile dealerships began to close under shelter-in-place orders in March, online car seller Vroom saw an initial drop-off in customer demand. However, by mid- to late April, things had begun to change as more consumers began visiting Vroom’s online marketplace and making purchases from the safety of their home. This demand uptick led Vroom […]
Keeping Employees Top-of-Mind | Jon Nguyen, CFO, Kyriba
Having last year surpassed the milestone of $100 million in annual recurring revenue, technology company Kyriba entered 2020 prepared to open a new growth chapter—one that is expected to include both organic growth as well as acquisitions. “Right now, we are at a different stage of growth. We are at this interesting point where what […]
Rethinking Your Office Space | Michael Borreca, CFO, LYNX Franchising
As CFO of a business that includes a franchise network of 8,000 sanitizing services businesses across the country, Michael Borreca has lines of sight into the sales of disinfectant and electrostatic sprayers that make him better informed than most CFOs, perhaps, when it comes to monitoring the country’s return to work. In addition to the […]
Realizing the Strategic Advantage of “Remote” | John Cappadona, CFO, School of Rock
The way John Cappadona sees it, School of Rock—the company that he joined as CFO back in March 2019—just became another business. “We are deriving 100 percent of our revenue right now from something that did not exist 2 months ago. We were an in-person education business. We had to pivot immediately to deliver a […]
Can Customer Data Expose The Path To Economic Recovery? Just Ask Eventbrite CFO Lanny Baker
This article was originally published on Forbes.com Ask any chief financial officer inside the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) realm why they are better prepared than most CFOs to navigate the country’s impending recession, and chances are that they mention the pools of customer behavior data now streaming into their forecasting models. Ask the same CFOs which SaaS developer’s […]
A Once-in-a-Lifetime Event for CFOs | Amir Jafari, CFO, Reputation.com
“We’re in a world that is highly abnormal. There’s a ‘sense of pause’ that’s been created. For me, this is a unique opportunity because when the world is standing still, we have the ability right now to validate our vision,” explains CFO Amir Jafari of Reputation.com. For Jafari, the current environment demands that finance listen […]
While Deemed “Essential Businesses,” Home Builders Look Beyond 2020 for Recovery | Hilla Sferruzza, CFO, Meritage Homes
Years from now, when Hilla Sferruzza recalls her initial actions to buffer the impact of COVID-19 on home builder Meritage Homes Corp. (NYSE: MTH) of Scottsdale, Arizona, she will likely not forget the seemingly endless calls that she placed to land sellers across the country. “It’s not like I’m calling a manufacturer and telling them to […]
Inside The Real Estate Realm, CFOs Practice ‘Push-And-Pull’ Cost Management To Ease COVID-19 Disruption
This article was originally published on Forbes.com Years from now, when Hilla Sferruzza recalls her initial actions to buffer the impact of COVID-19 on home builder Meritage Homes Corp. (NYSE: MTH) of Scottsdale, Arizona, she will likely not forget the seemingly endless calls that she placed to land sellers across the country. “It’s not like I’m calling […]
When Averages No Longer Matter | Mohit Daswani, CFO, ThoughtSpot
When Mohit Daswani stepped into the CFO office of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based ThoughtSpot this past January, he ascended to something more than just another finance leadership position inside a SaaS start-up. Daswani, who was previously the head of finance and strategy at payments company Square, Inc., was joining a special class of CFOs distinguished by their […]
Five CFOs Reflect On COVID-19’s March Madness
This article was originally published on Forbes.com “Protect your people,” “Engage with customers,” and “Be agile” were among the early admonitions issued by a group of CFO “first responders” when asked to reflect on the month that seemingly began as business as usual and suddenly flipped on a dime. TRIAL BY FIRE Andrew Casey, CFO, WalkMe, […]