What's Rarely Measured Matters Most

CFO Premieres

1189: Why Finance Should Lead with “Yes, And” | Bruno Annicq, CFO, Wellhub

A conversation from years earlier still stands out to Bruno Annicq. While working at AOL, he was supporting business leaders and helping tell the story of the business through data and analytics. Then a senior executive, Holly Hess, approached him with an unexpected suggestion: Why not become the CFO of AOL’s platforms business? Annicq’s reaction…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:50:44)
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1188: Testing Assumptions Before Burning Capital | Kevin Hettrich, CFO, QuantumScape

Kevin Hettrich walked into a conference room with a whiteboard full of numbers and a problem no one had fully articulated. QuantumScape’s leadership team was discussing how to scale an expensive R&D tool used to produce early battery materials. Hettrich had spent two weeks gathering data, talking with engineers, and analyzing manufacturing economics. Then he…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:54:55)
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1187: Pattern Recognition: How CFOs See Around Corners | Alex Chun, CFO, NEOGOV

Alex Chun already knew the management team at NEOGOV long before he became its CFO. As an investor at Warburg Pincus, he spent more than four years “in the trenches” with NEOGOV’s leadership team, flying to Los Angeles to work through operational challenges alongside them, Chun tells us. His path to finance leadership did not…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:43:21)
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1186: Keeping the Applause in Check | Adam Goldbruch, CFO, DoorLoop

Adam Goldbruch still remembers the celebration. In 2017, he stood inside a Tel Aviv startup office while employees cheered a milestone: a Disney princess quiz had generated “2.8 million page views,” he tells us. Champagne circulated as the founder delivered a visionary speech about changing communication through content. At the time, Goldbruch was young enough…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:51:58)
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1185: Scaling Smarter in the AI Era | Sarah Riley, CFO, dbt Labs

When the pandemic began reshaping the world in early 2020, Sarah Riley was helping guide finance at Zoom through an unprecedented surge in demand. “You could see the volume of Zoom almost spiking up by the regions that were going into shutdown,” Riley tells us. What followed was unlike anything most software companies had experienced…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:40:58)
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1184: From Deal Sheets to Operating Seats | Rick Hasselman, CFO, Salesloft

Rick Hasselman recently boarded “a moving train,” describing his arrival at a newly merged SalesLoft and Clari business as both complex and energizing. Just a month and a half into the role, he is already immersed in integrating a $300 million-plus revenue company, he tells us. That early moment captures a defining pattern across Hasselman’s…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:57:10)
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1183: Enter the Blockchain CFO Reshaping Capital Markets | Macrina Kgil, CFO, Figure

Macrina Kgil recalls a moment when she first encountered blockchain technology and “could not grasp whatever it was trying to do,” she tells us. Even with an engineering background, the concept felt distant and unclear. Yet that early confusion would later become a defining thread in her career. Years later, when the opportunity arose to…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:46:10)
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1182: From Cockpit Decisions to Capital Decisions | Andre Mancl, CFO, Nium

Andre Mancl recalls sitting only a few months into his first CFO role when a senior technology executive arrived with an urgent warning: engineers were leaving for Google and Facebook, and the company needed an immediate across-the-board compensation increase of 30% to 40%. It would have been a major financial commitment. But Mancl hesitated. Drawing…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:46:38)
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1181: What AI Means for the Future of Finance Leadership | Yuval Atsmon, CFO & Sr Partner, McKinsey & Company

In the desert during military officer training, Yuval Atsmon entered one wrong number into a GPS device. Instead of reaching the intended destination, he and his team ended up in the wrong location, and the simulated mission failed. The mistake cost him the chance to finish at the top of his class, he tells us.…
Listen to the Episode Below (1:03:40)
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1180: Where Finance Meets the Real World | Scott Thorell, CFO, Benetrends

Before his career became closely tied to middle-market businesses, Scott Thorell built his foundation in larger arenas. He began at Ernst & Young in New York, auditing financial services firms, then moved to Campbell Soup Company, where financial and operational audit assignments took him to Australia, Hong Kong, Europe, and locations across the United States,…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:52:18)
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Special Episode: Why Oracle Chose Hilary Maxson Now

In this special episode, we revisit a past conversation with Hilary Maxson and explore why her appointment as CFO of Oracle Corporation comes at such a consequential moment. As Oracle accelerates investments in AI infrastructure and cloud capacity, the finance role now extends well beyond stewardship into capital allocation, operational discipline, and long-term value creation.…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:46:41)
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1179: Why Trust Can Outperform Price | Thomas Baumgartner, CFO, voestalpine Metsec

As a child in Austria, Thomas Baumgartner bundled unwanted toys into mystery bags and sold them to classmates. Buyers could not see what was inside—they simply paid and took their chances. He cleared out old toys and earned spending money, he tells us. The story is lighthearted, but it reveals something enduring: an instinct to…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:53:01)
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