A Finance Strategic Moment On Friday the 13 of March 2020, Steven Miller closed Warby Parker’s 280 stores, scrapped the freshly approved budget, and launched PAR—Pause, Adjust, Redeploy. The framework shifted cash to safety and booming e-commerce (up 100 % YoY), granting leadership daily visibility and preserving liquidity until stores reopened two months later. Now […]
1092: Balancing Mission, Margin, and Market Share | Steven Miller, CFO, Warby Parker
It was Friday the 13, in March 2020, and Steven Miller was staring at a suddenly irrelevant budget. Hours earlier Warby Parker had shuttered every one of its 280 stores to protect employees and customers. “Remember that plan we just approved?” he asked the leadership team. “Forget it.” In its place he introduced PAR—Pause, Adjust,…
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From Legacy Telecom to Cloud | Brian McClintock, CFO, Fusion Connect
A Finance Strategic Moment Early in his career, Brian McClintock walked into a $12 million‑EBITDA telecom—only to discover within 60 days that it was actually losing $1 million a month. Reflecting on that moment, he explains how relocating, digging into the numbers, and telling private‑equity owners the hard truth set the stage for a radical turnaround.. Now Watch our […]
1084: Reading the Signals, Not Just the Statements | Brian Carolan, CFO, SailPoint
It was a late-night meeting room lit by the glow of Excel spreadsheets and cluttered with half-empty coffee cups. Brian Carolan, then a rising finance leader, looked around the table and saw not just fellow accountants and analysts but a collection of people relying on him to bridge data and strategy. In that moment, he…
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1083: Navigating the Go-To-Market Roadmap with Precision | Brian Robins, CFO, GitLab
It was a pivotal moment Brian Robins tells us he’ll never forget: stepping onto a makeshift stage to address some 400 employees just minutes before a key 8-K filing would publicly announce the potential sale of a major business unit. The room bristled with anxiety—people worried about their jobs and the future of the company.…
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Staying Ahead of Growth: How Finance Powers Proactive Scaling
In this episode, CFO Brandon Sullivan of 2X shares how he transformed financial reporting to drive agility and informed decision-making. After securing private equity backing in March 2023, 2X ramped up hiring in anticipation of rapid growth. However, when revenue stalled, Sullivan realized that monthly reporting was too slow for a dynamic business. He implemented […]
1079: Staying Ahead of Growth: How Finance Powers Proactive Scaling | Brandon Sullivan, CFO, 2X
The moment 2X secured private equity backing in March 2023, CFO Brandon Sullivan knew expectations would shift overnight. “There’s gonna be a press release,” he remembers thinking. “Our new PE partners will open up a treasure chest of relationships for us—we need to be ready.” In anticipation, Sullivan and his team ramped up hiring, ensuring…
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From Black Box to Control Tower
A former customer turned advocate, Stuart Leung joined Flexport when it was still a fast-growing startup lacking formal finance structures. In just a few months as CFO, he oversaw a thorough margin-improvement effort involving 15 “big rock” initiatives, uniting cross-functional teams to boost efficiency and profitability. He now focuses on AI-based automation, using new technology […]
1078: From Black Box to Control Tower | Stuart Leung, CFO, Flexport
Stuart Leung had occupied the CFO office at Flexport for only a few months when he realized the supply chain management company’s growing margin pressures stemmed not from a single root cause but from many. From pricing misalignment to invoice errors, Leung had compiled a lengthy list of snags. Along the way, he began empowering…
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1077: Unleashing Innovation: Strategic Insights into AI Integration | Omar Choucair, CFO, Trintech
Trintech CFO Omar Choucair is increasingly turning to AI as a strategic advantage—building teams, refining data “plumbing,” and automating time-consuming processes. His strategic mindset, honed by years of thriving in unpredictable environments, drives him to embrace AI as a catalyst for operational efficiency and transformative growth. Choucair tells us that his approach centers on leveraging…
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1075: Mastering Recurring Revenue: The Next Chapter Unfolds | Kevin Rhodes, CFO, Extreme Networks
Kevin Rhodes recalls one of the earliest lessons in his finance career. “I wanted to understand the business,” he tells us, describing his decision to ride along with a Waste Management truck crew. Clipboard in hand, he meticulously recorded stop distances, tonnage collected, and time spent at each location. By the end of the week,…
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1074: Balancing AI Innovation with Post-IPO Expectations | Bill Koefoed, CFO, OneStream
It began with a tense stretch of weeks that Bill Koefoed tells us he won’t soon forget. As OneStream’s CFO, he was juggling the details of going public when a small AI startup called DataSense caught his attention. “We didn’t even have a formal corporate development function,” Koefoed explains, but he threw himself into researching…
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