Drew Laxton explains how clearly communicating strategy to sales teams—especially around setting a minimum deal size aligned with the company’s ICP—helped improve performance and morale. By grounding decisions in product fit and disciplined planning, finance drove positive quarterly results and strengthened company-wide confidence. Now Watch our Complete Episode Featuring CFO Drew Laxton of Outreach In […]
1154: When Finance Becomes the Company’s Storyteller | Drew Laxton, CFO, Outreach
When Drew Laxton looks back on the past year at Outreach, one moment stands out—not a transaction, but a plan. The company set its annual targets, executed against them, and then exceeded expectations. “When you see green numbers at every quarterly all-hands,” Laxton tells us, “it’s amazing how that little bit of momentum just builds…
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1150: Making AI Practical in Finance, Not Theoretical | Matt Novick, CFO, Triplelift
Matthew Novick traces one of his earliest business lessons not to a boardroom, but to a furniture store in Portland, Maine. Growing up in his family’s business, he learned how to read credit reports, price products, and assess who was “credit worthy,” skills that showed him how decisions affect a business long before he ever…
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Turning Finance Into An Unlocker | Aneal Vallurupalli, CFO, Drata
By tracing retention through 200 customer calls, onboarding flows, and product gaps, Vallurupalli realized the breakthrough wasn’t a single metric but the journey itself. His holistic diagnosis reframed retention as a system problem—shaping Airbase’s cross-functional fixes and guiding its existing-revenue engine through scale. Now Watch Our complete Episode Featuring CFO Aneal Vallurupalli of Drata In […]
1146: Building a Finance Org That Thinks Before It Counts | Aneal Vallurupalli, CFO, Drata
The morning after Airbase’s sale closed, Aneal Vallurupalli woke up to a very different org chart. Before the deal, roughly a third to almost half of the company reported to him, including onboarding, professional services, account management, customer success, and financial services revenue, he tells us. The day after, those teams rolled into the acquirer…
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Crisis-Tested Finance In Volatile Markets | Michael Bourque, CFO, Convera
Kiavi’s pivot revealed two distinct customer segments—first-timers and high-volume professionals. Michael Bourque helped steer the company toward redesigning acquisition, service, and experience around each group using disciplined unit-economics. When the business remained unprofitable, he supported the move of operations from costly San Francisco to Pittsburgh. Now Watch the Complete Episode Featuring CFO Michael Bourque of […]
1144: Rewiring Finance for AI, Data, and Business Impact | Michael Bourque, CFO, Convera
Jack Welch’s binder hit the floor before Michael Borque had time to react. At just 23, he sat in a Honeywell acquisition review meeting as the “keeper of the numbers,” rifling through a binder he knew didn’t contain the EPS detail Welch demanded. When the answer didn’t come, Welch “swept his binder off the table,…
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The Power Behind Story-Driven Growth | David lee, CFO & COO, WEBTOON
During Best Buy’s Renew Blue turnaround, David Lee helped redirect over $1 billion in savings to reinvent stores as “omnichannel showrooms,” blending digital and in-store experiences. By aligning consumer insight with disciplined finance, the team defied predictions of retail decline—driving one of the fastest stock recoveries in the S&P 500. Now Watch the Complete Episode […]
1142: From Webcomics to Wall Street: Inside a Storytelling Powerhouse | David Lee, COO & CFO, WEBTOON
When David Lee joined PG&E in San Francisco, the company was collapsing under the weight of California’s first energy crisis. “These utility veterans kind of got us into this,” the new CFO told him, handing him an unusual assignment: act as an “anti-CFO.” Lee spent his days testing every forecast and financing plan, proposing contrarian…
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1140: The EQ Playbook for Post-Merger Reality | Niels Boon, CFO, Cint
The moment that stayed with him began at a marketplace where sales dashboards showed 40% gross margin—yet finance closed the books at 20%, Boon tells us. The gap, he discovered, lived in the shadows: rebates, discounts, and “free” services that never touched operational metrics. He manually traced economics to the client level and found margins…
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Bridging Legal & Finance: Closing Contact Risk Gaps – A Suite Voices Miniseries Episode
In this special episode of CFO Thought Leader—the first of three produced in collaboration with The Suite, Shaun Sethna (General Counsel and GM for the L Suite) maps where CFOs and GCs misjudge contract risk and how to collaborate effectively. He spotlights “locked-in” deals that still enable termination via vague clauses or missing notice-and-cure. Start…
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1139: The Global Lens of Finance Leadership | Atsushi Kitamura, CFO, Astellas Pharma
When Procter & Gamble asked Atsushi Kitamura to move from finance analysis into running a manufacturing plant, he didn’t hesitate. “They always give me next challenge to stretch me,” he tells us. Managing one of P&G’s large diaper plants in Japan forced him to apply finance in real-time operations—a proving ground that shaped his comfort…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:21:47)