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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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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Sequencing Growth For Scalable Outcomes | Erik Wissig, CFO, SureCo
Realizing his high-growth startup lacked the cash to fund earned bonuses, Erik Wissig shifted the leadership team toward long-horizon cash-flow planning. By aligning growth expectations with cash realities, he prevented future liquidity gaps and created a finance discipline that shaped SureCo’s scaling years. Now Watch our Complete Episode Featuring CFO Erik Wissig of SureCo Erik […]
1141: The Long Game of Resilient Finance Leadership | Erik Wissig, CFO, SureCo
When Erik Wissig recalls his early years as a founder, one moment still stands out. The team had met its growth goals and earned their bonuses—but the company’s cash flow hadn’t caught up. “You need the cash to make those payments,” he tells us. That hard-won lesson reshaped how Wissig approached finance from that day…
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1135: Where Strategy Meets Finance in the Ad-Tech Revolution | Clayton Kossl, CFO, Basis Technologies
On his first day in investment banking, Clayton Kossl was “thrown right into the cauldron.” With few senior professionals in the small aerospace and defense group, junior bankers like him were expected to face company owners directly. “You had to understand the businesses inside and out,” he tells us. The experience forced him to blend…
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1134: When Finance Becomes a Force for Influence | Chris Sands, CFO, InvoiceCloud
“InvoiceCloud is not just payments,” Chris Sands tells us. Sitting inside the company’s finance organization, he sees a platform built to change habits—helping businesses shift customers from paper invoices and mailed checks to fully digital transactions. The success metric, he adds, is simple: “Do more of their customers stop receiving paper invoices, stop mailing in…
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1128: Capital Discipline in a Usage-Based World | Ben Gammell, President & CFO, Brex
In 2018, Brex made a defining decision: rather than rely on middleware providers like Stripe or Marqeta, it built its own payments infrastructure from the ground up. That move, Ben Gammell tells us, gave the company a direct integration with MasterCard and the ability to issue corporate cards in “over 50 plus local currencies.” The…
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The Power of Relationships in Driving Enterprise Value
Amid a competitive, banker-led acquisition during COVID, he insisted on traveling to meet the founder in person. That relationship-building shifted perceptions, secured the deal, and underscored how trust can decisively shape enterprise outcomes. Now Watch our Complete Episode Featuring CFO Chris Miorin of apexanalytix Chris Miorin traces a leadership-first path to finance, forged at West […]
1122: Capital Allocation as a CFO’s North Star | Chris Miorin, CFO, apexanalytix
Chris Miorin’s path to the CFO office began in a crucible of leadership. At West Point, and later at Ranger School, he was forged in environments designed to test resolve. Commissioned shortly after 9/11, he knew combat was certain. Leading an infantry platoon in Iraq, he found himself working side-by-side with a colonel “30 years…
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1117: Building a Unicorn with a Finance Blueprint | Konstantin Dzhengozov, CFO, Payhawk
When Konstantin Dzhengozov turned down a corporate development role in the U.S., he wasn’t walking away from opportunity—he was running toward a different kind of growth. Having helped lead the FP&A function at a fast-scaling Bulgarian tech firm through its acquisition by a U.S. public company, Dzhengozov knew what came next if he stayed the…
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