Steve Shimizu’s finance strategic moment came during VMware’s acquisition by Broadcom, where he observed Broadcom’s disciplined, division-by-division decision making. Transitioning the EUC unit into a standalone company revealed how tightly every function interconnects—teaching him that finance leadership means orchestrating the whole system, not just managing numbers. Now Watch the Complete Episode Featuring CFO Steve Shimizu […]
1161: From Carve-Out to Standalone Enterprise | Steve Shimizu, CFO, Omnissa
An employee is on vacation in the mountains when it happens: “I left my laptop at home.” Instead of scrambling, the employee logs into a virtual desktop from another device, pulling up what looks and feels like their own PC, delivered through the cloud. That simple moment captures how Steve Shimizu describes Omnissa’s mission—helping companies…
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Shrink to Grow: The Hardest Call in Finance | Burt Chao, CFO, Nintex
Facing tighter capital and slower growth, Burt Chao led “shrink-to-grow” decisions—redirecting investment away from still-profitable product lines toward higher-ROI priorities. The shift required redefining asset allocation discipline while aligning stakeholders around long-term value creation in a constrained environment. Now Watch the Complete Episode Featuring CFO Burt Chao of Nintex In his first months at Nintex, […]
1160: Disciplined Bets in an Expensive-Capital World | Burt Chao, CFO, Nintex
As he nears the end of his first 100 days at Nintex, Burt Chao is doing something many new CFOs resist: listening more than talking. Understanding the business, its people, and its real growth potential comes before dashboards or directives, he tells us. Chao describes Nintex as a company with a “long and rich history”…
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When Planning Impacts Company Morale | Drew Laxton, CFO, Outreach
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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