Navigating the FinTech Landscape: Insights from a Startup CFO

Running a business [music] can feel lonely, especially when the decisions get heavy. Welcome to CEO Rispro by Sora Jane. Practical insights from the boardroom [music] and the meditation cushion. I'm sorry. I've done 10,000 hours in three [music] major parts of my life. I spent 10,000 hours being a CEO, 10,000 hours [music] being a board member, and 10,000 hours meditating. What we're going to do in each [music] episode is really unpack a real business challenge that a CEO is facing and see if we can [music] work through it together. Enjoy. So today we're going to interview Lakun Agarval. He's the CFO of a midsize payments gateway platform called Hello Clever. Um the real takeaway for CEOs today is going to be how do I select my 2IC?

How do I make sure I get the right guy or gal in that CFO scene? very very complex decision and we're going to really explore that with Lwood to talk about how he went from large corporate to a scaleup startup and why he was the right guy for the job. Hi, good day guys here again from CO whisperer. Welcome. Today I've got Lakun from Hello Clever. Do you want to introduce yourself a couple minutes?

Yeah, hi. Thanks. Um yeah, hi guys. Um my name is Lan Agrial. I'm the CFO at Hello Clever. I've been there for about 18 months now and Hello Clever is a Australian startup uh in the fintech space in particular payments processing loyalty rewards and um AI agents. Um prior to that I spent about two decades as a CFO of um businesses inside large global multinational companies. So I've had a long career um inside global multinationals and very lately I've now moved into a very different environment which is the Australian startup environment as well. So yeah that's where I am now.

Well I mean the so the way we run these sessions is you often you bring a problem with you that you want to kind of solve. Yeah.

I mean tell us what what are you thinking like what's the problem that you want to solve within your world today? So the biggest problem I I mean for me is um how can uh someone of my experience in my a CFO with decades of experience

um manage themselves and their tasks and resources in a way that adds the most value to a very different environment in in a smaller business.

So I'm I want to talk about like a few things that I've had to

So make that very narrow. Can you make that go quite specific like what's a specific problem or a scenario that you're having that isn't quite jelling

I think well um the number one problem for a startup is runway

you know how much money do we have left

and um

many different components lead to that runway changing every month

so one problem that we have in our business is we're not um we don't have a stable uh future

we have a very unpredictable future with a lot of different outcomes comes month on month, quarter on quarter. So the challenge for me as a CFO is to ensure that a business can keep growing. A business has the funds to do what it wants to do. People still get paid and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

Um but how do we uh manage the business and the finances and the funding in such a way that we can do all of these wonderful projects that we want to do and yet and yet not not run out of money. So it's a very different problem to um to what I was dealing with in in the market.

So is would it be kind of you know how do you kind of fund the growth?

Yes.

Um choose what to invest in.

Exactly.

Um but not go bankrupt.

Exactly. And and I think not run out of cash. Right. Exactly. And I find uh one of the biggest things I find is that

the entrepreneurs and the CEOs who start and run these businesses are the visionaries. Yeah.

And they employ people like me as a CFO to keep them on track. But they themselves

depending on their personality they themselves are not on track. They'll easily go off track. So there's a bit of a a nice comp tension there that you have to have in a company.

Yeah.

Okay. So um so basic we make the problem statement. You know how do we grow and then not run out of cash at the same time. Yeah.

Cuz there's two parts of that, right? Like how do you pick what you want to invest in? You know your capital allocation. Um and then how do you also not grow yourself broke?

Yes.

How do you not grow so quickly that you completely run out of cash?

Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, give us some background. I mean, why why would someone coming from large corporate to startup? What made you make that first change?

Well, to be honest, um, part of it was forced, part of it was chosen. So, uh, the industry I was in was in marketing services, which is, um,

in the last few years especially undergoing a bit of a decline. Um, not marketing as a profession, but marketing services companies, like marketing agencies that that serve serve large corporates. Yeah,

I think AI is actually um upending a lot of practices in that industry and there's a lot of cost reduction happening. So in that in that [snorts] uh phase in the last couple of years I was um had an opportunity to to leave which I took and then basically wanted to change my trajectory or what I call my final third of my career.

As soon as you're so let's just say you finished off you got paid out what you got paid out you know hopefully hopefully did well.

Yeah. Um, how do you, so the day you finish,

how do you make that decision about what to do next?

Oh, that's a good question. Um, cuz it's very common for like especially um, mid-level management or um, execs in large corporates, you'll you'll have a restructure, right? Yes.

You'll get caught up in it. You'll be on the wrong side of numbers. Yes.

You'll get voted off the island.

Yes.

And then all of a sudden, like you're not you're by yourself, right? And you got to decide what to do next. How did you how did you tackle that?

That's a very interesting question for me because where I am now, I'm in a very happy place and happy outcome.

But how I handled that departure?

Yeah.

I reflecting back on it, I I did all the wrong things.

Yeah.

Despite what did you do?

Well, firstly, I didn't give myself a break.

And because I'd been forever working and I think a lot of your own personal identity, at least for me, is wrapped up in

Oh, 100%.

My work, my title, where I, you know, all that kind a worse throat. Um, especially as

a you don't you don't throw that away instantly even though your job might go

you mentally I was still wrapped up in it and I wanted to get back to work so damn quickly

I didn't give my chance myself a chance to have a mental break and switch off.

Did you know you should have a mental break or was that not even on?

It was advised to me by so many people that I had no one trust but I just couldn't. I just had to keep on. So what I did was at the moment I left.

So then what stopped you from having that mental break?

Um probably a really deep answer which I won't go too deeply into but it's like just fear of failure almost yeah like

what if I never get a job again what if I never work again like all these

bad thoughts that come in your mind when you're by yourself

that happens to almost every exec

like reckon all of us have a tiny bit of imposter syndrome in us

yes

we worried we got made redundant or we got on the wrong side of the numbers or we left a great career and you're like will I ever get another job again?

Yeah. And it sounds so silly to say given like my own like pedigree of what I've done in my career as if I will never find another job again. But in that moment,

yeah,

it that part of that like I need to keep I need to look I need to talk to people. I need to have meetings with people every day to look for a job and know let people know I'm out there. And

um yeah, that was a bad thing to do because I actually needed and should have taken a break which I didn't. Um after exhausting my network and possibilities, I then

um took a little bit of a break, a little bit of downtime, but I I never took a proper proper break and then the other bad thing I did.

So just around the mechanics. So what you initially did what have lots of coffees with people, lots of catchups, those met recruiters, met built your network again.

Correct. So my my um my most inner network with all the professional people I knew in marketing and marketing services met them.

Um met my recruiter network again. you know, people who I have

worked with in the past or I've um recruited from in the past now saying I'm now a candidate, not not a client. So, just go going through all of that and each one of those is a conversation that takes time to to you know go in meet them have a proper chat an hour or so and then and then leave again. So, yeah, it it it's a it's a timeconsuming exercise rebuilding a network when you're looking for for a role.

And I find often exacts fall in one or two categories. One category is that um despite working full-time, they still um nurture their network.

Yes.

Another type that they're just so busy working full-time, they don't have time for the network.

Well, which category did you fall into?

I'm the first. Yeah. I'm um

So, you kept a strong network

all throughout my career. Had a strong network, which

probably led me to not taking a break. It's like I've got such a strong network.

I've been um I've lost my job here.

Yeah.

Let me go to my network. Y

that's strong that that

halfife of your network is very small, right? So you want to use it as soon as you can.

That's true. Yeah. And I I hadn't verbalized it like that, but I kind of felt that. Yeah. My network halfife is is small because if I went now on 18 months outside of that industry I was in which I was in for 20 years.

Yeah.

But even though I was in there for 20 years, 18 months out of it,

I don't feel like I could ring people up as strongly as I could the day the day I left it.

And and what did you say to your network? Were you originally after the same sort of large corporate role again? Were you the same?

And that was the second mistake. I made sorry. So the first mistake was not giving myself a break. The second mistake was

um not not facing reality is the reason my company was cost cutting and and and reducing was because

it was not my company that was losing in the market. It was an in industry structural shift that was happening.

Yeah.

Which meant

every one of our competitors and also upstream and downstream were all cutting costs. I was looking in the wrong place.

I was looking in marketing. All my

network, the majority of my network

would have been a CFO role in marketing.

I was looking for a CFO, commercial director role in marketing, marketing services, marketing adjacent.

Yeah.

But actually the entire industry was undergoing the same cost reduction. So

I spent a frustrating amount of time looking for jobs in places where there were no jobs.

How long how long did that take for you to figure that out?

Probably about two or three months.

Yeah. like just the the whole process of going through my network um talking to conversations and because I had developed a strong network and I had cultivated that throughout my working career.

Everyone answered my call.

Y

everyone was happy to meet with me. But then as you go through every conversation, you realize

okay this is like there's nothing happening here. I need I need to go in a completely different direction.

Yeah.

So what did you do next? What did you sign? So basically then I um started looking for to be honest the the whole market as a whole at that time this was um mid204 was very poor especially for senior roles

so I started looking for um contracts and projects I wouldn't even call them contracts they're just projects like

um I knew lots of people um and I had a lot of resident knowledge so I started offering my services to do a task or a project or whatever and some of these were uh a few days long, some of them were a couple of weeks long, etc. So, I would just be picking up bits and pieces of work here and there

to keep myself engaged to um provide value for some organizations. So, I worked with three or four different I think maybe five different companies actually.

And one of the projects I landed which ended up becoming my role here was um for this company, Hello Clever, where I knew the CEO from before. And um she wanted to buy a company. It's a startup company. She didn't have a CFO on board. She needed someone to do the due diligence and tell them why they should buy the company or shouldn't buy the company.

So did some M&A due diligence to

and which to be honest I'm not a corporate CFO. I'm more of an operational commercial CFO. So but I know the theory and what you should be doing and I've got way more knowledge than anyone in that business at the time. So I did this project for her and that project um finished. We we ended up not buying the company like there's many reasons why you don't buy a company. Um but in that process the CEO realized that

so it's CEO or CFO sorry

she was the CEO

a CEO Y okay

and in that process of doing that project and finishing it which ended up taking four weeks not not two weeks

um she said to me at the end look I realized I actually need a CFO in my business like we were 20 people last year we're now 40 people now we're getting to the stage where we need someone to help with this and so that became a conversation and an entry point into into that

organization And then I mean were you at the stage where you would have you know you know when we go through our job uh process and you get to a stage where you just take anything just to kind of keep you busy to figure out what to do. Were you at that stage yet or were you still

I was

actively looking at large corporates.

Oh no I I was because I had exhausted my preferred industry preferred role preferred context.

Yeah. And at the time because it was an industry structural uh cost reduction happening

and there was nothing else in the horizon in my preferred industry. Well, then if I'm going to look outside of where I've been for the last 20 years,

I'm open to anything, right? Um, any industry, obviously a suitable role within the industry,

but then that then you strike the reality of the job market at the time. As a senior person, you have no experience in an industry. Um, it's not the type of job market where people will then take people from other industries and parachute them in,

which there's just more risk to it, right? There's more risk to it. But but I I I do find a paradox in this because if you're a CEO,

it's very easy for people I see it all the time in the papers like some appointed CEO of this company. They've had no industry experience before but they've had a great run at a CEO somewhere else.

Yeah.

So

skills are don't have to be transferable if you're a CEO. If you're a CTO or a CFO, they

I find a lot of employers want the industry experience because it's it's that kind of job market at the moment. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. So, but how did that feel going from like a like how many employees would your last company have had that you were responsible for?

So, like 300.

300. So, you kind of went from 300 to like 20 or 40 people now.

40 when I joined.

40 when you joined.

Yeah.

Um when you walk through the door like you probably don't fit the typical stereotype CFO in a startup.

Absolutely not. No. Um my whole career and identity is being a big CFO in a big company handling big numbers big budgets reporting to global making financial operations run smoothly supporting my sales and marketing teams um making things like

I'm a very operational CFO not not a corporate CFO and

when I came to startup land um that's those skill sets a lot of them are not required in startup land but the craft and the knowledge that I have is required. So it actually brings you right back to the bare bones of your craft and um being able to deliver a financial at its bare bones financial operations to the organization. So things just run.

Yeah.

But um if they if a CEO just wanted to run things, they would employ a finance manager or bookkeeper. But the reason they're appointing a CFO

is to elevate the function and provide the strategic support and um guidance as they go through the next stages of evolution of their company.

What did they what did they have before you joined? Like what was the incumbent? An outsource bookkeeper or a fraction?

A lot of a lot of startups handle this a different way because I work in a building full of startups and most of them do not have CFOs. They're not of that size and I think 40 50s is when you start thinking of having some of them. So what most of them have is either an outsource bookkeeper

um or someone who works part-time but that you that you never see them so they outsource or what we had which was um a someone who has some finance knowledge

but he's not an ex it's not a career CFO and does the CFO ship in coordination with another role which is typically pops. So we had a COO chief operating officer

who had a background in finance. So he was doing the CFO role. Yeah,

part-time alongside his main role of operations. And I've actually seen a few other startups who do that same sort of thing. There's someone who's got a kind of a background in finance that sort of takes on the role

um whilst whilst you're small like from, you know, zero to 30 40.

How does one even um convince the CEO to take someone like you? Right. Because it's it's really hard for a CEO to pick a CFO. It's it's it's one of the most important decisions you have to make, especially when you don't have abundance of cash. Yep.

And you got to be very prudent. you're thinking, can I trust this guy? Will they do the right thing for the company? You don't fit the mold. Like you're not in your late 20s and and you're not like fresh out of university and you know super high risk tolerance cuz I find the older you get tend generally the CFOs tend to reduce their risk tolerance. That's the perception from a CEO perspective. How did you convince the CEO to take you on board?

I think I spun You've listed a series of facts. I've spun them in a very different way.

Yeah, please tell me. Yeah.

So, I said, "Look, what you need, you're a fast growing startup company, which is fantastic.

You're a young executive like early 30s to mid-30s with a great visionary entrepreneurial spirit.

What you need is an experienced guiding hand as you grow through the various different stages of your evolution.

Yeah.

Making sure we um allocate capital to the right areas. Make sure we raise it from the right people at the right price, at the right valuation. um we don't lock ourselves into terms in debt equity or any of that. Also someone who can just

make all of your internal finances just humly automated etc.

Um a younger finance manager, finance controller

won't have had enough runs on the board really to have the expertise to do all of the operational and the corporate stuff that I'm

clarify my question. I've got no doubt that an older more experienced person is the right person for that kind of role.

Yes. What I wonder is how do you convince the CEO CEO that because um you're asking the CEO to go against what the mold is. I mean I totally agree. They want someone more experienced who's done this before who's who's seen this five or six times.

Yeah.

But often a CEO doesn't think like that.

I think it really depends on the CEO's mindset. um they and what they're lacking and what what they to compliment. Um I it's sort of like I'm not sure if my CEO is going to watch this, but it depends on how self-aware my CEO is. Yeah.

Right.

Um my CEO did have a bit of a finance background, not not like a a long career like like I've had.

Um but I think in that project of doing the M&A like firstly why did they reach out because they knew that this is a big transaction. They need some proper professional advice.

Yeah.

Neither my CEO or the COO who was doing the CO folk thing part-time.

Had the requisite skills, experience, time even or diligence to do that properly.

Let's go get someone. And they knew cuz I knew them from before through my professional networks that they knew that I was available in market to do projects because I'd reached out to them etc. in this period when I was looking for work.

So that they reached out to me to do this project because I was available and they knew me and I knew them. So I think in that process they actually understood what value I I bring to their decision making

and the level of clarity and um assurance they get from making decisions yes no do this do that or or questioning certain things and also when they are sitting in the meetings with a prospective company they want to buy I'm I'm in those meetings asking the questions on behalf of the company they feel a lot more assured and in control when they have that by their side. So, I think the ability to demonstrate

um my value immediately to a task or a problem just made them think

we're now 40 people now. We're not 20 people anymore. We kind of need this kind of

CFO ship when I

I wonder whether it's probably less about what you brought.

Yeah.

It's probably more about what your CEO already had in them, that self-awareness that you mentioned.

Uh yes. Yeah. Sorry, step back to that point. Absolutely. Because if they if they didn't have that, no matter what you said, you wouldn't have been able to convince them.

True. There are CEOs out there who um I reckon half CEOs I mean probably half the CEOs out know what the percentages probably are not fully self-aware.

Yeah. And and um

there there are lots of roles you can put into your organization. And I find

most of the roles CEOs tend to go towards gravitate towards is more sales, more ops.

Yep. like sell more people to sell stuff, more people to build the stuff I'm selling. So I tell you why. Because if you're good at a financial model, you'll never do a startup

because the chance of success is so low.

Like if you're good at finance, like you just wouldn't do it. But if you're good at sales, you do it. If you're good at operations, you you'll set up a startup.

Yeah. Exactly. So I a lot of those CEOs

um are very entrepreneurial spirited people and

um

they've got you've got limited resources, limited opportunities to add headcount every year. Yeah.

And when you do, you just want to sell more and build more.

All these functions that we are corporate, HR, IT, etc., they're like, what can the immediate thought is where can I outsource? Your overheads, your cost base, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, and if you ever find a um self-aware um CEO that doesn't start every conversation already knowing they're right,

Yeah.

hang on to them.

Yeah.

Um because there there aren't enough of them out there.

No, that's right. Right. And look, I mean, we're all human beings. We're all complex beasts. Even

like if if I think back through my career, some of the best bosses I've had, I've been very self-aware and very very much knowing

when to defer to others for professional advice. But even those best bosses I'm thinking of in my mind,

yeah,

have moments and times where they're just completely wrong and pigheaded and just want their way. And everyone's human and I say, well, they're the boss, I'm not. So the boss ultimately has the right to

make a decision that's against the advice of a sales person or a CFO or whatever um because of the way they see things. So um and sometimes those decisions are objectively wrong in it's not the financially optimal decision or whatever but they've got other things in their mind as to why they want to do things.

Yeah. I mean it's it's phenomenally high and this is probably the difference between a CEO and a CFO. Like a CFO you'll know your domain really really well. Yes. But what a CEO does, they know a tiny bit of finance, tiny bit of sales, tiny bit of ops, and they've got to somehow weave them together and figure out what the right decision is.

Yes.

And it's hard. You get it wrong a lot of the time.

Yes. Yes.

But it's Yeah. It's a complex thing to figure out how to do.

And I think so I think um I would describe myself as a self-aware CFO. M

so if every decision was um a decision based on what is the most financially optimal outcome um every business would run like a CFO runs the business and there would be really no entrepreneurial spirit or creativity in the business. So I'm aware that my perspective as a CFO overlays or sits alongside not overlays the perspective of an ops team who are trying to develop products that go in a certain area, a strategy team that wants to develop something new for the market, a CEO who wants to do something else, marketing who wants to do something else. And so I'm one voice at a table. I would argue in my own um

interest. I'm a strong voice at the table, but I'm not the only voice at the table. Yeah. And uh yeah, I do recognize that the CEO um does need to make compromises and decisions as to what's best cuz the different departments um sometimes come up with completely different ways the company should go and the job is to corral everything together and also

decide on the best combined way.

So you get the job, you got your start date, you rock up on that on that Monday. You have like a Monday management meeting. I'm guessing most organizations do.

We have a Monday meeting. Yes, we So, so you rock up to him Monday morning. Monday morning. Monday afternoon. What's yours?

It used to be Monday morning. It's now Monday afternoon.

Okay. Monday afternoon. You rock up to him. You managed meeting. Here's this new guy that looks different to everybody else.

Correct.

Um, how do you how do you feel in that situation?

I feel like a kid again.

Yeah. Explain to me why. Yeah. So, look, I I haven't changed jobs too many times in my life. In my last uh organization I've had for like 13 years. So going for a new job and that first day a new job feel I hadn't experienced for a very long time.

Um and I felt a mixture of uh nervousness cuz it was new. I didn't know anyone. I didn't know the industry.

Didn't have any friends yet. Didn't have any friends yet other than the people who employed me.

Um and it was just uh nervousness. Um

but it wasn't nervousness meaning that I was cowering down.

It was a it was almost like a energy based nervousness. Yeah.

Meaning I was wanting to contribute. I was wanting to do something. I was wanting to tell people what I can do. I was wanting to show people what I can do and wanting to

to help them. Um so it actually brought out for me when I was introduced in that first meeting of um a side of me which is very uh it's it's the more engaging side of Lan. It's like hi how you going I'm here this is what you have to do etc.

I'm a bit demonstrative. I can talk fast too fast sometimes. Um but people immediately got a sense of my character what I was.

Did you say much during your first meeting? No, just introduce myself basically and um you know cracked a joke or two here or there.

Um but just yeah look I tell them what I'm looking to get out of it etc. Gave them a bit about my background because the first thing they're wondering is where's this guy where he come from? What's he in the past? Let me just explain briefly my background, what I've done and what I'm looking forward to doing here.

Yeah.

It was like it was like all I wanted is a pass mark in everyone's mental mind of okay this is a good guy normal person. Yep. Don't don't have to be afraid.

Yeah. And also because I'm coming from a corporate background

and by the way in startups most people who join a startup aren't joining a company for the first time. They've worked somewhere before. So people are used to people coming from a corporate background to

um to to a startup.

But it's uh it's important for them to know like what kind of person I am, what kind of corporation I've come from, what kind of expertise I bring. So they kind of know mentally where I I fit into the organization. So when you at your prior company the marketing services like how big would your team have been so because we're part of a group my immediate team was about four

four okay and my extended team because we had shared services which support our business but they also support other businesses that would have been about

I'd say about four four or five that support our business so maybe an eight total

and how big was your team when you when you joined this uh me me plus uh 6 of a person So 3 days a week uh

and they did the journals, the bookkeeping, that kind of stuff here.

Yeah, it was basically me.

Yeah.

Me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me plus plus a helper. But um yeah, that's

changed slowly over time. But yeah, trying to grow.

But then but then you but then you go from like a company where you got to delegate a lot of things to a company where you have to do everything. How did you find that change?

That's one of the biggest uh changes I've had to

um deal with personally because I'm I'm an actionoriented uh person generally. So Even though what I disrupt I had technically eight people reporting to me um everyone had their roles to do and jobs to do. So there wasn't a lot of direction required I mean help guidance all that stuff but

every day people knew what they had to do in their roles. Um

and that gets one used to looking after certain parts of finance

other parts just reviewing or ticking off on it. You're not not doing it. Now you're finding

now you're doing everything right everything from

um doing uh supplier payments and payroll

to doing board packs like everything in in in between

um raising capital dealing with investors um doing the budgets uh reviewing the budgets um logging on to the banking site to do one one of two payment approvals like

everything from go to work and um

I found that quite a shock to the system to be honest because I shocked me a bit Um,

not that any of those tasks were difficult or not or not being able to done, but

um, I've you've had to I had to develop a new skill, I'd say. And and I'm sort of just verbalizing this as I'm talking to you about it is

my mind has to be so flexible to get a call from my CEO saying, "Hey, if I raise this amount of capital at this this, what would be the new shareholdings or blah blah blah?"

Yeah. um can you do a board uh paper on this company that we want to buy and the strategy behind it and the rough numbers etc. Here's some information. Basically analyze this. Do a quick thing there.

Two, um someone didn't get paid and they're complaining about the tax taken out of their pay in the last pay two pay ago. Can you look into that issue? So going from very strategic high level stuff that actually is quite impactful to the company to just resolving a day-to-day transaction operational issue

which still requires a bit of digging and a bit of understanding but each of them take up time

and getting my head from strategic to way way operational and back again

several times a day um was a skill I didn't have before and that that's a skill I've had to uh had to learn is just to be very uh nimble and flexible mentally in in what's coming up.

I think what you're referring to is what they call context switching.

Um, and what you try to do is you try to reduce the delay between um, moving from one context to another context.

Like 5-year-olds are great at this.

But I think the older you get, the more experience you get. It just kind of takes longer.

Yeah. Yeah.

How did you do that? Was that just practice? Was it or is there a specific way one does that? I think I'm naturally more able to do it than others because even like in my old role when I compared my ability to manage an agency versus my CFO uh brethren in other agencies that I used to talk to a lot um

I would always rate myself as a bit faster, bit quicker, being able to do things and I think I've got personally a time management um in a way that works for me down pat and my habits and my little reminders, the way I work, the way I organize things the way I do.

Okay. So, you got your little system set.

I've got my system set up to be able to

do um handle many things coming at me.

And so, um but what what I like the the context switching is is is a is the best way to is a good way of terming it. It's um

I think my habits enabled that to happen much easier. Yeah.

Than if I didn't have those those time times saving habits.

Okay. Makes sense. Okay. So, you're in the organization now. You've settled in. Yep.

Um,

what do you see? What do you see exists and what do you see that needs to be changed?

Oh, wow. So much.

It's like going into a business that's never had a full-time CFO run.

I imagine then the management team like managed based on how much cash is in the bank, right? That's probably how they manage their expenses.

Yeah. Um, so there wasn't like there was but there wasn't really a proper budgeting process. There wasn't proper processes in approving things. in they're just so small just the CEO and CEO decided to do things

um there was no process for the the major stuff that's important is what do we work on next what are we putting our money towards capital allocation

right like and um like one question I asked I asked a simple question which became a big thing which ended up becoming a process is hey we've got this huge huge um tech development team that develops our product

hey so um how do we how does he decide he's got 20 engineers under him

how does he decide what they work on next, like what's the system? And it's just basically through a few dumb questions, you found out, well, it's whatever the CEO and COO says

Mhm.

to the CTO.

Yeah.

He gets them to work on

that's on the road map. Y

but but there's other people from within the business in sales and ops and other things. And so

you must get like 20 requests a month or something. And he goes, "Yes, I do. So, how do you know what to work on?" and he says, "Well, I kind of then have a chat with the COO and whatever and we decide." So, it's it's it's like it's kind of like whoever shouts the loudest.

Mhm.

And whoever's title is the most senior

um overrides other things they might be working on as well. And that's not a good system. That's not a way to do product development or or that. So, I said what we actually need is we we we need to operate like a like a hospital. I call it a triage system.

All requests are welcome. like all patients are welcome but when you come in you're going to triage no matter who you are it doesn't matter your title

every request gets assessed on cost revenue uh improvement opportunity cost reduction opportunity regulation uh error correction all of that stuff

we rate it and then every week or every fortune whatever the cadence is appropriate for our organization we have a meeting of the same people you're talking about but the leaders but they review everything and they constantly up and down what's priority and we've got 15 things we want to work our capability might only be four or eight.

So we work on those four or eight that we've just agreed as a priority and that's what you work on.

You come back next week, do a new triarch meeting and do it again and again. So or the next Fortnite, whatever it is. So

we implemented a process because and that was an operational process which I led the the process designed for because there was no process and I'm just finding

how did you how did you implement that with credibility? You haven't been in another startup. if you haven't done this before.

Um, by by I'm not an operations person.

I guess my credibility came from explaining to them what I clearly see with fresh eyes as

um

uh the negative outputs of the current process or or nonprocess. But how do you even introduce that without being that CFO that's just trying to slow things down, right? Although because right now the CEO CO gets to do whatever they want and they they have a great vision of the organization and now I've got the CFO coming in saying I can't get it what what I want. How does one

how does one reconcile that? That that's a good question. I I think it's um the way I've sort of pitched it is what we should be doing as a big growing company,

right? And that's fully aligned with what they where where they want to be as well is a company that's big that's growing and then gets bigger and better. Yeah.

And um like I sort of said, imagine we were double the size

where we are today, which is what everybody wants to double the size every year or two.

Um we can't be running like this. We can't just be having meetings on the fly, etc. to decide what the 20 20 engineers do.

We need a system. And before we build a system, which we don't have time to do now, let's at least have a process which we can then ape into a system later on, but a process which is flexible. Um, it considers all the relevant uh factors we should be considering when making a decision. And I have a suggestion by the way, how about we try this?

So, it wasn't coming to them with this is wrong. You need to do this. Um, everything you've been doing in the past is silly or whatever. Like, yeah, it wasn't attacking. It was more like let's try something to make it better because when as we need to grow and scale and the reason they're bringing in people like me and others as well is we're reaching a stage where we need to start putting in processes and systems to scale to become even bigger.

Yeah.

Um this is one uh idea that I said let's let's try this and that's what's been implemented since.

Okay. And what what have been the negative consequences of a system like that?

Bureaucracy. So what you're doing is you're introducing

you got a form to fill out now. You got a spreadsheet to fill some stuff into, right? Correct. We have a I think we do it on notion actually, but there's a form. It's a form to fill out a request.

Um, it gets rated. There's so there's a bureaucracy in people requesting it. There's a bureaucracy in processing the request and there's a bureaucracy introduced in deciding the priority of the request.

There's three types of processes. I mean, there was one before, but there was still,

but the request was just talking sometimes, not even recorded. Yeah. The decision was very often talking and not recorded.

No records of anything of why we're doing this now. And what the benefit of it is because sometimes the benefit of a of a request is now. But

sometimes things change. Yeah.

And people are still working on a project which no longer has the requisite benefit that was thought of at the time. But because nothing's documented, you don't know. Instead, we've got engineers working on projects that deliver no value. So that's they're the sort of things you can iron out with this sort of process. But also ensure that with whatever limited resources you have 20 22 24 engineers that you're working on the most high priority stuff that you

that would have been a sizable impact that's probably half your cost base.

Yes.

Probably half your employees.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Um did what kind of benefits did you guys get out of that? Um I think happier engineering teams number one because like I'm not a technical person but um what I gathered from their reactions was they love seeing their work used

in in production.

Yep.

Supporting the business growing the business.

Nobody wants to work on a project or a task that doesn't really get used much doesn't get recognized and you kind of feel like well that was a bit of a waste of time. And of course some not everything works. you get that too. But um I think the engineers took it positively because they were getting directions and they they weren't um task switching doing this task and then suddenly someone with a bigger job title says no do this task and you got to stop this and do a brand new task because someone someone said it and then going back to this thing that they were nearly finished on. Like they've stopped all of that stuff because

we've now got a system of prioritization and hierarchy.

Yeah. um which gave them which actually gave the business a lot more short on what's being worked on week to week or fortnite to Fortnite. Um that's good from a number of perspectives.

It it it enables more tasks to be completed instead of task.

It enables the right things to be completed and because the right things are being completed,

we're we're providing the product features and things for certain clients existing or new. So then more revenue is being generated from that. Yeah. which enables like a flywheel of more y more more resources to go around.

Okay. So, we've got our cost base sorted out. We've got good processes around that part of our organization. Now, if we turn our mind to original question was, you know, how do we grow and not run out of cash? So, now let's think about the growth part of the organization.

How were things running before before you arrived from a finance perspective?

Um, so we were an early stage startup. So like most early stage startups, we we raise capital. We spend the money to build our product.

And when we run out of money, we go back and ask for more capital.

Um and uh

and you always run out before you expect. You spend you meet your cost budget. You never meet your revenue budget. Every startup has the same.

Pretty much the same.

Yeah. Um but you know, once you've got a product that starts to gain traction in market, which we did. Yep.

And great. You got some revenue coming through, which is fantastic. and that revenue starts to grow and grow and grow. That gives your investors

uh compared to other investments they're making a bit of confidence that you're on to something because you're selling in the open marketplace, people are giving you real cash and that real cash is growing every month. Great, great story. So then it's about um what can we do to support you and grow you etc. So yeah, that's that's the background I was in. We were a growing business but we were losing money. Mh.

So that's that's that's when I walked into the business. And so the the huge focus for me immediately was how much cash do we have?

When do we run out of that cash based on our current run rate of spend

um and growth and [clears throat] um very quickly worked out

we don't even have a proper forecast of spend or growth. So we needed to build that first

to get a more accurate view. Um and I mean otherwise what I assume what they would have been doing is you know we lost 100 grand last month. We got a million bucks in the bank. We got 12 months left. That's that's probably the way things were done. Yes. But that simple analysis, which is exactly what my CEO did,

um uh is um not right and dangerously not right because

if you spend 100 grand a month, but what's your trajectory?

Yeah.

You were saying 100 then it's 120 150 like actually you already forecast four people to come into the organization that's going to be an extra selling cost. We're going to move offices. That's that's an extra rental cost etc. Why don't we just forecast out what we know forward looking expenses

and your revenue I can do it on two ways on just revenue doesn't grow or revenue grows a little bit or revenue grows to the way

we want it to grow.

Yeah.

And have three versions of a cash flow forecast which gives you three different um runways.

Right. So that's a lot more information from just doing a little bit more

little bit more financial analysis

than just doing the back of the envelope which is kind of how it was being run until this stage.

Yeah.

Okay. So you got proper forecast, you got some scenario planning, different growth levels, different cost spaces.

Yes.

Um how do you explain that to the management team once that's built? Like how did how did they use that as a tool to make decisions with?

Um I think the management team were very uh appreciative firstly appreciative of getting some information with some diligence behind it.

So how many people on the management team? How many?

Uh four on the core management team.

Okay. Cool. Okay. So quite a small team. Yeah. And like we had an expanded leadership team of about 10.

Yeah.

Um but yeah, four four of our core management team and they're a little bit um surprised as to like how how little money how little runway there was

because if you do a back of the envelope, what we spent last month, how much I got in the bank, divide one by the other, it's 10 months left.

Yeah. um it's actually uh based on the decisions we've already made um and the costs that are going to already increase

um that we could have as little as uh 5 months left not 10 months left. So that's a bit of a shock to the system. There's that level of mental security they had.

Um remember they're

CEO management team in charge of a business which employs 40 people now. So like it's not just that themselves it's you know feel quite responsible for this organization that people have come into. So to suddenly think I've only got five months left. Okay, I need to

Did you have people in that team then tell you you should not share this broader with the organization? It will scare people. They'll start looking other jobs. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah. So this is what

and and what's your view? Is your view more transparency or less transparency I'm going to be a hypocrite and say I my general view is more transparency

because I don't in my experience in corporate life I've experienced so many situations where management treat employees like mushrooms

they they feel they shouldn't let people know but

people are better knowing things generally speaking

um so they know that situation and they know the best way they can contribute to improve the situation

I find it a very command and control attitude that

oh don't let the little people worry about these problems because they'll get un unfocused on their work.

I found people are smart

like people figure this stuff out themselves.

Yes. And then

they then people go why aren't management telling us etc. They actually lose faith in management the other way around.

But also people are smart like they can work out ways to help if they know what the problems are.

They good people will find ways to help solve those problem. It's not just all in the minds of one or two people

and we able to do that. We able to be transparent at this stage.

Yeah. So the reason I'm a hypocrite is whilst I say that and that's my general view. um on stuff like this which is trying to tell people oh guys we don't have uh nearly a year cash left we've only got like four or five months left

because I was so new to the organization probably at that stage and I'm

didn't know everyone and how they'd react I said let's just keep this between us for now let's find some

you say that or you suggested that

I said that to the management team and and they agreed

they agreed yeah

yeah um

in hindsight was that the right call hindsight's fantastic

I don't think so I think I soon as you work something out and it's something so mission critical like I fell into the old

command and control let's not worry little people about about these problems uh mentality maybe that was ingrained in me from 25 years in a corporate

um but actually uh it's

there's no one who would have been afraid or ran away

whatever like people just need to know what the situation is

um

I think there's so much value to be gained from CEOs and management teams um sharing information about their business with the people in the business.

Um and uh obviously keeping aside you know corporate confidential stuff that you can't share

like when you're doing an M&A and only certain people can can know about that but generally what's happening in your business people should know and I think people feel way more connected and way more trusting of management

um the more you the more you share with them. So so now you know we we share uh revenue figures with everyone in the company. we we share um what's happening with the capital and um investment rounds and stuff that we're doing with everyone in the company. So they're aware we give them all monthly updates and things like that. So um that wasn't the case before.

And what was the impact when you know the core management teams figured out the runway is not what we expected.

Well, how did they react?

Um yeah, it was surprised uh but they understood. First thing is they check the calculations and quietly check the model, make sure it works quite explained that. So they okay the numbers add up so that's fine. So you come to the realization okay so we've we've got this left then it it we we then brainstorm as to what what we need to do

right and

are we going to go out for more capital now are we going to put pauses on the cost expansion that we had planned or not um let's look at the revenue what uh how real is that how quickly can that come in can that be accelerated so how or whatever so

it was like assessing all of those three things. Um, and

and how long you had you been at the company for now?

A month.

Month. Oh, wow. So, you probably wouldn't have had that much street cred yet, would you?

No. No. So, I I'm and like self-aware enough to give. This is what I found. Here's my calculations. This is our situation. Uh, this is what we're doing. Here's a quick forecast, etc. So, I'd done all the groundwork to come up with the analysis to

then have a discussion as to what do we do? And so then at that stage I didn't have enough cred to then lead the conversation.

I had enough cred to give them an analysis of a problem but not actually um tell them what we should do cuz I didn't know enough about the business.

I mean so I'm on on a bunch of company boards often I find some CEOs when they're given this harsh truth they just fall into denial.

Um they're like no we're going to grow our way out of this problem. It's not a costbased problem. You know we can always raise more money if we need to. There's nothing to worry about him.

You sound like my CEO. That's exactly the the is that denial? I'm not sure. Uh, sorry, but like

it's it's it's a very strong optimist optimism bias.

It's a very optimism bias and

which is not always grounded to reality.

It's not always grounded and I think the CO has a um default setting of well, let's not spend more money if we're about to run out.

Um, which is a very negative bias, right? So there's a there's a tension there, but all those things you mentioned um are all the things my CEO did say, we'll grow out of this. We're going to get this, etc. We shouldn't

we have this deal coming on and they're going to sign up.

And even if you need to raise more capital, I'll just go to my major investors, they'll give me more capital. So So don't worry about it. And I'm

How do you handle that a month into an organization? You've just been unemployed. You don't want to lose your job again.

Correct.

Y that went through my mind.

Yeah. instantly like the first month when I'm uncovering I'm going I've just got this job and we won't be out of money in four months finally I want to go back to the job market again and and and that sucked.

Yeah. Yeah. That that went through my mind and um

but what gave me a bit of confidence was not only the CEO who had this um optimism which may or may not be grounded CEO or CEO sorry CEO. Yep. Not only did you have this incredible optimism which I didn't think was grounded in reality on all of the points but semi-reality

but being a bit you have to be a bit conservative in these situations or what if all of that doesn't happen then we are going to run out of money then what do we do

um my COO who was doing the finances part-time before I I joined

were they co-founders the CEO and CO or the

CEO came on later afterwards okay

um the CEO and the tech the CTO were the co-founders So him who's had who has a lot more financial mouth and experience because he was doing that before I came on board

um and the CEO and the CTO none of them were worried

which um so if I was a C CFO that would worry be that no one's worried

no and the reason they were not worried is because

they were very confident in their product and their sales pipeline which there is data for

um and already grown for 20 to 40 people in the year just before I joined

and they have a product that is growing very fast because it's catching in the market. So the um I think what gave me confidence that we're not going to run out of money in 4 months is the revenue forecasts we had and the sales pipeline we had

if anything they were conservative.

They were not pie in the sky stuff when if it doesn't happen we're going to run out of money. Um and um our constraint was actually a product

getting product and currencies up and live so people can transact in different currencies so that these customers can then come on board. There's a little bit of regulatory onboarding with every customer in our industry etc. which adds a bit of delay which one thing we don't have is time when we got four month runway.

Um by the way the four four five month runway wasn't the worst case the one year was the best case. It's it's summer somewhere in

but so as a CFO wouldn't you be petrified that other people aren't afraid.

Initially I was but I had this conversation with the COO and actually asked him why because it said

cuz like it I know what you're saying but you don't know the business that all these clients that we have in the pipeline will turn on the moment we get this currency live get this rate with this country etc this payment method etc. So um and he co was a head of sales and operations. So he knew all of that intimately.

Um and some of those clients were being onboarded right now. Some of those currencies were being uh turned on right now, which meant in the next 4 weeks, you'll see some of that currency flow start to happen. You'll see some of that revenue start to land in in the next month in

and the following month in a full month as well. Yeah.

So you'll actually start to see the trajectory. So the burn rate that you're looking at now should be less and less which extends your runway every every month. Obviously, if you spend more than your

y

then your revenue is growing, then the burn rate.

Did you believe him at the time?

Um, I think I had no choice but to believe him. Um, there was no reason for me to doubt him.

Well, but I hadn't seen

I've got no doubt he believed himself.

Yes.

But did were you able to believe him in that moment?

More than 50%.

Okay. because of the track record he had had. Yeah. In his previous three, four months like showing all these new clients coming in on different currencies and how they're coming in. So I could believe the pipeline. Okay. Cuz that's what he was running often. Um so I had some more hot water or

I'm fine. I I had no no reason to doubt him.

Yeah.

Um it was just uh I hadn't had

any experience within the company, any solid experience or claim

to have a reason to doubt you. Um, so I think like we had to go with it, but I had to keep

a strong eye on the finances and the cash flow and the burn rate and the revenue growth rate and and

did you guys make any changes based on that forecast, that budget, that meeting?

Yeah. What what kind of stuff did you No, not not immediate. Um but I think look despite the um despite the uh optimism of my CEO um yeah we did slow down some of the hiring the new hires we had some of the new heads that would have just increased the burn anyway right

correct saying look

um we've got this pipeline that needs to be

you convince them to do that because often I found when a CEO or a head of tech or head of sales um they think the way to solve this is to spend more is to spend more on sales, spend more on marketing. It's it's a growth problem.

Often I find CFOs default to it's a costbased problem because that's the only thing you you can control in a short amount amount of time.

So what you've said is you've helped them think, well, let's not increase our cost base. How did you do that? Cuz they would have said, no, no, but we need this engineer to build this feature to sign this customer up, and if you do that, we'll we'll net it out ahead.

Yep. Yep. So I said look I I said I said in the short term in the next four or five months we have an engineering team of 22 or 23

which is a huge team by the way that's that's a very team

sizable team

let's clearly articulate the highest value projects they can work on

and delete not delete pause all these other projects they're working on and reassign them and you know that that triage process I described earlier one of of them is revenue growth, potential revenue growth.

Mhm.

Let's order it by that.

Yeah.

Okay. Let's work on the highest revenue generation projects and the other ones which are

Yeah.

regulatory cost avoidance or or features blah blah blah. They they can just go down a list.

Let's reassign 20 of those 24 onto the high revenue generation projects. We don't need to hire more people to get more revenue to get the product delivered to to then turn on the ability to have these clients come on board, etc. So, I hear you and I understand why that was done. But if you went off to one of your CFO tea parties,

Yes.

and told your CFO buddies, that's what we're doing.

Yeah.

They probably would have said that's probably not enough.

Yeah.

If you've only got 5 months

Yeah.

doing something that minuscule like not not recruiting more heads. Yeah.

Like that's not enough of a drastic change.

Yeah. That's right. Correct. So, I think the moment I did the analysis, I'm already preparing to go to investors for capital,

right? because

so you got your plan B kind of lining and so whilst we didn't verbalize and talk about a plan B

um I had already started developing okay we'll do this but I've got one month maybe two months of believing you guys

and if it's not happening we're like I'm saying we need to stop all this crap now we need to go to get capital it'll take 3 months I've got 3 months left

and it'll take you 3 months and you can't go to capital when you've only got a month left cuz you're just desperate payrolls are made

all that stuff So we basically once you get to t minus 3 months is when I like

I I stop believing you to like we need to do what I say now otherwise

none of us will have a job in 3 months time. So that's I

did that end up happening.

No it never we did we never but like no but you're asking why why we didn't do more. It's like

the management team had built this company from

a normal startup developing a product not much revenue to having a product that's starting to catch fire in the market. Yeah. and having a sales pipeline and had now built a manage an engineering team and a sales team and um I had enough confident that they knew what they were doing that they believed their own data which they they were talking to me about and I said okay let's let's see it this month and

um like if I worked out the worst case is 5 months

and nothing's happening for a month or two then then we go instantly into

um save the company mode kind of kind of stuff but we didn't we didn't get there but that that was in the back of my mind but you go right if I was a CFO and someone told me what did you do when you only got 5 months left I would just stop hiring

that's not going to save your company

but um uh we did delay a couple of roles to your earlier question um just because they were not critical to we we basically I got them to agree

most important thing now is um revenue growth

right everything we do in the company should be aligned to revenue growth every project etc there are some hires that are not uh revenue growth um we can pause them for a month or two. So that's all we did.

Let's put all our efforts into this.

Let's change on what we're working on. Um cuz every department works on different priorities.

All the priorities got to be around revenue growth to support that

and let's really kickstart that or not kickstart some work but let's put a fire on that.

Yeah. focus on that for the next couple of months

because we've got all these customers waiting to be waiting to go revenue waiting to be collected

because we're we're you know payments processing company that the moment they onboard and turn on money just starts flowing

and you produce financials what once a month I guess for this team is it monthly or

monthly financial

okay so a month comes and goes

y

um what's happened

uh we've had a little bit of traction um the burn rate has reduced which is good

um not as much as I thought but there are delays and like in in your business. Um what you forecast and what actually happens is uh sometimes different

and then you analyze why those delays were and um there were delays in onboarding uh regulation. So basically the timing of when they started

was later so you come to that end of that month and like we do our financials very quickly um so you know

you know within within a couple of days of the month ending you've got my result. M

so then I discussed that and saying look we can't go another month and be behind plan

and they said well we won't be now because

we forecast let's say 2 weeks of this client but they came in only for um 6 days instead of 14 days but the next week next month it will be 30 days out of 30 anyway so it's not going to matter y

so it's only the new clients that they're forecasting and so then we said

what are the new clients that you're forecasting to come into this month like on day 15 is it going to be day 15 or day 22 or whatever

and um That's that's really where the you quickly work out where the variance is likely to come from y

is the start date of new clients not the existing clients cuz unless their volume drops or or whatever. So

um you start to get a feel for the the natural run of your business. What importance of onboarding and quick onboarding and all that. So what impacts in our world and every business will be different is the volume processed and depending on the industry and actually what percentage share of their volume you have that that can change and also start dates and end dates of contracts. So

there are actually a few key things and if if you just focus on that and nut that out properly

you get a very accurate view of your revenue which then guides you for the for the for the rest of your cost. But after one month came um we had improvement not as much as we had forecast in the initial meeting when I said we got 5 months left

but definitely improvement and after 2 months um there was a lot more improvement probably

and it was all revenue side improvement was it

absolutely absolutely revenue side and that's again

all that's doing is extending the runway so now at the end of two months I don't have 3 months left I don't have five months left I've now got eight months left on my worst case

yeah because the run rate is now much better because the burn rate is much lower. So, so it keeps

if I'm the CFO, CTO, I'm thinking great, I can go higher those heads now.

Yes.

Um, what was your view to that? I assume that's what they they thought they wanted to go hire some more people straight away. Yes, we got And was that the right thing to do or wrong thing to do? What did you advise them?

Yes. Um but let's um let's talk about which roles, how many, when and what the cost is

and let me guide you in my head. Let me tell you, but to them let me guide you as to how much we can afford and when.

Yeah.

So that we don't end up spending more than we should. This is exactly the role a CFO should be doing is guiding the organization to grow in a sustainable way. So you never hire too many too quickly that you suddenly have these conversations about save the company 3 months to go kind of thing.

You never want to be in that situation. Um and if you are it's usually revenues fallen because of a a failure of your product to land market or you've just spent too much you you've grown too quickly. Yeah.

In in your cost space. So

um you can you can reduce costs but that's not going to

do much for your long-term future. Your long-term future all has to be about revenue growth. So the more like I also gravitate more towards um improving uh product features capability

for things that land in market but the decisions we have to make Japart I think finance can only um ask the questions and probe

but it's a group decision which often the CEO often has to um decide upon is which product features are we going to work on and why are those in market versus a option A, option B, option C. But

how do you understand that? Cuz um so you used to be a CIO before I got into my CEO career. And

if you're a good CIO, CTO, you can obate everything.

Yep.

Um why do I need 25 heads instead of 22?

Mhm.

Well, you can make up any story.

Yeah. Cool.

And any CFO, any CEO will not be able to see through it.

But conversely, a CFO will think, well, you've got 22 people.

Like like surely that's enough.

Yeah.

How did these guys justify additional headcount? And and that's such a knowing smile like in in a big company

is a knowing smile because

I think CFOs just don't bother anymore because you can be offiscated. So in fact they just

they just say no.

No they just they just tell you we need to cut you got 25. Make it make it 23.

You work it out.

They don't even bother to ask anymore.

This is I'm talking% don't even bother to ask anymore why where's the best? No no no. you know better than me,

which is code for you know how to

you you you know how to hide things from me. I can't even ask you like or tell you where to cut.

I'm just going to give you a target.

This is your cost reduction target and you go find the best way to do it.

So you're in control of your department and do it like in our startup world

um well it's it's it's a lot more nuanced than that. I mean because we are smaller and everyone

we're only at this stage 40 45 person team. We're small enough to know what people are doing and ask et the linkages that's so different like in a smaller company. The linkages between the decisions you make and what you work on and how they show up in the financials almost immediately is is so quick and apparent.

Um you're really controlling the reigns of a of a business.

But when in in a dev team to have 24 versus 22 or 25 versus 22

Yeah.

almost no one including the CTO actually probably knows what the impact of that is. They just want they just know they want to build more features.

Yes.

And the only way you do that is you hire more people. That's what they that's their natural inclination.

Yes. Yes. So um the CTO is always wanting more resources

cuz there's always more to build than they can possibly build.

Correct.

And the only solution is more heads to build stuff.

Correct. Correct. And uh but sometimes more heads doesn't

necessarily result in reduction of time for projects.

It depends on the project and what you're what you're working on. Um what it does do is builds capability of more projects to work on. But you know to develop a feature might be something quick a week or two. Sometimes a feature can take months.

Y

and having more people working on it doesn't necessarily reduce the time.

Yeah.

So therefore I'm making a CFO. So all I'm doing is increasing the cost but not reducing the time which doesn't give me faster revenue.

But the problem is the CFO would have told you that reduces time

cuz they would have generally believed that. They would have honestly would believe that. And yeah,

how does any CFO or anyone just go back and document and track those decisions and hold people accountable like hey you said this is going to reduce time effect no one remembers that you just you make those decisions and you you keep going

and you don't hold people to account because one that's a very ugly conversation to have

and the CTO just says I there's stuff I didn't know I didn't know that we had this complexity this client needed this or this country needed this regulation we didn't know about. So I I'm going to tell you a little secret of um

my life in corporate u on that point is

I quickly discovered when I was asking for capital uh expenditure in my organization I'd have to fill in a form and give give some revenue analysis and this and that

and it was really hard to justify

and then um one project we did and we didn't end up with the revenue that we wanted from this project

and I discovered I was never called up on it. No one ever checked up on me and account.

Then I'm thinking so this is just a process either to slow us down for asking for capital

or just something people go through to make a decision at a point in time but then no one ever circles back in this organization.

So you know what I did from there then on

I just made up the numbers.

You just made up fairy tales. Complete fairy tales. Yeah. just like, "Oh, we need to do this." And often with the not making up numbers for the sake of it, but things we wanted to do to grow the company

where a global team in New York would often just say, "No, unless you meet these certain criteria." I'd just make up the numbers to meet the criteria.

It would get approved. No one would ever come back to see what the benefits that we claimed were actually realized. In many cases,

uh they were or met 80% which means not fully realized. No one held us to account. But what we did do was grow our business and we we got the resources we wanted to um do things and we and we didn't end up growing the business maybe not to the perfect ratio but otherwise we would have never been able to grow. So coming back to this startup world

a dev team can always make up any numbers which because I'm not the subject matter expert I wouldn't be able to

say that's right or not right. I you kind of have to trust your CTO you know when they're coming to you with something. So look, I mean cuz I mean something like sales is easy, right? Cuz a sales person got a target, they've got a quota, you add into the forecast. Yeah. Anything that generates revenue is generally quite easy to put into a spreadsheet.

Yes.

Anything that holds costs or builds features.

Yes.

Support even onboarding you can kind of justify because I can onboard more customers and more transactions.

Mhm.

Because I often find CFOs of large organizations and perhaps you found this to be a change. CFOs of large organizations where it's a pure cost element. Yep.

You look for reasons to say no.

Yes.

The default is to say no.

Mhm.

Um because you don't understand the cost space. The manager probably doesn't understand the cost base. Um if cost goes out of control or you know companies die in smaller organizations often CFOs need to find ways to say yes.

But say yes to things where um they don't have complete information and nor does the CTO actually understand or have complete information. How how did you make that transition?

So, yeah, it's it's that's one of the things I've had to unlearn and relearn. Um I've had to unlearn the uh natural instinct to have complete or almost complete information before making a decision.

Yeah.

Often now um I have 60 to 70% of the information. I need to make a decision, but I have to make a decision and I make a decision and we go with it and we move on to the next decision or the next issue. Um getting things good enough and out the door and actions started is better than

waiting, waiting, waiting to have all the information to make probably the same decision you're going to make anyway, but now you've just lost time and opportunity. So the speed at which um decisions are made and business goes in my organization or probably most startups is far far greater than the speed at which decisions and are made and also the speed at which businesses grow. And I think there's a bit of a linkage there actually in in a larger organization. The faster you make decisions,

even if they're not perfect and you know they're not going to be perfect, they're not going to be optimal because you don't have all the data, but the faster you make decisions and put them into action and get things done.

Yeah.

The quicker the outcomes happen.

But I think it's too I think it's obviously the speed I 100% agree. Um but I reckon it's the default often has to

I don't agree. Yeah. Tell me why.

I I'll tell you why.

I know what you're saying. Cuz

you don't have the luxury of time or money to sit around and judge.

You don't have the luxury of knowing

or knowing.

Yeah.

Yeah. Cuz in a large company, someone's done the product 30 years before me and the systems before me and like the market positioning before me.

We're working all that out as we grow. We're working out our market positioning, our product, our client base, everything. We're working at everything. Um the default has to be yes because if you start with a default of no

um

you will not get anything done because there's so many reasons to say no to decisions in a startup. There's so much unknowns

almost every decision like an a good objective CFO would say no to everything cuz everything has a cost space against it

and a huge uncertainty especially very early stage when you were sub 10 employees. Yeah

40 employees you have some knowledge you have some revenue you have some history. I I I'd agree. Look, I mean I mean you asked me a question is that the the default is yes and I said I'm not sure.

Whilst I agree the default should be yes, it it just can't be a blind yes. I think that's what it's

it's a it's a yes with justification.

Yeah.

Mhm.

Right. So what what I mean by that is

hey we should we should buy this company that's going to say we should invest 10 more people in our ops team. We should invest uh six people in customer services. We should put four people in um tech team. We should put four people in uh uh sales in overseas or whatever.

Yeah.

All good ideas. So if we said yes to all of them, we'd be bankrupt in next month cuz I I can't put on 20 people in a month then still have money.

Yeah.

So it's a it's a yes with justification. So you it's it's a yes but almost with prioritization on what we do

cuz we're very good at coming up with ideas.

Mhm.

That's actually that's the same in a big company or a small company. If you if you employ good people, good ideas come from everywhere. Which is another reason I'm circling back to what I said earlier

why you shouldn't have this command and control structure because that there's a bit of an assumption that that only the ideas and only the solutions come from the top. Ideas come from everyone and everywhere. You employ good people, people will come up with good ideas to help the business grow.

Yeah.

So having good ideas is not the problem in a startup. M

um the problem is deciding what to work on, not running out of money and making sure what what you work on has the best bang for buck, the best value for for what you're doing right now, this quarter or this year

because

2026 for us as a business now we're 60 plus people compared to 40

is very different to at the start of last year. The evolution of your company is is is very fast.

Yeah. Yeah.

So let's just maybe close off on the cost base side of things. What about on the growth side of things? That's that's a question. How do we grow, not run out of cash?

Mhm.

How do you how how do you think about growth investments? So, you know, that'd be investments in your sales, your marketing that um

I'm sure every day of the week they want to open up into a new country, they want a new currency.

Y how do you think about that? So, we look at where does our growth come from

and so I can now talk to my business, my specifics of my industry. So, our growth is coming from um uh new markets where we don't operate in at the moment. So there's a decision to be made to invest in people and resources and systems there to

and that that that's geographically new countries, isn't it?

Geographically new countries. Um new product.

How many countries are you guys in now?

Um we operate we do 22 currencies. So yeah, at the moment we're growing every year. Um there's also uh new products. So um that's the whole tech team, product development team.

Yeah.

Um there's new currencies. So um

oh sorry, not new currencies. That's the market. It's new payment methods within. So, so for example, in Australia, you can pay via credit card, debit card, Google pay, Afterpay or Pay ID or there's five different method in Philippines, you'll have

whatever the local payment system pay in Vietnam etc. So,

um you can like we've got one system of account to account in pay ID in other countries there's multiple systems. So, so there's the more

products and features you enable for your clients in payments, the more you you open yourself up to more market opportunities and and landing more clients.

And then growth also comes from share of wallet for each client that you have. So if you're existing clients,

it's not always the case that you're getting all of their volume. Sometimes you're getting a portion of their volume.

So then how do we increase that? And that's mixture of good account management um proving your ability and your product that it's safe, it's compliant over a period of time. So then go back to the clients like can you now give us more or can you give us can we do a better deal for you etc.

How do you get CEOs to think about that? Cuz often I find CEOs are more focused on you know new markets, new regions cuz that that's so much more fun and exciting.

Yes.

And going back to existing clients and account managing them and getting more share of wallet

correct

is a lot more boring.

A lot more boring. Yeah. Um um it's hard to get that. It's very hard.

How do you how do you get that focus there? Because obviously, if you ask me, it's always easy to get more from your existing clients.

Yes.

Cuz they already know you, they already like you, they're already transacting something.

I don't know. I think I think CEOs are always after the fun stuff, you know.

No, totally. Like I mean that's the benefit of the job, right? You get to do whatever you want. You got someone else do everything else. CEOs would much rather be able love to announce just launch a new office in Tokyo or New York or whatever than

um not be able to announce we doubled our volume on an existing client, you know, like that's

that's a boring press release.

It's it's the same financially, but it's one's one's way more fun than the other, right? So,

um I think um

I don't I don't think I've got my CEO to focus on that. Um it's it's it's a portfolio of things we're working on all the time. M

so coming back to the question of how to get the growth there's there's operation there's geographic growth there's product uh growth there's payment method growth

um

and then there's um like share share of wallet growth as well so probably four different ways my revenue can increase

so some of them are quick and some of them are slow burn like the new geographic market ones so you you then have to uh work about is almost like I for me it was almost like time timelining it like we start putting money in here allocating capital here

what's our expected timeline in market A and market B according to individual nuances regulatory hurdles etc to actually being able to get a license or partner with someone who has a license to then actually start generating revenue and what would that be and how often etc. So you can develop like a not a cash flow forecast but a business forecast of each of those four streams and

um

like the ability to you know the fifth one is just um more more clients in existing market. So that's that's your sales team.

Yeah.

Which you don't need to spend more on necessarily because you've already got the sales people and those generate more revenue every it'll just kind of recruit and snowball. Correct. So, so you're looking at those four or five buckets of how revenue can come into your organization. So, that's how I've mentally compartmentalized it for for my company.

And then you have that conversation with the CEO and COO uh generally on um which of those areas we we want to invest in and when. And so what I try to do is

not to say no to anything

because then you then I am the CFO that says no all the time and that's not what I want to be.

Um basically um try and categorize them into quarters.

So so no one feels like their objectives are not happening this year. It's just a quarter four instead of quarter three quarter two quarter because so my job is to like add capital.

Okay.

This is this is how much we can afford to do based on our forecast. here's what I propose we do in quarter 1, quarter two, quarter three, quarter four. And then that frames discussion to see this is what's up for discussion.

Yeah.

What's not up for discussion is how much money can we spend because the CFO's done the analysis and told us how much we have available. If we want to maintain our runways, all that stuff

and what is up for discussion is what we do and when we do it. Yeah.

And I see CFO's given his recommendation. Well, let me play with it. And often that's framing it in that way gets the uh right people involved I guess at the right level of decision-m and also gets their buy in as well because they're the ones that have come up with the plans and sometimes they say we also need to do this and this things I've not thought of but then that's all always hard cuz I'm sure as a CFO you probably think I wouldn't mind building a bit of a war chest a couple dollars in the bank just in case something goes wrong.

Yep. Um but then the management team were probably thinking now we got to try this, we got to spend here, we got to grow here. How do you balance those?

I don't I don't have that luxury. So I had to get used to not having that war chest because

when you're in a big

global company, you never look at cash every day because you've got millions and also you're backed by a billion dollar company. You're never running out of cash.

Like um here I you should be looking at your cash every day as a CFO of a small company and I do. Y

um my war chest mentally is is the 3 months. The 3 months it's tus 3 months

because that's how long it would

realistically take if you went to invest. I need capital now before we run out.

It probably take you one to 3 months to get it.

Yeah.

So t-minus 3 months that's my war chest, right? That's that's what I don't touch. So when I do my forecast and how much we've got to spend etc. I'm always keeping three months away for a for a so that we don't

And have you have you had to raise capital while you've been there? You okay? We have. Yeah. But we'd raise capital probably 8 months in. So

someone like you know like me um I'm in a big company I wouldn't get involved in that. That's a corporate function would do.

So now I am the corporate function.

You're everything to do with

everything. So yeah, I got fully involved in everything uh on the capital race which we did um 8 months into my journey here and now we're under doing another exercise right now to to do another one and I feel much more

um grounded, much more um capable of running this very efficiently compared to the first time because the first time I did it I was learning as I go on on. So one of the companies on on the board we we always have this discussion cuz you know whenever there's time to do a raise I always wonder in my head let's use your numbers what if we reduced our dev team from 22 to 15

then we'd break even tomorrow

then we'd have no need to raise

correct but then we would grow slower

how do you know that how do you know that as a CFO that you'd actually grow slower because often as a board member even I'm more obated out

I don't see any of that dayto-day what kind of questions could I as a board member ask a CFO of a smaller company to be like, well, I'm in a board meeting. I say to you, why don't we just cut our heads by seven? Let's cut out seven heads. I don't know, that's 100 grand a month.

Mhm.

We'll start breaking even.

Yep.

And then and then we'll grow from there instead of having to dilute and dilute and raise more money.

Okay. So,

how do you evidence that we'll grow slower? Okay. So, one of the mentioned five buckets on how we grow.

The slowest way to grow is entering a new market because all the setup and months delayed to do it. Um the two fastest ways to grow are getting your sales team to get more share of wallet from an existing customer

and getting the product team to develop more products to see

which is more currencies more payment rails etc because once you've got them available

the people in your pipeline and even existing customers will literally turn on and on board and do it. the

but then if I as on the board I'll say to you look then why don't we just for the next 6 months under index on dev and overindex on sales why don't we cut seven heads out of dev put two more into sales grow existing wallet and get that money sooner the answer to that question is

um

a lot of the major revenue opportunities in our pipeline are waiting on this payment method to be turned on and made available in Vietnam and this one in Africa and this one in Japan And that's what our dev team are working on. So if we just put more salespeople on or just focused on sales. Um the they need the additional products to unlock those revenue opportunities.

And if how real are they? Um cuz you always hear from a dev team, right? If we only had feature XY Z, I'd sell this or a sales team. If only I had this feature, I'd sell this.

Yep.

Would these be like contracts that are signed up waiting for a feature or someone who says they will sign up once a feature is ready?

Both. Both. So there are signed up contracts waiting for a feature to turn on and there are other real which is real and there are others which are just pipeline. They're not a customer yet but they will be once we turn this on.

Um so like the the thing is the dev team. So there there's a nuance here. The dev team work on

um developing these product features which are then sold into market to create revenue but they're also doing lots of other stuff like compliance related activity etc. So to maintain the payment rails and licenses in all these countries

you have to show um all sorts of things um stuff to do.

Yeah. So there's a lot of stuff there which is not revenue generating

but it is required as a as a

price of entry in that market and you can't turn that off

but you got to have compliance, you got to have risk, you got to have

KYC, you got to have all all this kind of stuff in in different markets. So um yeah turn if if we the way I so the way I kind of think about it if we reduce the dev team to save salaries

the stuff you can't get rid of is the compliance and risk stuff so three or four heads will always be three or four

which means instead of having 18 people release products I've now got 14 people release products and I've just told you

the releasing of products leads to revenue. Yeah. So, you're just you're saving money, but you're you're shortening your window to to sorry, you're lengthening your window to get to get more product.

Let me say that another way. Devil's advocate. Um, okay. Look, you got 60 heads. Yeah.

Let's just not increase that.

Let's just accept that we can only go into one region per quarter or whatever whatever the velocity of that team is. Yep.

Let's just not increase that.

Mhm.

That's uh cuz you'll come to cash flow neutral very quickly then if you're not already there because you'll keep growing your revenue. You won't grow your cost base. we won't grow our cost base. Our revenue will grow. Um uh and we'll grow slower than what we're doing by investing in certain areas.

So thing is as a growing business like we have already achieved cash flow neutrality

and as we grow every month we're now um I should know this term with the opposite of cash burn. We're cash generating.

Y almost no startup CFO knows the opposite of cash burn. So cash, you generate cash.

We generate cash. Cash flow positive. Cash flow positive and we're slowly increasing that every month.

Now we're not a big company yet. We're still a startup or scaleup as I think we call ourselves now. So that money the objective isn't to

get that money and sit on it and make a return and you know generate 10% ebida or something like there's no such thing. Our objective is to reuse that money into the business to grow our top line. Right. Which is either coming from and this is the real tension to invest in the next quarter more in sales or or more in the ops and ops ops and dev more in sales and more ops and the other corporate functions that we we do a little bit around here and there as as we grow.

So my team's gone from 1.6 to two people you know like this over the 18 months but not in a big way.

The sales and offices was all where it's at. That that's where the tension is. But sometimes you go and get I want geographic expansion. Yeah.

So this year we've decided on two markets. By the way, we

see initially wanted four or five.

Yeah.

And I've not negotiated her down, but I thought of

we've whittleled it down to two because that's what's doable and given the length of time involved and cost

to actually from the moment you enter employ someone to actually generate revenue. Yeah.

It's 6 to 12 months kind of lead time engine. But so you got to start those exercises, but nothing's going to happen this year from the money you put in. So it's an investment into next year that future revenue. So those um those conversations we do have and we we just try to make sure that we have uh I guess with the with the CFO's guidance

um we're allocating capital in the best way to uh sustainably grow. If we did what you just suggested, which was

yeah,

just not employ anymore, just just stay where we are,

we would grow, but the rate of growth would be lower than if we reinvest that money that we're generating into more people. I guess the lens of me saying that was more around if you're still burning cash. But if you're neutral,

Yeah.

you spend spend every additional dollar you have, right, to grow more.

We have to grow. Yeah. Otherwise, what's the point of sitting on it?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So, now go back to the original question. How do we grow and not run out of cash? Like how do you make that decision about I mean every department wants more heads, right? Every single department there's not a department that wants uh any less heads.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

How do you make that decision as a management team and how do you help kind of inform that decision?

Okay. So that's a a good question. Like I mean we we're doing this exercise now. We I'm in the middle of doing budgeting for next year 26. Um we've had our end of year management catchups and you know um trying to uh CEO trying to corral everyone onto the priorities for next year and what we think we might be doing and then every department head has gone away and thought about that in in light of what we want to be doing for 26

and come up with a list of people they want and why etc. um that's come back to us and now the job for us for me as a CFO

you look at that great we're run out of money next month so this the this is this is my process and like I'll take

basically start with all requests what everybody wants

put them into my spreadsheet

I've got my revenue forecast I've got my staff cost forecast and I've got my opex forecast that ends up ends up with a profit forecast

so you just go through each of them individually and um you know once you've got you have to really look at your revenue first off because

the revenue

guides

guides everything. So I have a very strong look at revenue with my CIO

revenue forecasting

and have you gotten better at revenue forecasting?

We have now

18 months in

like even 3 6 months in I I can ask questions as a CFO but um I don't really know the the flow of the business properly yet. 18 months in I'm very aware of it. So I can ask very relevant questions and I can probably spot too much optimism in forecast and there's a level to which

myself as CFO and sales and ops need to come to a happy medium or compromise of saying okay this is our forecast.

Yeah

because they'll always forecast too much. I'll always poo poo it

and we need to we need to come come to something and say once we agree so that goes in first. Um the staff cost forecast is what we currently have plus what everybody has asked for. That all goes in.

Opex expenses is pretty easy to forecast for me as a small business. So do that.

You add that all up. You see what it looks like and it looks horrible and we say okay so how much do we need to cut down to make it work and when and how etc. So

that's a conversation. The way I do it is I do my own first CFO cut. Firstly I I show the

unadjusted unadulterated version of this is what everybody wants. this is the revenue costs and that and you can see how ugly this looks guys we this is not a budget we're going to run out of in in March or something like that right

and so um this is what I recommend we do

and these are all the roles that have fallen out

so of the growing from 60 to 120 next year we can only afford to go from 60 to 90

there's 30 roles we can't hire y

because we just don't have enough money unless the revenue starts to really shoot up

um I don't have enough money that we're actually going to go back into negative territory again and run out of money again and our war chest that I have is going to whittle away to zero by next date. So, um I work out something that works out for us how much we can grow, how much how many rolls we can afford to put in based on the revenue forecast and our opex forecast

that still has enough money sensibly to grow um still has a war chest etc. And um I've just all I've done is come up with a number some suggested roles. But the like in my head it's the same process as what I what I did before. The number is not arguable.

The number is the number. Like this is this is the number. What we can talk about is

which of those 60 extra rolls we put in and take out, you know. So I'm saying we can only afford 30 30 out of 60. So which of those do you want to put in? Here's my suggestion. Here's the timing. But we can play around with that. So that's a process that I think has to be like a budgeting process like

and then the four of you guys get together and you trade it what comes in what goes out. It has to be directed and run and facilitated by me.

Yeah. In finance. CO

um

there's no you do that with all four of you together or one by one. I start in my organizations it'll be different in others but in my organization I do it with the COO

because they control sales and ops which is the majority.

Yeah.

And then I get the the CTO involved. um for his point of view on what he wants. And then once I've done all that

with them,

I sort of present to the CEO with them together and say, "Here's what we've worked on, here's what makes sense, here's etc. why

and the CEO will usually um adjust a few things because they don't agree with everything that we've done or whatever, but we're not doing a whole detailed exercise with a CEO cuz

got so many other things to work to worry about." But yeah, we we get it to a stage where it's probably 80 90% complete,

which is our budget, which is our call to action, which is our resource plan, which is our workforce plan.

It's all things in one

and it's it's a pretty important document. Of course, the budgets change the month after they're produced, but it's a very important directional document. Goes to the our board, etc. And investors even we share stuff with them as to what our plans are for this year. And um we sort of come to a happy medium and that that yeah big goes to the board for sign off becomes our formalized budget. Y

and yeah that's that's basically how we how we roll.

Okay fair enough. So so what's the what's your macro thought then like you know about how do you decide on what to invest in like you know how do we grow not run out of cash? Well what's like the big macro learning that that you Um I'm speaking from a small company environment. Um, you have to go after things that give you the best and bang for buck and it's not always going to be a financially optimal decision.

Mhm.

Like my instincts would tell me.

Yeah.

I've got limited money and there are five ideas which which gives me the most revenue first. Just do that then number two, number three. Sometimes it's a portfolio of things you have to do which might be option one, three,

then two, then four or something like that. Um because of

because of various reasons. Um

sequencing of products. Um being able to show something for another opportunity later on down the track. Yeah.

Uh gaining credibility in a market. Uh demonstrating something for a regulatory environment,

etc. So the order in which you do things isn't always the finance most financially optimal.

Yeah. So to decide where to put your capital it's it's a combination of financial analysis, operational need and strategic uh strategic direction which necessarily involves a conversation with the CEO, COO and CFO. Those three are the most important.

Could I suggest something different?

Sure.

Yeah. So um if I think about like what what have you effectively done? I think what you've effectively done is you've increased the level of financial knowledge across leadership team.

Yes.

over over an 18month period.

Yes. Would be that

it's that bundled with emotional intelligence.

Yeah. I think that's what allows your kind of role to succeed

to be able to meander around these complex conversations

to figure out when to say when not to say and to help educate the leadership team on financially managing an organization

cuz I mean when you worked at a large organization every senior exec would have had deep finance experience they would have read P&Ls every day of the week

you know multinational of course

that's just a given

in a small startup where people have a lot of domain expertise and you might have a first time CEO and a first time CTO and a first time co

um they'll know their area quite well but they tend on average to not be very financially literate.

So I reckon what you've actually done quite effectively is actually increase their financial literacy and that's what's allowing you to have these kind of complex conversations.

I hadn't thought of it like that. I think everything you've said there is bang on like even my CTO who is the most um uh financially illiterate of the three talk we just mentioned there. Yeah,

that sounds bad. He's not true, but like doesn't

it's not his thing.

He has uh several times remarked to me how um uh happy he is that we've got a CFO on board like me

and because it gives him confidence in the numbers and the state of the business being handled

professionally, financially. Yeah.

But also, he said it's teaching me a few things I hadn't

Yeah.

never been involved in, never had to think about. I mean, he's a co-founder.

He's a technical co-founder.

Yeah.

So, he leaves the other stuff to the other CEO co-founder.

Um,

so I feel like um I guess someone with my way of working and and doing things um

uh suits this this kind of company in this kind of environment. There would be a lot of CFOs like me from large multinationals that wouldn't survive a month or two in a small startup. So there's a there's a level of um uh acceptance you need to work differently.

Yeah. But I think it's those two qualities that probably separate the ones that would succeed, the ones that wouldn't.

Yeah.

Um it's the can I educate this team?

Yes.

Cuz if you don't educate them, if you're not a natural teacher,

you'll get frustrated in 3 months. You'll bang your fists on the table. Yeah.

And you'll get thrown out the door.

Yep.

And they'll probably go bankrupt 3 months later.

Probably. Yeah. [laughter] You're right.

Yeah. Yeah,

I mean because it's often it's very hard as a CEO of a smaller company to figure out, you know, when do I need a CFO and then

then how do I pick the right guy out to do that? That's

I think when you need it, it sort of comes at you.

Yeah. like my CEO realized I need this now in the course of doing that project saying

all this analysis and questions and value like this is we need this like

being absent this she could clearly see the gulf in her

capability and her decision-m versus having it by her side

so the need comes but it probably hits you at some point y

um

but then to select the right one

select the right one um

I mean she's one from one right she selected fear of fur and I'm the right one for her. Right.

Well done.

Better batting average than most.

Well done for her. Well done for me. I got I got it. I got a good job in the right in the right place, the right time.

But well done for her. She selected me and she found I don't know whether she consciously did this, but she found the right person through the project that felt would um meet the working environment of the company that we're in and the industry we're in.

I had no experience in fintech.

Yeah.

I'd never used the systems we're working on now. Um, I know nothing about the regulatory environment, who I competitors are, like just nothing about it. Just that I'm a good competent CFO. What she might have seen is this guy knows something I don't

and he's happy to explain it to me.

Yes.

Yeah, that's right.

They're probably the two things that that she saw and that was probably enough for her to be like, well, let me give this guy a shot.

She think if it doesn't work out, I'll go rid him next month anyway.

Um, this is the thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if it doesn't work out, you always replace them, right? So you have to give someone a shot. If you if you've identified the need for a role and you want to recruit that role, you have to give someone. So

someone you think you can work with, someone you think is going to add value and can fit in well with the organization

is good. I mean in in my role because

no one knows any as much about finance as the CFO will know about finance. um having um the right sort of CFO type that is willing to explain things and actually willing to get their hands dirty on the operational stuff as well as

sit strategically

that's a unique type of CFO that can that can do all that. Yeah, I think you know you found someone that you can do that

one you know just

so if we if you boil down the keys for your success um the ones I mentioned was the you know ability to educate your peers

um one would be the emotional intelligence to navigate these conversations.

Yes.

Is there a third or is it really just those two things? Could those two things alone allow someone from large corporate to make that transition? Um, there's one thing you haven't said, but you did say it was like an unsaid thing, but I'll add it to the list. It's it's your core competence. Yeah.

If you take that as a given said, you said is I've met people who can

talk things and communicate things. Well,

the actual core competence um it can get shielded if you have poor core competence in your craft in a large company because you layers. It gets shielded by layers. Yeah. you get shielded by layers and also there's many people doing parts of finance. Yeah.

So when I talk about finance like I'm just talking one one field in a company. Finance is

um accounts payable, accounts receivable, operational finance, budgeting, management forecasting, board reporting, investor relations, capital allocations,

all sorts of different parts of finance. And in the larger the corporation you are,

people just have one component of finance. So if your core competence isn't that great in finance, you can survive in a bigger company through being very good at a few of those things, not all of them, and working your way up through brilliant communication and presentation and networking and all that.

In a smaller company, the core competence becomes very critical

because if I was lacking in a few of those things, I couldn't do my job.

I'm expected to do all of those things

competently. So my core competence you need to be a good general accountant.

Yeah.

And

100% agree.

And there are people is who are CFOs in larger companies

who are not good allrounders as they're good in certain parts of finance but not in everything. So yeah you need that good general competence as well as those emotional intelligence which you mentioned.

Yeah I'd say.

Perfect. Well as as we wrap up I mean the question I' like to ask all our guests. I mean, what's something that you've you've known to be true that you've later found out wasn't? Something I've known to be true like in terms of my business?

Yeah. In in terms of your career,

Oh, okay. I've got one.

And maybe this has happened through my career. Maybe maybe it was true once upon a time

um that

just work hard and you'll be rewarded. M

that's a fallacy. Complete fallacy. Yeah.

It was said to me by many people when I started my career, well done. You got a good accounting job. Work hard. You you'll go far. You'll be rewarded if you work hard.

Without knowing any better. You believed it.

Yeah.

If I just put my head down and work hard, someone will notice me

will notice that young bright accountant looking for an opportunity.

Yeah.

It doesn't happen. You got to manage your own career.

Yeah. Um, one thing I' I'd say to people is working hard is one thing, but you have to be uh the promoter of your own work. Y

um, you have to seek out the opportunity.

You have to be your own cheerleader, right? Yeah. You have to be CEO of your own career. That's what you got to do. You do.

Yeah.

But that advice,

I think it's it's being given a bit more now to the younger generation coming into the workforce.

When I started my career, that was not the advice given to me. Those were being almost looked down on back then. And I would have thought

you you would be seen as being too boastful.

Yeah.

If you celebrated anything you did,

even if it was great,

right? And even when you got it, you sort of shied away. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Kind of for with the appreciation kind of stuff. It was

it was a taboo thing to um be boastful of your own achievements and things. But um

that was the only lens he was looked at.

You're either boastful or not. And it's that's not the only lens. It's it's communication. It's letting people know what you're working on. It's letting people know what you've achieved by saying this is what's been completed.

So people have a mental log of what these people are working on etc. And it's not cheerleading in the sense of shouting it from the rooftop. It's

it's it's making yourself known in an organization, making yourself valuable in an organization.

That's what gets your career

uh going and gets you the rewards that you're seeking, not just the hard work and keep your head down. That that actually doesn't work in today's world.

Good advice.

Awesome. Great. Thanks very much. Thanks for your time today.

Thanks. Thank you very much. Thanks, guys.

Cheers.

Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed [music] it. If you do want to be a guest, make sure you hit me up and do follow me on socials and [music] make sure you check out future episodes.