Jim Cook, Netflix co-founder, former CFO of Mozilla, early employee at Inuit, executive coach, and author of Substack Cook’s Playbooks, returns to the podcast for the third time. In this episode, he breaks down the evolution of the role of CFOs from traditional scorekeepers to more strategic and operator roles, before looking ahead at what’s to come. This episode is packed full of helpful advice about transparency, building trust, authenticity in your executive role, and why “fake it till you make it” is actually bad advice. Looking at the future of the CFO role, Jim explains why he believes there will be no need for both COO and CFO roles in an organization, the biggest mistake a CFO can make at this time, and how CFOs should be adapting in order to succeed in this next era.

—

SPONSORS:

Planful is a financial performance management platform designed to streamline financial tasks for businesses. It helps with budgeting, closing the books, and financial reporting, all on a cloud-based platform. By improving the efficiency and accuracy of these processes, Planful allows businesses to make better financial decisions. Find out more at www.planful.com/metrics.

Brex offers the world's smartest corporate card on a full-stack global platform that is everything CFOs need to manage their finances on an elite level. Plus they offer modern banking and treasury as well as intuitive expenses and accounting automation, bill pay, and travel. Brex makes it easy to control spend before it happens, automate annoying tasks, and optimize your finances. Find out how Brex can help you make every dollar count at brex.com/metrics.

Vanta's trust management platform takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation. Over 9000 businesses use it to automate compliance needs across over 35 frameworks like SOC 2 and ISO 27001. Centralize security workflows, complete questionnaires up to five times faster, and proactively manage vendor risk. For a limited time, get $1,000 off of Vanta at vanta.com/metrics.

Tropic is an intelligent spend management solution that consolidates your spend data and processes into one unified offering, enabling insights and decisive action. It doesn’t just show you where the problems are—it helps you solve them. From spotting hidden optimization opportunities, like duplicative spend, to automating those painful procurement workflows, to giving you the best market data that turns every vendor negotiation in your favor. Tropic combines smart insights with real human expertise to keep you ahead of the curve. Visit tropicapp.io/mostlymetrics to learn how.

RightRev automates the revenue recognition process from end to end, gives you real-time insights, and ensures ASC 606 / IFRS 15 compliance—all while closing books faster. Whether it's multi-element arrangements, subscription renewals, or complex usage-based contracts, RightRev takes care of it all. That means fewer spreadsheets, fewer errors, and more time for your team to focus on growth. For modern revenue recognition simplified, visit rightrev.com and schedule a demo.

—

@cjgustafson222 (CJ)

LINKS:

Cook’s Playbooks

www.benchboard.com

Jim Cook on LinkedIn

—

TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Preview and Intro

(01:37) Sponsor – Planful | Brex | Vanta

(05:49) CJ’s Career Growth Since First Interviewing Jim

(08:35) Making Finance Transparent

(14:40) Sponsor – Tropic | RightRev

(17:07) The Influence of Bill Campbell

(18:57) How to Get to Trust Faster

(20:32) Letting Your Freak Flag Fly in Your Executive Role

(23:06) Is “Fake It Till You Make It” Bad Advice?

(25:25) Why CFO Tenures Are Getting Longer

(28:16) The Evolution of the CFO Role and Technological Capability

(32:45) Scorekeeping and Actuals Don’t Matter Anymore

(34:38) The Era of the Strategic CFO

(36:48) SaaS and the Operator CFO Era

(41:09) Jim’s Prediction on the Next Era: The CFO Architect

(49:47) The Biggest Mistake We Could Make in This Era

(51:48) The Era of, “I Need a COO and a CFO,” Is Over

(55:41) Where a CFO Will Spend Most of Their Time in This Next Era

Get full access to Mostly metrics at www.mostlymetrics.com/subscribe

The Era of “I Need a COO and a CFO” Is Over: Jim Cook on the Next Evolution of the CFO

Powered by Wave AI