Uncovering Blind Spots and Other Lessons from High-Growth Companies with Five-Time CFO David Lapter

Summary

Run the Numbers, March 10, 2025:

Uncovering Blind Spots and Other Lessons from High-Growth Companies with Five-Time CFO David Lapter
Host: CJ Gustafson | Guest: David Lapter, CFO at Dashlane

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Episode Overview

In this episode, CJ Gustafson sits down with David Lapter, a five-time CFO currently at Dashlane, to explore the blind spots, operational lessons, and cultural dynamics of high-growth tech companies. David shares candid stories—from missing crucial VAT payments to the domino effects of unchecked execution mode—while emphasizing the importance of humility, strategic prioritization, and authentic competitive differentiation. The conversation is packed with analogies, actionable frameworks, and reflections on how to build resilient teams and finance functions that can scale.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Identifying and Managing CFO Blind Spots

[06:47]–[11:32]

• Blind spots are inevitable and change over time:
  David analogizes blind spots to those in driving—some remain with you for years, while others appear suddenly. CFOs must consistently carve out time to “diagnose and think at different altitudes” (07:50).

• Skillset-based blind spots:
  Both David and CJ admit their weaknesses in hardcore accounting and legal, especially without a CPA background.

  “As early stage CFOs, I think we're all forced to play a lawyer on TV, fake it. But at some point you've got to…put your hand up and say, okay, I can no longer do this.” – David [09:18]

• Delegation and hiring:
  The natural tendency is to double down on areas of comfort (e.g., FP&A) and resist giving them up. Yet, truly scalable growth means hiring leaders—even if it takes two years to fill a role—without lowering the bar.

  “I had one role at Dashlane… that took me almost two years to fill. I'm just happy I never lowered the bar because it's been a game changer for us.” – David [11:11]

2. Prioritization Frameworks for CFOs

[13:24]–[17:10]

• Eisenhower Matrix:
  David credits Mark Suster with introducing the urgency/importance framework early in his CFO career. While not always written down, he regularly forces his team to assess, “Do we have the right balance of short-term and long-term?” (15:20).
• Long-term projects vs. day-to-day:
  Example: Integrating Salesforce and NetSuite is a project that requires carving out long-term bandwidth—otherwise, “you may be afraid of it” and never get to it if trapped in daily crises.

3. Execution Mode: Blessing or Curse?

[21:04]–[26:14]

• Execution mode syndrome:
  A warning from David’s Fab.com days—always being in execution mode prevents stepping back to assess what isn’t working (or what’s festering).

  “A lot of lessons learned…not staying out of execution mode because…cram times will come and go, but they can’t just fester.” – David [21:58]

• The risk of spreading too thin:
  Both agree that focus beats volume.

  “I'd rather accomplish two to three things than accomplish 50% and poorly at that of 10 things…You won't be judged on how many things you accomplish, it's how well you execute.” – David [23:12]

• Defining “done”:
  Misalignment about what “done” means can derail cross-functional efforts, highlighting the need for executive presence and clarity.

4. Talking About Competitors: Respect, Not Demonize

[26:35]–[36:52]

• Respect starts with the acknowledgment of shared passion:

  “Start by respecting the different players in your sector. Know you have more in common than you think.” – David [27:01]

• Collaboration with competitors:
  In cybersecurity, partners like Apple or Google can be both competitors and ecosystem allies (e.g., FIDO Alliance). Small players benefit from uniting for a stronger voice.

• Differentiate, don’t demonize:

  “Demonizing the competition is lazy…real differentiation starts with owning your own story.” – CJ [02:03]; reinforced by David [30:28].

• Story-driven differentiation:
  Focus on the “two or three things around which I can from my heart...tell a story that somebody can identify with” (32:21), rather than endless feature checklists.

• Using competitive content internally:
  Dashlane maintains a Slack channel for competitor updates—not to obsess, but to remind teams to stay vigilant and motivated.

  “We don't only do that for awareness…we do that to remind our teams that our competitors are not complacent…It's a constant race.” – David [34:23]

5. Building High-Functioning Teams in Hypergrowth

[39:43]–[46:42]

• Evolution from generalists to clear swim lanes:
  As companies scale (100–150+ people), roles must become more specific; the “Cheers threshold” (where not everyone knows each other's name) is a key inflection point (41:12).

• Guardrails and cross-functionality:
  Introduction of “offering teams” at Dashlane—cross-functional groups accountable for prioritized initiatives, ensuring all bases are covered and minimizing downstream surprises.

• Domino effects of siloed decisions:
  Classic example: HR making payroll changes that impact finance workloads in ways they don’t anticipate (45:00).

6. The Perils and Power of OKRs

[46:50]–[51:58]

• OKRs: Keep it simple:
  Early efforts at Dashlane failed by rolling out too many OKRs, too fast, and too granular—resulting in operational rejection.

• Focus on a handful of key results:
  “5 KRs not necessary, not allowed…give me 1, 2, 3 KRs…that will help define and align everybody and really rally the troops.” – David [50:11]

• Make metrics meaningful:
  Tie every key result back to something understandable for every employee. A naked OKR without a story or context fails to mobilize action (51:47).

• Beware frameworks-for-frameworks’ sake:
  Don’t adopt what’s trendy (“Google does this…”) if it doesn’t fit your company’s scale or context.

  “Just because you read something or it's worked for one person, that doesn't necessarily mean you need to drop everything and adopt it either the same way or at all.” – David [47:08]

7. Copying Best Practices and the Social Media Illusion

[52:16]–[54:36]

• "Everyone has solved everything":
  It’s easy to feel behind seeing social media and competitor spins, but most wins and learnings come from long, painful journeys tailored to each company.

  “You know the depth and the scale of your warts better than your competitors, but believe me, they're freaking out about other stuff.” – David [53:44]

8. Org Reporting Lines—Should HR Report to Finance?

[55:06]–[57:14]

• Early stage: probably yes. Later stage: definitely no.
  As complexity grows, HR should shift to a dedicated people leader. The risk when HR reports to CFO too long is that “people function can’t be run [as] an afterthought.”
• People is a strategic function:

  “The people function as partners in crime with finance…But I can't do what [our head of people] does and vice versa.” – David [57:22]

9. Lightning Round: Mistakes, Advice, Tools, and War Stories

[58:06]–[67:40]

• Biggest mistake:
  Early career—forgot to include a hundred-thousand-pound VAT payment in a cash forecast (“gave me a big scare, obviously led to credibility issues with the board, but we managed through it” [59:06]).
• Advice to younger self:
  “Listen, but speak up.” Learn to reserve your input until it matters, but don’t be afraid to be the minority voice, especially before important decisions are made ([60:25]–[63:09]).
• Finance software stack:
  • NetSuite (core ERP), Excel dominates FP&A and RevRec, bill.com, Expensify, Vendor, Avalara, and Carta (with a self-maintained Excel cap table as backup).
  • “I'm always going to be more comfortable in Excel than in somebody else's tool...” – David [64:40]
• Craziest expense issue:
  Someone purchased “a million boxes” for shipping at the height of holiday season without informing finance or logistics—triggering chaos and downstream operational headaches ([66:20]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Prioritizing Growth Initiatives:

  “You won't be judged…on how many things you accomplish, it's just how well you execute them.” – David [23:18]

• On Differentiation vs. Demonization:

  “Demonizing the competition is lazy…real differentiation starts with owning your own story.” – CJ [02:03]

• On Hiring and Delegation:

  “The reality is you can’t give in to the urge of lowering the bar to fill a role…and bringing on a true seasoned leader of FP&A made a world of difference.” – David [11:07]

• On OKR Simplicity:

  “5 KRs not necessary, not allowed…give me one, two, three KRs…that will help define and align everybody and really rally the troops.” – David [50:11]

• On Social Media Illusions:

  “You know…the scale of your warts better than your competitors, but believe me, they're freaking out about other stuff.” – David [53:44]

• On Knowing When to Specialize:

  “There's a point in time…let's call it the Cheers syndrome…where not everybody knows your name and you don't know everybody's name. My guess is…between 100 and 150 [employees].” – David [41:12]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [06:47] – Identifying and owning blind spots as CFO
• [11:32] – The human tendency to hold on to your strengths
• [14:21] – Eisenhower Matrix and forced prioritization
• [21:04] – Execution mode syndrome and lessons from Fab.com
• [26:35] – Respecting competitors and building authentic differentiation
• [39:43] – Evolving team structures as companies scale
• [46:50] – Making OKRs simple and actionable
• [52:16] – The illusion of best practices and social media comparison
• [55:06] – When HR should (or shouldn’t) report to the CFO
• [58:06] – David's biggest on-the-job mistake
• [63:37] – Dashlane's finance tool stack and reasoning
• [66:20] – Craziest expense: a million unsanctioned boxes

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Tone & Style

The conversation blends candor, humility, actionable advice, and personal war stories—delivered with banter, honesty, and the occasional analogy or quip (“let’s call it the Cheers syndrome…”; “I still keep my own cap table in Excel”).

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Summary:
This episode is a rich medley of real-life CFO wisdom—blind spots, hiring, prioritization, competition, team dynamics, goal setting, and even expense horror stories—framed with memorable stories and no-nonsense advice for anyone operating or aspiring in high-growth tech finance.

Transcript

[A]

We have a Slack channel where we put up press releases and blog posts from our competitors. We don't only do that for awareness, we do that to remind our teams that our competitors are not complacent. They're not asleep, they're constantly moving. They may be chasing us or they're trying to differentiate themselves doing it their way, but that should be something that says, hey, I can't be asleep at the wheel here. This is a constant race.

[B]

Is this thing on?

[A]

Yesterday's price is not today's price.

[B]

Welcome back to Run the Numbers, the podcast where we cut through the finance jargon and get real about what it takes to lead in today's business world. Today I'm joined by my friend David Lapther, the CFO of Dashlane. We had dinner last night actually. David is a great hang and we're going to talk about the lessons he's learned in the trenches of high growth companies. We're diving into blind spots. Why CFOs tend to double down on what they're good at looking at you FPA and avoid the things that make them sweat. Hello, cash flow forecasting. CJ ain't so good at that. David shares how he's tackled his own gaps and why too much execution mode, which is a good word, can be a trap. We're also talking competitors. Should you ignore them, respect them, or call them out by name? David explains why demonizing the competition is lazy and how real differentiation starts with owning your own story. And of course, we're breaking down high functioning teams when to move from overlapping roles to clear swim lanes, why OKRs can fail, and how to avoid the operational domino effects that can blindside your team. Stick around. This one's packed with insight, a little humility, and maybe a few lessons learned along the way. All this, and much, much more after a short word from our sponsors. Trust isn't earned, it's demanded. Whether you're a startup founder navigating your first audit or or a seasoned security professional scaling your GRC program, proving your commitment to security has never been more critical or complex. That's where Vanta comes in. Businesses use Vanta to establish trust by automating compliance needs across over 35 frameworks like SoC2 and ISO 27001, centralized security workflows, complete questionnaires up to five times faster, and proactively manage vendor risk. Vanta not only saves you time, it can also save you money. A new IDC white paper found that Vanta customers achieve $535,000 per year in benefits and the platform pays for itself. In just three months, join over 9,000 global companies like Atlassian Quora de Factory who use Vanta to manage risk, improve security in real time. For a limited time, our audience gets $1,000 off Vanta at V-A-N-T a.com metrics. That's V A N-T a.com metrics for $1,000 off. Here's a question. Do you feel like you're wasting time and energy on contract renewals or tracking shadow IT spend or this is a bad one explaining rising software costs to the board Truth is, traditional spend management is broken. That's where Tropic comes in. 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 give you the best market data that turns every vendor negotiation in your favor. I'm a Tropic customer myself. I've been using them for over a year and I love their price checks. They allow me to see if I'm getting a fair market deal instantly. And I'm proud to say that I am no longer using my email as our company's contract repository. I've got every document and renewal neatly organized in my Tropic portal. Isn't it time to turn spend management into your competitive advantage? Visit TropicApp IO MostlyMetrics See what's possible when intelligence drives your decisions. TropicApp IO MostlyMetrics what does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 answers. Bull market Bear Market rates will rise. Rates will fall. Can someone please just invent a crystal ball already? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future proofed their companies with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP. Bring accounting, financial management, inventory, HR into one fluid platform with one unified business management suite. There's one source of truth giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. With real time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. Whether you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards at more time on what? What's next? If you listen to this podcast, you'll know I ask CFOs all the time to rep their tech stacks and I would say almost every one of them. Use NetSuite and that's what I would use, too. Whether you're a company earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com metrics. The guide is free to you. That is netsuite.com metrics. Oh, yeah, it's netsuite.com metrics. Please, guys, I really need this. David, welcome to the podcast, my friend.

[A]

Thanks for having me.

[B]

So I know you're a cfo, but I feel like if that doesn't work out, you could be a late night DJ talk show host.

[A]

I'll take that not only as a compliment, but a plan B I can now put aside.

[B]

We were joking before we hit play. I was like, is that you have a very baritone voice. And did you say you actually used to sing?

[A]

I used to sing in high school. So it's a few years ago, but I do remember loving it and being part of the choir. Maybe half your audience will now turn off, but hopefully not.

[B]

No, no. Well, I mean, they're gonna stick around for the hot takes that we got coming here.

[A]

I promise I won't sing during this episode.

[B]

It is on Spotify, but I don't think the album will be available. We're gonna jump into all sorts of CFO topics. And the first one, which I think you're really brave to come on and speak about this and be vulnerable and honest is. Is talking about blind spots. Because I'm not really one for New Year's resolutions where, like, you write down like, these are the things that I'm maybe not as good at and. And I have to improve upon them in this next year. But I guess just in the spirit of. Of continuous improvement here, David, how have you, I mean, you're a successful cfo. How have you identified any working habits or skill sets that you need to improve on?

[A]

Yeah, and they fall into various categories. They're also situational and they're also different in time. There are blind spots and issues like that that last a long time. I mean, to build on the analogy of a blind spot, we all know blind spots as something related to, you know, you're driving and you've got a blind spot, Right? So you've got blind spots that exist and are defined by how often you change cars. Right. You might lease a car for three years and you know, that blind spot is not changing. And then you've got, you know, an accident. Somebody comes out of nowhere and you know, blindsides you and you get a whiplash and all that. But I think you could take all types of blind spots in business that can fit into each of those categories. So you need to just. My rule of thumb is, especially recently, I figured out as we've passed milestones at Dashlane, I've got to make and reserve the time to diagnose and think at different altitudes and different angles about things I don't normally think about.

[B]

That's a great perspective. And I love the car analogy because I've had a couple of SUVs that had like literally the worst blind spot in the world. Like, if you didn't have a backup camera, you're going to hit whatever was behind you. But situationally it does change because your blind spots as a CFO at like a series A stage could very well be different than that of a CFO at a pre IPO stage.

[A]

100%. And that also emanates from your role as a CFO in a series seed series A company. You truly are the sparring partner of the CEO in just about every aspect of the business. You may not be a domain expert in technology. That's usually the first, I'll admit. Like, I am not a technologist, so I stay out of that swim lane. But for many other aspects, you are that sparring partner. And the bigger you scale, I mean, you know, at our scale today, you know, I may have a point of view, but the areas I obsess over are, let's say a slightly tighter, tighter angle.

[B]

Do you think blind spots are more relevant to the, to what we're talking about when it comes to like understanding your business? Or do you think it's more like a skill set, like I have a blind spot that I'm not a CPA by trade, like that? That would be an example.

[A]

I think it's both to, to have just like an easy answer. I'm not a CPA either, and so it's probably a natural tendency. I'm assuming you would have the same as me. I started my career as just a generalist, a strategist. I was in consulting and then vc. So where are the angles that I'll naturally know are my blind spots? Well, there are going to be accounting, like hardcore gap accounting or foreign accounting and taxes, and then secondly legal as early stage CFOs. I think we're all forced to play a lawyer on tv. Fake it. But at some point you've got to put your hand up and say, okay, I can no longer do this. I'm slowing down the business. But when you get to FP&A and analytics, that's where we feel. And again, I'm projecting that you and I think are similar.

[B]

Oh, yeah, I'm with you, man.

[A]

You're at home. Right. And you don't want to give up that territory and that natural human tendency, which again, I think goes way beyond just the office of the cfo. That natural tendency is going to give you a blind spot because over time, no matter how young or old you are, you're not giving yourself a chance to bring on people who have a different point of view and probably know a lot more recent ways of working, of what tool sets to use, how to model. And I've experienced that in FP and A as we've scaled at Dashlane.

[B]

And you're spot on because I started in consulting, then went over to later stage private equity for a while and then ended up on the operating side. And there I kind of got my feet under me in the FP and A world. So, like, somebody throws me into an operating plan, I feel at home, but somebody throws me into, I don't know, an accrual forecast, like I'm lost at sea. I do think that like a skill in and of itself though, is, is raising your hand and saying, I need to hire somebody here, rather than just saying, I'm just going to go with what I'm comfortable with over here 100%.

[A]

Right. And. And it's doing that. And also there are moments, you know, I mean, I've been a CFO five times over 20 years, so there are definitely many moments where I felt this urge of desperation. I must fill this role. I desperately need this because I'm trying to do my job and this other job for too long. But the reality is you can't give in to the urge of lowering the bar to fill a role. I had one role at Dashlane in the last, what is it, eight and a half, nine years that took me almost two years to fill. I'm just happy I never lowered the bar because it's been a game changer for us.

[B]

Can you say more about that? Because I do think there are CFOs who feel like crap. I don't know this. I just need like a warm body in here to help me fill this blind spot.

[A]

Yeah, so, so, so let's be clear. Those areas that I completely would either not want to do or cannot take. Take for example, that cpa, when I've joined new companies, that was my number one priority. Right. How Do I fill that role? Hopefully that role is already filled. But if not, how do I fill that role with somebody I can trust who can be my partner, at least for the foreseeable future? Okay, but then you take the example of FPA at Dashlane. We had somebody run FP and A a long time ago at Dashlane, shortly after I joined the company. And at some point after, as I said, eight, nine years, that person moved on in their career. And that's okay. The question is, how do you fill those shoes, right? Do you desperately say, okay, I've got a rush and just fill this role so that I can sleep at night? And God knows I lost a little bit of sleep in that year and a half, two years. But we took the time to assess the right person to keep that bar really high, Interviewing candidate after candidate, literally through a couple of phases. And there were times when I probably did a half assed job running FP and A to the detriment of the team that I was trying to manage. So I'm grateful to them for putting up with me. But, you know, bringing on a true seasoned leader of FP and A made a world of difference.

[B]

This is maybe a weird way to actually ask about the same scenario, but I know you're really good at FP&A. You came from that world. Do you also think there's a tendency, though, to hold onto something that you're good at and not want to give it to somebody else to free yourself up 100%?

[A]

And as I said, and I'm happy you phrased it that way, it is a human tendency, right? Some people are better at it. You know, they see it coming. They see themselves being pulled into a bigger role or a different role, and they need to address that. That's one of the things I've struggled with, delegation, right? How do I give up? Especially the things that are my sweet spot that I'm very comfortable with. But I'll tell you, you know, doing so can be a big relief. And if you onboard somebody, right? So you're hiring carefully and you onboard somebody, right, you're not only relieving yourself of time, freeing yourself up to think about other blind spots the business has. Not just you, but the business, but also you're putting somebody else with who's obviously promising in their career on a path to continued learning and development from you. I mean, they're starting by having the opportunity to learn from you. So I think it's like, win, win, win.

[B]

I was recently introduced to this framework called the Eisenhower matrix and I'm probably going to butcher it, but it's basically like what's the combination of urgency versus importance? And if you like if something's urgent and importantly you got to do it now. But there are a lot of things in our lives as CFOs that are very important, but they're not urgent, they're just kind of burning in the background. And I think sitting down and identifying your blind spots are one of them. Do you have any strategies or frameworks to actually force yourself to say, hey David, this is something that I probably need to either brush up on or take the time to go and hire?

[A]

Yeah. Oh God. I'm a big fan of the Eisenhower framework and I'll give credit to Mark Zuster, who's a dear friend of mine at Upfront Ventures. And I remember the first job I had as a CFO. He was the CEO of the company. This was back in London 20 years ago. And at some point he sat down and we talked about the Eisenhower framework and how I was applying it in my job.

[B]

He's a legend. Yeah, I've read a lot of his stuff.

[A]

It was, it was a big first time CFO kind of lesson learned for me to be aware of that. And I use it, maybe not religiously in like let's write, write it down but rather without saying it. I think about things that way as I work with my direct reports and assess the key projects, their prioritizations, you know, that they have with their teams, be it accounting, legal, FPA and so on. And you know, for me, one of the things that I regularly try and force on the team is do we have the right balance of the short term and the long term? Right. And I think that may not always be a solution to the traps that are defined that the Eisenhower framework is trying to solve for. But usually it's that it's that long term perspective. It may be important, it may be urgent, but it's probably the urgency can be enforced, created, protected by having a balance between the short and the long term, if you know what I mean. For example, we're doing a big project right now and it's going to take quarters around integrating Salesforce and Netsuite in on a long term path to having a single source of truth. And so that's something that if you're, if you're trapped in the day to day grind, whether you're in rev ops or accounting, you're never going to get to that project. In fact, you may be afraid of it. So, so you, you've got to make room for that long term. And I'm not saying the balance is 50 50, right? You know, it probably has its ebbs and flows. When accounting is busy doing their monthly close, it's probably zero. And that's okay. But I'd like to think about it that way.

[B]

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[A]

Well, I'll give you the example that comes to mind when I use those words because it's, it's like a tattoo or a scar from a past life. When, when I was CFO of Fab.com, a startup that was, you know, very, very well known and followed, raised a lot of money in a short period of time, grew from 45 to almost 700 in the span of two, two and a half years. It truly felt like whether it was an acquisition or an expansion or a change of business model, expansion of our SKU count and positioning, and so on and so forth, we were always executing on a decision being made and rarely had reserved the time to step back, assess, and not only assess where things were Working, but also assess where the warts, where were the tumors that may have been just starting to grow that we should have jumped on top of. So a lot of lessons learned in terms of, you know, not staying out of execution mode because the truth is you'll always, you know, the cram times will come and go, but they can't just fester. And you've got to make sure that they have their day and, or as a cfo, as an exec team, you've got to be able to pass those things on to a team that's going to execute so that you can keep a broader perspective and monitor.

[B]

It's such a nuanced balance because teams can also fall into the trap of just thinking big picture about stuff and never actually going and executing. There are a lot of books written about strategy, not many about execution. But teams can also shy away from like picking up their head and being like, what the hell are we doing here? Like on a three year basis. And they get trapped in like the minutiae of the day to day.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. And I find that also when you're in execution mode, you also often forget the two key things, which is one, am I spreading myself too thin? And when I say I, I don't mean necessarily you as an individual contributor, but are we as a team, are we as a company spreading ourselves too thin? So this is a big theme for us in 2024 and in 2025. How are we ruthlessly prioritizing? I dare say two to three things. I'd rather accomplish two to three things than accomplish 50% and poorly at that of 10 things. Okay. You won't be judged necessarily on how many things you accomplish, it's just how well you execute them. Right. And how well you plan them and so on and so forth. So I think a lot about not spreading yourself too thin and then thinking about the efficiency and measurement behind the things you actually do. I remember being in a meeting a few years ago and the CEO had just joined a discussion about something that was being done and the meeting did not go well. And sometimes it's those meetings that don't go well, where you learn a lot about executive presence and behavior and things like that. And the CEO was most upset. What triggered him to use that word was the definition of done. And there was no alignment in that meeting. Very clearly amongst the cross functional team members around that everybody had defined done the same way. And we all walked away a little bit like shocked. But after digesting that, I think we all came back to the table, and then for the years to come with other projects with a little more refined sense of appreciation, of respect for what done truly should mean.

[B]

We recently spoke to the CFO of Miro, Justin Colombia, and what he was saying is that he encourages his team, like you just mentioned, David, pick up two max, three things at a time and be absolutely world class at doing it and getting it done, because I'd rather you be world class at those. And it almost feels not boring, but like you're really honing in on like a very narrow either skill set or set of tasks. Then be mediocre at 20 things and be able to show me this list of things that you're quote, unquote, doing.

[A]

Yeah, 100%. And it's natural if you're going to be in the spotlight, if you're getting a lot of press, if you're raising a lot of money. Let's put aside economic cycles that it's hard not to not believe your own hype, but just feel like you could do no wrong. But time and time again, I think if we go to examples of companies that have faltered or had very tough moments, maybe they've come out of it very often, it will emanate from trying to do too much. And I'll go back to that example. At Fab.com, we had an amazing executive team, talented people at the table with all the best intentions. But I think our growth ambitions and the pressure of growth put us in a place where we just did way too much too fast.

[B]

Well, this funny thing also happens that once you start to get some hype or people view you as successful, you get all these other opportunities. But it also takes away from the bandwidth of what made you originally, quote, unquote, good at the first thing.

[A]

Totally right. You know, you got to be adaptive, but stay true to what made you special. That special sauce.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Be aware of it. You know, it's really important.

[B]

You got to make the main thing the main thing. David, I want to transition a bit to talk about talking about competitors. It sounds very meta when I say it that way. Let's talk about talking about competitors. So we often have to talk about our position in the market and who we compete against. What's your philosophy when it comes to speaking about other players in the market?

[A]

You know, I may come across as hopeless optimist or romantic or having a romantic view in a way, on competitive landscapes. Obviously this is a business. Sectors have competitors and you can be at different place, different stages in the development of a sector. Whether it's all greenfield, whether you're not even competing when you're speaking to a prospect, to competing, but it's still a new purchase, to trying to oust the competition. Right. So there are different. There's that clear spectrum. But I like to approach it from a position of respect. Start by respecting the different players in your sector. Okay, Know who are the main players. You don't need necessarily to obsess. Over a hundred players like in. In our sector, there are four other players we look at. We're amongst five that are names, let's say, that are known. We have differentiation points. But you got to start by respecting your. Your competitors. Know that you have more in common than you think. You're all playing in the same space. You have a shared passion for what problems in society you're trying to solve. We're in cyber security, I trust. And I start thinking that every one of our four competitors equally have the ambition to solve these problems for their clients. So I think that brings us together. The other thing, and it's not necessarily every sector is like this, but you and I both know in technology you've got big tech and big tech are important partners of ours. But at the same time, big tech in certain elements can be a competitive threat to smaller players that are trying to establish themselves, trying to innovate. And what I'd like to say is if there are opportunities for the small players to collaborate, to try and have a louder voice in partnering with and changing the landscape and changing the way big tech is actually thinking about things. Because chances are big tech is part of paving the road for the smaller innovative ventures. So how do you work with each other to be able to have that bigger impact? And if you trample on your competitors every day, talk negatively about them first, you're going to make it very hard to collaborate outside. We do a lot of work, for example, in our space with the Fido alliance. And you've got Apple and Google, our major players in the Fido alliance, I believe Microsoft too. And we're effective there because we partner with One, Password and LastPass and other players to unite in. What is it we're going to ask of the Apples and the Googles of the world in the way they are starting to pave the roads that are relevant and impactful to our space. So I think you got to start from a position of respect. And then obviously, as I said before, that doesn't mean you're all the same. So you've got to ultimately find what are the differentiators that are honest and true, around which you can tell a story that defines the moat makes clear what is the moat that defines Dashlane compared to its competitors.

[B]

Let's get into that, because I think what you're saying is powerful. You don't have to demonize your competitors to win, but you do have to differentiate.

[A]

If I got that correctly, that's exactly right. And, you know, I think you don't even need to be talking about technology with a CFO to know that we're surrounded today. And here I'm going to maybe go a little bit on a tangent, but whether it's the political landscape, the international landscape, whether it is in social media, we're constantly faced by this barrage of pressures that have turned into a David, a good and a bad, a good and evil David and Goliath, whatever. And although there are a lot of lessons to be learned from that, that doesn't necessarily need to be the way you act all the time with your competitors.

[B]

Do you have any frameworks or tips for communicating how you're differentiated?

[A]

I don't know if I would call it a framework, but as a non technologist. Right. So, yeah, it's more of a modus operandi. Right. How do I, as a CFO who's obviously going to be in positions, whether it's like the talk we're having today or who knows where, who knows with whom, I need to be able to quickly, succinctly depending on the audience, be able to tell a story about what makes Dashlane different. Right. And so I have some obligation to understand our technology to a certain extent. As a cfo, I'm going to take some financial perspective and point of view might be right, might be wrong. I'm sure there's an equally strong opposite that a competitor is going to take, you know, comparing themselves to us. But I've got to figure out what are my two or three things. I don't need 10. This is not a price list on a website that has tick marks saying, what does the competition do and what do we do? It's what are the two or three things around which I can from my heart, again, sorry to sound corny, but from my heart, tell a story that somebody can identify with that really resonates.

[B]

With me because I worked at a cybersecurity company as well. And like, I was never going to be able to tell you how the code was different. But what I could tell you is that, listen, most security companies approach this through going to the CISO like a heavy tops down motion. We are developer first. Okay? So that's one quality. The next quality is that the way that we go to market is we make it free to try. And it's product led growth. So you can go on and try it without talking to a salesperson and see if you like it or not. And then you basically add on different qualitative pieces to it. And then it's like, okay, I've got that off. As a cfo now I can talk about the numbers and how we've grown and like evidence of why that's working and why we're different.

[A]

That's totally right. I agree with you.

[B]

You've mentioned competitors can motivate teams by creating buzz and excitement. That. That one actually caught me off guard and I feel like I'm looking at it like through rose colored glasses. Now, how does Dashlane approach differentiation when competing against giants? Like a 1Password?

[A]

Well, what I mean by sort of like driving the team and create enthusiasm and buzz by comparing yourself to competitors is imagine you're at the starting line or as part of a competition at the Olympics. You know, you'd speak to athletes all the time. And one of the things they'll say. They'll say many things, but one of the things they'll say is that it's competing with greats that drive you to be greater yourself.

[B]

It pushes you.

[A]

Yeah. It focuses you. That's right. That's right. And so I'd like to think about that. And what's interesting in our space is we haven't taken the same road as our competitors. We've decided to be innovative in certain respect in terms of our business model and the area we focus on. Our competitors have taken a different path. Some of them. Right. And they have their own differentiators, and that's fine. We have a Slack channel where we put up press releases and blog posts from our competitors. We don't only do that for awareness. We do that to remind our teams that our competitors are not complacent. They're not asleep. They're constantly moving. They may be chasing us or they're trying to differentiate themselves, doing it their way. But that should be something that says, hey, I can't be asleep at the wheel here. This is a constant race.

[B]

I totally agree. And I feel like competitors can sometimes do some of the marketing for you because the potential buyer may not know that they have a problem. So you're trying to bridge this awareness gap now, whether they go and buy from the competitor or somebody else, but at least it's out there in the ether, people are talking about it.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. And back to the point you said earlier, which is so true, which is, remember what made you special. Right. And we were talking about that earlier. I think here, the way competitors talk about each other should not force you to always be sort of context switching. Just because your competitor says one thing about you does not mean you need to have a rebuttal for just that point. Now, I'm not a salesperson. I have so much respect for that team. They deal with no 99 times out of 100. Okay, maybe it's only nine times out of 10. But the point is they have that tolerance for rejection, which I didn't go into that profession because I can't. Right. I know. I know my limitations. So they do need to be able to quickly have those talking points. But I do try and be aware and ask my teams to do the same. To be aware of, hey, don't immediately be pulled one way or the other defined by the person or company that's pulling you that way. Define your own path. You know, what's the way I want to describe Dashlane as opposed to, I must define myself based on how my competitors define a difference.

[B]

You know, it's funny because people do fall into those molds. Like, if you look on a website, like, your competitor may put, like, their name, your name, and then, like, all these, like, check marks along, like, if you hit that feature or something. But then, like, you go further down and, like, they're becoming highly specific. It's like, saves all your passwords. Like, can expand to teams of three to five. Then it's like, likes dogs more than cats. Like, they're just, like, adding things in. You're like, wait, I like dogs too. Like, you feel like you have to adapt to whatever they're deeming the playing field that you're competing. Like, no, no, wait. Just like, be who you were before. It's okay if you have some overlap, but you don't have to just take their view of the competitive landscape and try. And try to, like, come up with, like, some corollary to every single point.

[A]

That's exactly right. And that's what ultimately, maybe without wanting to ends up creating differentiation. Right. I'll give you a perfect recency bias here, but a very perfect example. A Dashlane. And it also brings us full circle back to the first point we made on competition, which is start acknowledging what you have in common. Know that you're on. You're all playing on the same field. Right. For the most part, same rules. And so one thing we about a year or so ago came to realize, and this is across all competitors in our space, and I challenge any competitor that says this is not true through to show me the data that says that we all are challenged by the fact that the bigger the company that buys Dashlane as a credential management tool, the lower the adoption rate amongst their employees. Because most companies see the point that you need to protect from bad password and credential hygiene, but they don't want to create an edict forcing all of their employees from using it. So no mandated use, like an SSO or you know, MFA2FA. That of course is mandated use, but for password managers, so far most companies don't do that. Hence fast forward, you have lower adoption rates. So what we've done is we've said, look, the whole sector is challenged by this. And we know from speaking to IT administrators and CISOs that they're aware of that and they recognize that by not having full use, they do still have a blind spot, no pun intended, to the discussion earlier. And so what we've recently launched, and this is a differentiator no other player in our space is doing, it is we've leveraged our technology in a zero knowledge architecture to actually inform IT and the security team and ultimately the individual employee when they're using weak or compromised credentials, even if they're not using Dashlane to fill those fields, because we have that ability when the extension is in the browser. So it's again not getting too technical, but we were able to say, hold on a second. If the whole point is to provide value to the business decision maker, IT administrator or ciso, well, why don't we give them that visibility irrespective of whether somebody is using the tool or not. And at the end of the day, if that then turns into a heightened sense of desire to use Dashlane, for example, well, good for us. But that's second degree of importance.

[B]

Thanks for making that real for us. That was great. I want to talk about high functioning teams, especially in a growing environment. Like you said, you've been a CFO five times. That's amazing. Congrats. And a lot of these companies have been in hyper growth where you're constantly breaking things and you have to change the structure of the Org. So I guess my first question is how and when should companies progress from having these overlapping responsibilities to more specific and defined swim lanes?

[A]

Obviously the caveat or safe way to start. The answer, in my opinion, is there's no specific when. Right. There's not one day when you say, okay, at this juncture now we need to find swim lanes. The earlier stage will have many more jacks of all traits. And I'd like to think that for a long time and you know, people can disagree with me. I'm sure there are people who do for a long time. I hope you have a certain core group of people who will do anything for anybody if it's helping the longer projects and goals of the company. And I can have a long laundry list of things I've done that are way outside of what you'd think is in the job description of a CFO still today. Okay. But I do believe there is a point in time and maybe, you know, thinking back, it might be around the time and I forgot you might know whether there is a term used to define this moment where you suddenly realize you don't remember everybody's name.

[B]

Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. There's a term for it.

[A]

Yeah, it's escaping me now. You know, let's call it the Cheers syndrome or the Cheers threshold. Because Cheers from the show in the 80s where that song was, you know, where everybody knows your name. There is a point in time where not everybody knows your name and you don't know everybody's name. My guess is it's somewhere between 100 and 150. You know, from having been there a couple of times, I think it's probably falls around there. It obviously depends on the company, the logistics, are you in multiple offices, etc. But I think at that stage you've reached a level of scale where a different, again to use the word modus operandi way of working is called for. Where we use the RACI framework a lot at Dashlane, so where you have just a defined agreed, like the whole exec team respects and agrees, for example, real estate is in my remit. That doesn't mean that other people won't be involved, need to be informed, are going to participate in making it happen. My people team is my partner in crime, in many real estate related stuff, especially when it comes to workplace experience. But when it comes to decisions about offices and leases and anything like that, buck stops with me. Right? And there is that respect and involvement. And now you think about every function and type of work and there are many.

[B]

David, I think the effect you're talking about is the Dunbar effect. You can remember up to 150 people's names and when a company gets over that point, you stop being able to have the same level of empathy for everybody because you don't have a connection with them, you don't know their face, you don't know, like I said their name anymore.

[A]

You're right, that is the term. That is the term. I've heard it before, but it was escaping me.

[B]

I think it's real though, because like as CFOs, even at a company that's 120 people, if I have a headcount sheet with like 90 something percent accuracy, I think I can visualize every person within that I know what department they're in, even if I can't visualize what they look like. I could tell you who they report to at least. But after 150, that's really hard to remember. And then it becomes not lines in a spreadsheet, but it's less of a connection. I don't know. Would you agree?

[A]

100%. And you can try and do things to keep people more closely connected. You know, have buddies for newcomers to make sure they're introduced as an exec team or as managers make a bigger effort to introduce newcomers, cross functionally to other people you work with. But ultimately it's going to become tough and there will be cultural implications, but more importantly, yeah, not everybody will know each other. So one of the other implications of that, which is very true, we're almost 300 people. I've seen, as I said, like double that, not more than 700. But you quickly see and it's tangible. There's moments where when decisions are made, you have high risks of up and downstream. Not having somebody thinking about the impact that what they're doing is going to have up and downstream. You know, and I'm not pointing fingers, but just to give a crazy example, you could have an amazing, worthwhile, right on point marketing promotional campaign that doesn't consider, okay, I need support to be ready for the barrage of questions that are going to come in or maybe that somebody needs to create content on the website to address these things proactively and so on and so forth.

[B]

Yeah, and I've seen it in my own working patterns too, where like the HR team may be saying, listen, we need to move all the customer support people from salary to hourly because we don't think this is in compliance and they're doing the right thing. They've worked so hard, they even get a new HR module to go and track it, but they forget to tell finance and accounting and they don't realize that it's six to eight more hours each week for the accounting person to tally up that part of the payroll. And if you were a smaller company and you were all sitting next to each other and you know what everybody's working on, that probably won't happen. But it feels more removed and you end up with this, I guess, domino effect.

[A]

Yeah. And what we've done at Dashlane in the last couple of years is, and it doesn't solve everything. There are obviously functional areas of focus and project oriented work streams, but we've deployed something called offering teams and essentially for anything. And you probably are familiar with the concept, but we didn't have it before. We only started a couple of years ago where We've got a B2B B2C part of our business. And each of those has a cross functional, primarily senior experienced within the world of Dashlane. And as I said, cross functional team that is going to meet regularly to define what are the key priorities and quantitative metrics by which we're going to measure success around the initiatives that they drive. And they are able, because they're cross functional, to always have all the bases covered. So that's been really successful for us and we're going to do more of that in 2025.

[B]

It sounds like you kind of implemented some guardrails to minimize the downstream impacts of these domino effects.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Totally agree. I mean that. And that's the thing. It's. You try and create those guardrails, David.

[B]

So I suck at okrs.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I have this pit in my stomach whenever I look at the calendar and it's time to do OKR planning. You were honest with me and you said that OKRs are something hard for you at Dashlane for years as a company until you made them simpler. Can you speak to the simplicity there?

[A]

Yeah. You know, there are going to be many. Again, like, my team knows I'm all about analogies, but there are many examples in business and in life where just because you read something or it's worked for one person, that doesn't necessarily mean you need to drop everything and adopt and adopt it either the same way or at all. Okay. And we learned a lot and made a lot of mistakes and failed completely in deploying OKRs at Dashlane in the early years. OKRs was back then like the hot topic. And so we needed OKRs and we needed to not go from first gear to second gear. We needed to go to fifth gear. Right. And so this meant OKRs for the company cascading them down, individual OKRs. You know, we had, you know, back then, like still 200, 250 people. You need to feed that slowly into the organization. But we went much too fast, too quickly, much too fast and too broadly as a result. There was kind of a not overt or willful, but operational rejection of it. It just didn't work. The car stalls. Okay, so, so how did we bring it back? And I would say largely it ended up being rejected through ignorance. Not in. In the sense that we. It became ignored. Like it was a. Okay, I needed to tick a box. But I didn't truly value, and I say, I, I mean our, our teams, the Dash Cleaners, we didn't truly value the power that was behind it. So how did we do something about it? And I wouldn't call it okr2 version 2 or, you know, a next gen. It was truly, I'd say, launching a new way of thinking at dashlane or a more, not even new in the sense that we were not smart enough to think about it before, but I think a much more calculated, refined way of thinking about what we do. I was talking about a few minutes ago offering teams and the initiatives, brutally prioritized initiatives that they focus on. Well, those initiatives are not, they're not going to become initiatives that the company and the executive team is going to back unless we agree on the ways we're going to measure how those initiatives are performing. What are the leading indicators that say whether those initiatives are worthwhile? I'd rather have the leading rather than the lagging. Finance is really a lagging indicator. So what are the leading indicators that will let us know whether this is worth continuing and when are we reaching milestones? So I've got like three, four key initiatives we're working on for 20, 25 for each one of those, you could call them called mo's. Right?

[B]

Right.

[A]

And they are the krs. We already know what they are. And by the way, 5Kr is not necessary, not allowed. Right. It's like, give me 1, 2, 3 krs. Key results that we are looking for, key metrics that we respect, obviously that we can calculate, but that we respect, are going to help define and align everybody and really rally the troops. Right. The whole point to okrs, which never worked at Dash Lane again in the early days, was it brings everybody together, understanding and rallying behind a number. Right. So what are those two, three numbers that everybody gets and everybody can wake up and when they're thinking about their part of the job, they're saying, okay, this is how my success is going to be measured?

[B]

Because it's not going to Be successful and the body is going to reject the organ. If people A, can't explain what the OKR is or goal, I just call it a goal and B, can't tie it back to what they do day to day. So if you over complicate it to the point where they couldn't explain, explain to like their significant other or like their grandmother, like what the goal is, like oh, we're trying to, you know, get X amount of customers, something like that. And then they can't say, well me in engineering, this is how I impact it. You lose the force through the trees.

[A]

Yeah. And you know, the way you're just describing that leads to the word, you know, storytelling. Our jobs are very much about storytelling, you know, and whether you're talking about differentiating to, about a competitor, whether you're talking about your okrs and your key initiatives, the values and goals for the company, you've got to, you've got to think about your audience. And I talk to Taylor, our head of FP&A all the time about it. Like what, what are, what's the story behind the numbers so people can really relate to it.

[B]

That's so true. You can't have like just this naked okr, like there's this number. You have to have a story with a plot and with characters. Otherwise people are going to look at it like it's just this thing, it doesn't mean anything to them.

[A]

That's right. And especially when you're talking about very technical things or very quantitative things, chances are 80% of your audience doesn't speak that language. So how do you, how do you get to 90% of the audience understanding the story you're trying to tell?

[B]

One other thing that I want to reflect on that you mentioned, David, is the urge to copy what other companies do when it comes to goal setting. And everybody will be like, oh, you know, well Google does this or Amazon does this where they reflect on everything in a six page writing memo or something. Or Google has this framework where blah, blah, blah, but it's like, well, Google has $70 billion in free cash flow. That covers up a lot of sins and a lot of crappy frameworks.

[A]

That's right. That's right. And you know, again, to take that broad perspective, we live in a world and I have two kids, 18 and 21, to age myself a little bit. And so they're living in a world that's very social media full and so I can, I have some visibility over their experience. And it's full of noise. How Everybody has solved everything, right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And so as an 18 year old, and again, I don't want to get too off topic, but as an 18 year old, you start coming into the real world, going to college and stuff like that, thinking, oh my God, I'm behind because my peers have solved everything. They've got six side hustles, they're going to retire at 30 and stuff like that. And I think the same syndrome, I think it's the grass is always greener syndrome. Right. You always are leaning on thinking that your competitors have it all. Right. And you don't. And yes, you'll know the color and the depth and the scale of your warts better than your competitors, but believe me, they're freaking out about other stuff.

[B]

I'm really glad you brought this up because if it's a younger person who's trying to find their way in their career, or it's a company who's trying to benchmark themselves against others, it's very easy to see on LinkedIn or social media all these hacks or all these frameworks. But what you don't see is if they actually, like, worked. People like to point to like a quote unquote solution. A lot of times it's kind of empty calorie. It's just showing that you understand, like a methodology. You don't actually see the execution of.

[A]

The true results and you don't see the painful path to getting to where you are today.

[B]

Yeah. The years and years of suffering to make it an overnight success.

[A]

That's right. But mostly the things you and I have talked about today, that work for us both have been a long journey and they may not work for most companies out there. They just work for us. They happen to work for us.

[B]

Yeah. And also, like, not to pick on Google, but if you're looking at a framework that Google used at the dawn of like the Internet browser that may not work in today's macro environment or competitive environment.

[A]

That's right. And from listening to some podcasts recently on AI who can avoid them, things are continuing. They're going to accelerate even more.

[B]

Yeah, David, I got a spicy one for you. I didn't know where to throw this in, but I know you have a good opinion on it, so I'm going to throw it at you. Okay. Should HR report to the cfo?

[A]

So I'd say that for very early stage companies, you know, Seed A, even potentially B, that probably makes sense. I mean, if you go back to the point that the CFO is there as the sidekick and confidant of the CEO and really trying to take care of all the back office stuff so that he or she doesn't have to worry about it. I think that's a natural appendage. But when, whether you're getting to that hundred one hundred fifty mark or just through the natural scaling of the business, which is different for all companies, you do hit a point where you recognize one thing above all. And I remember that point when I joined Dashlane, HR reported to me and about a year, year and a half later we brought on ahead of people and two things on that. First, this happens when you realize that all the priorities and initiatives and objectives that you've put on a list that are related to the people function, whether it's recruiting, whether it's learning and development, whether it's performance reviews, you know, compensation, whatever it might be that they're afterthoughts. Afterthoughts in the same sense that I've got a day job just like my peers and then they, when I have extra time, I'll focus on those things. The people function can't be run that way. Right. And so you end up being very transactional. You get payroll. Right. Right. You get variable compensation. Right. You get the basics. And by the way, that's why in those early days it's such a natural appendage of finance. But there comes a point in time when you've got this constantly evolving culture. You have this yearning from a bigger and bigger team for more direction for again people, partners, performance development, working with managers, first time managers very often to how do I become a good manager? You need somebody who and a team who's going to totally focus on that morning, noon and night. And so the second thing I was going to say is whether I think back [e-mail] and then now at Dashlane, I mean the people function as partners in crime with finance. And Pamela, our head of people is truly somebody I talk to multiple times a week because we care about the same thing. But I can't do what she does and vice versa.

[B]

Yeah. I have come to believe that the biggest accelerant to a CFO to make them good at their job is a really great people partner, 100%.

[A]

And the second one, at a slightly different juncture is a good general counsel.

[B]

Oh yeah, I haven't got to that point yet. I'm still trying to play lair on tv. David, I'm going to take you into what we call our long ass lightning round. So I ask every successful guest, what's an Example of something you've messed up on the job before.

[A]

Oh, you know, it's interesting that you put that as a question in your lightning round, because it is in my lightning round when I interview people. And as corny and silly as it may sound, obviously you can ask, what's the thing you're most proud of? Big accomplishments, blah, blah, blah. But I always say that the three things I've learned the most from in my career were great mentors, existential threats we went through, running out of cash, competitive threats, whatever it may be, and making mistakes. And so, you know, I say off the top of your head, like I forced a person say, you don't, you can't wait 30 seconds or 20 seconds. The first thing that comes to mind, what is the biggest mistake you've made in your career? Because chances are the first thing that comes to mind is going to actually be more true than trying to impress the person who's asked you a question. So anyway, with that in mind, I obviously being the asker of that question, have a few that have stayed with me since my early days. Fortunately, by the way, I still make plenty of mistakes, but fortunately the big ones are earlier in my career as a cfo. There's one that will stay with me, you know, forever. The first big scare I got, you know, I was part of my first startup and we had, we were strapped for cash, you know, you're talking about just after the dot com bubble burst, you know, in the early, early in this millennium. And we had quarterly VAT payments in the UK and in France and I forgot to in my cash forecast, forgot. And I didn't have anybody in FP&A, by the way. So it was all on my shoulders back then and I forgot to include vat. And it was a hundreds of thousands of pounds payment that was materially going to change our CAT trajectory. So it gave me a big scare, obviously led to credibility issues with the board. We managed through it, but it's one that will stay with me. And so accuracy, attention to detail, big thing.

[B]

Thank you for sharing that because I know there are probably people nodding their head right now like, yep, I stubbed my toe on that VAT as well.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Next one, if you could tell your younger self something, knowing what you know today, what would you tell them?

[A]

This may sound strange and I'll explain what I mean. Okay, it's listen but speak up and, and, and, and it comes from two different lessons I've had over time. When I was in venture capital, I was in London, worked with two partners. And one of them was a guy named Herbe de Foret, a huge force in corporate finance, had been the treasurer of BMW, the CFO at Carrefour, like real expert over many decades. And when I was able to observe how he acted in board meetings, I learned so much about listening. I was never one to jump and talk. I usually listened more naturally, but there's so much power in that. He would sit at a board meeting and just listen. And he was, by the way, by far the smartest, most experienced person in the room. But he would just listen, observe, let others have the credit for speaking up, let them say what comes on their minds, reserve the things that really matter. And then at some point during the board meeting, he would say one thing and it would change the trajectory of the discussion. It would be the true essence of the strategic dialogue. And if you've got a good functioning board, you probably have one or two people who are like that. And you know, I remember him fondly and I will always, and I've taught my kids that lesson, like, that's something that stays with me. Just listen. You don't have to speak every time a question is asked. You don't need to participate in every discussion. Listen, observe, think, speak, when it's really going to be impactful. Right now, on the flip side, I said speak up. And speak up is about the mistakes I [e-mail] for example. But I think we all make those mistakes, which is especially like, let's say as a high functioning executive team, if there's something that's being said or contemplated, especially before a decision is made, speak up if you disagree. Ideally have data driven, data informed reasons for it. Don't sit back and say, well, I'm going to be the minority speaking against it or I'm going to be the only naysayer. No, no, no, say your piece. You don't want to get to a point where you've made mistakes and then go over and over it in your head asking yourself, what if I had spoken louder, Right? And I have examples like that from my experiences where I still ask myself what would have been had I pounded my fist a little bit.

[B]

And you also wonder if by you speaking up, you give someone else the courage to speak up and maybe you weren't really in the minority all along.

[A]

You're totally right. Back to the whole issue of empathy. You know, you may need to be the first one to step out of your comfort zone and speak up. And suddenly you realize there are a few who feel the same way. Good point.

[B]

Thank you for sharing that. That was powerful. Yeah, of course, more of a technical one. Can you walk me through your finance software stack? What tools does your team use to get the job done?

[A]

It's rather simple and I'd say maybe for a series. You know we're a series D company but you know, five years since our series D, we're a pretty late stage company. Yeah, it may surprise you. I mean we have Netsuite. Years ago we moved from QuickBooks to Netsuite but we still do most of our FP&A motions in Excel. Rev rec is still in Excel that I'd love to change but it still is in Excel. But we use Bill.com, expensify. We use vendor to help our purchasing. They've been, you know, very helpful over the years. We have Avalara for all the sales tax and vat. What am I forgetting? We use Carta like most companies. Although I'll be the first to admit I always keep a backup, not a download from Carta. I still have my own cap table that I maintain in Excel and it's a good.

[B]

Do you really?

[A]

Yeah, I do, I do and I'll say it's impressive. It's come to save me in a.

[B]

Press of or crazy. I'm actually not sure which one. But say more about Zed. So it helped.

[A]

So it's come to help a few times over the years. First, call it paranoia. What happens if car does has an outage? Right. Like yeah, and I need my cap table. How do I. How am I sure I've got it? Number two, it just makes it easier if I need spot conversations and you know, about topics but where I can have much more flexibility to analyze the data in an environment I'm comfortable with. Right. I'm always going to be more comfortable in Excel than in somebody else's tool where I've got to define and pull a report and then finally this is a nice little add on I have to say, although I don't use it every year. But having a backup and being able to switch to a competitive product if a pricing renewal negotiation doesn't go a certain way gives me a little bit more confidence. Carda's not the only game in town. Although I am so impressed by the way they have built their service and their tool set. They deeply know not only the needs of the cfo, but they have a real strategy behind what they're going to add to their tool set. I mean very, very impressive company. So I'm a big fan but you know, go back to blind spots. I like to make sure that if it's going to be the cap table, like you can't be off by one. Okay, that's one thing where there is no room for error. There's no materiality. Materiality is anything different from the truth.

[B]

Some people play video games on weekends. I do scenario waterfall modeling.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

All right, last one I got for you. What's the craziest thing you've ever had someone try to expense you've been a five time cfo.

[A]

Well, it would be too much of a soft answer if I were to say gym membership because that can happen in a seed company. But it has to be bigger. Look, the biggest expense migraine headache I've ever had was somebody with I assume all best intentions went out and bought I think it was a million boxes, like cardboard boxes for shipping, you know, shipping product without both running what was I think hundreds of thousands of dollars purchase can RFP or anything without running no rfp. Not running it by finance and most of all not running it by logistics. So essentially our head of logistics who's responsible for running warehouses suddenly had tractor trailers arriving with multiple tractor trailers arriving with a million boxes. And this was the height of the Christmas New Year's holiday season. There was no place for the boxes so it caused a up and downstream problem. It was absolute chaos. So it goes beyond just saying really, you went out and expensed this? Maybe we needed those boxes but it was not thought through.

[B]

That's the domino effect we were talking about. David.

[A]

Definitely.

[B]

This combo has been a blast. It's been very meaningful to me, young CFO to get to spend time with you. So thank you so much for carving time out for us.

[A]

Thank you so much cj. It was a pleasure.

[B]

Run the Numbers is a mostly LLC production yelling an intro by Fat Joe, artwork by some AI thingamajig. Podcast and video editing is done by cleancast@cleancast IO. Nothing said on this podcast is intended to be business or investment advice. It's the sole opinion of me, a guy who feeds his dog too much ice cream and has a history of net operating losses. Lol. If you like this podcast, please hit subscribe. It would mean a lot to me. And Also check out mostlymetrics.com that's my newsletter where I explore business models and financial metrics. Thanks for riding with me. Share this with your friends.

[A]

Peace.