When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, Zoom went from steady growth to hyperscale almost overnight, even generating a backlog of a million tickets. Sarah Riley was a finance leader in the company at the time. She joins CJ to talk about what she learned from the experience and how it impacted her in her current role as CFO of dbt Labs. She also explains the influence of Helmer’s Seven Powers framework on her strategic decisions. The discussion covers how Sarah’s evolved pricing models, and helped bring product-led and sales-led growth together into a single go-to-market strategy at dbt Labs. She breaks down how she uses big systems thinking to build out a finance org, how to create healthy off-ramps for pilots, and what’s actually okay to break when “moving fast and breaking stuff”. She also touches on the current use cases for AI in finance and for turning your team from “doers to reviewers”.

—

LINKS:

Sarah Riley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahjriley/

dbt Labs:

https://www.getdbt.com

7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy:

https://7powers.com/

CJ on X (@cjgustafson222): https://x.com/cjgustafson222

Mostly metrics:

http://mostlymetrics.com

RELATED EPISODES:

Wasted Capital and Where to Find It: The CFO’s Guide to Spoilage Levers Leakages:

—

TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Preview and Intro

(02:18) Sponsor – Pulley | Navan | NetSuite

(05:53) Being at Zoom at the Start of the Pandemic

(10:14) Challenges Caused by the Influx of Customers

(14:06) Takeaways From Sarah’s Time at Zoom: M&A and Build Versus Buy

(15:49) Sponsor – Planful | Tabs | Rippling Spend

(19:38) Taking Advantage of Your High Share Price for M&A

(20:56) What dbt Labs Does

(24:27) Pricing Evolutions at dbt Labs: Freemium and Open-Source

(27:51) Seat-Based, Usage-Based, Hybrid, or Outcome-Based Pricing

(30:27) Pros and Cons of a Free Component

(32:17) Finance and Sales in dbt’s Evolving Go-to-Market Strategy

(34:09) The Evolution of dbt Labs’ ICP

(35:09) The Helmer 7 Powers Framework

(40:39) Being a Big Systems Thinker While Building a Finance Org

(44:16) Moving and Iterating Quickly: Creating Healthy Off-Ramps for Pilots

(46:19) What You Can and Can’t Break When “Moving Fast and Breaking Stuff”

(47:32) The Current State of AI and Use Cases in Finance

(51:20) Long-Ass Lightning Round: Boundary Definition

(52:08) Advice to Younger Self

(52:56) Finance Software Stack

(55:20) Craziest Expense Story

—

SPONSORS:

Pulley is the cap table management platform built for CFOs and finance leaders who need reliable, audit-ready data and intuitive workflows, without the hidden fees or unreliable support. Switch in as little as 5 days and get 25% off your first year: pulley.com/mostlymetrics.

Navan is the all-in-one travel and expense solution that helps finance teams streamline reconciliation, enforce policies automatically, and gain real-time visibility. It connects to your existing cards and makes closing the books faster and smarter. Visit navan.com/Runthenumbers for your demo.

NetSuite is an AI-powered business management suite, encompassing ERP/Financials, CRM, and ecommerce for more than 41,000 customers. If you're looking for an ERP, head to https://netsuite.com/metrics and get the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning.

Planful’s financial planning software can transform your FP&A function. Built for speed, accuracy, and confidence, you’ll be planning your way to success and have time left over to actually put it to work. Find out more at www.planful.com/metrics.

Tabs is a platform that brings all of your revenue-facing data and workflows - billing, AR, payments, rev rec, and reporting - onto a single system so you can automate and be more flexible. Find out more at: tabs.inc/metrics.

Rippling Spend is a spend management software that gives you complete visibility and automated policy controls across every type of spend, saving you time and money. Get a demo to see how much time your org would save at rippling.com/metrics.

#hypergrowth #7Powers #FinanceStrategy #bigsystemsthinking #GoToMarketStrategy

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