When I hear that this is like 2008 or the dot-com crisis, I’m not sure. I believe there will be only more and more work for tech businesses. We saw during Covid that people still needed to buy online and find services, and businesses needed budgeting or e-commerce tools.

"There’s no other place I’d rather be right now than in tech.”

What makes a company culture more than mere bluster? And what role does a CFO and their finance team play in nurturing this culture? In this episode of CFO Yeah!, we go deep into Netguru’s growth journey to find out.

Gosia Madalińska-Piętka is CFO and board member at Netguru. Gosia joined as Head of Finance in 2016, having previously served in senior accounting and controlling roles at Tech Data and Hewlett-Packard.

Netguru provides consulting services in product development, software solutions, and product design. Since being founded in 2008, it has completed more than 600 projects for clients including Volkswagen and IKEA, and has more than 850 employees all over the world.

We spoke about what makes Netguru one of the fastest growing companies in Europe, Gosia’s work to modernize its finance processes, and the focus on culture and community for a largely remote team.

“During the seed round, it's a lot about the story you tell, and your market conditions. How is our software going to fit into the trends that are happening outside? It’s about telling your founder's story, what you believe in.”

After working as the Head of Global Pricing at Uber, where she managed weekly budgets approaching millions of dollars, Rose Punkunus worked as CFO for several tech startups. There, she encountered the same issue many times: although she and her teams needed technology to accelerate their work, the only tools available were costly, enterprise offers.

So she created her own: Sudozi.

In this episode of the CFO Yeah! podcast, we discussed her experiences moving from large companies and finance-specific positions to founding her own business from scratch. She shares her insights on securing seed funding, working towards growth, and how CFOs can communicate more effectively to their teams.

“Obviously, as the company leader, I have to think three chess moves ahead - I'm watching the world. And I think that the world is a really exciting place. I feel like it's 1994 all over again, when the internet was born. Web3 opens up so many opportunities.”

Rob Whalen studied accounting in the 1990s and planned to join a major firm. Instead, he began a career in sales.

25 years later, Rob co-founded PTO Exchange, an innovative employee benefits platform. Since then, he’s successfully built a healthy business and a thriving work culture.

In this episode of the CFO Yeah! podcast, we discussed the challenges of founding a company, the right approach to building a healthy culture, and his predictions for what’ll come next for finance professionals and businesses.

“When I look at finance and accounting teams, I think ‘wow, we’re one of the biggest bottlenecks here.’ The way we interact needs to be the next significant evolution of workflow and optimization at work.”

Dave Sellick believes the finance and accounting world could use more empathy. In his view, accountants have been stuck with dehumanizing processes for too long. Technology can free them from repetitive, machine-like tasks, and help them bring more value to their organizations.

But what exactly does the future look like for finance professionals and accountants, if their heads are no longer buried in data and Excel spreadsheets? For Dave, it promises more creativity, innovation and human connections. We just need to learn how to better interact with machines, and then each other.

In this episode, we discussed the need for more empathy and human connections in finance and accounting, and how automation will get us there. But first we need to learn to code.

“When you start working at a growing company, it’s hard to understand or drive every topic. But I believe that personal trust enables the CFO to come in, once something is burning or close to burning, and to help solve it.”

Dr. Veronika von Heise-Rotenburg is a digital finance expert and startup CFO, with extensive knowledge and experience in both the automotive and IT sectors. Having led finance at Cluno, Cazoo, and now ‘Device-as-a-Service’ company everphone, she’s found a niche in asset-heavy businesses, debt financing, and building highly efficient finance operations.

In this episode of the CFO Yeah! podcast, we discuss Veronika’s behind-the-scenes role in the acquisition of Cluno (a “Car-as-a-Service” startup) by Cazoo, her 90-day plan for any new CFO role, and the best practices and experience she gathered from working on a large exit deal.

“The future of finance is all about breaking down silos, connecting the systems across the business and producing analytics and models at fast speed, which other people across the business can actually consume.”

Mastering data is one of the main keys for businesses to navigate and operate at their best in the future of work. And Joe Garafalo’s team at Mosaic is working to make that a reality everywhere.

Joe got serious about financial data at Palantir, where he helped build an internal tool to connect various SaaS platforms. This turned into a prototype for Mosaic, a tool that gives companies data to make better decisions.

In this episode of the CFO Yeah! podcast, we discussed the future of finance, and how CFOs can leverage data to position their function at the center of company decision making. He also dispenses great advice on how CFOs can move from a reactive to a strategic approach.

“Modeling has become one of the most important skills for accounting and finance professionals. It's its own discipline, its own skill. And yet, there's no requirement, no rigor. So, we believe that it's critical to have a bar that determines that people have the skills.”

Working in finance for over 20 years, Ian Schnoor realized that companies needed to drastically raise the bar when it comes to financial modeling. So he took the lead and created his own training program for finance professionals.

In this episode of the CFO Yeah! podcast, we discussed the pitfalls of inadequate financial modeling, and the importance for finance professionals to step up their Excel game. Ian also shared useful, actionable tips and insights to make anyone’s models better!

“You can't go in and fix the finance, accounting and stakeholder ecosystem without understanding the entire organization. If you're focusing on just one piece and ignoring how the others relate to it, you're missing the bigger picture and the opportunities to really optimize.”

After several years studying medicine and understanding how systems drive the human body, Anthony Nitsos joined the business world to study the systems driving organizations and supporting growth.

After supporting several companies as a fractional CFO, Anthony launched SaaS Gurus, a company dedicated to help organizations unlock their potential for scale.

In this episode of the CFO Yeah! podcast, Anthony explains the importance of building robust foundations to support business growth, and how to build a business diagnosis to measure your company’s resilience potential.

For the past 10+ years, Asif Ahmed has been focusing on helping entrepreneurs structure and leverage their finance processes to grow faster. He’s also been a tax advisor for HMRC, and is Managing Director at Acclivity Advisors.

Between changing fundraising rules, emerging challenges for companies in their Series B, and an evolving finance landscape, it can be difficult for finance leaders to navigate the complex environment of today and lead their companies to success.

In this episode of the CFO Yeah! podcast, Asif discussed the complexity of the tax system, how the rules of fundraising are changing globally, his book The Finance Playbook for Entrepreneurs, and how CFOs can level the playing field through knowledge and community.

Glenn Hopper is a former Navy journalist, filmmaker, and founder. He left the military and spent two decades helping startups operate at scale and prepare for fundraising and acquisitions.

Today, he’s CFO at Sandline, which provides digital discovery services for legal teams. He’s also the author of two books, including Deep Finance: Corporate Finance in the Information Age, which we discussed at length in the podcast episode below.

We also spoke about building data-driven organizations, machine learning, and the exciting era the finance world is stepping into. Keep reading for the highlights, and listen to the audio for all the juicy details.