The Headcount People

Florian Gendeau has been the Head of Finance at Novo for over four and half years. The company has evolved significantly over the course of that time, growing from 12 employees to more than 300. He has some amazing insights, learnings, and frameworks that will help you understand how Novo has been able to scale by 25x in just a few short years.

Chapter list: 00:00 - Cold open 02:45 - Why is headcountmanagement important? 04:20 - Define headcount management, and how to do it. 10:24 - what does a great planning process look like? 14:03 - Best practices for keeping the headcount plan up to date? 21:46 - What are your top tips for Finance leaders?

Full pod dropping on Feb 15! 

Somrat is the Head of Business for Gusto Embedded Payroll, so he oversees a cross-functional org that includes finance, HR, go-to-market, and product teams. He previously oversaw Gusto’s strategic partnerships, technology ecosystem, distribution partnerships, and the developer ecosystem. Somrat also has founded two VC backed companies, both of which were later acquired. Somrat gets really involved with headcount management and org design at Gusto, and shares what's made him successful over the course of his career. (00:54) - Guest introduction - Somrat Niyogi (2:53) - Why is headcount planning important? (4:14) - What has worked for you that viewers can use as a blueprint for headcount planning? (8:14) - What is effective org design? (13:10) - Why build your org chart in a slide deck vs an org chart product? (15:27) - How do you keep all of these things in sync? (20:23) - What are the best ways to work with GMs, CEOs, and also department and function leaders? (23:02) - Best practices and parting advice for adjusting strategy.

Here's a sneak preview of our first guest, Somrat Niyogi, GM at Gusto (head of embedded payroll product), giving his best practices for headcount planning. For him, it all starts with org design.

Check out his full episode dropping Wednesday, Jan. 18th!