CJ Gustafson sits down with Marten Abrahamsen, CFO of Vercel, at the NYSE to talk about running finance inside a hypergrowth AI company. They cover AI use cases in finance, rev rec, forecasting, KPI dashboards, PLG, consumption pricing, and Marten’s “speeding tickets vs. parking tickets” framework for moving fast without losing control.

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LINKS: 

Mostly Talent: https://mostlymetrics.typeform.com/to/cLTxtAsN

Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martenabrahamsen/

Company: http://vercel.com/

CJ: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/

Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com

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TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 Speeding tickets vs. parking tickets

3:21 Visa IPO in the financial crisis

5:09 Going public has changed

6:45 Private market: 22–24 trillion

9:03 More or fewer public companies?

9:48 Sponsors — Brex | Aleph | RightRev

13:04 KPI dashboard on your phone

14:12 Revenue flux via Slack and Notion

15:37 RevRec tool: green, yellow, red

17:56 V0 is a job requirement

19:43 Speeding tickets vs. parking tickets

20:33 Sponsors — Rillet | EY | SpendHound

23:49 Very few one-way doors

25:02 Finance in hypergrowth

25:39 Three-scenario planning

27:00 Honest with the board

31:00 PLG + consumption at Vercel

33:32 What Marten checks every morning

34:03 Why RPO doesn't work here

35:36 Holiday usage is up

37:10 ICP shifted to solo developer

39:22 Capital allocation in a fast market

41:32 Growth compounds; margin can't

43:22 SaaS gross margins: spicy take

44:24 Cash-burning AI: 2026 vs. 2021

47:29 Are some hypergrowth cos destroying value?

50:00 Lightning round

50:11 Bank of Ireland mix-up

51:10 Don't punt problems forward

52:04 Finance software stack

52:38 Expensed an oven

53:12 Credits