Revisiting: Wall Street to SaaS CFO with Carla Cooper (CFO @ Contentful)

Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Growth minded cfo. We are here today re releasing one of my favorite episodes of season one, an episode with Karla Cooper, who is the CFO of Contentful. Karla is the CFO of a company doing hundreds of millions of revenues, managing all the amazing things that the CFO is managing at that scale. But the most interesting part for me of that episode was how Carla got there. Kala came from a totally unconventional background. She spent years working at Wall street as a private equity analyst and transitioned towards the role of a CFO in a tech scale up. That's a very interesting transition. And what was interesting in that episode was how Carla got a lot of the learnings from a previous life into this new job. My favorite moment of that episode was when Carla shared how she wrote a memo about a new company that she shared with the CEO as an initial way to step into the role of the CFO of that company. That was such an interesting way of applying her previous skills into how she got into the new job to share, uh, her understanding of the company and how she would proceed. And I think this was a really, really interesting way of transitioning careers. Uh, and probably something that would be very inspiring to a lot of finance leaders out there. If you're considering a move. If you feel that you can't become the CFO of a scale up because you are working on Wall street, just listen to that episode. It was a great one. Enjoy and see you soon on the Growth Minded CFO podcast.

Speaker B: I did a lot of reading and um, I think I even Googled why the first time CFOs fail. So I did come up with a rule. I did come up with three principles and to keep me grounded because this was 2021 and the only thing, remember, capital was free, valuations were sky high, and so it seemed like the only thing people cared about was revenue.

Speaker C: I'm Lauren Pearl, here with my co host Alex Louise, and we are here with Carla Cooper, the CFO of Contentful. Uh, so Carla, we would love to start off the discussion with just a quick introduction on who you are and what you do at Contentful. So Carla, take it away.

Speaker B: Sure. Thank you so much, Lauren. It's great to be here. I am the CFO of Contentful. As you said, Contentful is a, um, $200 million software company that provides, uh, content management software where you can create, manage and deliver anything you need for a digital experience. So it's an exciting place to be and we can talk more about that. How Did I get here? I've been here since 2021. I came from Salesforce, which I had joined through the acquisition of Mulesoft. And um, this is an opportunity for me to be a CFO. So I came in 2021 and it's been a fantastic journey of scaling and building, which I'm sure we'll talk about. I actually run both, uh, the traditional finance functions, plus I have the privilege and honor of also overseeing our information services team, so comprising business platforms, internal IT and our data and analytics. So that's been super interesting for me because as a retired recovering software analyst, so the first part of my journey was actually on Wall Street. So I spent almost two decades as a Wall street as an equity analyst, mostly covering technology. And I made the switch over to a series of companies, a couple of one which went public and were acquired. Um, so that's been what I've been doing since 2010.

Speaker A: Kaala, I think we both already have our minds just kind of like popping with a lot of questions because I think we've touched on many, many topics that we've discussed with other guests, uh, uh, in the podcast around the structure of the team, the data, uh, uh, the path to becoming a cfo. So I'm really excited to have you on the show today, um, and I'm sure we're going to learn a lot from you. Maybe just looking back at what you've just said and coming back to the origin, I think one thing that we really liked and found really interesting in your profile, preparing this episode was this idea that you came from a world that is very different from the SaaS or technology world from today. Can you tell us a little more about your first job as an analyst in this environment, uh, of bank and all of this investment type of capabilities and then how you decided to move into a more operational role as now a cfo?

Speaker B: Sure. So I actually had no idea what I wanted to do when I graduated from college. So hopefully I am, I don't think I'm alone in that. I did want to live in New York City. So the way that one can do that from a US University is to find a job in finance. So I did that, found it interesting. Um, didn't actually think that I would stay in finance. So I tried, tried an internship when I was in business school at the Nabisco Food Group in brand management. Actually, um, found my way back to finance because I liked the discipline. So I like the discipline of stocks go up and stocks go down. You may not know why and you may not like it, but it's a really interesting way to kind of ground and it's an interesting set of disciplines. And so that's a. That's a fascinating way to kind of live your life, where you're guided by that every day. Um, but after almost 20 years of that, I began to think about, you know, what. What is the next sort of rest of my career look, and are there other ways that I could leverage what I've learned in a way where I could be more of a builder? And that's how, after a series of informational interviews and explorations, I found my way to a company that was similar to the company, that of the type I covered as an analyst. But obviously I had a huge amount to learn on the operational side, so luckily I got a chance to go do that. So I came as the head of FPA and investor relations to a company that went public about a year later. So I had a lot of value to add from that Wall street perspective. But to be honest, it was a real rebuild in terms of my skill set, which was both scary and also ultimately proved to be really fun and exciting.

Speaker C: Yeah, I would love to hear a little more about that moment of transition. I can imagine that kind of during those days, moving from Wall street into the operations of a company, there have got to have been some moments where you kind of looked inward and thought like, wow, this is very different. And I'm curious to hear both about the ways in which that transition where you were like, this is different. I need to have a different skill set and what moments you had where you realized, oh, this is different, and my prior skill set is an advantage. Can you speak a little bit to what that was like and what that looked like for you?

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: So in the places where I thought, ooh, this is new.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: So when you're on the outside looking in, you actually think that anything in reported results are real numbers. I had no idea that accounting involved operational accounting. And closing the books involves a lot of estimates. So if I have to say I had one light bulb moment, it was that, you know that when Cisco can report their. They used to do their conference call famously, incredibly quickly, five or six days after month end. They're doing it based on a lot of experience, but they're doing it based on a lot of estimates. So if I had a single light bulb moment like, oh my gosh, go behind the curtain, it was that m. On the flip side, what was super helpful was that external, particularly because we were preparing for an ipo. It was actually being able to really take on how is an external person going to look at this business and what's going to be important to them. And so that was over and over again. And I think the other thing is having been a sell side analyst where I had clients really, really thinking about who is the end customer that I'm talking to, who is going to be the end user of my financial statements of everything I put in an IPO roadshow deck. And so having that internal perspective and being able to use that to help shape what we were doing internally was probably the main thing that, that I found really useful and helpful.

Speaker C: That makes so much sense. You have so much empathy for that stakeholder because they used to be you.

Speaker B: Exactly right. And why, why also I'll uh, only my first screen. I haven't changed jobs a lot. Some of my changes that you see on my LinkedIn profile are all actually due to acquisition. I think really deeply when I join a company about what the opportunity is because if it all goes well, I am going to be representing that opportunity to someone who I used to be. And a lot of the people at some of the people, not a lot maybe, but some of the people I still know. And I care deeply that if I'm going to go and be a spokesperson for a company, I really want to believe 100% in the investment strategy and what we're doing.

Speaker A: Mhm. So important one thing that I would like to come back on, which is really interesting, Carla, was a lot of finance people, when they move from one type of function, which you're an analyst and you moving to operational, actually wondering how do I make that happen? You know, there's a kind of, it's so much of a jump, you know, and it's not always something that is a totally random move. Um, was that for you based on the relationship that you got from the previous job? Did you know someone or what was the way for you to go from one place to another and how did you evaluate the opportunity when the opportunity appeared for you?

Speaker B: Yeah, it, so it took me a while and the key to this, and I tell my 21 year and 21 year old and 24 year old children this as well. The key that I think is often underrated is informational interviewing. So just to ask for someone's time, you know, 15, 30 minute Zoom or whatever to learn about what they do. And for me that eventually led to um, somewhere where I found an opportunity that was open and I found a friend who knew the CEO that was definitely a piece of it, but I had a lot to build up. Like what does it actually mean to do a job in, in this case FP and a. The ir. The IR piece I felt I knew better because I'd seen, I'd worked so closely with IR people when I was an analyst. But the FPA piece was a lot of actually thinking about what are the key skills and the things I'm going to have to do and know every day on the job. And I mean I got maybe 50 or 60% of the way there on my, you know, informational interviewing. I still had a lot to learn but. And I did a lot of those. So that was my real key. But then it is ultimately key to use your network, um, and be able to reach out to someone, particularly when they're going to take a chance on you.

Speaker A: I love that comment that you just made around, um, getting outside of your company and reaching out to people. This is something that we've heard a couple of times from on the growth minded CFO podcast because that's typically gross minded type of mindset to just say, hey, let's get outside of my day to day, let's speak to other people. And that's usually how opportunities also arise. So I think it's a, it's a great learning, especially when people are contemplating changing career or moving into a different space. And also from what you just said, also not being too much afraid of things you don't know. Right. Maybe you know really well industry relationship, but way less on npna. And guess what? You can learn. I guess that was your confusion as well, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, there was a. I read something a bit back which said you essentially need sort of a T of skills. Right? There's going to be a set of things that you know quite well, but then there's going to be a whole lot of other things you need to know, people who know how to do those things. And then you need to have enough business sense to actually understand how to ask the right questions.

Speaker A: The T shaped professional. That's how it's called, I guess.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.

Speaker C: I'd never heard that one before, but it's excellent and just speaks to the power of networking and the skills you need to be a great networker as well and pull from your network the knowledge you need. Um, I want to circle back a little bit to what you also briefly talked about, which was you've actually not done a ton of job searching in your career. A lot of times you've moved from company to company because of, uh, acquisition. So I really want to kind of get a little bit of a view on what, what it's like to be in a company throughout that kind of acquisition process because it's such a special kind of vantage point, um, in the journey and the life cycle of a business. So bring us in the room a little bit. What is it like to approach a company that's like a year from that kind of IPO moment? What is it like leading up to that? And what kinds of things are you experiencing after it happens? Walk us through it or maybe from your experience at least.

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So it is, um, you know, it's a tremendous opportunity, I guess, for scaling and transformation. And so really here it's start with the, start with the end point. So just pick our favorite thing, the 10K. Um, if you actually think about what's in a 10K, you're going to have to develop or be part of sort of everything that goes into that document. So. And when you walk into a company, when I came to Contentful, for instance, we were only about, um, $75 million in revenue. We were a, I think technically by that point we had incorporated in Delaware, but we did not have us GAAP financials. We did not have um, any controls or we had some controls in place, but we've ramped up our controls program. So you had to go from a place of just a lot of bits and pieces. We had netsuite, but we didn't have a way to actually consolidate our books on NetSuite. So just actually taking a document like a 10K and thinking what is going to need to go into this and breaking it down sort of piece by piece. And, and of course a lot of it's not finance per se, but finance will end up being involved in a lot of it because any number has to be something that finance is comfortable with. So that's one way to really think through the massive amount of change that needs to happen. And then you also. Just. The other thing I would say is that you also just have to have the processes, the reporting, the forecasting to be able to do all of that on a 90 day cycle. So when you think of those two things, they're quite daunting. When you start, you end up with a really long checklist and you just work your way through those things. And you've got to have the right people, of course, in place to do each one of those things. So there can be some more transformation on the people front too.

Speaker A: Yeah. The broadest test is also looking forward and, you know, kind of working backwards from what you want in an ideal state, which is probably the goal. Um, and I think one thing that I found really interesting on your career path as well is that you've been working for companies that got acquired multiple times. And I guess this is a very different type of setup because you're not really, maybe you're planning to exit or sell the business. That might be a situation, but you don't necessarily know exactly how the financial situation will be. What are the systems? Can you also walk us through the. How did you get prepared for getting into another, you know, merge into another organization and merge into another process and things? How did that happen? And I think one thing that I really like with finance people in this type of situation is that they usually know way before everyone else that this is going to happen. Right? You're already in the process before, so you know what is going to happen. How did, how do you go through this? And maybe from practical example of when you joined Salesforce, for example, that might have been an interesting journey or transition for you.

Speaker B: Um, so a couple interesting points there. I guess the question is how way before, I mean at mulesoft it was only a couple of months before the deal was announced that I knew anything which was, you're right, sooner than some people, but certainly not soon enough to make any full scale, ah, huge changes. Um, generally the acquirer is going to dictate your use of systems and process. So you don't have a lot of say. I mean you obviously have to go in and I mean, I know because we just acquired a company actually last year Contentful had the opportunity to buy a company, um, a fantastic company built on the same technology as Contentful. So we had a very, um, seamless technology integration. And on the finance side they were using QuickBooks. You know, we use NetSuite. So on the finance side we dictated a lot of what they did because of course we needed the way to have that integrated and consolidated. So I think the same thing is true on the acquired side. You need to be prepared to do a lot of systems transition. I would say would be my advice going into an uh, M and A, if you're the target, would be to make sure that you can, you can do that. And so the better your core processes are, in my experience, the easier you have in taking your information out. You know, a lot of times flat file and being able to prepare it and hand it off to the acquirer to ingest. The one super interesting thing about Being acquired for me especially sort of as an analyst is the fact that you get to see two companies side by side have different policies for the exact same situation or, or topic. So for instance the bookings policy at ah, Salesforce or how we calculate certain metrics, there were certain cases where um, you know, they chose vanilla and we had chosen chocolate. And so neither is right or wrong, but each had knock on effects around sales compensation and other things that were super interesting to understand. And so that was a fascinating part. So always going into an acquisition can be difficult. Um, but always going into it with an open mindset and what you're going to learn has been helpful. In the situations I've been in that is so interesting.

Speaker C: I love that we're getting kind of into a nuanced discussion about these different aspects of what it feels like to be in an IPO versus an acquisition. Because I think, and this is sort of my own bias showing as a founder focused on startups, we think of both of these as just exits. Right. Like they're exit moments and so sometimes we kind of smush them together. But as a cfo, managing this change sounds like it's a vastly different experience. One has like a clear checklist, it's a huge deal, it's going to be incredibly public. Um, and there's going to be a lot more kind of government stuff involved. Um, and then the other one feels much more like a moving target but with so much to learn and kind of like a dance of marrying with another company. And it's a different kind of challenge. So it's very interesting to get this view, a little peek into what it might be like to go through either one of these M moments.

Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, we, we said, particularly at Mulesoft when I was there, the I in IPO is for initial. So in, you know, you're really, you're really setting yourselves up to scale. You know, that's true in both cases you execute it differently. Um, but always keeping in mind, I think the strategic value you can bring your customers and then how as a finance department you're going to set the company up to scale are the two key things. I think if you had guideposts, those would be two key things.

Speaker A: And I also like the fact that you see this as a learning opportunity. You insisted a lot on this, which I find really interesting because a lot of finance teams usually see those acquisition process are one, really stressful because you need to go through the deal. And second, sometimes it's also kind of a risky moment. For your carrier because you're usually part of a team that you know can be made a little bit redundant and you know, sometimes you don't really know like how the processes will merge, who is going to do what. And so we're seeing this as a, as a, as an opportunity to learn as well on how different companies and how you compare the reality, not the buy the book type of things is also great I think from this perspective and a great learning for others.

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Speaker B: I think one of the amazing things about being in a finance department is many, many, many companies, maybe not every company, many companies need ultimately to report financial results and to understand their financials. Particularly if you're a finance professional in a, uh, technology industry that has growth. We have a, we have a great, I would say I am confident that this group of professionals has great opportunities in front of it. And so really the only mistake you can make would be to be not learning and closed and not open to the opportunity and not learning about the future opportunities. We are all in a very, very exciting ecosystem and so I think that's one of the positive things that you can take around with you every day is the idea that we are in an in demand and in an exciting place to continue to learn, which means you can have an exciting career for decades, um, and not be worried about the idea that the opportunities are going to go away.

Speaker A: I love that positive mindset, especially in an environment where people can sometimes be very cautious around, ah, how you can use technology and what is going to be the impact on technology, um, on the role of the finance teams. And what we've heard so many times from guests on the show is that it's actually an opportunity to be better on your job learning, being more efficient rather than, well, someone's going to take my job and it's going to be an AI or whatever. So I think it's really interesting and it comes back to this idea of constantly learning. I think something that we've also discussed in the past with you was the fact that when I think when you joined Cotton Full, it was being a first time cfo, right for you. Um, and one thing that you insisted on again around this idea of learning was how did you get prepared for moving into that position? Can you give us a little bit, um, you're outside of contentful, you got the job, you contemplating taking the job. How do you get ready to sit into this new role and how do you prepare for this new position?

Speaker B: So I'd say two things, one of which we've already talked about. One is you definitely want a rich network of phone a friend. So back, Alex, I think to your, to some points that you've made earlier today and then I think on other podcasts, which is definitely build your kitchen cabinet. Definitely build the group of people that you can go to when you don't know something and you're never going to know everything of who you can reach out to, who might again, that person might not know the answer, but they might be able to connect you to someone who knows the answer. So I think a huge plug for networking is. Um, the second thing is I did a lot of reading and um, I think I even Googled why do first time CFOs fail? So I did come up with a rule, I did come up with three principles and to keep me grounded because this was 2021 and the only thing, remember capital was free, valuations were sky high. And so it seemed like the only thing people cared about was revenue growth. But I actually realized that my job, you know, the job of the CFO is bigger than that. And so I came up with three rules.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: No one goes to jail. Which means we have high integrity financial results and statements and we take the security and the integrity parts of our jobs really seriously. That is rule number one. The second is don't run out of money. So at the time we were in a, um, we were, we were burning a lot of capital. We actually achieved uh, cash flow break even last year. So being able to position the company towards, towards that has been one of the things that I've done while I've been here. So again, rule number two, don't run out of money. And then rule number three was actually make the revenue plan. And so the revenue plan, as you guys know in technology businesses is so incredibly important, but making sure. And there's a different set of rules. I know a colleague, um, person who was on my team, was now a cfo, took the rules and adapted them. But it's really keeping in mind that you have a holistic set of responsibilities and making sure that you honor, honor

Speaker A: all of those feels like a kind of a pyramid of like, you know, you don't want to go to jail, you don't run out of money. So you can keep on running. And, and then because you've done both of them, you get to the point where you're actually delivering on the strategy which is delivering the plan. That's a great.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: I think it's a great summary of this. And how did you, once you, you had these three rules for you, how did you prepare to uh, get into this job? Was that interviewing with people that were already in the team, um, also learning from others. And also one thing that I found really interesting in a lot of other guests was it's not only about your finance. Right. I guess that when you join and have a lot of questions on your finance, even now it's structured, we can come to that later. It's also about who are going to be my other stakeholders, who am I dependent on. And so how did you get that organized? Maybe before you joined or in the first couple of weeks or months after joining.

Speaker B: So the one, one thing I've done on multiple occasions when I've gone to a company is I actually take myself back to my analyst days when I was writing research reports. You can find them online. And I actually wrote a research report on Contentful. And so I developed a thesis on the business and what I thought was going on to really get me thinking and get me asking questions that I thought would be helpful. And so I would say developing a thesis on the business is something that you can really do. And it doesn't have to be in the form of a research report, but developing a thesis and forcing yourself to think through that. And that often means you need to figure out who is the competitive set. It often means you need to think about, um, you know, what the growth dynamics. I mean, typically as a cfo, you would have some access to financials before you actually go there. So understanding and analyzing the financials before you get there, what do you think is going on? And you'll probably have more questions than answers. But developing that thesis, I think is really important. And then I would say the second thing, Alex, is you're making a great point about. It's not only understanding the function of the finance department, it's understanding the function of the, the company and your peers that is really important. And I'm not sure I have great advice there other than that to acknowledge it's incredibly important. And you need to spend a lot of time doing that, um, and making sure that you spend time getting to know those people, what their goals are. I think one of your previous guests, um, said something that I would echo, which is any action in the business ultimately gets translated into financials, which is very cool. But the point is to get to know those things that are ultimately translating into the financials and get to know those people and those strategies and those. The way those folks are making decisions as the input. And so to really focus your attention there.

Speaker C: I really love your point about building a thesis, and I think your second point about kind of understanding stakeholders in different departments in the building, it kinds of relates to each other. I think we've heard a lot from many guests about, um, as a cfo, you got to get out of the finance department and into other parts of the business. You got to understand all the levers and where they exist and what everyone else is sort of working on. But I love your idea of finding kind of a grounding thesis on the business because it kind of gives you some content to react to those experiences. I could see kind of holding that thesis as the thing that you're working on as you're building those relationships, as you're learning about the company. And ultimately that thesis being what sets apart sort of a, uh, more junior role, a VP of finance, someone who's more kind of action oriented from a CFO who has to be really a thought leader on what's going to happen next in the business and where the business should go. So I love that idea of building a thesis as you journey into the company.

Speaker A: It's really, really, really good. And I think, uh, it's a really good synthesis of what I think the role should be. And sharing a little bit of my personal experience as a CEO of a tech company as well. Much smaller than the new Calabat. Uh, growing. I love when people are actually coming to me and trying to understand how the business work, challenge it and make a thesis. And maybe sometimes the thesis is totally wrong, but still trying to. And yeah, because trying to understand where it's coming from. What made you think that this is the way it's going to work is really interesting. And to share something really practical that I encourage everyone to do, if you're raising fund or if you're going through an acquisition process, is trying to talk to investors and try to get an investment committee memo. I've had the chance discussing and debriefing with a couple of them. And it's our equivalent of your notes that you would have for company. Right. Your report that you're going to write. I'm sure CEOs of companies are reading this and say, no, Kala is wrong. It's not what we do. But even reading this is so positive because you're probably going to see a lot of positive things. But for me, reading investment committee memos, when we. Obviously we don't always have them, but sometimes they share it. It is so interesting. And sometimes you just also see a blind spot or something that you did not explain well. And that's something that is extremely valuable. So having someone that joined your team and does that exercise, um, without even them asking is really, really good. And I would highly encourage everyone. I would love for my team to do that.

Speaker B: Actually.

Speaker C: I'm going to tell them we've changed Alex's company.

Speaker B: You've given me a new idea. So thank you, Alex. Um, the other thing that I've been working on right now is that we've moved from burning cash to generating cash. Um, and we actually were able this year to make some proactive investments, um, in our innovation and in AI and in our positioning, um, that became available to us because we had that. But it means we have to be thinking about the business in a different way. And so there's some very financial implications. Like we're going to become a taxpayer in more jurisdictions. Right. So we have to do things differently. But it also means that we've got to really put the onus on us to be able to highlight the conversations of, uh, okay, so say we have an extra million dollars to invest. What's the best use for that, you know, we need to be a partner in answering that question. The other, the other fun exercise I did was to pretend that you're a Contentful board member in and, and, or you could use a person making an investment in a year. And what, given the strategies that we know about today, what do you want? That's what do you want it, what do you want to be like write your board report a year or a year and a half from now? What do you want to be saying and what are the reasons for your success going to be? So in our case, Contentful developed an internal product called Studio that we launched about a year ago and then we made the acquisition of a, uh, fantastic personalization technology in August. So for instance, in a year I want to be able to write to the board that we are seeing fantastic growth in part driven by customer uptake of those new, of those new um, products. And therefore that means that we need to be doing board reporting on what do our attached rates look like across those three products? That's something we hadn't, we, we didn't put as a main metric. We've been reporting on it in some cases, but that needs to be part of our drumbeat because it's part of our sales motion and it's different than it was a year ago. So a great example and I would hope that that would be something that, uh, you know, a potential investor would look at and consider important too.

Speaker A: That's amazing. This kind of forward looking statement that reminds me of, you know, when product managers are, before delivering a ship, a, uh, feature or a new line of product, actually tasked to write the press release in the first day so that, you know, you try to project yourself in. All right, when this is going to go out in the market, what are we going to say from that? And I think it's a great parallel from there.

Speaker C: One of the questions that I really am curious about, Carla, is you have this super interesting background as an analyst on Wall street and as an experienced cfo. And I wonder, are there any kind of skills or principles that you think are really important for CFOs to have that we don't really talk about enough?

Speaker B: Oh, that's such a tantalizing question, Lauren. Thank you for asking. Um, so I think, because I do think, and I would make a plug for doing different jobs, um, throughout your career as a way to develop multiple perspectives. But I'll share two here right now, the first is just a concept of really simple economic value and making sure that in all the complexity you know of accounting, for instance, that you don't lose sight on, you know, more cash sooner continues to be, you know, a good, a good thing. Um, you obviously have to put that within the value of short term versus long term, but really in a very grounded way, if you were going to explain it to your mom or your dad or, you know, your smart brother or sister, really, in some cases, if you find yourself very challenged by lots of competing complexities to just step back and think, at the end of the day, does this provide value? And which of my choices are options provides the most value. So I would say peeling the onion back and making sure that you do that would be one thing. The second thing that I would say that perhaps is underrated because we are CFOs, uh, is this idea that it is our job also to tell an investment story in a way that's integrated with the financials. So particularly when you're at a company which is public and, and the stock can be up some days and it can be down some days. So being able to tie people back to a long term vision, and that may mean that the next two years are going to be years of investment, but as we do that investment, we believe we'll see accelerated revenue growth in year three or year four. But being able to tie back. And why do we believe that? Well, we believe that because the market opportunity is huge. We have a very competitive product. Um, we have a way, we have a highly differentiated product. So being able to tie back and so we're pursuing a strategy that's going to deliver against that, but not tomorrow, it's going to take time to play out. So being that role of Chief finance Vision officer, bringing vision into what you do and the kinds of ways that you present and think about how the financials tie in, I think is really important and something that we can do to be actually inspirational. In addition to reporting the financial results, you know, properly and correctly and on time, offering also that vision that is so huge.

Speaker C: Carla, I feel like, I think you're so right in that it sounds undervalued because so often we think of the Chief Vision Officer as the CFO and as CFOs, we're kind of just in the background crunching the numbers. We're the adult in the room. We're kind of stabilizers. But you're so right to be impactful. You have to bring that story and that vision and that excitement to what you're doing, to how you're allocating capital to the choices that you're Making and have them be backed by the numbers as well. I love that.

Speaker A: And one thing that I think is also really interesting in what you just said is that you moved from a public company where you had to tell the story for investors in the outside world, but you're now in a private company where I guess, yes, you're probably telling the story to the board members and maybe a few investors. But I guess the point is also about telling the story to the team. Right. And that also relates to this idea that you need to be embedded into the organization, the team, and for them to understand what's the vision. Is that, Is that a. Is that a correct assumption that I'm making here?

Speaker B: Absolutely correct assumption you're making. Because actually our employees are also, you know, equity holders. And so many of them came for the promise of that. The idea that Contentful can be a giant company someday. And so actually helping them go along the journey and understand what that could look like is really important. So. Absolutely. Alex. I spend, you know, a couple of days a quarter talking with investors and um, of course our board as well, but then I spend many hours every day talking with my fellow employees. And so I do think you're right to the extent that CFOs aren't thinking a lot about it. I think it's a really, really important point well made.

Speaker A: That's, I think, ah, it's a great conclusion and a great takeaway from this episode today, Carla. Um, because I think it's, as you said, Lauren, this is often something that lies within the CEO. You know, the CEO is supposed to give the vision stuff. And I think at the end of the day, when the CEO is telling the vision, she's not the only one doing it. Right. And I think the interesting thing is that it can come from different angles that are consistent and telling the same story. One might be coming from the numbers, uh, and maybe that's your role. But again, it's not only the numbers. And I think that's a great way of looking at the role of the cfo. So thank you so much for sharing this gala. It's been super insightful.

Speaker B: Thanks, Alex. And if I could make one more point on that. You have the. The CEO is absolutely the. The chief vision person. The CFO can also bring the number, the dimension of the facts and the results into that conversation, which can actually amplify it and make it more m. And make it more powerful.

Speaker A: Yep, that's. That's. That's totally right. And I think over all of this episode, I'M just trying to remember all the points that you said. Caroline, I think you've been one of the guests that I think embodied the most this idea that it's grounded into the reality and there's been a lot of practical tips, but also getting to this vision and having this role that is a forward looking role for the organization. So I'm sure this will have inspired a lot of people that are maybe in other positions, uh, if you're a financial analyst, uh, if you're writing, uh, investment documents today, maybe you can become the CFO of a great company.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I think that's super inspiring. And we got a few tips on how to get there and not only on how to move from one position to another, but also how you prepared for these changes. And, um, that's been really a great conversation. Thank you so much, Carla, for so.

Speaker B: Thank you. You guys have a great podcast. So thank you.

Speaker C: Thank you so much.

Speaker B: I am a subscriber.

Speaker C: Oh, amazing.

Speaker A: You know, we're just doing this, um, with Lauren. It's been a great, a great time doing this together, really with this idea and hope that people will learn, people will also recommend other people. So, you know, if you know other people that we should invite you, Carla, or you as a listener today, please don't hesitate. Um, we've only had great conversations so far, so we're doing more and more of them. So if you also like this episode, um, please, um, take one minute to just rate it. Whatever the platform you're using, it's always great. Um, and if you can reshare it with your friends or people that might be interested, this is great help for us and pushing us to take more time with Lorraine to do this on the side of our jobs, which we love.

Speaker C: And subscribe on whatever platform you listen to our podcast.

Speaker A: Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you so much, Karla, for being with us today. And see you soon on another episode of the Growth Minded cfo.

Speaker C: See you.

Speaker B: Thanks for tuning in to today's episode of the Growth Minded CFO podcast. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and consider telling a friend or colleague about the show. We'd really appreciate your help in spreading the word. The Growth Minded CFO is brought to you by Upflow. Upflow is a groundbreaking financial relationship management software. Think of it like a CRM for finance. Upflow enables businesses like yours to collect cash faster, build stronger customer relationships, and achieve efficient long term growth. Join thousands of forward thinking finance leaders and go from chasing invoices to engaging customers. Find out more@upflow IO.