From an Exited Founder to a Fractional CFO ft. Matthew Powell

Speaker A: Welcome back to the podcast. It's great to welcome Matthew Powell to the show. Matt left a career in EY to find a peer to peer fintech lending startup. He took this all the way through from seed to series A and then an exit to private equity. It was really fun to geek out a little into that world and Matt's journey and his decision to eventually start Model Pro as a founder and fractional CFO agency that builds financial models for startups. If you're interested in startup journeys and fintech, this is one for you. Hope you enjoy. Welcome to the new F Word podcast where we cut the fluff on business finances and lift the lid on the new F word, the fractional finance revolution. It's a game m changer for small businesses. I'm your host Colin Hewitt, co founder of Float Cash Flow Management for Xero and QuickBooks. We believe that really understanding your business finances makes all the difference in the world. And having a strategic partner like a fractional CFO is the key to unlocking that. So join us as we dive into personal stories and actionable insights from forward thinking finance leaders and seasoned entrepreneurs to discover why fractional finance leaders have become an irreplaceable part of small business leadership. All right, well Matt, it's great to have you on the podcast. Be really looking forward to just hearing more about your story. And I know you were at EY and then you moved into doing your own startup. So tell us a bit about that journey.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks Colin. Obviously great to be here and join the podcast. So that's good. Yeah. So I started my career in a sort of traditional sense, in the sense that I joined EY from the sort of grad scheme and then I spent sort of seven or eight years at EY primarily across real estate, audit and assurance, working with kind of listed companies, so, uh, much larger than the companies that I work with now. And I think that was a, you know, great, great sort of background to my sort of finance career. Not only the sort of people that I got to work with and learn from, but the companies that I got to be part of as well. So I really kind of learned, you know, what best in class looks like at uh, scale and I think obviously sort of going on to later in my career working in small companies. I think it's very good to be aware of what best in class looks like. And obviously you can't be there from the beginning, but having an awareness of the steps that you need to take to get there I think is helpful to have in your Mind, I think, you know, working with smaller companies, you definitely need to rip up some of the rule books that you've seen in kind of listed companies that have been operating for sort of 25 years. But it's definitely good to have that foundation of what good looks like because I think, you know, many people start out in early stage businesses and they're just not aware of what good looks like. And I think, yeah, uh, if you can have that in the back of your mind, you can sort of inch your way towards it.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's actually the complete opposite of me. I sort of started off, yeah with that, uh, just straight out of uni with no idea. And I think probably thought that big businesses are just slow and boring and then realized actually they've figured out a few things along the way. So you're absolutely right, there are some good things, but obviously there are some downsides to the pace and uh, the bureaucracy that creeps in over time as well. I'm sure you saw that too.

Speaker B: And I think they definitely get a bad rap for being slow. And I think that is fair. I think the bigger you get, the problem is as well with systems and technology, you kind of bolt different systems on over years and then changing anything becomes really difficult. And even in the startup world that can happen because you start out with best intentions without really knowing what the future holds. You don't know the scale that you might be, you don't know the size of the team, the types of tools you might be using. And therefore you sort of bolt things on to sort of get you to the next 612 months. And in a lot of startups the lack of funding means you're not thinking five to 10 years ahead, you're thinking sort of three to six months ahead. And you can easily see how over the course of 20, 25 years you end up with a tech stack that is really difficult to change. And the change management process and cost is huge. Especially if you look at sort of large financial institutions doing any wide technology change is millions of pounds and many, many months of work. So that was kind of one thing that I did see. You know, if it's not completely broken, most people just leave it alone and that is fine generally, but it can get you into problems.

Speaker A: And. Yeah, so how long lei was that?

Speaker B: So I think about seven or eight years in total.

Speaker A: Right, okay. So good stint, good stint.

Speaker B: And I was doing well there. I was well regarded, enjoying it. Uh, you know, great people, lots of really interesting people and lots of people have left and gone on to do really interesting things as well in that kind of peer group. But I think, uh, you know, I, I always had that thing in the back of my mind that I wanted to, to do something sort of individually and entrepreneurial. And I always felt like being a part of such a big business with kind of a hundred thousand employees, there was only so much difference I could really make. And you know, even if you kind of make it, let's say to, to partner, you're then, you know, in amongst a big partner group and you're kind of still working your way up the ladder. And you know, I just wanted to try something on a smaller scale, but try, you know, try and get something off the ground. I think lots of people have that kind of itch they need to scratch and I think I would regret sort of not going out and doing something alone. Uh, I'm sure you can relate to that.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah, no, absolutely. I feel like in some ways I maybe missed that stage of life, uh, that, you know, corporate, you know, few years where you really, you know, knock your pan in for a, uh, you know, for like a, you know, pull. Is it like, was it like that, you know, were you doing like, you know, six days a week kind of working late? Was it the kind of, the sort of typical impression or were you able to find a balance in that at that stage?

Speaker B: I think in the first couple of years I, uh, sort of probably was a bit shielded from some of it by sort of seniors. But I think as a, as it progressed it definitely did get, get busier. So we typically had a busy season which was, you know, January to April, but then by the end, and that was typically based on company year ends, especially with listed companies, they've got quite tight reporting requirements to the markets and that kind of thing. So yeah, really, really long hours in that part of the year. But then by the end I had kind of six or seven clients with year ends dotted throughout the year. So I tended to be pretty busy all year round. And I think the biggest challenge there was just, you know, you'll probably relate to it in a startup, uh, world kind of juggling seven clients. Or in your case it could be seven different, completely different areas of the business that need attention and each of them need probably ah, 80% of your attention. So I always felt kind of stretched between them. But yeah, for sure it's long hours. But yeah, never stopped learning when I was there. And I've definitely still I've taken a lot into my next sort of stage of my career of Things that I've learned.

Speaker A: Yeah, my agency, we rented an office beside a couple of architects. And I remember I sort of made a decision that I wanted to try and live a relatively balanced life and just sort of stop. I remember reading a book about time management and it was saying there's always going to be more emails to do. There's always going to be more things that you'd like to get finished. And I find that just to be increasingly true. If I just can get clear the inbox or just finish that project proposal that I wanted to get done, then I'll go home. And I'd lived like that for a while and then I read this book and I realized it's never done. So just go in, get your list to do list, do the things you want, and then, uh, make a list for tomorrow and then come back in. And I find that to be a much better way of working. But to go back to the architects. I remember every time I would even work beyond like 6:30, which felt late to me, I'd go and the architects would always be still in the office. And then my wife did architecture at uni and the culture sort of started there. And I remember just thinking like, I don't want to, I really, you know, I can, I've seen startups, you know, do the whole sleeping under the desk thing and you know, stories like the Revolut team being expected to come in and work on Sundays. And I just thought, you know, I don't, I'm not signing up for that. So I've always kind of tried to, to avoid that. But yeah, I guess when you're in a big a, uh, bigger organization and you're trying to make that, climb that ladder, it's almost like you've got more pressure.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. You've probably got a few more constraints there. I think when you, when you run your own business, you, I guess you get, you get to make the rules. And that's a blessing and a curse because like you say, your, your to do list will always be longer than you'll ever get to. And I think when you realize that, it's quite, it's quite reassuring. You should have, you know, months and years of work ahead of you that you can't get done. And the key really is as, you know, sort of trying to identify the things that will move you along most meaningfully. But I'm still learning, I think we all are still to try and identify those things and really be really careful about your time management. And I think One thing that really helped me weirdly is kind of having kids where a lot of people ask you if that's helpful or it hinders your career. And obviously it does mean you can't just work all weekend and all night in the same way that you might have done when you were younger. But I think what it taught me is to cut out the unnecessary things in your life that really don't add value and be a master of your own time. And I uh, really do think that if you can manage both of those things well, it's, it's going to help your, your career because you cut out the things that just aren't adding value and focus on the things that you can do best and that you can add the most value value to.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I, uh, we have, we have kids and that was a big one for me is just like going, I'm not going to. I don'. Be that guy that works in the evenings, you know, like it's just. And then I think I was pretty too tired after we got them down. He's like, I can't. I know, capacity. So you're kind of forced into it. But even now I think that's helped me. Even now they stay up later than we do. It's like just use the evenings to relax and then try and hit it early if you want to, rather than doing the late nights.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think there's lots of different theories of how to do it, but there's that Stones theory of sort of tackling the biggest things first and uh, that's definitely something I do. So I get up very early, like 4:35, and try and get my, get my stuff done before the house kind of wakes, which I think is, is quite helpful because as soon as the, you know, it's 6:30 or whatever, the kids are up and you know, it becomes carnage in the mornings.

Speaker A: So what time do you go to bed at then to make that work?

Speaker B: Nine, nine thirty, ten if I can. She's not very rock and roll, but I guess, uh, you know, you need, you need to do what you need to do.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean getting up at 4:35 is. I'm, I'm impressed. But like say, yeah, it all depends what time you go to bed at, doesn't it? It's like so, well, tell us then. So you then went from that and did you have the idea while you're still at ey for Fluoro?

Speaker B: So yeah. So Fluoro. Well, it's actually so my best friend from university, Nick, he was he went down a banking route. So he was at RBS and then he became a trader. Uh, he actually came to me with the idea for building a peer to peer lending platform, which at the time in 2013 wasn't particularly widely known. There was a couple of platforms around that later became kind of a bit more well known, but at the time it was not really well known. And I remember thinking at the time, so that the idea was, you know, you'd have individual people lending to other people, kind of cutting out the bank in the middle. And it was a time when, you know, banks weren't lending or if they were, it was at high rates. Post crisis savings rates were really low. So there was kind of an opportunity there to kind of cut out the middleman and help both parties, which was quite appealing. But I remember saying to Nick, you know, this sounds quite complicated. And he sort of has a way of, you know, convincing people, which is always a good thing as a CEO, uh, I think. And so, yeah, he came to me and said, you know, do you want to get involved, help me start sort of planning how it could look? And it kind of went on from there. And it was obviously quite interesting to me, sort of understanding the sort of financial mechanics of how it could work. And yeah, uh, it was that kind of thing of if I didn't go down that route, I'd probably always regret it. Especially if the company went on to exist and, and do well. I would have kind of regretted not being a part of it. But it was definitely not without risk. You know, we had kind of a small amount of seed funding, pre seed funding. I joined pre revenue and kind of with a baby on the way. And you know, it was definitely not. It was, uh, you know, baby, I was going to say baby launch. The baby was born a month after launch, which was very, as you can imagine, quite, quite stressful. Yeah.

Speaker A: Wow. Yeah. And it must have been. Yeah, because obviously coming from that salary and you know, knowing that, you know, you might have in 12 months, you might be back on the job market if it didn't work out. M. Yeah, that's a big, big risk floor. Then what happened? You know, you made it through that first 12 months with, with a baby.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And I became quite good at multitasking and kind of managing my time. And yeah, the first 12 months was really kind of just trying to get some, some product market fit and trying to find where we, where we sat in the credit spectrum and trying to sort of engage with all the different aggregators like Money supermarket and clear. Well, clear school weren't there then, but you know, go compare and those kind of guys just try and sort of increase distribution and. Yeah, really. Actually in the early days, weirdly, we had more people wanting to lend money on the platform then we had loans available, which I always thought would be the other way around, that you struggle to convince people to sort of lend their money. But I think that was a reflection of the interest rate environment where you were probably getting hot, you know, half a percent on your savings. And so we sort of had. It was a bit like a dating website where you don't want too many men or too many, you know, women or the other. And we were constantly juggling that kind of matching algorithm, let's say, to try and make sure you didn't have people with their money sat for too long unlent. And you know, that was, that was a challenge. And just the kind of tech build was complex because you can imagine we were splitting loans into sort of a thousand parts and every repayment that came back in had to be split into a thousand. And you can imagine the volume of transactions was epic. So a lot of the work was on the tech side and I think a scenario. We probably underestimated the amount of work there. I'm sure you've experienced that at your end as well. But. But yeah, we got some good early traction and that enabled us to get kind of next stage of investment. Slowly but surely, we kind of got it off the ground. We started with a team of five, which I think that was pre FCA regulation. I think that would be difficult to get off the ground now for a lending business because it would be under the FCA regime, which I think the barrier for entry is higher. Obviously we went through that, but we had already some track record and funding to get us through there. But yeah, we slowly sort of professionalized and institutionalized the business, taking on more and more funding and kind of increasing our, uh, retail investor base to sort of 7 to 10,000 I think by the end.

Speaker A: And, um, were you playing the role of CFO at the business at that point? Was that always your kind of primary role or were you doing many things?

Speaker B: I mean, I was cool, my title was cfo, but in those early days I was kind of heading up compliance, risk finance and people, people, everything really at that early, early stage. But I think as the business developed and as we took on institutional capital, my role became much more narrowly focused on sort of strategic finance and cfo. Whereas in the early days, as you can imagine, you just have to do stuff because there's no, there's nobody else to do it. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah. And then you guys exited that. You or you exited it.

Speaker B: Yeah. So obviously there's quite a bit happened in the middle. So we actually pivoted away from the retail investor funded model which to be honest was difficult to scale because, you know, the average person was lending kind of 100 quid or something. You know, the bulk of the money was coming from a really small number of investors. And yes, it's kind of a difficult model to scale. And I think the regulatory angle was becoming more and more complex to navigate. There were a few kind of failed platforms and you know, bad publicity around that and that didn't help. So we sort of pivoted the business towards a sort of institutional capital model where we had a warehouse line with a large investment bank and we were using that funding which was kind of just a lot easier to manage because we could have a uh, you know, couple hundred million facility and draw down funding when we needed rather than, you know, you can imagine sort of marketing to retail investors and trying to get capital to flow, uh, in a neat way was difficult because you'd have ISA season where it would be inundated with capital and then Christmas or whatever where capital was lower. And it was a constant juggling act to kind of manage that.

Speaker A: Yeah, um, I get the feeling there's a lot of money sloshing around that's looking for decent returns at the institutional level. So actually the retail is almost. It's useful to kind of get stuff off the ground. But once you kind of prove in the model they're not, uh, uh, you know, and it's reliable, there's not a shortage of money out there that wants to, to try and get you know, a reliable 4 to 5%.

Speaker B: Exactly that. And I think, you know, especially personal loans, unsecured personal loans. It's actually there aren't that many platforms that offer that to the sort of capital markets because the mortgage industry is obviously very familiar with that model. That securitized model and credit cards is another different beast. But unsecured personal loans is typically banks and other finance financial institutions, lending sort of, uh, retail deposits and things like that. Whereas you don't have that many platforms who are originating unsecured personal loans and then putting that through the capital markets. There are a couple, but so there was quite a lot of interest in that. You know, we had I think at least 10 term sheets for that, that facility. So yeah, there's quite a bit of demand there.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's. It's tricky, isn't it? Because I think this is a whole other topic. But, like, when it comes to lending, it's one of the things that, you know, people have talked about, you know, are we going to get into lending at float? And, you know, my. One of the things that really put me off is those, you know, when you get those endless letters in the post from, like, credit card companies saying, you know, congratulations, you've been approved, take on another 8,000, you know, this year. And, um, it's only 34% APR or something, and you're just like, gosh, people are doing this and it's like, this is destroying people. Like, it's. In some ways it's like, for some people, it's like a massive. Like it's helping them open a business or it's opening a door that would not be able to be opened by traditional bank and other people. It's destroying their lives because it's putting them into the cycle of debt that they're not going to get out of. Like, how do you. Where do you stand on that? Like, what's your take of being in that world?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, uh, we, we feel very strongly on that as well. So we were very keen that we were. So we were kind of a prime and near prime lender, which I think is a fair reflection of a big portion of the uk. And in my mind, you know, it was super important that where we were lending, we were actually improving people's lives and that could be helping them finance a car affordably, or it could be kind of consolidating some really expensive debt. And we had calls with customers where, um, they're almost in tears about how much money you've saved them because they're drowning in credit card debt or they've got store cards and not necessarily managing it very well. And with a cheaper personal loan, they can kind of reduce their monthly, monthly expenditure by hundreds of pounds, which is really meaningful. But, yeah, you know, as you go down the credit spectrum, there's a big debate to be had around, you know, whether someone should be taking on debt. And, you know, what happens if they don't get approved for a loan. They still need the money and maybe go to some sort of unregulated lender. And that's happening more and more, especially with the current kind of climate that we're in and the cost of living, just a basic standard of life has gone up. That is a big risk. So I'm not one of these people that sort of thinks all lending is bad. But there is, there's definitely, you know, we definitely wanted to kind of avoid that kind of subprime segment. So yeah, we were predominantly lending at kind of sort of 10 to 15% APR. It was as low as kind of 5 at one point when, you know, personal loan rates at some point looked like mortgage, uh, rates, but then not in recent times.

Speaker A: Yeah. Were there any, you know, just personally, did you have any. Either personally, yourself or as a business, did you have any particularly hairy moments in that journey when you were almost running out or, you know, was it, did you always manage because you were mindful of that? Were you always. Okay, how did that play out?

Speaker B: Oh, uh, I mean it was all hairy. I mean in the early days because I think you read about these kind of stories of startups raising tens of millions in the early stages and they're kind of thinking five years ahead. But um, uh, I wouldn't say bootstrapped because we were investor backed, but we were typically raising as much as we needed and not much more. So as soon as the funding round was complete, it's almost like we'd start thinking about the next round of funding. And that was kind of not ideal because it's a big distraction for the management team. And so yeah, we were, every time we completed a funding round we were kind of, you know, things were always getting a bit hairy. So I think in hindsight raising a bit more and just expecting things to take longer is sensible. And so the longer kind of you can think in advance, the better. And funding rounds are taking longer now. Like I think I'm uh, sure the average funding round is six to nine months and can be longer. And you know, a lot of the sort of early stage businesses I work with, when I, when I speak to them, they're kind of expecting it to go through in two months and it just doesn't really, I think every now and then it can if, you know, people, you know, friends and family, rounds and things.

Speaker A: But yeah, no, absolutely. I think that it's been, that's certainly been one of the big changes for us as a company. Having seen, you know, initially our product startups weren't interested in like short term operational cash flow is uh, kind of like, well, we just raised, you know, 3 million, we run out in 18 months. You know, that's, that's all we need to know. And you know, since COVID it's just been like more and more startups going like, yeah, we need, we need to get we need to know exactly where our cash is for the next six to nine months because we don't know if we're going to be able to raise or not, you know, so. And if we don't, we're going to have to make difficult decisions and we're going to have to cut our cloth accordingly. So yeah, it's just been a totally total shift in the type of businesses that are coming in our direction. So Matt, so you went from being cfo, early stage founder in that company. What happened next? Did you take some time off after that journey?

Speaker B: Yeah, so we sold the fluoro business in 2020, December 2020 to private equity and then I stayed on until September ish last year. So 2023 and then yeah initially took some time out. So it was a kind of 10 year roller coaster and very much enjoyed having a bit of time off with a family. I've got three young kids so it was just really nice to be kind of, I was always very, very present and doing school runs and things like this. But there's always as a founder and you're always thinking, even when you sort of giving the kids a bath or whatever, you've always got things on your mind. And I think that period of time was really, really nice to just sort of not be constantly thinking about all things Fluoro. So I had a bit of time out, although I'm not very good at doing kind of nothing, albeit that was hard. I say that's probably harder work than the Fluoro. But I in background kind of set uh, up a financial modeling consultancy business. I was sort of trying to think about what I wanted to do next and I knew that I wanted to work with early stage businesses. It's kind of the most enjoyable in my opinion. I think there's, there's something nice about just working with founders really passionate about their own project, weird and wonderful project and that kind of standing at the foot of the mountain and looking to grow and so, and obviously over the Fluoro experience we gained a lot of experience in fundraising. So we did, you know, pretty much every year we were fundraising and kind of got a uh, really good understanding for how to build investor ready financial models and what investors really looking for KPIs and things like this. And I think there's a real lack of support for early stage businesses there. And so yeah I just work with early stage businesses that seed and pre seed so pre revenue all the way up to kind of series b. So uh, 5 to sort of 20 million revenue and that's Helping them build financial models for fundraising. So that's one piece of what I do. And then now I've kind of fallen into kind of fractional CFO work and that's again working with startups and scale ups on a more kind of broad, more broad topic. So that's kind of cash planning. It could be kind of cash issues or it could be just sort of, you know, more strategic forecasting, exit readiness, investment readiness, establishing a finance team. Because quite often there's companies that have got an outsourced team and they scale and um, want to bring that in house and kind of set up a best in class team. So yeah, good bit of variety and it's sort of a term, uh, that I hadn't really come across five years ago, but it's quite popular now as you know.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, obviously, yeah, we've decided to do a podcast about it. But it does feel like this rise of the fractional is. It just makes so much sense and you know, like being able to bring someone like you into a company for, I don't know, a couple of days a month or a week, whatever's required for the duration of that period that is needed and like you say, help build the finance team, build those foundations. It's, you know. Yeah, I don't know why it's taken us so long to, to get there, you know, and in many ways and maybe, maybe it was always a thing but certainly it was never something that we'd considered before and something we're getting a lot of value out of now ourselves. So yeah, it just, you know, what's your, is it. Do you know any other fractional CFOs? Have you kind of. How do you, how do you find your getting? Are, uh, you just word of mouth or how are you finding, getting new clients? How does that work?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I do it through a few ways. So one is the sort of financial modeling side. What happens is typically they'll come to you with a need for a financial model but quite quickly realize they probably need a bit more strategic support. So that's one, one channel. I work through a few networks as well, so they offer full scale kind of fractional finance teams. Because I think it's not just the cfo, right. It could be you need a finance manager two days a week or you know, operational support one or two days a week. So that as well. But it is uh, I think it's a bit more congested, the fractional market at the moment. There's a lot more people coming to that Market, which I think is a good thing because I think there's a lot of companies that are not really aware that that option exists. And I think it's probably a bit of a controversial view, but I think, you know, some, some people ask kind of when is the right time to bring in a fractional cfo. And my view is, is day one. And I don't mean kind of bringing someone in three days a week because I don't think that's necessary, but bringing someone in one day a quarter or one day a month to sort of discuss your go to market strategy, your fundraising strategy, how do I target the right investors, all that kind of stuff. Just have a day with someone that's done that and it's money well spent because the cost of getting that stuff wrong is much more expensive. It could even be help me find an FC or something like that. And you know, the cost of getting that decision wrong, it could be a, uh, 10, 10 to 20,000 pound recruiter fee and again to replace them.

Speaker A: So, yeah, I think when we brought in, you know, our first refractional CFO and who helped us do things like revenue recognition, month end process, you know, software solution, you know, to do expense claims and just all the things that, you know, we were actually able to then do, you know, a lot of those ourselves. And our bookkeeper was able to work on a month end process and it just uh, all sort of came together, but it took that uh, kind of project to really get us there. And yeah, I can't recommend it enough.

Speaker B: What was the trigger, if I can ask for you, was that advised by someone to bring one in or was it.

Speaker A: No. Yeah, it's a really good question. The trigger was we had somebody, uh, like I had, we had a young team at an operations manager and they weren't, they were struggling with forecast. So it was really like holding them and we were kind of being asked for it and it was kind of like, why is it not here? And it kept being delayed and delayed and I think ultimately they just didn't feel confident in doing the forecast. And so they were, you know, they were getting involved. They were sort of going between this and then all the other things they had to do and always got pushed to the end. Uh, and we kind of realized like, you know, I think I met somebody who was like, have you, could you come in and sit down and do a bit of mentoring with this person to help? And that was the kind of moment when they came in. We were like, whoa. And he was able to Sort of say, you know what, there's so many things you're not doing that we didn't know about. So it was kind of fortunate in some ways. But yeah, it was a big eye opener and it just made me think, you know, for all the startups that don't have that and that you know, they just get themselves in such a mess. And it's so nice when you have like month end, close a month end, produce the management reports. Like you feel like, you know, you're sort of growing up as a company and you're not doing all the wrong things which for uh, you know, I get it for a while that's the way you want to exist because it's just there's no point in you know, putting lipstick on a pig and you know, if the company's not going to work. But you know, it's kind of like making that investment as soon as you can like you say, and why not do it from day one, you know.

Speaker B: Exactly. And I think comes back to what I said earlier about you know, knowing what best in class looks like or even what good looks like. I think in you know, most early stage businesses just don't know what that process should look like. For example, you know, a really slick monthly process and then the forecasting piece as well. You know that you have a lot of people who are good at kind of you know, month to month stuff but less on the strategic stuff. And so I think even if you invest one day a quarter, uh, in speaking to someone that's done that stuff before, it'll be money well spent because you know, just to help you plan your roadmap. I always think as well for kind of tech stack as well so finance tech stack specifically, if you get that stuff wrong, it's really difficult to roll back from and quite expensive and makes people inefficient. So just getting someone to cast their eye over that is really, really well spent. So m, my view is kind of have a fractional early on and just play around with the number of days you use them because I work with some really ad hoc where they can pick up the phone anytime. There's not a kind of guaranteed commitment of X days. So uh, why wouldn't you have that in your business or outside your business?

Speaker A: 100%. And I think like you say the market is going to get more, there's going to be more people coming into that because it's an appealing thing to do if you can, you know, you can work less and you can, you know, you can work with the clients that you want to work with and not be tied into one business. So like, I can see the appeal for, for the fractional role, but it's almost like what do you think's going to help, you know, what do you need to do to, to stand out? Is it niching in? Is it, you know, is it marketing? Is it, you know, what's the thing that's going to not. How do you not sort of blend into that? Just another fractional cfo?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, uh, it's going to depend on your, on your background, I think. So. I think one thing that I like to differentiate with is the fact that I've been in the founder's shoes. So I think I haven't come just from a consulting background and I'm telling you how to run a startup when I've got no idea. I've actually been, you know, in your shoes and managed to get something off the ground. And I think people appreciate that. But I think, you know, you don't have to have that background. I think I would recommend niching down on, um, what you're really good at. So I have seen more of a kind of demand for fractional CFOs where there is already a CFO in place and that could be a very good CFO that just hasn't done fundraising or, I don't know, hasn't launched a business in the US and they need someone who has to sort of mentor them and guide them, not to replace them, but just to supplement them. So that's another thing that if you have a very specific skill set, it could be in forecasting or it could be in software for finance teams or it could be, you know, launching in different markets globally. That's where you can probably stand out, I think, against sort of a, you know, jack of all trades kind of cfo.

Speaker A: It's funny doing. There's so many different types of CFO and I think finding somebody who's got experience or. But it could just be that you connect with them and you know, you get on. There's a, there's a, there's a sort of chemistry, isn't there, on, I guess from your side? You know, my wife's a bookkeeper and you know, sometimes when, when she's getting like, faced with an opportunity for a new client, it just becomes clear that this isn't going to be a fun client to work with. Like they're stressed, you know, they want everything tomorrow. They don't really value what you do. I mean, I don't know if you've come across any of those kind of customers, but it is nice to be able to choose the ones that you want to work for. And.

Speaker B: Yeah, and it's both ways. I think, you know, your cfo, uh, could be technically very, very competent, but if you don't get on and if they're not able to connect different parts of the business, they won't do well regardless of their technical skills. Because I think the role is kind of, um, a. Obviously I'm biased, but it's kind of a bit of a linchpin in the business where you can't just operate in a silo within a finance team. You know, you really do need to be engaged with all the different teams because you're probably the person in the business that can connect the dots the best because you've got the whole visibility end to end. And so I think that very much is a relationship role. Obviously you need technical skills in there as well, but you can't just be technical. I think we learned that at Fluoro whenever we kind of hired people for their technical skills and kind of probably knew they weren't the right cultural fit. It rarely worked, if ever. And I think that's the same with a fractional cfo. If you don't get on with them, that's going to be a problem down the line, I think.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Matt, it's been great talking to you. I think we should probably. We should wrap it. Is there anything, you know, how do people hear about you? What's your. What's the best way to get in touch with you if they're thinking of bringing in a CFO or any other person that's watching this or listening to that might want to have a conversation?

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. LinkedIn is probably the best place I'm normally on there. Kind of don't always agree with all the stuff on there, but normally can have some good debates on there. But yeah, if you reach out on LinkedIn, I'm happy to have a chat, either a call or a direct message.

Speaker A: Brilliant. Are you doing any thought leadership on LinkedIn these days, or are you posting much or just.

Speaker B: Yeah, I do a little bit. I try and sort of share some little nuggets of things that I've learned along the way and try and help founders with avoiding some of the pitfalls. I'm, uh, not as consistent as I could be, but it's one of those things that you struggle to get around to, but it's tough.

Speaker A: Yeah, but look great, you know, love what you're doing, you know, really appreciate the feedback you've given us on Float. And yeah, it's look forward to hearing more.

Speaker B: Cool. Thanks very much. Really enjoyed it.

Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the new F Word. I hope you enjoyed it. Remember, expert financial advice shouldn't be limited to those with just big budgets. You can access the same level of advice for a fraction of the costs thanks to this fractional revolution. I believe that every growing business needs to know how much a game changer this can be. So if you love the episode, please consider subscribing to the show. It'll help us keep doing what we're passionate about. And feel free to share this episode with others who might find it useful.

Speaker B: Useful.

Speaker A: Finally, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn. See you in the next one.