Vivek Manipadam, founder of Gemfield Partners, highlighting important lessons for CFOs focused on an exit

In this episode, we’re going to talk to Vivek Manipadam who both founded and runs the boutique M&A advisory firm Gemfield Partners. Vivek shares lessons from his experience of M&A and funding rounds, with his acquisition experience being on both the sell side and the buy side. He works with leadership teams on exit readiness and appraising the buyer-universe. This episode is a great listen with some fascinating lessons on how well thought through information sharing can drive competitive tension and lead acquirers to trigger progression towards an acquisition.

In this episode, we to talk to Arti Modhwadia who now has a career path as a fractional CFO in the Tech space, having founded her career working with EY and Harvey Nichols. She has focused on working with purpose-driven founders helping them to scale their ventures sustainably and raise finance for growth.Arti shares some really important lessons for those who might be deciding to embark on a portfolio CFO career. She talks through essential frameworks for rigour and process to support three or four successful businesses simultaneously. She also shares helpful lessons for any finance leaders balancing family commitments with this varied career path.

We've brought Berlin based finance leader, Rory Ribeiro onto the podcast to bring to the fore his insights on how telling key narratives in high growth businesses and tech enablement for finance. He shares his learnings from Marley Spoon, a business at significant scale, and how AI and a systems perspective frames decisions around ERP and systems implementation.

In our discussion with Sanjay we learn about the key steps on his journey to becoming CFO at Gravitee. We discuss his perspective on career milestones and how to focus on the most essential capabilities that can make you a great CFO operator. Sanjay brings some fascinating insights on the practical steps anyone can take to become an amazing partner to the CEO.

Steve talks to Guy Hutchinson about his career and the key learnings moving from the CFO role to being CEO/Founder. We dip into how he tapped into his capabilities to found a business from scratch, moving through the emotional stress of those early months pre-traction and shares some really tangible insights on focusing on your health and forming a balance to those inevitable work pressures.Steve Coulson is Founder & CEO at Kitt. Kitt provides fully managed, custom designed private offices to teams of 20-300 people, in any building. They are live in over 100 buildings in London with clients including Oatly, Flo Health and Capital On Tap.

In our discussion with Saagar Mehta we share the key principles of pricing. And introduce CFOs into the most important concepts and approachesto optimize pricing, aligning it with commercial goals and target segments.We discuss approaches to Packaging structure, Price model, and Price levels as key levers to optimize both Sales Velocity (Land) and Net Revenue Retention (Expand). And share how a CFO can work in partnership with other stakeholders on this kind of important project

Kiran shares some insights into his business background, starting in engineering and then moving to venture capital. In this episode we talk about how the operational CFO can partner closely with the founder and lead a focus on gating important investment decisions and targeting the right metrics for success. We dip into the why rev ops must always be on the radar and the optimal approach to hiring into the finance team.Kiran is a three time CFO and his current company Alloy, Asolves the identity risk problem for nearly 600 of the world's leading banks and fintech companies.

In this episode we talk to Paul Barnhurst, the FP&AGuy, and a thought leader in training and content that helps FP&A and Finance leaders drive better business decisions. We dive into the critical ‘whats’ of FP&A, discuss the upside of seeking out those all important leading indicators and you might be surprised why FP&A leads and CFOs alike need to adjust their communications to bring the bottom line right to the front. Website: The FP&A Guy (thefpandaguy.com)Planning & Analytics Community: Home | Plan Buddies (plan-buddies.com)Your host is Guy Hutchinson and this podcast was brought to you by Startup CFO.https://startupcfo.tech/Music: Pumpkin Blues by Daniel Fridell and Sven LindvallLicensed through Epidemic Sound

In this episode we talk to Joe Knowles, VC and partner at Smedvig. We learn about the Smedvig approach to investing and make a deep dive into the challenges making that first finance leadership hire.Joe explains how the CFO role is different from others in the C-suite and how the team at Smedvig seek to persuade founders of the ROI in that hire. He talks through what the investor director looks for in a strategic CFO, and how a focus on ‘hiring-up’, bringing in someone with experience running a Tech business at scale, can so often pay off for their portfolio companies.

In this episode Guy Hutchinson steps into the guest seat to share some insight on why the Startup CFO community is such an amazing resource for Tech CFOs. Guy had an accomplished career as a CFO building startups from seed-to-scale. On this journey he founded a meet-up group with three other CFOs, and that group became Startup CFO the leading community in the space. We discuss in detail how this type of community can offer finance professionals peer-to-peer support, developing events that support signifiant career advancement and how the group now focuses on the key strategic aspects of the CFOs role. He explores why trust and authenticity are the one true currency and shares a surprising recommendation for any CFO thinking about becoming a founder.A big thank you for Emily Lincoln-Gordon who interviewed Guy for this. Emily is COO, former General Counsel and founder at table eight. https://www.tableeight.io/