Proactive Finance: Strategies for Success

Megan - 00:00:27: Today, my guest is Chad Gold. Since 2023, Chad has served as Chief Financial Officer for G2, the world's largest and most trusted software marketplace. In addition to managing the company's financial performance, Chad is responsible for investor relations, legal, strategic business development, business operations, real estate, and facilities. Prior to G2, Chad spent five and a half years as a Chief Financial Officer of SalesLoft, where he contributed to significant growth and expansion, overseeing 10 times enterprise value growth from $200 million to $2.3 billion through series D&E funding rounds, as well as a majority stake investment by Vista Equity Partners. Before joining SalesLoft, Chad served as Chief Financial Officer for Rubicon Global, as well as Global Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at SAP Ariba. He also held multiple finance leadership roles at The Home Depot in financial planning and analysis, international, and M&A. He began his career working as a senior consultant in business valuation in the Atlanta office of Ernst & Young. Chad has a bachelor's in finance from the University of Florida and an MBA from Emory University. Chad was recognized by the Atlanta Business Chronicle as CFO of the Year in 2022. Chad, thank you very much for joining me on today's episode of CFO Weekly.

Chad - 00:02:23: Well, Megan, thanks so much for having me again.

Megan - 00:02:24: Today, our discussion focuses on strategic financial engineering, mastering valuation and investment strategies for high growth tech companies. And I'm excited to hear more about this topic and learn from you and hear about what you've been doing these last couple of years since you were last on the show. So let's jump right in. So that we know a little bit about you, can you start by giving us just a brief overview of your career to date?

Chad - 00:02:49: Sure. So started my career over 20 years ago at EY. So now called Ernst & Young back then, called EY today, but not doing auditing, but doing corporate finance. So business valuation, financial modeling. And that was incredible because it taught me how to build these great models and really learn to analyze financials of a business. But after doing it for a couple of years, I got worn out because you're really moving from project to project. You don't really get to learn a lot about each business. So I left EY after two years and I went to the Home Depot and ended up spending about eight years at the Home Depot. Originally recruited, Bob Nardelli was the CEO, the former GE executive, had become the CEO at Home Depot and was building a corporate audit staff, very similar to the finance leadership program at GE. So I started out there and I ended up working in a myriad of different roles. I did internal audit. I did mergers and acquisitions. I got to work on about 20 acquisitions. I did work with the international businesses. So Home Depot had entities in China and in Canada that I worked very closely with. And then ultimately finished doing financial planning and analysis and operational finance. And so lots of great experience, really built my foundation, I think, for what made me the CFO I am today. But after doing eight years of retail, I was a little burnt out. You know, finance is already a bit cyclical. You know, there's certain operating processes that you do all the time. And when you, you know, mirror that up with a retail business that also is very cyclical, it just starts to kind of wear on you a little bit. And so I was fortunate enough to have a friend that I worked with at EY 10 years earlier over at Ariba. And so he said, look, I know you know how to do financial planning and analysis. I'll teach you software. Software. And so back in 2013, I went over to Ariba right after it was acquired by SAP and ended up working with my friend for about a year. And then he left and I stepped into the division CFO role for Ariba and did that for another three and a half years, which was amazing because that was my first exposure to like a recurring revenue and a technology company. And you really have those financials come together. Loved my time there. But just like any finance leader, you know, when you're a division CFO, there are certain parts of the business you don't own. Like raising capital and treasury and things like that. And so after a period of time, I ended up leaving Ariba to go be the CFO of a company called Rubicon Technologies, which was a waste and recycling tech company. They're now a publicly traded company. And that was my first foray into full seat CFO. We raised about $120 million while I was there. We did a couple acquisitions and it was an awesome experience. But I had a hinkering that I wanted to go back and work in. Pure tech again. And when SalesLoft called, it was the perfect fit. It was Atlanta-based company. At the time, there were only $20 million in ARR. And they wanted me to come on as their first CFO. And that really was the foundation. You know, for a lot of my experience and my run that I'll talk to you about today, because I spent about five and a half years as the CFO at SalesLaw. Led two funding rounds our series d and our series e so we raised about 170 million dollars and ultimately led the business through a strategic exit. We were ultimately acquired by Vista Equity Partners back in December of 21. And what was great was the Vista deal was incredible, not only for our investors, but for our employees. When I joined SalesLoft, it was valued at about $200 million, and the Vista deal was for 2.3 billion. So over about a four-year period, we generated 10X in enterprise value creation. And then lastly, my most recent move, after five and a half years at SalesLoft, a couple of years working with Vista, which I really enjoyed, I had gotten to know G2, and G2 was a strategic partner for SalesLoft. They actually had many of the same investors as SalesLoft. And one of my favorite things is coming in as a company's first CFO.

Megan - 00:06:50: Yeah, the second time. That's amazing.

Chad - 00:06:53: That's right. And so for the last 10 months, I've been over at G2, really helping to scale and build that business as its first CFO, and I'm still there today.

Megan - 00:07:03: And throughout your impressive career, you've achieved remarkable milestones, including leading sales law through transformative growth phase. So what motivates you and drives your passion for financial leadership? What gets you out of bed in the morning?

Chad - 00:07:17: Yeah, it's a great question. You know, it's funny. I probably talk about finance a little bit differently than a lot of people. You know, I view finance very much as a business partner that can make the news, not just report it. And I love that because I really feel like we have the power to help drive the business. And so I get energized by that. And, you know, I get energized by driving business outcomes. And I think, you know, I always say that finance, you know, you never have to ask to be invited to the party because you can always invite yourself. And so you get to get involved in effectively every business topic in the company because if you really think about it, finance is just the expression of everything that happens in the business in numbers. And so if you're going to really do a good job and have a really strong finance function, you have to be involved very far upstream in the business, far beyond when the numbers actually come in. So that's one of the things I love. And I'd say the other thing I loved and probably why I do it in high growth technology companies is I love to build. And somebody asked me one day, they had looked at, and they said, wow, you, you know, you were at companies like Home Depot and SAP and then ultimately moved into smaller companies. Why did you do that? And I said, you know, what I love about working at companies like SalesLoft and G2, I can look at the end of a week or a month and I can actually see the impact that me and my team are having on the business. We can make decisions faster. We can fail fast. We can make mistakes faster. We can improve things faster. And I think, you know, when you work in big companies, it just takes longer to drive change. And it's not to say that you can't do it, but I find that I can do more in a month at G2 or at SalesLoft than I could do in a quarter or even six months at SAP as an example. And that's just, you know, something that I really love. I love, you know, the opportunity to really drive business outcomes and performance and to really make things better.

Megan - 00:09:05: And in working at scaling companies, how do you approach the development of financial models that can support and project such aggressive growth? How is it that you remain, I guess, aggressive, but still realistic in your models? And just give us some advice there.

Chad - 00:09:21: Well, I'd say, first of all, you have to be able to answer three questions when you're building a finance function, a model, which is, and they have to be answered in order. And so the first question you have to be able to answer is, what happened in the business? And then if you can answer that, then you say, okay, well, why did it happen? And then the third question, which is the most fun, is, so now what? And so you have to start by building an infrastructure, both in terms of people, processes, and systems in all of your data that allows you to answer those questions. And then as you start thinking about financial modeling, there are three big things you look for. One is, for the most part, your operating partners in the business don't spend a bunch of time in the financials. And so you've got to build models that connect. You've got to connect the operating metrics that they're driving day-to-day with the financial statements, with your P&L, with your statement of cash flows, with your balance sheet. And you do that so that when you talk to them, you could talk to them in their language. And so that's one of the big things with financial modeling is connecting the operating metrics that are running day-to-day with the financials so that you can course-correct much faster. And then what I would say, the second thing is, is your financial models need to be built in a way, like, built at the level that you run your business. And the example I would give you is, you know, some companies run a very high-level financial model. But what I find is, is, like, if you don't build your financial model in detail by your business segments with your, with all the different functions that your executives own, it's very hard for you to steer and guide the business. And so I find that, you know, it takes more time to build it up front. But if you build a financial model that's way more detailed, it allows you to make course corrections much faster. And then I would say the third thing, which is the most important, is if you have the data. If you have the data infrastructure, if you have the operating metrics, you have to build the model into the operating rhythm of the business. And so whether it's monthly or quarterly, you have to update your financial model with actual results. You have to roll those financial results through a forecast and really continue to find your model and refresh it all the time. And I think, you know, the model becomes a living, breathing piece of the business if done right. And I think where I've seen finance teams make the mistake is that they don't. They don't use the model as a living, breathing thing. It's kind of an episodic thing that they update when they have to for their board or for an investor. But if you're keeping it up to date all the time, it allows you to have real business conversations like, hey, I want revenue growth in three years to be here. So I need our sales capacity to be at one number. And I need our retention metrics to approve here. And then you start to guide the business towards those long-term financial targets. And it's pretty powerful stuff. And what I would say is... A lot of people get overwhelmed when they hear a model that's two or three years out. But the reality is, you know, there's two different cuts of the model. There's the first year that you're either in or your next year, which I call fine-grained. You're doing really detailed analysis and using that to steer your budgeting process and your forecasting to your board. And then as you get out to the future years, it's coarse-grained. It's not going to be as detailed because you just don't know. But you want to make sure that if you are setting projections back to your... Question of mitigating risk, if I'm setting projections two or three years out, I need to make sure that I'm making the right investments and decisions today that at least put us on the path to do that. And so having that model and having it, you know, continually updated allows you to do that real-time.

Megan - 00:12:48: Are there any tools or technologies that you're particularly fond of right now for financial modeling?

Chad - 00:12:53: Yeah, I would say there's a couple of really strong ones right now. I think I've used a few of them. I've used Adaptive Insights before, which is a great modeling tool. They're now owned by Workday. They're up in company companies like Pigment that are really strong at doing that. And I think any of them can be good. I think it comes back to if you build your data and your process the right way, the system should be the enabler. And then what I find is the right systems and the ones I'm referencing do this. They allow you to not only kind of warehouse and analyze financials, but you could put your operating metrics in there as well. And having all of those metrics in one place can be super powerful for you.

Megan - 00:13:32: And given your experience in elevating sales loss valuation from $200 million to $2.3 billion, as you mentioned, what are some nuanced valuation methods that you applied to reflect the company's growth trajectory? And how did you manage valuation adjustments through multiple funding rounds?

Chad - 00:13:49: You know, I'd say, look, there's both financial and non-financial ways that you help to drive valuation in your business. So, you know, at SalesLoft, because we were growing very fast, you know, revenue growth metrics were going to be the primary driver of our value creation. And so my responsibility was to be able to tell the story about what our revenue growth was going to look like and show a track record that we were hitting those numbers, but also showing the path that we were doing it in ways that investors liked. And what I mean by that is investors tend to look at recurring revenue in different ways from different segments. And so, for example, they might value a revenue from an enterprise company, you know, where you're selling to like a Google more than if you were selling to a small company, just because the reality is the retention profile of the smaller company is different than, say, Google. And so part of my job was to be able to tell that story that at SalesLoft, we were really moving up market with the business. So not only were we growing fast, but we were changing the mix of our business from being really heavy. Small and medium business to more enterprise. And so the power of the growth with that mix shift really amplified our valuation. And then I think, you know, on the non-financial side, you know, outside of just really focusing on peers and growth multiples, it's really being able to describe the uniqueness of the asset to the investor. And, you know, when I think about SalesLoft, it was about, you know, we were the first platform that really built out more for not just the SDR, but the account executive. And then that led to all the data. And I think investors get excited about that in addition to just the peer valuation metrics. And then what I would say to any CFO that's looking to drive valuation, I'm a really big believer in the concept of, it's called lines, not dots. And what I mean by that is that you're responsible for building relationships with investors throughout your time, whether you're raising capital or you need something or not. And if you do a good job of that and you build that relationship with investors when you don't actually need something. You start to build a great foundation with them so that ultimately when you are going to raise money, it's a really seamless process. And you also build credibility with investors because you say, hey, look, I know we met six months ago. I told you that our revenue was going to be here. We're actually there. We beat that number. And investors love getting to know you when you don't meet something because it's a very organic way to establish that line of a relationship versus dots where you're meeting with them at a point in time.

Megan - 00:16:11: Great advice. So how is it that you structure and negotiate funding rounds to align with the company's strategic goals?

Chad - 00:16:20: And what I would say, and I hate to give you the it depends answer, but it does vary based on where you are in a company's growth journey. So, you know, for example, at SalesLoft and honestly, really at G2, it's very similar. We are very fortunate. We've got very sophisticated seasoned investors. And so for the most part, our terms are very consistent. And what you find is, is that as you get into later funding rounds, unless the company is hurting. They're in bad shape. And if you have good investors from the earlier rounds, you tend to be able to get investors to agree to the same terms you had before. And honestly, your existing investors want that because they don't want a new investor coming in that's got better terms than they do. So that tends to dictate it. You know, what I would say is obviously your biggest levers that you're trying to fight for are people talk about valuation, but really valuation is all about driving how much dilution you're willing to take in the business. And so you're being thoughtful about not only what value you're asking for. But also how much capital you're actually taking in. And then what I would say is the last piece of advice around terms is think about when you're raising money. It's not just about the money, but about the actual investor you're bringing in. And investors can add a lot of value to companies if you have the right relationship. And so, you know, one of the things I've always said is, you know, if you bring on the right investor, they're going to support you through the journey. I think about at SalesLoft, we were lucky to have investors like Insight Partners and Emergence Capital. Al Rock and HarborVest. And, you know, many of those investors supported us in multiple funding rounds and helped us to find new investors because they were big supporters of the company. And I would say we got great terms from them, but it wasn't like the only thing we were solving for was the terms. It was also solving for getting the right investor in the business, too.

Megan - 00:18:04: And post-investment, integrating new capital into existing operations can be complex. So, can you describe your approach to financial integration after major investments or acquisitions? And how do you ensure also that the financial infrastructure can scale?

Chad - 00:18:21: I think, you know, there's two things. One is when you're in the discussions with an investor, one of the big questions they have for you is how are you going to use the money? And, you know, by no means is it marked down to, you know, marking every single dollar, but it's like, hey, in general, I'm going to invest a certain amount in sales capacity. I'm going to deploy X amount for innovation and research and development. I need to use a certain amount of money to support the customers that I acquire. And then there's going to be infrastructure. I think I've always prided myself on, you know, you've got to build a financial infrastructure and a finance team that's ahead of the business in terms of its maturity. Because you're right, as you take on rounds of funding, especially as they get larger, not only do you have to have the infrastructure, like a good banking platform, to use and a good treasury function, you have to have a good accounting system to make sure that you can manage your financials in a way that makes sense. And then to your earlier question about planning systems, you've got to put a planning system in place to make sure that you've got visibility to how the company is doing. And so, you know, we always made sure that we had those pillars or those foundational pieces in place before we took capital. And, you know, what I would say was that made us much more effective at being able to tell the story, not only to investors before they were putting in money, but then after the fact, we could say, hey, we told you, here's what we were going to do, and here's how we did it. And I think, you know, at the end of the day, the investors do view the CFO and the office of the CFO as the steward of their capital. And you got to take that responsibility seriously because, and by the way, it's not where you're sending up a finance function where you bring in money and you start saying no to everything. You want to drive growth in the business, but it's about driving responsible growth. You know, back to, you know, the thing I didn't say in my comment on valuation was also, investors want to know as they're thinking about, value creation, that you're building a sustainable business. And so, you need to not only show them a path for growth, but a path for profitability too. And, you know, you have to have all those pillars in place to be able to do that.

Megan - 00:20:14: Leveraging debt can be a double-edged sword in high-growth environments. So what are some of the advanced strategies that you've used to manage and optimize debt financing?

Chad - 00:20:24: I've used it two different ways. I've used what's called, there's debt that's kind of what's called a trauma-committed debt, where you actually take out money and pay interest monthly. And that was actually part of the Vista transaction. So that's part of kind of a financing setup where, you know, it made the most sense to put some debt on the balance sheet. And, you know, really there, it's all about managing cost of capital. But I'm personally, especially for high-growth technology companies, I'm not a big fan of term debt. I'm a bigger fan of what's called revolving lines of credit. And what I mean by that is you can go and set up, it could be with your bank, it could be with their obviously investors that do it, but you can set up access to capital at a much lower cost than raising equity that you don't have to use unless you need it. I call it almost like rainy day money. And it gives you a lot of flexibility to, do things like acquisitions, you know, to make strategic investments where it makes sense. But, you know, you can do it in a way where you're not having to spend all the interest costs up front. There's normally a little bit of a fee for what's called unused funds if you're not using the money, but it's well worth it to have flexibility. And the funny thing about revolving lines of credit is the best time to get those is after you raise money or when you're very flush with cash, because banks and debt investors, you know, like doing that with well-capitalized companies. And so I've always been, I've always been a fan of having access to that as part of my capital stack to be able to give my businesses the maximum amount of flexibility. But the downside to your point or the double-edged sword of debt is, you have to be really thoughtful about the covenants that you're taking on. And especially in a high growth technology business, you don't want those covenants or those requirements that you have to meet to either keep the debt or to, to not get in trouble. You don't want them to be very restrictive to the business because you're going to make investments and look, it's a high growth company. They're going to be things you're going to learn along the way that are going to be different than you thought. And you've just got to ensure that, that the covenants don't restrict you too much, you know, as you, as you think about that, because otherwise the debt's not really worth it.

Megan - 00:22:22: And scaling rapidly introduces numerous financial risks. So what risk management frameworks or practices have you implemented to address these issues such as cashflow, volatility, market fluctuations, operational scalability, and on and on.

Chad - 00:22:38: Just to name a couple, right? Well, and I would say my wife says to me that being a CFO of a high-growth technology company is probably the most entrepreneurial thing a finance person will do. And what I mean by that is, you know, look, you don't take these jobs if you're not okay with some risk. And, you know, the way you manage that is you have to have a decision framework where you think about what are decisions you're making that are like the quote-unquote bet the company decisions where you need lots of data and lots of analysis. Analysis and you're going to talk to your board of directors and you're going to align as an executive team. And I would say, you know, those decisions are probably 5% or 10% of the time. You shouldn't be making that many decisions that are bet the company type decisions. But then there are decisions that are like, hey, this could be a really good opportunity or it may not pan out. And so you can't do all of them. You got to stack rank them. But then, you know, what you need to do is you need to say, look, we're going to take some of these risks and we're going to have toll gates or milestones along the way. And back to your earlier question. About the financial infrastructure, having the reporting, having the accounting and financial planning functions set up, allow you to give real-time feedback to how initiatives are doing. And I think where companies get sideways a lot of times is they don't have that telemetry in the business to know if what they're doing is really helping make the business better or not. And so that's probably the biggest risk mitigation I've thought through always is like making sure I've got the telemetry in the business, especially for all those decisions that are not bet the company, but we should be monitoring them and to make sure they're having the best decisions. And then connecting it back to your model question you asked, you know, and having that model be a living, breathing tool, you should constantly be running scenarios in your business in terms of, you know, growth trajectory and understanding that in a high growth business, especially one that's not profitable yet, if your growth slows, your cash burn will go up. And so you've got to understand and have cushion built in your business to really manage against that and have contingency set aside in case something happens. And I think that's a big part of it. I think, you know, that's why having that multi-year model where you're continually updating it gets so important because there are things that happen in the next three months that can impact you 18 to 24 months from now if you're not careful. And so constantly looking ahead and managing that. And then, of course, I think, you know, then there's just the core compliance stuff that you need to have set up. You shouldn't do it too early, but as you get to be a sizable company, being audited by a big four accounting firm is really important. It gives investors confidence, but I think it also builds really good. And I think that's really important. I think it's about having that financial stewardship and muscle in the business, really challenging your accounting team. I've been really lucky to have two really strong accounting teams, both at G2 and at Sales Loft, where they were able to close the financials very fast, which allowed us to analyze the numbers quickly. And, you know, I think having that muscle built where you're able to be audited by a big four firm is really important. And that's actually a requirement if you ever want to be a public company. And then I think it's about having in all of the different decisions in the business, it's about having who has decision authority to make what decision. And I think where sometimes their bottlenecks is you as the CFO don't want to make every decision and your CEO doesn't want to make every decision. And so you have to have really good alignment with your executive team. What are decisions that you can make versus decisions that I need to make? And then really kind of putting in the systems, the workflows and the processes to automate a lot of that so that you can get things like that out of email or out of, you know, informal forms of communication, because that'll make you run faster.

Megan - 00:26:06: From your experience, how does the role of financial engineering evolve post-IPO? What happens after a company goes public?

Chad - 00:26:15: You know, it's funny. I think people look at the IPO like a destination and it's just really a stop on the journey. You know, if you really think about it, an IPO is a, it really serves two purposes. It's a fundraising event. So you put a lot of cash on the balance sheet for the company. And then it's a huge brand building exercise. It's, you know, way to put your brand up on the side of the New York Stock Exchange or on the NASDAQ and really to lend credibility to your business. But beyond that, and back to a lot of your great questions earlier about financial infrastructure, all those same things apply. You have to have the telemetry on the business to create an environment where you can beat and raise your financial performance. You have to set really, you know, exciting projections for investors, but they need to be reasonable and conservative enough that you don't come out and miss right away. And so, you know, there are a lot of companies that agonize over setting, you know, you're setting guidance for the next year and you have to spend a lot of time really being thoughtful about how you set that guidance because, you know, it has a big effect. On your market capitalization, it has a big effect on investor confidence. And, you know, I hate to make it sound like Goldilocks and the three bears, but there's a bit of getting it just right. You don't want to be so aggressive that investors get excited and then you don't hit the numbers because then you lose credibility. But you don't want to be too conservative that investors aren't excited about it and you blow past it, but you've actually lost their confidence because they don't trust your numbers the other way. And so there's a fine line that you have to build. And, you know, I would say finance leaders, CEOs, investor relations teams, they spend a lot of time investing in building those relationships with investors so that there's that trust in the team post IPO, because, you know, again, back to it's just a stop along the journey. Now that you raise the money in an IPO, you got to go do everything you said you were going to do. And I think, you know, what's interesting, even as a CFO, your role evolves a good bit as you move towards from a private company to a public company. I think day to day in a private company, you have the opportunity to be much more involved hands on in the business, driving the operations, improving the performance as you migrate. And as you transition to being a public company, you have to do those things, but you really have to do those through your team because your job is to be the financial storyteller to the investor community. And, you know, I think that's a huge responsibility for a CFO. It's a big responsibility, private company as well, but it becomes even that much more important as you become public.

Megan - 00:28:40: And tell us a little bit about G2 and why was this the right time for them to bring on the CFO role? Where are they heading?

Chad - 00:28:47: First of all, just a little bit about G2. You think about what G2 is the world's largest and most trusted software marketplace. And so we have nearly 2.8 million verified reviews from real software users from effectively any piece of software that you want to learn about. And we are there to help connect software buyers and sellers, which is becoming even more important in the age of artificial intelligence. And if you really think about the premise of where the company came from, it really started as just a really simple question, which is, why is it easier to find authentic information about a $100 hotel room versus a $100,000 piece of software? And 10 years ago, that was the case. You could go to sites like YaleHotels.com, and you could read real reviews from verified users of hotel rooms or restaurants or whatever, but you couldn't do that with software. And the company started as... When it started out, it did call itself the Yelp for software, and really where it's evolved to is it's the place you go for software. We have over 90 million people visit our marketplace annually, literally employees from every one of the Fortune 500 companies. We have buyers that come to research and purchase software, so they want to be thoughtful, and they always visit G2, and they're thinking about making a purchasing decision. As a seller, you want to be listed on G2 because it helps you to grow your business. It helps you to understand who's looking at you, what you can actually gather. Rather intense signals for people that are interested in your technology. And then lastly, it's also a place for investors to go. They actually come to us to understand what's going on in various segments to help inform investment decisions. And what I would say is, why was this the right time for G2 to bring on a CFO? We're north of $100 million in recurring revenue today, which I would actually say is late to bring on a CFO, honestly. But I think it's the time. If you look at the company, it's really surrounded itself with really strong, strong leaders and really good investors. And said, hey, look, for our next stage of growth, and we don't know what that can be. I always say, I want to build a company that can go public, whether it actually does or not, I can't control that. And so given the financial profile of the business and the stage it was at, it was time to bring on a finance leader who not only could help to drive the financial infrastructure of the business, which I would say that was really strong here already, but can help to drive the strategy with the CEO and the executive team. And I think that's the time. For me personally, what brought me to G2, it was really three things for me. One was, when I go back to my time at SalesLoft, we effectively built the sales engagement category that we were trying to evangelize on G2. If you go and you look at corollaries or the more mature businesses that talk about technology, you think about like the gardeners or the foresters of the world. Well, in the early days, they don't care about new categories. And so we were able to get real user feedback, and generate real revenue by investing in G2 as a company. So SalesLoft was a very early G2 customer. The second thing is, every piece of technology me and my team would buy as a finance and corporate services team, we would review it on G2 and understand what users were saying, how it's ranked, and that was interesting to me. And then I would say what was the most compelling for me was when SalesLoft rolled out its workflow called Rhythm back in the middle of 2023, G2 buyer intent, and I would say, well, I'm going to do this. So you think signals that show, you know, the types of companies researching your software in your category, that was the number one data signal that was being ingested by SalesLoft. And I said, wait a minute, I always thought of G2 as a software marketplace and a place to go look for reviews, but it's actually this massive data company. And so that got me super interested and excited. And then when you couple that with having an incredible executive team and really, really strong investors, so, you know, a G2 IVP is an investor, Excel is an investor, Emergence Capital, who was also an investor in SalesLoft, is an investor, as well as Primera. And then we have strategic investors. So HubSpot, Salesforce, and LinkedIn are all investors in G2 as well. And so when you couple all that together, it was the right time for the company to hire a CFO, but it was also, I think, the right time for me to come here. It got me really excited as well.

Megan - 00:33:08: And reflecting on your current role and past roles, what are some of the key lessons learned about mastering financial engineering and investment strategies? What's one thing that you would like to leave the audience with?

Chad - 00:33:20: One thing, huh? What's that?

Megan - 00:33:23: Or two, maybe three.

Chad - 00:33:24: You can keep me honest on that one. Back to the thing I said at the very beginning, I do believe that finance has the power to make the news. And what I mean by that is, is that if you're able to help the business understand what's going on, you're going to be right there with them helping to make the next decision. And so, you know, you want to be a finance team that the business seeks out. And in the early days, sometimes they don't know they should and you have to almost insert yourself into certain processes. But you should embrace that relationship with the business. And you should always say, you know, look, they're my numbers too. It's not just the business's numbers. When we set financial targets, it's the finance team's targets as much as it's the chief revenue officer and the CEO's targets. So really wanting to be a proactive finance team is, you know, what I would say is paramount to really driving financial performance and financial engineering. You know, the other one I would say, you know, back to your two or three, you know, finance really is just the expression of everything that happens in the business. And so really, really connecting your financial performance to the operating performance of the business and ensuring you have a good understanding both in your finance team, but also in your executive team and in other functions. That's the finances team's responsibility. And it's really important in any high growth technology company. And then I'd say the last one is back to my comment on lines, not dots. I think that really is important as you invest in relationships in your career. I look back to, not only are there a ton of investors that I work with now at G2 that I've met, throughout my time at SalesLoft, but it also applies to your relationship with employees. At SalesLoft, I was lucky enough to bring on two leaders, my chief accounting officer and my head of financial planning who had worked with me at other companies. And I think, you know, as you build your career, it's great to have leaders that you can partner with to help accomplish things. And I was lucky, my head of FP&A at G2 was also my head of FP&A at SalesLoft. And so he and I are in our third company together. And, you know, the investment, our relationship over 10 years is part of what helps us to work so well together today. And so I'd say those are the three big things. And then my last thing with finance and driving financial performance is, you know, finance can't be the no police, especially as you want to drive financial performance, because if you say no to everything, you're not going to grow. And so I coach my teams and I hire people that are comfortable in the zone of, there are going to be times you have to say no, but you say no, but. No, you can't do that. But here are some things you can do in order to achieve the goals you want to achieve. Or alternatively, you know, there are times that you could say yes, but you're like, yes, and I need you to do these other things to make me comfortable with it. And I think that's really important because then the business feels like you're partnering with them to drive financial performance versus being a blocker. And you never want to be seen as a blocker, as you want to be seen as a good strategic partner.

Megan - 00:36:13: Chad, thank you so much for sharing that great advice and for being my guest today.

Chad - 00:36:18: Oh, Megan, it was my pleasure joining you again. It was great after nearly two years to reconnect.

Megan - 00:36:23: Yeah, absolutely. I've really enjoyed speaking with you and thanks for finding the time to be here with us again today. I wish you and G2 all the best. And to our listeners, please tune in next week. And until then, take care.