Roundtables with finance GOATS
Takeaways from candid conversations with finance legends from Slack, Figma, Notion, Intercom, and Tome.
Time flies when you’re having fun. And you know what’s fun? Finance is fun.
You know what makes it even more fun? When you talk to some of the GOATs—folks who’ve built finance teams from the earliest of days at legendary SaaS companies like Figma, Notion, Slack, Intercom, and Tome.
Over the past few weeks, we live-streamed candid conversations with the following finance GOATS:
Sean Whitney, early Figma
Sam Isaac, early Slack and now Tome
Nic Malianni, early Intercom and Notion
Kevin Kooi, early Intercom, Labelbox, now Otter AI
We talked about the early days of building finance teams within SaaS, what matters most, and how to get started. Few SaaS finance professionals are better to learn from.
Here are three big things I took away:
1. Success requires trust
Finance is the one function that covers the entirety of the business. The Head of Finance is most similar to the CEO—their purview covers every function, and decisions must always be made considering what’s best for the company in its entirety. So it should be no surprise that every GOAT we spoke to credited the trust they built as the foundation for success in their respective roles.
However, finance is also the company's scorekeeper. They force check-ins on metrics, ensuring things get quantified, measured, and followed up on. At times, this means leading many uncomfortable conversations.
In order to be effective in that role, Finance has to be trusted. Trusted by the CEO and the Board, of course, but more importantly, trusted by the heads of each function. And to build trust, they need to be an unbiased source of information. Numbers need to be correct, understood, and analyzed rigorously and intellectually honestly.
If you’re struggling to have the ear of your team, it’s likely the result of a lack of trust.
2. Everything points back to ARR
All the GOATS pointed out that nearly every analysis within a SaaS company points back to Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). That’s why the best way to build trust in any SaaS business is by building a reliable source of truth for ARR reporting.
Need to develop a goal for the product team on engagement or activation? You’ll want to find a metric that correlates well with customers’ propensity to pay or retain.
Need to prioritize an ICP or segment to focus your marketing efforts? You’ll need to understand which are more likely to make a purchase and stick around.
Need to make a call on what takes priority on your product roadmap? You’ll benefit from understanding the potential impact of a new feature on new customer growth and retention.
Every question you’ll ask across the business points back to ARR, so your job as a first finance hire is to build a solid analysis foundation that allows you to easily access, crosscut, and enrich your other data with ARR.
If you need help, The Ultimate Guide to ARR is a good place to start.
3. SQL is a superpower
It’s not a coincidence that all the GOATS have had such success in their careers and speak passionately about their love of SQL. It’s the most high-leverage skill you can learn to get serious about building trust with your analysis.
It’s simple. Get dangerous. Learn SQL. It’s a hill I’ll always die on.
These candid conversations were just the beginning of a running series with great finance leaders in SaaS. If you’d like to hear the full conversations, here’s the 30-minute recording with Sam and Sean and the 40-minute episode with Nic and Kevin.
If you know of a great finance leader, please reach out. We’d love to talk.