How AI Is Turning Figma’s Finance Team Into Builders

1. 0:00 – 0:54

   Intro

   1. PMPraveer Melwani0:00

      I think we're gonna be able to attract and build the world's best finance organization because so much of what people want is the ability to learn and feel like they're being invested in and surrounded by people that wanna go and become the best at their craft.

   2. SASeema Amble0:11

      We'd love to hear a little bit about what made someone a great hire on your team, a great person.

   3. PMPraveer Melwani0:16

      I want folks that feel extremely intellectually curious. You're coming in and trying to solve and try to understand the business really well. You wanna use AI as a tool to help you and empower you, but it's really, really critical to still be that thinker.

   4. IMIvan Makarov0:27

      We're in the era right now where a lot of slop is being called out. I've heard one CFO talk about how using AI just led to unlimited amount of docs that are being created every day.

   5. PMPraveer Melwani0:36

      Anything that you're putting out there that you're asking someone to consume, it's gonna take them time, effort, and energy. Ninety-five percent of the challenge there is just, like, getting your data in the right spot.

   6. SASeema Amble0:43

      What do we think changes in the next 12 to 18 months?

   7. PMPraveer Melwani0:47

      If our business complexity was staying the same, I think we probably wouldn't need the same number of people a year from now. Um-

2. 0:54 – 7:32

   How automation has changed the finance role

   1. SASeema Amble0:54

      Welcome to the a16z Podcast. I'm Seema Amble. I'm joined here by my partner, Ivan Makarov. We recently wrote a piece called You Need a New CFO.

   2. IMIvan Makarov1:04

      [laughs]

   3. SASeema Amble1:04

      Our argument, uh, was that AI takes, um, finance to the next level, and the CF- CFO's job increasingly includes building and automation and really designing the systems and the team to do that. Today, we're joined by Praveer Melwani, um, who's the CFO at Figma, and we'd love to explore what you have seen over the course of your career and, uh, what you and your team are doing now. Praveer, thanks for joining us.

   4. PMPraveer Melwani1:28

      Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited.

   5. SASeema Amble1:29

      Maybe to kick things off, um, both Ivan and Praveer, would love to hear a little bit over the course of both of your careers how automation has changed the role in finance and what the team does.

   6. PMPraveer Melwani1:41

      Yeah. I've, I've always felt like the, the role of a finance individual should be this operational leader. Uh, and you know, I, you know, when I joined Figma, none of the automation pieces were, were, you know, in place at all. Uh, and I felt like in order for me to be effective at the time that I joined, you know, a lot of my work needed to be living in SQL, building the data tables, really understanding how, how I can orchestrate the financial information to drive the conversations I wanna then have, uh, across the company. Um, and you know, I continue to, I continue to kinda go back to that initial days that I had in that seat and what I was doing as the force multiplier, the piece that actually gave me the ability to have the scaled impact across the organization. And if anything, I think, you know, what I was building way back then is that much more possible and plausible and accessible to individuals by, uh, by the tools available to them today. So, um, I hope that more and more folks feel like they can be empowered to take that operational sort of lens to the way that they actually go and, and position and work with their, with their counterparts across the business, um, 'cause I do think that's the magic of shifting this role from, you know, what can be viewed as, like, a traffic cop sort of finance-y type function to one that's a business enabler and, and a true change agent within the organization.

   7. SASeema Amble2:48

      And to double-click on what you were using for automation, maybe pre-AI, um, maybe explain to people what exactly you were doing. Was it macros in Excel? Was it-

   8. PMPraveer Melwani3:00

      Yeah

   9. SASeema Amble3:00

      ... using OCR for documents?

   10. PMPraveer Melwani3:01

       Yeah. Honestly, it was, like, everything under the sun. So, like, I, uh, it started, like, living in SQL, looking at all of our, uh, product metric and utilization data, mapping it to all the financial information we had in Stripe. Uh, I'd go and create these, like, 4- or 500 lines of SQL, uh, that I'd wanna then use to create the golden tables that I'd go and pass off to someone, or then be able to pass to different go-to-market systems that we'd be using. Um, so I felt like, you know, uh, I spent my day living in that, uh, living in, uh, that query editor. I'd then go and tap-

   11. SASeema Amble3:28

       And, and of course, waiting for the query to run for-

   12. PMPraveer Melwani3:31

       T- totally

   13. SASeema Amble3:32

       ... however many hours

   14. PMPraveer Melwani3:32

       ... and then, yeah, and you hope you got it right the first time.

   15. SASeema Amble3:34

       Exactly.

   16. PMPraveer Melwani3:34

       Uh, and then I would go and I'd, I'd, you know, eventually I had an, you know, we eventually hired data scientists, and I'd go and tap them and say, "Hey, I have this thing I went and built. Can you go and add it to our ETL process so it goes and, you know, there's a recurring job that I can then use that same information and pass it to Salesforce or Marketo," or whatever systems that we were using at the time. Um, and that was, like, the initial sort of unlock for me of, like, oh my gosh, if I can get consistent in our, in our definitions in the way that we're talking about things, um, no longer are we ever debating, like, what, what's true and what's fact, um, and we can just get past that and really focus on, you know, how are we actually gonna go and drive the business?

   17. SASeema Amble4:10

       I was talking to someone who was in their early 20s, um, who was complaining about how long a prompt takes to run, and I was explaining to them, you've not lived the pain of, like, hours on hours of waiting for SQL, a SQL, SQL query to, to run and then only to come back and be like, "Shit, it didn't really w- didn't totally work." [laughs] Um, and, uh, and so yeah, it's, uh, it is just an order of magnitude-

   18. PMPraveer Melwani4:32

       Totally

   19. SASeema Amble4:33

       ... change to that.

   20. PMPraveer Melwani4:33

       Yep.

   21. IMIvan Makarov4:33

       Yeah. The time is real interesting, right? Uh, especially the era that we've lived through. Um, when I was at Webflow at Figma, we saw, for example, a huge spike in usage in COVID that I could not believe in the beginning. I don't know if you've, you've, you've experienced it this way, too, where I thought our data was broken or something else was broken, but it took us weeks to figure it out.

   22. PMPraveer Melwani4:51

       Yeah.

   23. IMIvan Makarov4:52

       And I feel like today, in this day and age, we live in a day where you could figure it out to an hour with some of the, some of the spikes, some of the, some of the usage revenue as well. Like, this is a very different world we live in. Um, did you experience that as well?

   24. PMPraveer Melwani5:04

       Uh, I mean, yeah. I mean, our business took off [laughs] uh, during the early days of the pandemic. I think that was actually the, the, the time where we're, where we started to partner with the folks at Andreessen, was, like, right at, right at the early stages over there. Um, but yeah. I mean, I wake up every day. I mean, I, I have the ability to, to, to go and, you know, b- rebuild my context on what's happening, and then at any m-moment during the day, you know, the team, team loves it when I'm [laughs] ... I don't know if they love it, but they, but they know that I'm constantly in there going and taking a look at, you know, hourly dashboards or, you know, or sort of daily metrics on things to make sure that I'm also, um, sourcing things that I think maybe look like anomalies or, you know, asking the right questions. And I think they view me similarly to how they view, how they view their role within the organization as, like, uh, you know, a counterpart who has ideas, who wants to come to them and, and truly build the, you know, the best business possible, uh, all using and having access to the same data, uh, available to each other.

   25. IMIvan Makarov5:50

       Yeah. What's interesting, like, when you and I went to college around that time, that was more of a monthly or quarterly cadence, um, and then it became a weekly cadence. I remember maybe, especially with data moving more into the cloud, it became like, "Let's have a big weekly dashboard," to where now what's possible is, is daily. Um, has that changed your habits, the way you even just look at, think about data, how often you think about it all?

   26. PMPraveer Melwani6:11

       Honestly, I, I view data and having access to it as, like, the key unlock to how I can run my day effectively. Um, you know, and so throughout my time at Figma, it was the thing that I would wake up every day, and I... You know, I remember we-- there would be, like, 30 people that would sign up for a paid plan, um, in those first few days when I joined, and I'd go through line by line, who are they? Are they personal addresses? Are they business addresses? Are they people that we can reach out to? What can I learn from this, um, to help us inform what we eventually built, which was our organization's product? Um, and I think, like, y- I think early days it's extremely important, uh, and then now I, I, I just understand the, the, um, the repercussions of, you know, movement in any one direction. Uh, and if you catch something on before it becomes, um, uh, you know, a big deal, it can actually save the business, like, hundreds, thousands of dollars. Um, uh, but if y-you catch it in the other direction, you can really put more juice behind it and re- and really seek to, to, to unlock in the other way. So, you know, if anything, like, I, I view this as, like, a daily, if not, like, m- you know, more than that rhythm. Um, and I think the, the, the goal for me is how do I empower other folks on, on my team and across the business, uh, to similarly feel the accountability, um, to those same metrics and truly act as business owners and, and want to go and triage things and not say like, "Hey, I can wait till next week." Like, you do need to solve it sooner rather than later because I do think the rhythms here, um, are moving really rapidly.

3. 7:32 – 10:16

   What makes a great finance hire

   1. SASeema Amble7:32

      And before we get into what you've automated, would love to hear a little bit about, uh, what made someone great, a great hire on your team, a great person, um, in a leadership role m-maybe pre-AI.

   2. PMPraveer Melwani7:46

      I think, I mean, honestly, a lot of similar things today, but I think that you'd apply them slightly differently. Um, I want folks that, that feel extremely intellectually curious. You're coming in and trying to solve, um, and try to understand the business really well, and then seek to problem solve in a way that, um, you know, is trying to drive the right outcome. Um, I don't think that necessarily has changed today. Like, I still very much value that. Um, I do think that you can make a lot of the tedious tasks or the repetitive nature of things, um, uh, feel like they take less and less of your time so that you can spend more and more of your time, um, really trying to seek how you can, um, uh, you know, find the places of magic within the business that you can go and supercharge. Um, so, you know, intellectual curiosity, fluency with data, ability to ask really solid questions, um, and then structure your thoughts in ways where you can actually, um, make sense of the data that's being given back to you, um, and then thoughtfully communicate it on the other side of it.

   3. IMIvan Makarov8:42

      How do you interview for that? Do you-- How has it-

   4. PMPraveer Melwani8:45

      Yes

   5. IMIvan Makarov8:45

      ... developed or some of the ways?

   6. PMPraveer Melwani8:47

      Uh, you know, it's interesting. Today I'm, uh, or rather right now I'm, I'm, uh, hiring for a VP finance, uh, and the case study part of the process for me is so, so sacred. Um, I wanna both test for, like, how are you using the tools available to you? Um, so yes, I, you know, I fully expect folks to... I don't give them a lot of information as part of this case study. We're a public company, so I get the benefit of, you know, a lot of data out there. Um, but how you actually piece that, that, those puzzle pieces together in a way that, um, actually makes sense, the model output makes sense. You have the ability not just to go and create that output, but you, like, truly understand how it works. Um, so then I focus the case study conversation on, like, have you really, really understood the, the, the structure that you've created? Have you molded it in a way where you've tested what are the highest, um, uh, what, what are the pieces of that model that are, uh, the, the most sensitive to any change? Do you have a strong intuition on, uh, how the business is actually working using the tool that you've created? Um, and then, like we were just talking about, can you effectively communicate that? Um, because yes, I think, like, you know, anyone can go and create, like, a, you know, a model sitting and, and, you know, pick your favorite, pick, pick your favorite LLM. You can go and do that really, really easily. Um, but, like, are you using it as an effective tool that, like, actually is enabling you to, to, to think? And I think, like, um, you don't wanna outsource your thinking today. Like, I s- I think you wanna use AI as a tool to help you and empower you, um, but it's really, really critical to still be that thinker.

4. 10:16 – 15:04

   Workflows Figma’s finance team has automated

   1. SASeema Amble10:16

      Yeah. A lot of what you're describing applies to a good hire with or without AI. I think if anything, AI just, you need more of the, um, the, uh, accountability and thoroughness to know that the thinking is there behind it-

   2. PMPraveer Melwani10:30

      Yeah

   3. SASeema Amble10:30

      ... um, as, as you receive a work product. Let's drive in a little bit on, or to understand what you've automated, and we can talk a little bit about what we've been seeing with report public companies.

   4. PMPraveer Melwani10:39

      Yeah.

   5. SASeema Amble10:39

      Um, but maybe walk us through a couple of workflows at Figma that you've automated, and how did you decide what to focus on, and what did you, what did you do to automate them?

   6. PMPraveer Melwani10:49

      Yeah. I... You know, they're so broad, and so I, you know, maybe I could pick a few that, um, to me have been fun to see. I think, um- I think we've, like, moved really quickly even over the last, o-over the last year to say, you know, how do I go and, uh, uh, try to coach people to embrace new tools and new ways of working, to now one where I feel like I'm, you know, constantly being, um, uh, constantly, constantly being, like, hit in the face with a lot of these really cool ideas. Um, we do a segment, uh, at the, at the company all hands. We, you know, our all hands is called Fig Nation, where, um, we show folks how others have built with AI, and consistently our team shows up as, as a team that's, that's there. Um, so it's things with, you know, Kajal on our, our credit and collections team. He's gone and rebuilt, uh, his entire workflow, everything from invoice tracking, cash collections, making sure that we can reconcile everything to, to NetSuite, and he's done it in a way where it's like a homegrown system where, you know, it's, it's tied to the very systems that we use. Um, it then has freed him up to say, "Okay, well, I can go and continue to drive down my days receivable by focu-focusing on the, on the things that really matter, um, and then focusing on what are the other, um, uh, sort of tedious tasks that I can go and build automation for." And so he's then gone and say, "Well, I can go and, like, rebuild the way that I wanna run our credit checks, and, uh, I d-I can go and stitch together the datasets in interesting ways that allow me not to have to go and, uh, you know, manually go and, uh, in-into them," and it's a singular way where he can now go to, um, anyone to, to say, "Hey, go and leverage the tools that I've created to, to, to go and, um, and, and really drive, um, and drive change there." Um, on our, uh, on our corp dev team, it's, it's been really fun to see, like, how they, you know, both will, uh, you know, can you vibe code a product is one of the, one of the checks that we use in diligence now, um, which is actually really fun to see. Um, like how, how deep is your moat? How, how interesting is the technology there? And I think, you know, everyone should be able to-

   7. SASeema Amble12:37

      You'll try to recreate the product? Wow, okay.

   8. PMPraveer Melwani12:39

      Yeah. Um, and you can ac- I mean, I think our team's gotten really damn good at s- at some of this, and so you can get through some of the, you know, is this a real thing? Is it not? Like, how, how difficult is it or not? And, you know, there's obviously nuances to, to a whole bunch of these ideas, but it gives you, like, a solid intuition there. Um-

   9. SASeema Amble12:53

      And before, would you have had to go to the product team to do that part of the diligence?

   10. PMPraveer Melwani12:58

       Yeah. I mean, we still partner with the product team-

   11. SASeema Amble12:59

       Sure

   12. PMPraveer Melwani12:59

       ... but you can take a lot more of like, "Hey, this is what I built."

   13. SASeema Amble13:02

       Sure.

   14. PMPraveer Melwani13:02

       "This is what I've seen," and it builds a lot of credibility there. Um, our-

   15. IMIvan Makarov13:06

       I can do a pause on that. Those are some of the corp dev people, right? Not product people.

   16. PMPraveer Melwani13:11

       Yeah.

   17. IMIvan Makarov13:11

       Their finance background, right?

   18. PMPraveer Melwani13:12

       Yeah. [laughs] Yeah.

   19. IMIvan Makarov13:13

       It's fascinating.

   20. PMPraveer Melwani13:14

       Yeah. Um, totally. And they, um, we're like a very document-oriented culture, so they write investment memos. They write, um, uh, uh, you know, uh, M&A memos, whatever it may be. And, you know, uh, amongst them, uh, the end, the end readers or the, the, the, the folks that are di-digesting it are gonna be folks on our leadership team or other product leaders. And, um, you know, more often than not, there are themes, there are similar questions, there, there are ways that we all as leaders tend to have a, a way of looking at problems. And what's, what's been interesting is they've gone and created unique pers-personalities for each of us as leaders, um, uh, as, you know, a set of skills that they can go and run their investment memos by, um, to actually improve the process.

   21. SASeema Amble13:52

       Do you have a, like, an investment committee that exists, like the interaction between all of them through the whole app?

   22. PMPraveer Melwani13:58

       Yeah, exactly.

   23. SASeema Amble13:59

       Okay.

   24. PMPraveer Melwani13:59

       So, so that's exactly what they'll end up demoing.

   25. SASeema Amble14:01

       Okay.

   26. PMPraveer Melwani14:01

       Um, or rather they'll, they'll sit there kinda going back and forth and saying, "Okay, this is what Praveer would say, and this is what Dylan would say, and this is what, like, you know, uh, Sean would say," our CRO. And so you, you kinda get a, you get, you get, like, the areas of the document that you either want to go and plus up, do more diligence on, what are common sets of feedback that I need to go and make sure I ask the questions over, um, and then it reduces the cycle time that we're all sitting together on. So, you know, I, I, it, there's a lot of these areas where, you know, we're both feeling like it's, it's a tool that helps you augment. It's this tool that helps you go and replace workflow. Um, and then it's this tool that helps you seek to understand and learn, and I, um, uh, you know, I, I'm constantly surprised at, like, how, um, you know, quickly we've been able to riff on things. And, you know, for me it's, it, it's actually put me in this really optimistic spot of saying, like, um, "I'm gonna-- I, I think we're gonna be able to attract and build the world's best finance organization," because so much what people want is the ability to learn and feel like they're being invested in and surrounded by people that wanna go and, um, you know, become the best at their craft. And as much as I can do to go and affect and enable that change, the better I think we're gonna be able to go at, at, at retaining and growing and grooming that talent

5. 15:04 – 19:32

   Build vs. buy, and calling out AI slop

   1. PMPraveer Melwani15:04

      over time too.

   2. SASeema Amble15:04

      And are all those tools, did you build those right with the LM directly, or are you guys also looking at, um, off-the-shelf AI tools that you can partner with? And would you rather build or buy?

   3. PMPraveer Melwani15:18

      Yeah. Um, the ones I was describing, uh, you know, it's a mix. Like some, like s-some of them folks were sitting in Codex and, you know, I think that's what the team is doing on the, um, uh, on the corporate development team. They're sitting in Codex and trying to, you know, work their way through something. Um, we've also seen folks, like, sitting within, um, you know, some of the workflow automation pieces and building skills around agents, uh, using ChatGPT, and so that's, you know, how some of the credit and collections pieces were, were being built. And we've also started to see folks being able to embrace it and build it on our tooling as well. So we, you know, we have a tool called Figma Make, which allows folks to be able to prompt through natru-natural language and create, you know, um, a, an application, a website. Uh, you can then host it. You have, like, a, you know, back end behind it. And so, you know, some of those instances are starting to crop up too. So, um, I'm actually excited about that 'cause then we can w- then we can ideally flip into this world where we can give product feedback as well, um, which, uh, you know, uh, I, I know everyone would love. [chuckles]

   4. IMIvan Makarov16:08

      I think we're in the era right now, in the period, in the cycle where a lot of slop is being called out. Um, there's been a lot of conversation too where we went from unlimited token to people just calling it slop, um, in meetings, or I've heard one CFO talk about how using AI just led to unlimited amount of docs that are being created every day, and you just can't find anything. Because everybody can write a doc now or 10 docs-

   5. PMPraveer Melwani16:29

      Yeah

   6. IMIvan Makarov16:29

      ... in, in, in, in few minutes that it took, it would take you a week or two. Um, well, there's some of the areas where, uh, and then naturally created also the conversation around hiring. Do you hire younger people that are more versed in these tools? Do you hire, um, people more experienced that may be both, or do you hire more senior people that know what the world-class looks like? And that's what worries me a little bit is that we will forget what the world-class looked like.

   7. PMPraveer Melwani16:51

      Mm-hmm.

   8. IMIvan Makarov16:51

      Just like in the pre-AI era, you know what a really good model looks like, um, like especially with some experience and having created models. Um, where do you think this is going? Like, have you had to call slop on some of the stuff that's being created right now with AI?

   9. PMPraveer Melwani17:06

      Sometimes.

   10. SASeema Amble17:07

       Yeah.

   11. PMPraveer Melwani17:07

       Yeah. I, I think like, you know, I think we, we've also done a good job internally, um, about building policies around, like, branding when you've written something with AI. Um, I think like, uh, you know, one of the things that's really important, I think I was sharing it earlier, like, you should not be outsourcing your thinking. Um, you know, anything that you're putting out there that you're asking someone to consume, it's gonna take them time, effort, and energy. And so I think you wanna make sure that, you know, you put a similar bar to go and review, read, summarize, make it simple. You can start in a different place. I'm totally cool with that. Um, but I do think it's on all of us to make sure that we're, you know, uh, being really thoughtful about how we, how we use each other's time, uh, as well. Um, so yeah, I mean, I've been in s- I've been in instances where I, you know, things look a little bit half-baked, and you really poke around, and you're like, "Did you ac- do you really understand what's going on over here?" Um, but I've been, also been in instances where I'm like, "Oh my gosh, like, your speed of iteration here is, like, pretty damn incredible by virtue of how you set it up." Like, a couple weeks ago, I was sitting in a-- we're going through 27 planning. I was sitting in a T&E review. We're looking, you know, we're looking at our T&E portfolio and saying, "Okay, where, where do we have the opportunity to go and make changes to policy? Or maybe where, where are we not, like, upholding policy where we should?" Um, and our corporate finance team, they did a really good job about stitching together information that lived in different data sources. We use Navan, we use Zip, we use, um, Ramp, and, um, there's a lot of fuzzy match that you have to go through in order to, like, really get that information working. Like, was someone actually traveling for, for an offsite? What if they lived in San Francisco and were just visiting? Like, how do you actually wanna go and, like, tag and treat that data? Like, 95% of the challenge there is just, like, getting your data in the right spot. Uh, and these models are good at making, at making these assumptions for you. And I, I didn't need something 100% perfect. Um, I just wanted something that was directionally, you know, in the right, you know, i-in the similar vein from where I'm going, that gave me enough information to understand, you know, what are the areas I really need to crank the dial on. Um, it was really interesting. They both, like, outputted a set of suggested changes that we needed, we needed to-- we could make. Um, I gave... I remember giving feedback that morning, 30 minutes later on, like, some of the construction of how I actually wanted things to look, look like. Like, it was all visualized for me when we got in the meeting. I was like, "Holy shit, this is, like, a really fantastic use case here." Um, and they did it in a way that, like, um, you know, uh, I don't think they would've been able to do it by hand. Um, so, you know, as, as much of that slop, you know, I think can happen, I also think some magic can really get unlocked if you, if you, if you kind of like use the right tool for the right purpose, um, and understand, you know, what is, what is good enough and what needs to be, like, really, really picture perfect.

6. 19:32 – 26:25

   Turning one-off agents into shared systems

   1. SASeema Amble19:32

      A couple of comments to that. Um, I mean, a key unlock is the data, right? Now with AI, you can consume all these sources of data and quickly do the fuzzy match-

   2. PMPraveer Melwani19:43

      Yeah

   3. SASeema Amble19:43

      ... get, um, a, a directionally correct or precise, uh, you know, reconciliation across these sources. Whereas before, right, you had to run the SQL query, you had to, you had to wait, and then, and see it, and, and then, and then essentially you had to be your own BI, uh, analyst on, on top of it. Um, the second piece is, uh, there's this muscle that's being developed around the automation, right? And so even if there is slop... Like, for example, I was talking to one of our growth stage CEO, uh, CFOs, who was saying that in, I think a month or two, there have been, you know, 40 or 50 agents created by their team, which obviously are not all being used, but it was getting everyone in this motion of, uh, of, okay, if I don't, um, if I'm doing something manual or tedious and I don't have a great tool for it, let me build. And so a lot of those, maybe 90% I, I would guess, of those tools and agents are not being used anymore, but it got people to think, okay, instead of doing this manually, let me think automation-

   4. PMPraveer Melwani20:39

      Yeah

   5. SASeema Amble20:39

      ... first around it, um, which I think is almost as important as getting the, like, uh, the, the agent built.

   6. PMPraveer Melwani20:46

      Yeah, I 100% agree with you. I also think, like, how you share it, how you get other people to understand what other people are building, and then you end up in these scenarios where, where, you know, our internal audit team is like, I... They spend a ton of time going and, like, following up with individuals to make sure that they're adding information, you know, on the tickets that they need it, so it could be trackable for our SOC au- our SOCs audit. And then you're like, well, you know, that internal audit team is not the only team that does that. You know, our GRC's team is doing the same thing as they go through, like, all of our ISO and SOC 2 audits as well. You know, you have a bunch of this back and forth on the AP side when they're going and writing accruals. Like, you, you wanted to go and build this motion of going and triaging, pulling information in, reconciling it, and why not go and build a singular platform that does that? This is actually where I think, like, you know, a systems team is re- is really, really interesting to come in and, and then harmonize some of the things that you see are happening, really productize it, um, so that you don't have all these individuals going and building similar things. That, I think, is, like, the evolution of what a CIO function should or could be. It's like, how do you go in and you take a lot of these bottoms-up things that people have crafted, and you have it, you have it rebu- be rebuilt and repurposed in a way that can live on beyond the creator, uh, and the, and the initial builder. Um, so I, I, I, uh, you know, I think that, that, that cross-org sharing, we're doing some of it at, at our, at our, you know, um, at our all- company all hands, but we're also doing a lot of it internally across our teams.

   7. SASeema Amble22:00

      I was also talking to another one of our growth stage companies. Um, the head of customer success was saying every one of their-- his reps had a different dashboard that they had vibe coded-

   8. PMPraveer Melwani22:10

      Yeah

   9. SASeema Amble22:10

      ... and they had different numbers.

   10. PMPraveer Melwani22:12

       Yeah.

   11. SASeema Amble22:12

       Um, and so I think to your point, uh, there has to be some reconciling function, um, which would... which is a great segue to hear from you guys around, uh, what are people doing in terms of the teams that should be building this are... and who is, who's taking the agency? Is it, you know, someone initially builds an agent from your team, and then you're taking it to, um, you're taking it to an engineering team centr-centrally? And we talked a lot about this idea of the finance engineer, which we can-

   12. PMPraveer Melwani22:41

       Yeah

   13. SASeema Amble22:41

       ... unpack further, but we'd love to hear a little bit about that.

   14. PMPraveer Melwani22:43

       Yeah. I, I think, like, you know, I think we've always had... I think having specialists come up with the ideas and iterate, they know what good looks like. They know what they want. Um, they know the process that they're, that they're trying to, uh, make look right. Like, they're fantastic in going, at, at going about building these initial prototypes. Um, but do I want that same individual to be the individual that has to go and make sure that they're checking for all upstream dependencies and making sure that, like, you know, if they were ever to leave, that, like, this thing is hosted in the right way? Um, and hey, does anyone else across the organization have the same need? Probably not. This is where I think, like- You know, a world-class CIO org can, can come in and really show some magic here. Um, yeah, I'm really excited. We just had a new CIO join yesterday, a guy named Kasper Sørensen, who joined over from Coinbase. Um, and a lot of, like, what, you know, we talked about a lot in, in the interview process is, like, how do you, how do you create these, like, you know, centralized PM-type functions within the CIO organization that can partner with the rest of the business teams, find the things that are really working, and then build these, like, um, foundations that other can, others can build on top of? Which is not too dissimilar from, like, how a systems organization would have functioned otherwise, but the pace that you can, you can, um, you can iterate on and then how you can empower others to build on top, um, is what is changing right now.

   15. IMIvan Makarov23:57

       Is it centralized right now within the company? Do you s- or do you see that changing or eventually-

   16. PMPraveer Melwani24:02

       Yeah. So, um, as is all things at Figma, I think we've grown faster than we've built, you know, the tools to support it. Um, and, you know, you know, it's on me to always empower the organization to build, and then I'll-- I don't want to slow people down by creating the infrastructure on top of it, and so I think we're chasing a little bit of that right now. Um, I think with some teams, we've done a better job, um, centralizing that, and with other teams, I think, um, you know, they, they built far, far quicker, and I think we're now having the process of saying, "Okay, well, how can we go and help?" So, um, I think we're in the messy middle right now.

   17. IMIvan Makarov24:32

       Mm-hmm.

   18. SASeema Amble24:32

       I think that resonates with a lot of what we're hearing from, uh, our companies, whether it's a go-to-market engineer or a talent engineer, uh, this concept of the finance engineer. It's a decentralized, um, set of builders across teams. Um, it could have different profiles. You know, some- sometimes it's someone who has an engineering background-

   19. PMPraveer Melwani24:51

       Yeah

   20. SASeema Amble24:51

       ... on finance who's good at kind of thinking about what workflows need to be automated.

   21. PMPraveer Melwani24:55

       Yeah.

   22. SASeema Amble24:55

       Other times, it's you've borrowed someone from a s- uh, a product engineer from another team, um-

   23. PMPraveer Melwani25:01

       Yeah

   24. SASeema Amble25:01

       ... to go build. Um, but it, you know, I think, I think everyone's in this messy middle right now in terms of, of what, what that profile of person looks like.

   25. PMPraveer Melwani25:09

       A, a lot of it reminds me of data science teams and how they partner with other parts of the organization as well. Um, and you as a data science partner are like, you know, the deeper you get into understanding the context of the team that you're working with, like, the better I think you o- you operate as a, a-as a, as an individual. Um, so, you know, we've got data science individuals that are partnering with our product team. They build as much, if not more, product intuition than our pr- than our product managers and engineers, and they're viewed as part of that core team, um, that can go and help ideate and push change, and they're just leveraging a different tool in order to enable that. Similarly, we've got folks on, you know, the data science side that are supporting our finance organization. Um, it's actually really interesting. Like, the folks that I think have been devoted there actually come from accounting backgrounds, a couple of them. Uh, and they understand that, like, hey, this stuff has gotta be, like, really, really hard and c- and, and, and always correct. Uh, they understand the nuances that we're describing on, like, checks and balances. What is a refund? What is a, you know, uncollectible? All that, all that kind of, um, uh, all, all that kind of nomenclature. And so it actually enables them to be better builders. And similarly, I could see that translate to, like, you know, the, you know, the finance engineer that you're describing. You have some shared understanding of what is necessary. You could build that context over time, but at least, like, you... It's important to at least, like, build that major so that you can also go and push other people's frame of thinking as well.

7. 26:25 – 30:24

   Who owns the metric definitions?

   1. IMIvan Makarov26:25

      Who owns the definitions? Like, the, the reason why I'm asking this question, um, especially we see it at an early stage where it could be a team of 20 people and just, uh, founders and no finance or business people, and then eventually they bring in them on. Um, but they're building, uh, definitions of key metrics that serve reporting, that serve, um, investors and really business decisions. Um, and eventually finance gets hired. Um, where the definitions, how often would you-- It feels like in the past we used to revisit them maybe every couple of years, where now because you can access the code or you can access the Stripe logic much easier with AI, has that changed much? How often do you visit it? I mean...

   2. PMPraveer Melwani27:02

      Yeah, my, my team owns the outputs there. Um, maybe I'm, maybe I'm a little... We're, we're a little bit later than some of those early, earlier businesses. We have, you know, more controls in how, in how we wanna talk about it. It's always been really important to me to have consistency in how we talk about our business. Um, you know, it's one of the things that I felt has always been empowering to, like, how I can show up for our, with our board, with our leadership team, with, you know, other folks broadly, is that they know that what I'm putting out there is the same thing that I would've put out there a month ago, and, you know, the hi- the historicals never change, and, you know, I'm, I'm not trying to hide anything. Um, and I, um, you know, I, I, I would just wanna make sure that, you know, a-as we grow and as we give ourselves the ability to iterate and, you know, we constantly have this conversation on different, different sets of disclosure as we go through earnings. We wanna be consistent. We, we, we wanna have the decisions that we make, um, be things that we can look back on and feel, um, uh, feel good about, um, and have longevity, uh, further beyond. And so I, I, you know, I think it's, it's great if people finding different ways to think about their business if it's empowering them to go and build their business better. Um, but I do think that there's some value in consistency as well.

   3. SASeema Amble28:07

      Who is it on your team that's automated the most?

   4. PMPraveer Melwani28:10

      [chuckles]

   5. SASeema Amble28:11

      What role?

   6. PMPraveer Melwani28:12

      Uh, I, you know, I, I, I, I could say someone, but I, I'm assume that I'm, that someone else is probably coming up with something different really quickly. But, you know, very, very honestly, it's, like, all, like, individuals who are owning certain parts of our forecast model all the way through to, you know, uh, individuals on our biz ops team that are automating their day-to-day, um, sort of like, you know, how they're actually going and running, um, uh, you know, competitive benchmarking and pricing studies. So it's like, uh, I actually think that, you know, it's the, it's the one upping of each other that actually en- enables you to create an organization that wants to better one another. Um, so, you know, I, I would feel uncomfortable saying there's one individual, um, because I truly do think that this is, like, a, a team that's, um, uh, trying to do this together.

   7. SASeema Amble28:57

      Do you think it tends to be people who are more expert, like, who have more expertise or experience in an area, or is it really across the board? And, and how much is it coming from you-

   8. PMPraveer Melwani29:07

      Yeah

   9. SASeema Amble29:07

      ... and the role that you've automated yourself?

   10. PMPraveer Melwani29:10

       Yeah. I, I mean, I think, like, early days it was helpful for me to go and show folks, like, hey, if I, if I'm coming and trying to do things in a different way, like, hey, that should be your signal to you that, you know, my expectation is that you are as well. Um- But I think, you know, in large part, um, I think the things that are important is have a solid understanding of the data sets that you're trying to pull from, and the folks that have been able to move more quickly have, like, an understanding of, like, how these things are stitched together. Um, and when you understand the things that... and, and how they're architected, you can better think as, like, an architect of like, "Okay, how do I actually bridge these things in a way that's logical? Where do I know where the model is actually making a deterministic decision versus inferring? Um, and what tasks, like, is it okay for that to happen, and what tasks is it not okay?" Um, and I think then, you know, others kind of pick up and learn from that. Um, but, uh, you know, I, I, I do think that, like, the, the rhythm that we've created, the show-and-tell rhythm, the, you know, the internal hackathons, this ability to bring in other experts, we do a lot of, like... I do a lot of conversations with other finance leaders, and I try to bring in some of that intel internally so that it can get disseminated, and I think my leaders are also doing that, too, which is really cool to see. Um, I think everyone right now is trying to learn from one another, which is, which is really cool to see.

   11. SASeema Amble30:23

       Nice.

8. 30:24 – 33:10

   AI tools as a recruiting perk

   1. IMIvan Makarov30:24

      Yeah. I feel like one of the common themes that are coming up in my conversations with CFOs or, uh, directors of finance, um, or even just individual contributors is that they're finding it's really fun to w- be working again. Because before it was like you're reconciling something for two weeks or three weeks, and you're closing the books for two or three weeks-

   2. PMPraveer Melwani30:40

      Yeah

   3. IMIvan Makarov30:41

      ... or continuously. And, and now it just feels like people are really turning their eyes towards the business and are able to surface insights business, um, and all of that. Uh, there's just a lot of excitement around, uh, what's possible with AI, what's possible with vertical solutions. Um, one of the things I'm, I'm, I'm curious to go back on the, um, buy, uh, scenario. Um, I was talking to one of our hypergrowth companies the other day, and they said, "We just have to buy everything off the shelf. We're moving so fast." Do you ever feel that way? Like, maybe building is the longer path than just buying one of the solutions out there?

   4. PMPraveer Melwani31:13

      I think for, like, the core systems of record solutions and, like, the things that, like, we just can't mess up, like, yes, we're going and buying solutions for that. The areas where I think our team is having a lot of fun, it's the... you know, it's kind of where you're going. It's, like, the workflow automation. Like, what are the areas where if I think about my day, like, I'm almost, like, not thinking, um, and how can I go and augment my day-to-day so I can s- you know, go and re-orchestrate how I want to spend my time? Um, I, like, I also, you know, fully, fully agree with the sentiment that you're sharing that, like, the work has gotten, you know, the, the work, the work is always gonna be interesting, but the work has gotten more fun 'cause you can explore things more quickly. Um, I've had folks on my team come up to me being like, "Holy shit," like, "I actually am, like, having a ton of fun." And I actually think that, like, o- that the, the policies that we've created and the freedom we've given folks to explore is, are the reasons why, like, some folks are like, "I wanna stay here. I really, really like what I'm doing." Um, and I think, you know, I, I don't know if folks are actually treating, uh, access to technology as, like, a recruiting vehicle as much as they could or should. Um, you know, I've at least started to do that in the recruiting conversations since I started to hear that from the team. Um, especially when you're trying to pull from folks who are not necessarily in technology. They're like, "Oh, my gosh, this is, like, my, my front end, or r- my front entrance into, like, an entirely new world, and if I'm empowered to learn, like, this is really cool."

   5. IMIvan Makarov32:29

      Yeah.

   6. PMPraveer Melwani32:29

      Um, so, you know, I actually would lean... I mean, I, I know other people are maybe gonna steal this now, but, like, uh, for me, that was actually one of the really fun things to do.

   7. IMIvan Makarov32:35

      No, I agree. I actually, I had this idea, too, that, uh, I think we need to start talking about this like we talk about perks and benefits. You get X, Y, and Z if you come to work here, that my-- your former employee-

   8. PMPraveer Melwani32:45

      Yeah

   9. IMIvan Makarov32:45

      ... employer doesn't let you available, and now you also get access to all these models or other tools.

   10. PMPraveer Melwani32:49

       Yeah. Yeah, and I, I think it's not just that, but then it's also, like, if you, if you have folks understand what are other people building around them, um, and so much of what you're gonna learn is through osmosis of what others have built too. And so if you get this feeling that, like, you're joining an organization that's not just saying that they're, that they give access to these things, but they're actually building and that you can see it and you can feel it through the inter-interview process, um, those are the places I'd gravitate

9. 33:10 – 38:26

   More time for strategy

   1. PMPraveer Melwani33:10

      to.

   2. SASeema Amble33:11

      So, uh, in 2020, my partner Angela and I wrote this piece on how CFOs needed modern tools. We had this pyramid diagram in there, which was essentially say- saying that the finance team was spending all their time on this, like, data reconciliation layer.

   3. PMPraveer Melwani33:24

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SASeema Amble33:24

      And at the top, which was the smallest amount of time, um, was being spent on strategic finance or str- like, strategy questions. Um, I'm curious if your time you've, you know, actually seen your time, um, and your team's time unlock, not just on doing things they enjoy more, but, like, being more strategic or being able to weigh in on more decisions, or, like, how has that changed your, your role?

   5. PMPraveer Melwani33:48

      I feel fortunate that, like, you know, as I've grown within the company, that, like, that has taken up more and more of my role. And then as I then think about, like, what, what is exciting for others, like, I also recognize, like, for me to have fr- for... that there's benefit in me creating that same space for other people within the organization. Um, so yes, there are things that, like, we'll have to do as daily rhythms or weekly rhythms, um, but in the same breath, like, if I can get, like, take our, uh, take our... We have a finance organization that's split, and one of the, one of the pillars is go to market. If I can take the team that's focused on our self-serve business and immediately get them out of reconciling last, last week or last month or whatever it is, and then m- very much more focused on what are the experiments we're running? What are the trends that we're seeing? Where are the dollars that we should-- Like, what are the additional dollars that we should be spending on? Like, that is way more engaging to them. Um, and I think they're actually able to do more of that now. Like, it's, it's, like, such... it's some of the little things here matter so much. It's like, how can I go and automate the creation of a set of materials that I know is gonna look and feel the exact same way and, you know, then focus my time on the annotation, the discovery, the understanding? Um, and we've seen s- we've seen that start to get a lot, a lot faster, um, and the quality of that improve. And, you know, we even had one of, like, the... It was actually the leader of that team get up and talk about, like, how he had gone and created a set of plug-ins to go and, you know, in Figma to go and ideate on this stuff really quickly. Um, so, you know, I, I, I would hope that my team is telling me that they're spending a growing share of their, their time on that, on that bucket of things. Um, but you're always gonna have to chase You know, the complexity in your business and managing the complexity with, like, how much time you're able to reserve for, for the other pieces. Totally. One of the things that we're seeing in the CFO tools that we've invested in is the product is moving away from, you know, tracking workflow towards, uh, providing a result, and then part of the product is the, the, the audit trail. Yeah. So obviously, finance needs to make sure everything's correct. Totally. You need to be able to, uh, track where, you know, how the, the product came to, um, a particular reconciliation, for example, um, but then it's done for you. Yeah. So it's that balance of both having the audit trail and the, um, and the result. But we are definitely seeing our teams spend more time doing things like running experiments and doing things that us- used to take, like, a month-long- Mm-hmm ... research study. You had to pull in some from data science- Mm-hmm ... and, like, chase down a bunch of people over email, get everyone in a room, and now you can quickly iterate on this because you can, um... Yeah, you can- Yeah ... you have agents running in the background. And, and it could even-- And it's even things on, like, the accounting side, like flux analysis, right? Like, you know, you're spending time as an accountant going through and trying reviewing the GL accounts for, like, per- period over period. If you can leverage a tool, and I know there's a whole bunch of tools now out there that give you that initial sort of, like, stab at what has changed. That gives them, like, a set of things that they can go and chase. It gives them, like, an initial set of things, and maybe it's right r- right away, and I'd love for that to be more and more true. Um, and then they focus their time elsewhere. And so I, I, uh, I fully expect that, like, w- the spirit of where you're going, like, that, that, like, um, initial draft, that initial sort of set, set of expectation, that initial sort of idea of what to go and, um, and, and pull the thread on, um, can, can be surfaced, uh, via tools. It's kind of where I was going when I was talking about that T&E piece, right? Like, it was giving our team sets of threads that they can go and pull, um, and then us enough gut to go and, and chase it too. Right. You have the, the data and then now the time to go, you know, address those second-order questions and s- see what, what's behind, uh- Mm-hmm ... what's, what's going on. Yeah. I was thinking how, um, when we grew up, the word reconciliation was a very negative word. It was associated with a lot of bad memories- [chuckles] ... and a lot of weeks and months spent on trying to chase something, where now it's just something you do, or maybe it's even a positive word because you can, uh, you can solve it much easier, quicker with the modern tools and with AI. And, and find maybe not exactly where the errors are, but just get there so much quicker. Mm-hmm. And then you still need, obviously, to go talk to people as FP&A will always continue to be the- Yeah ... the people, the people discipline. Yeah. I, I... You know, it's one of those things I think I underplayed, um, uh, or I under- I, I didn't realize how important communication, um, you know, relationship building, uh, your ability to, you know, go and influence was to this role. Um, you know, I, I probably walked in feeling like I could, you know, be the smartest person in the room and figure it all out, but then I realized, like, you know, it's a team sport regardless, and you can only go and affect so much change, and you then really do have to go and, um, get other people to, to be on the same page with you. And if you can do that effectively, I think you can be a really, a really effective leader. But, um, you know, those are sort of like the, I think the true skills, if I can tell... You were, you were asking earlier about, like, you know, what am I screening for? If I, if I can test and get a sense that you're like... You, you have this ability to build really solid followership. You have this ability to go and build trust with others. Like, that's so invaluable.

10. 38:26 – 46:38

    What changes in the next 12–18 months

    1. PMPraveer Melwani38:27

       That's a, a good segue into what I wanted to chat about next, which is what do we think changes in the next 12 to 18 months, uh, for the team and the role and the function overall? Um, I don't know if you guys have any points of view on, on what might change. Maybe let's start off talking about how your team even is organized. Yeah. I mean, I, I would love to be in a spot where, um, you know, we're only adding individuals if, like, the complexity of the business is growing faster than, than the, than the needs to support it. Um, I do think that we're in a spot now where, like, you know, a lot of the, the regular, um, sort of business rhythm pieces, I think you can start to move in the reverse direction versus needing to add people in order to keep up with it. Um, you know, I think for us, we're gonna continue to fight it 'cause we're, you know, adding new products. We're acquiring teams and businesses. We're, you know, continuing to evolve what, what we're doing, and so it's always more... I think in that world, the complexity there is still outpacing, you know, where we're, where we're able to truly drive, you know, uh, effi- you know, complete efficiency. Um, but we're definitely like, um, we're definitely getting more efficient, you know, period over period. Do you think that the efficiency... Do you think it'll, like, plateau, like you've got the tools to do what you need to do, or do you think that this-- more of these processes will just completely get automated end to end? I would hope that more- Yeah ... and more can get completely automated. I think maybe I'd tar- start with the pieces that are, like, truly deterministic and, like, how can I feed it with enough information so that I can feel that the output there, um, you know, is completely, completely trustworthy. Um, I think getting something to that, like, um, audit-ready output piece, um, uh, for a, for a system that's, like, truly business critical is extremely high. I think it's also gonna be, you know, an interesting sort of conversation with the auditors on what gets them comfortable. Um, but I don't, I don't, I don't kinda take it out of the picture. I, I do think we'll get there over time. Um, I think, you know, like I was sharing, I, you know, as long as our business compli- if our business complexity was, like, staying the same, I think we probably would- wouldn't need the same number of people a year from now. Um, but, uh, you know, I, and I think you only get there because you're doing a better job of finding these places and rhythms where you can, um, you can build more consistency in, in the way that you're operating.

    2. IMIvan Makarov40:35

       Is Excel under threat?

    3. PMPraveer Melwani40:38

       No, it's like my love language, dude. Like, I, I, I think in the same way I was describing how I, um, uh, you know, I still think that case study is so important because, like, you use it as a tool, right? Like, you use it, you use it to build intuition. A lot of the output people are still creating is a model. Like, I mean, that model could be, you know... You, you could host it somewhere else. It could, could be something else. But, like, I think you want this tool to give you this ability to refine your understanding, um, and play with things with your hands, and it's kinda like the magic that we see with Figma, right? Like, we can give people the ability to go and, you know, have a, have an initial stab in a first draft through, you know, prompting and through natural language. But, like, sometimes it's so much easier to go and riff and make changes, um, on your hand. Take a color wheel as an example. You've got like a, a s- a screen that you've, that you've designed, and you're like, "Hey, I wanna go and change the background." You could sit there in an agent and prompt it, right? Like, go change the background from red to green. Or I could take the color wheel and you get all different shades of it, and you get the real feel of what, of, of what's going on. Similarly, I think about that with Excel. It's the way I build trust, it's the way I build understanding. There may be something better in the future, but for me, I think it would be really, really hard to rip away from me. [chuckles]

    4. SASeema Amble41:37

       I, I also grew up in Excel, and I still use Excel to, like, organize my thoughts. Like, if I'm trying to run an analysis, I'll... I-- it's-- yeah, it's just even, like, the spatial, um, organization of it.

    5. PMPraveer Melwani41:50

       Yeah.

    6. SASeema Amble41:50

       And, and I think the, the models aren't quite good enough to, like, create a forecast-

    7. PMPraveer Melwani41:55

       Yeah

    8. SASeema Amble41:55

       ... or a model quite yet, but I think that organization is still valuable. I don't know if you feel similarly.

    9. PMPraveer Melwani42:00

       Yeah, totally. And I also think, you know, p-part of the things that I've tried to experiment with now is, like, how can I use, um, uh, you know, how can I use, how can I use one of these models to help me better understand the output that a team is putting together? Like, if you give me, like, a, you know, a 20-tab model, it's gonna be really challenging for me to go and, like, s- you know, ta-tab through and thumb through everything. But if I can, you know, pass that same context to, through, through, uh, through a model to m- help me understand, you know, what are the things that really are, are, are the, the needle movers or what are the areas that are more sensitive, um, it's actually given me, like, a better starting spot to go and, to go and orchestrate and understand things, which, um, I've actually found really, really helpful and effective.

    10. IMIvan Makarov42:37

        The world we're living in is also challenging, too. I was talking to a university professor the other day, and I was asking, uh, him how do they teach AI at the university. So they don't right now. And one of the challenges that they, they said they had a course, and within a semester they've changed the syllabus several times because new models have dropped.

    11. PMPraveer Melwani42:54

        Mm-hmm.

    12. IMIvan Makarov42:54

        And they just have to completely change how they do it, though, so they just sort of give up. So they're going back to fundamentals again, teaching people analytical, uh, thinking and Excel and all-

    13. PMPraveer Melwani43:04

        Yeah

    14. IMIvan Makarov43:04

        ... of that because, um, I imagine you're in a similar world where if you were relying on AI too heavily, you're gonna have to redo how you do your earnings.

    15. PMPraveer Melwani43:11

        A lot has changed, but a lot hasn't changed.

    16. IMIvan Makarov43:13

        Yeah.

    17. PMPraveer Melwani43:13

        And I think maybe that's the spirit of where you're going. Um, I, you know, I, I think that the core capabilities of what makes a great finance person are still there. Um, uh, how you actually, you know, leverage the tools at your disposal to make, you know, better, better decisions is, you know, always gonna be this, like, moving target for you. Um, uh, like, the unlock that SQL was for me is, you know, now, you know, net, a net, net new unlock with, like, AI as a, as a tool and capability, um, driver for me. So I, you know, I, I, I think a great finance person, um, has longevity if they continue to adapt.

    18. SASeema Amble43:48

        Which, you know, we wrote this piece. We said, uh, it was titled You Need a New CFO. The main point was that the mi- there's a mindset shift. So whether the individual actually has changed, it's the, that they have to think more automation first, either build or buy the tools, depending on what's, what's available and what makes sense, but it's really automation first. Um, I'm curious if you think the profile, either of you, of a CFO in the next year or two is going to change in any way or to your point, it's kind of the same, the same dimensions that are important, but, uh, maybe just the, the mindset continues to evolve.

    19. PMPraveer Melwani44:21

        If I were to give advice to anyone, it's like hire someone who feels a similar amount of business ownership and, uh, wants to be the, you know, a-an operational rigger as you as the CEO does. Um, they wanna win, they wanna win no matter which way possible. They have a set of tools that they're gonna use and an understanding of a P&L to go and orchestrate that change. Um, but you truly want, like, a business leader versus, like, you know, someone who, um, you know, like I was sharing earlier, like a traffic cop, right? Like, that, that is just not... And yes, I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of things that you're gonna need to have as, like, commonplace and solid understanding of, like all the accounting fundamentals, like, you know, your, your, your ability to actually go and orchestrate a planning process. But, like, I actually think the things that, like, make people truly unique in this role, it's like, do you understand the business? Can you go and make, make change happen? And can you get-- can you simplify the understanding of how the business model works so that others are all running in the same direction?

    20. IMIvan Makarov45:14

        Yeah, and I think it's true, uh, whether we're talking about a public company like Figma or we're talking about a seed stage or a Series A startup that's starting to scale their go-to-market and getting traction, is that that's what the founders and the CEOs really need from finance is that extra business opinion, opinion on the business, um, and insights that, uh, are easier to get, but also still you go back to the basics like customers.

    21. PMPraveer Melwani45:38

        Yeah.

    22. IMIvan Makarov45:38

        Do you understand the customers? Do you understand the behaviors? Do you understand the metrics that come from that, uh, inputs, outputs? I think that's, that's-

    23. PMPraveer Melwani45:45

        Yeah

    24. IMIvan Makarov45:45

        ... will always be the same in what we expect from-

    25. PMPraveer Melwani45:47

        Yeah. Maybe the thing I'd add, like, I, I, I do think, like, you know, um, creativity is important. Not like, you know, go and create, like, a fun-funky set of metrics creative, but, like, how can you actually go and think about your business in a slightly different light, um, and use that as, like, the way that you go and, um, drive change and be opinionated. Um, and I, you know, I actually don't know how... I, you know, I, I try to do, I try to do this. I don't know if I'm doing it as much as I, you know, could. Um, but if I come up with these ideas, if I can come up with different ways, uh, of thinking about things, I actually think that, um, I think some great ideas can come from your finance organization, and if you really set them up well and right, um, they can be, they can be this, like, layer within your organization that's just as im-impactful, um, and, uh, really driving a lot of the internal strategy as well.

11. 46:38 – 49:56

    Where to start with finance automation

    1. SASeema Amble46:38

       I will say at the investor and board level, we are seeing a much deeper set of analysis come through or the rapid iteration. You know, before it used to be, "Oh, we have all these questions at the board meeting or before," and then it's a, you know, the team needs to run and cycle through that. That process has-

    2. PMPraveer Melwani46:54

       Yeah

    3. SASeema Amble46:54

       ... just short-circuited and hopefully is less painful-

    4. PMPraveer Melwani46:57

       Totally

    5. SASeema Amble46:57

       ... on the finance team side. Um, last question for you, Ivan. Uh, as our portfolio companies or just companies in general come to you and say, "Where do I start in terms of automation?" what do you give them as advice?

    6. IMIvan Makarov47:10

       Uh, I think it's kind of the same place where we always started. You start with the integrity of data. You have to figure out if you actually have a good access to data, if you're tracking things. Many, many of the times, especially early-stage companies, they don't even track anything, and so you have to set that up. And that often goes on, uh, against the priorities that maybe the first finance hire has. Like, "Oh, I gotta close my books on time. Gotta send the board update." All of that, actually, no. Like, you can't even do that until you're on a solid foundation. You might sometimes have to set it. You might have to rebuild it. You might have to change things. We've had a number of people that came in, especially now, very quickly can realize within several weeks that maybe the revenue is calculated, um, in a way that's not How it should be calculated for that business model.

    7. SASeema Amble47:49

       More, more creative, uh, ARR, uh-

    8. IMIvan Makarov47:51

       Yeah.

    9. SASeema Amble47:52

       At the early stage, uh, than I've ever seen before.

    10. IMIvan Makarov47:54

        For sure.

    11. SASeema Amble47:54

        Yes.

    12. IMIvan Makarov47:54

        For sure. The, the, it's changing fast, too. But, um, but it starts with data, and then, um, based on that, uh, you really kinda create the reporting rigor, you create the metrics, and then you create the story. I think one of the things, too, Praveer, was, um, especially you've been on that journey as a CFO, like storytelling becomes a really, really important once you have your eyes set on the IPO-

    13. SASeema Amble48:16

        Mm-hmm

    14. IMIvan Makarov48:16

        ... and you have to, uh, be all telling the same story. I feel like that has moved ear- to earlier and earlier stages because you expect to tell the story now in fundraising for series A, series B, and, um, not just the story of what the product vision could be, but story with the numbers and what the, what the business could really be like, and that's gotten easier, but it's also gotten harder because I think a lot of people overthink that with AI.

    15. SASeema Amble48:38

        And, you know, Ivan and I have been hosting these CFO and controller dinners for, I don't know, a couple years now, and we saw this real market change, I'd say, maybe nine months ago, when it went from people saying, "Oh yeah, I'm generating this tax memo or this onboarding doc with AI," to saying, "Okay, yeah, I can actually-- I'm doing the core, uh, the data reconciliation, um, and automating many of the workflows," and it's really been a step, uh, function change. And if anything, um, the leaders are saying, "I'm-- I, I need to do this, otherwise I'll be perceived within my organization as, uh, behind everyone else." This goes back to your point around you winning the hackathons. Like, finance was never the one that was gonna be winning the automation hackathons, you know, I don't know, a couple years ago, and it's, it's pretty cool to see that's totally changed.

    16. IMIvan Makarov49:24

        Yeah. I l- I love this part of it, and I, um, I would, we have, like, an internal maker week. We-- And it's our internally branded, like, hackathon, and, um, you know, I, I would always sit there early days and not really know how to participate, and now I'm like, if I had, like, a spare minute, I think I'd have a million different ideas, and I'm sure my team has-- feels very similarly.

    17. SASeema Amble49:42

        Well, Praveer, thank you so much for joining us. This was really fun to talk about and, uh, understand directly from someone who's gone through this journey of automation over, over your career. And thanks, Ivan, and, um, this was a really fun conversation.

    18. IMIvan Makarov49:55

        Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah.

Episode duration: 50:11