How Confluent’s CFO Runs Planning, Pricing, and Prioritization

**CJ Gustafson** (0:00)
And we talk about professional goal setting. Is it true you write down your 12 month goals and carry them with you?

**Rohan Sivaram** (0:05)
I'm going to be a tad bit geeky here. Any point in time, your brain is basically processing over 2 million pieces of information. And if you don't help your brain prioritize it, it will prioritize it by itself.

**CJ Gustafson** (0:18)
What's your framework for personally evaluating if a company is one you should join?

**Rohan Sivaram** (0:23)
So I have this, I'll say rough and tough framework. I call it the three T's, total addressable market, technology, and team.

**CJ Gustafson** (0:30)
Can you talk about the learning and adapting part? How often are you looking to change the plan and implement what you're hearing?

**Rohan Sivaram** (0:37)
You got a lot of calls as CFO. I need more money. Of course, you need more money. Let's think through, how are you prioritizing? The strategic goals that you set tend to be true north.

**CJ Gustafson** (0:46)
I'm curious how networking has impacted your career trajectory.

**Rohan Sivaram** (0:50)
You're as good as your networks. If you screw up, you wouldn't have a network.
If you're showing good business results, typically, there'll be people who will have your back.

**CJ Gustafson** (1:00)
Is this thing on?

**Rohan Sivaram** (1:04)
Yesterday's price is not today's price.

**CJ Gustafson** (1:15)
Welcome back to another episode of Run the Numbers. I'm CJ, a tech CFO, and I interview really, really smart people, like Rohan Sivaram. He's the CFO of Confluent. This guy carries around his goals in his wallet. I love this. You can revisit them at any time. That's the type of discipline I need with goal setting. We go into what it was like to join Confluent at the stage he joined, and to scale it to a multi-billion dollar company, including the shift to consumption and usage-based pricing. And folks, when you make that shift, it's not just a pricing change, it's altering the entire business model.
We also go through the metrics that he looks at on a daily basis to make sure that the company is on track to hit those goals, and also evaluating job opportunities. So if you're somebody who's thinking, hey, it may be time for my next chapter here, he looks at job opportunities through an investor lens. He looks at the TAM, the tech, and the team. We also touch on how Confluent has matured its budgeting process over time, something that he likes to call Hybrid Zero Base Budgeting. A lot of you budgeting nerds at home may know what Zero Base Budgeting, but what's Hybrid Base Budgeting? You can probably adopt this into your own cycle. All this and much more coming up next. Rohan, thank you so much for joining me in the podcast.

**Rohan Sivaram** (2:28)
CJ, great to be here. I was checking my emails. We've been trying to schedule this for almost a year, so I'm glad we're able to do it finally.

**CJ Gustafson** (2:36)
I'm very persistent. Hopefully, I'm earnestly eager and not annoying. It's a PSA to all the CFOs out there. Eventually, I will get you.

**Rohan Sivaram** (2:44)
When you look at your lineup recently, it's been all top tier CFOs, so it's actually a privilege and pleasure to be here.

**CJ Gustafson** (2:50)
Thank you, sir. I know you're a busy guy, so I appreciate it. I want to start off with a fun one because the majority of the guests I have on this pod are truly type A people. They're very motivated. And we talk about professional goal setting. Is it true you write down your 12 month goals and carry them with you?

**Rohan Sivaram** (3:07)
I started this practice say about 15 years back. And I've consistently done it because I've seen the results come through. I'll tell you a fun story. I was actually on a walk with a mentor of mine. And this was about 15 years back. And we were just having a chat. During the conversation, he just happened to say, he writes his goals down and carries it all the time.
And that intrigued me. So I kind of delved a little deeper, a little deeper, a little deeper trying to unpack why he does it. It turns out that obviously it's a good practice to do it. There are scientific reasons why you would do it.
And I'm going to be a tad bit geeky here. Any point in time, your brain is basically processing over 2 million pieces of information. And if you don't help your brain prioritize it, it will prioritize it by itself. When you write down your goals and you read it at a regular interval, your brain helps you prioritize your goals in a manner that you're not even controlling it. These goals are not just professional. They're personal. I mean, as you think about our lives, you can't differentiate between personal and professional lives. My goals are mostly around, how can I be a better person? And if I can drive more discipline into my life, it ends up being that your professional side of it gets impacted in a positive manner as well.