The Evolution of the SaaS CFO Role - with Chad Gold, Salesloft

**Ray Rike** (0:00)
Hello, I'm Ray Wright, Founder and CEO of Benchmarkit, and your host of the Metrics It Measure Up podcast. We talked to a wide variety of the top B2B SaaS and Cloud thought leaders, CEOs, executives, investors, and people just like you to discuss the metrics and benchmarks they use to make metrics informed and benchmark validated decisions. Now, on to today's show.
Welcome to the Metrics that Measure Up podcast. Today, we are joined by Chad Gold, the Chief Financial Officer at Salesloft. Today, we'll be covering four main areas with Chad. First, how the B2B SaaS CFO role has evolved over the last few years, especially the last couple years. Next, how Chad uses performance metrics to both manage the business and report on the business to investors and board members. Third, how Chad uses performance metrics in the annual planning and budgeting process. And then fourth, Chad's vision on how the B2B SaaS CFO role will continue to evolve going forward. So with that, Chad, please take a moment to give a brief overview of your career journey to becoming a guest on the Metrics that Measure Up podcast.

**Chad Gold** (1:26)
Yeah, we'll do. And Ray, thanks so much for having me. For me, started my career, did two years as a corporate finance analyst at EY. So not as an accountant, but learned to build models, had incredible experience, but just felt like I wasn't getting deep enough into an industry. And so then I was lucky enough to be recruited to the Home Depot where I spent eight years doing a myriad of different finance jobs. I did financial planning and analysis, I did mergers and acquisitions, I did operational finance and I did internal audit. And what was great about that was awesome foundation for finance skills. My biggest struggle with it was that finance is already extremely cyclical and retail is even more cyclical than that. And so the reality is that over time I was ready for a new challenge and I was lucky enough to then be recruited to my first software job with a company called Ariba that had just been acquired by SAP. Most people know the largest procurement marketplace in the world. And what was cool about that was I worked for somebody that 10 years earlier had worked with me at EY. And he said, look, I know you know financial planning, come run FP&A for me, I'll teach you software. And so I was lucky enough to work with him for about a year and a half. And then he left and I became the CFO of that division with an SAP. Did that for about four years, was then recruited to my first full seat CFO job at a company called Rubicon Technologies, which is now publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, a waste and recycling technology company.
And then eventually left there to join Salesloft, and I've now been at Salesloft for over five years. When I joined Salesloft, we were 10 times smaller than we are now. And you led us through a number of capital raises. And then ultimately, we did a majority recapitalization with Vista about two years ago. And now I'm here with you today.

**Ray Rike** (3:18)
Interesting background. I always kind of look at, there's two different types of CFOs in my little narrow definition. Those who grew up through the FP&A route, very strategic kind of business thinkers, and then people who grew up through the accounting route, once again, maybe a little bit more financial and accounting centric, and they had to learn the strategic side. But you mentioned you were recruited when you were at Home Depot, which is an amazing training organization. I grew up in GE and a lot of GE people actually went to Home Depot in the early 2000s. What made you decide, I really want to go to technology and apply my craft in a different industry?

**Chad Gold** (3:59)
I think one was it was so different. I like the challenge of it. At Full Transparency, I'm a big proponent of this concept of lines, not dots. What I mean by that is you meet people throughout your career, whether they're investors or friends or colleagues or bosses and whatever. If you foster those relationships over a period of time, you never know when you reconnect. I actually had a chance to reconnect with one of my favorite people I ever worked with.
It was as much going to work for him as it was going to work in software. What I found was when I got into software, I truly loved the role that finance can play because the reality is in a technology business, if you start to understand the way the financials work, it's like watching a game in slow motion because you can see the levers. The financials are just the output of everything that happens in the business. If you're moving up upstream and you see what's going on, you can really materially impact the financials downstream.