Startup CXO

Chapter 18High Impact Areas for the Startup CFO as Partner

As a startup CFO, there are several opportunities to engage with high‐impact functions that will add value immediately and set your company up with a foundation to scale quickly. A key area to focus on first is revenue operations. Regardless of whether or not revenue operations reports up into the CFO function, the CFO role will be critical in building and scaling the function. The revenue operations function within the finance team and this role is typically responsible for all of the less glamorous items like establishing processes, systems, and watching over the data. Yes, it's head's down most of the time, but the impact is significant, especially as you scale, develop more accounts, hire more sales reps, work with channel partners, and expand geographically.

The core mission of the revenue operations team is to help leverage the salesforce by removing friction in the sales process and providing the accurate and trusted data when the team needs it in order to make great decisions. In a startup you're going to have friction, most likely from misalignment between Sales and other functions, especially Product, Marketing, and Finance. It can be healthy to have some friction, or it could end up killing you, but the startup CFO has a unique view on how all of these teams can work together. Your key role is not to referee debates or choose sides, but to ensure that data and systems are available to everyone so at least ...