FP&A Today

What does it take to be the finance leader behind Hollywood stories? Diya Sagar, CFO of AWA Studios, which produces critically acclaimed, original stories for comics, TV, and movies, joins Glenn Hopper to reveal how she manages the money behind the magic—from funding graphic novels that may not pay off for years to navigating the unpredictable world of graphic novels, film and TV deals.  How a “creator-first” approach shows up in budgets Building a Hits-Driven Portfolio The Ultimate Model: From Page to Screen Economics The 2-4 year timeline  What Boards Really Want in a creative industry

With more than 20 years of experience helping startups scale from seed to series B, Maria Azatyan has built architectures for companies across ai, robotics and the new space economy, translating complex technologies into numbers. This is coupled with her frank perspective as a single mother balancing finance leadership and advising startups.  Sci-fi Dreams Made Real: sharing experiences with Waymo Setting up ArmGate, empowering entrepreneurs  One month to “two minutes” using AI to work with data Case study: AI to Automate ERA Filings for Venture Funds Role as ex-CFO at DocDoc.ru whose exit was ranked one of Russia’s top five IT & Digital M&A deals.  Problems with cash flow to 45% year-over-year revenue growth  Biggest startup challenges for finance teams 

Joyce Li, CEO, and chief AI strategist at Averanda Partners, brings a rare combination: CFA charter holder, computer science graduate, MBA from Wharton, Board advisor on AI. She advises on multi-billion dollar investment strategies and works with boards and C-suites on AI strategy, governance, and adoption.  The power of Excel in an AI age The ROI of AI and what boards want to see  15% as the magic AI productivity number  Agents and the future of finance

Rohini Jain leads finance strategy at BILL,  which delivers strategic finance capabilities in one integrated platform including AP, AR, expenses and procurement. She has more than 20 years of experience shaping and leading finance, product, and operations teams at global fintech, payments, and e-commerce companies including at PayPal, eBay, Walmart and General Electric.  She spoke to us ahead of the earnings release for Bill.com (November 5) which revealed total revenue at $395.7 million, an increase of 10% year-over-year, and core revenue, (subscription and transaction fees) of $358.0 million, an increase of 14% year-over-year. Bill now serves 498,100 businesses as of the end of the first quarter.  In this episode:  Deciding to choose finance (and disappointing my mother)  The GE “magic” building the next gen of finance leaders Building a diverse skill set in my finance team Love for engaging small and medium-sized business  Challenges and stress of public CFO role  Building agentic capabilities and finance’s future A surprising Excel revelation 

The opening voice on a Lyft earnings call is that of Aurelien Nolf, VP, FP&A and Investor Relations at the ride-hailing firm. He holds a dual role managing the 60-person FP&A, finance analysts, and investor team with access to billions of data points looking at the mode, price,drivers, frequency and demand for current offerings– and much-anticipated future services – such as robotaxis.  In August 2025, the company saw an 11% increase in revenue to $1.59 billion for the quarter ended June 30. Its profit climbed to $40.3 million from $5 million a year earlier, driven by a rise in ridership and bookings. In this episode Nolf opens the hood into the FP&A processes and opportunities at the San-Francisco-based iconic brand. In this episode: The metrics that matter with billions of data points  The logic of combining FP&A and investor relations Finance hackathons, curiosity and the culture of Lyft Operational vs financial metrics driving Lyft’s success Using ML in our forecasting, variance analysis, and IR reports  The challenge of hiring for FP&A in the Bay Area

Chikako Tyler is the Chief Operating Officer at California Bank & Trust (CB&T). She began her career at the leading California bank in 2010, starting as risk manager, progressing tos trategic planning and analysis (spanning seven revenue divisions and 150 units), before serving seven years as Chief Financial Officer revealing . Here she reveals the strategic leadership as the bank grew, from $9 billion to $15 billion in assets, and overcoming challenges from the post global financial crisis to COVID. In this episode: Math academic to commercial real estate California Bank and Trust’s stress testing Efficiency ratios and operating leverage Differences in the path CFO to COO Inclusion and leadership in banking The most company specific fave Excel function answer

As a fractional CFO and financial advisor, Carl Seidman, a returning guest, has worked with finance teams at some of the world’s most recognized companies, helping them strengthen forecasting, cash flow management, and strategic decision-making. He also teaches several top-rated online courses including the FP&A Mastery Signature Program.  My first fire-drill, creating a cash flow in one week  The under $50m revenue opportunity for fractional CFOs  The power of an advanced (live) FP&A course  Expectations and reality for AI in your finance career The catastrophe if AI gets something wrong  What I learned about Copilot in Excel developing a LinkedIn course The Power of LET 

Peter Lynch is the founder of ASimpleModel.com and serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Stephen Gould. He has worked in private equity for most of his professional career at Rabobank, JP Morgan, Argenta Partners and Hilltop Holdings. But he’s perhaps best known for turning complex financial concepts into clear accessible lessons through ASimpleModel.com. JP Morgan in Buenos Aires Crazy models during the financial crisis  Capital allocation strategy at Stephen Gould  How a Simple Model took off  Most common mistake in building a financial model  Clarifying private equity Incorporating AI into everything I do 

Andrew Polito is VP, Controller at Go HQ which provides a suite of back office services, including recruiting to delivery companies. The Fort Worth-based company provides back office support for transportation and logistics, seeing 500% growth in five years, earning a spot on the Inc 5,000 list of fastest- growing private companies in America.  In this episode: From audit to shifting to a private company finance team Building FP&A from the ground up  Power of the 13 week cash forecast How I introduced automation in an initial two-person finance team   How our finance tech stack delivers the data and insights to succeed  

Mariya Guttoh is  Director of FP&A and Treasury at PayJoy, a global FinTech company expanding credit access through smartphones to underserved customers in emerging markets. Celebrating 10 years this year , the company has served over 15 million customers and is on track to reach $650 million in revenue and $110 million in profit by the end of 2025. In this episode Mariya traces her steps from cosmetic marketing in Ukraine to arriving in the US with $300 and working three jobs while earning her MBA to becoming a finance leader. My finance journey working three jobs to pay for my MBA Becoming an advocate for AI in finance Two finance camps– “excited but clueless” and “cautious but clueless”  Using AI to automate vendor reporting across 10 countries  Identifying high impact AI wins (forecasting)  My ideal magic FP&A solution  How I turned myself into a self-created extrovert  Offset in Excel 

Akhil Khunger, VP Quantitative Analytics, Barclays, has more than ten years of experience in the field. Akhil develops statistical models to forecast balance sheets, revenue and probability of default. He has experience with time series modeling, statistical modeling, machine learning and building implementation frameworks using Python and other programming languages. Akhil, who has a master’s in Financial Engineering from UC  Berkeley and London School of Economics, has worked in CCAR and Bank of England stress testing and know the Basel III/IV framework, SR 11/7, SR 15-18, and SR 15-19. He also has experience managing junior model developers. In this episode:  The worst year for modeling? Diving into models  Working with big datasets Getting to the real reasons behind trends and data   The power of stress testing  What human judgement can bring to the table  The AI component in forecasting 

Esti Levy Dadon, Executive VP Finance, Fiverr ,started in public accounting at Ernst and Young, before leading the finance function at Fiverrr. Since joining the global marketplace in 2016 she steered the company to a successful IPO in 2019. In her words: “In almost 10 years at Fiverr  I’m still waiting for things to be boring and repeatable, but it never happens because things change all the time” In this episode: Building finance from the ground up at Fiverr  The path to IPO and the financial work required  Challenge of building a robust forecasting model for a public company Creating a finance team to last Business partnering process at Fiverr Traits for hiring in FP&A at Fiverr    Mindset FP&A perspective shift to connect you to the business

What do FP&A professionals need to understand about data work and BI and the work that BI is doing? Marcos Bento, Director BI, at Wasabi Technologies: “They need to translate business requests in English in a way that the BI folks can translate that into codes. That’s where the magic happens.” In part two of our deep dive with Marcos Bento (BI) and David Suter (FP&A) from Wasabi Technologies, we explore the execution side of their successful data partnership. In this episode: Our 130-Iteration Journey: Net retention metric evolution Cost per dollar of new ARR (and how settled on it) Storytelling across technical and executive audiences Lean team compositions (4-person FP&A, 5-person BI) Power of the problem solving skillset in our hiring 

Wasabi Technologies (a Boston-based cloud storage company with over $530M in funding, a decade of hypergrowth, 450+ team members, and multiple exabytes of storage deployed) sets high standards for its finance and analytics teams.  Both teams are under pressure to deliver fast, accurate, and actionable insights. Marcos Bento, Director Business Intelligence at Wasabi Technologies and David Suter, Director, Financial Planning And Analysis at Wasabi Technologies join us for a special two-parter. They delve deep into how their teams work together, across functions to turn raw data into real-time financial intelligence. In this episode:  Building and gaining trust between BI and FP&A  Getting from “10% out” to within a couple percentage points for forecasting  KPIs such as dollars per terabyte  BI and FP&A as investigative reporters  Predictive analytics: forecast in the 6 or 12 months working with sales  The manifesto for AI at Wasabi 

Daniel Gardner is operational finance business partner at FirstGroup Plc, a leading UK-based provider of public transport. Daniel brings a unique perspective shaped by a diverse finance career across iconic consumer brands like L’Oreal, the Body Shop and Hunter Boots, where he led major forecasting overhauls and drove commercial transformation. Now at First Group, he is leading the development of a cloud-based forecasting system for a billion pound division, working with more than 50 stakeholders to deliver scalable real-time insights.  In this episode he talks about the power of “systems thinking” in the CFO’s Office as a way of understanding how different parts of an organization (or any complex system) interconnect and influence each other.”If there’s an area, I’d say that FP&A could do with its systems thinking. Structure makes behavior and behavior makes structure. So it travels in a loop, which means that to make changes in an organization, you either have to hire people who do not exhibit the behaviors naturally or you’ve got to change the structure and alter the incentives that are producing the problems.” In this episode: Bringing my philosophy-training to finance  Six week finance transformation at Hunter Boots  Getting from lagging to leading indicators  99% of People Problems Are Really System Problems Python+ Excel (practical examples) 

Sarah Schlott, Senior Director of Finance at Tray, a leading point of sale system in entertainment,  joins Glenn Hopper to tear down the sacred rituals of corporate finance. Rising from billing temp to strategic finance leader, Schlott who has been in corporate finance for 18 years, delivers brutal honesty about what’s broken in FP&A and how to fix it. She challenges everything from annual budgets to variance analysis (“forensic accounting in disguise”) while advocating for a bottoms-up, operator-first approach that actually works. In this episode: The power of aggressive curiosity in finance  My most accurate forecast was also the one that failed  My views on variance analysis  Running a $100M forecast in Excel  Why we shouldn’t treat the annual budget as a “golden idol” Moving away from a “spreadsheet guilt trip” every month  From Singer-Songwriter to Finance Leader Connect with Sarah Schlott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahschlott/

Connagh Hopkins is Head of Business Planning and Reporting at Western Power, one of Australia’s largest electricity network operators. Connagh shares her fascinating and unconventional journey from working on the global licensing for  “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to navigating Australia’s energy transformation. In this episode:  Who Wants To be a Millionaire success (powered by Lotus123) The Consolidated 10 year plan at Western Power  Scenario planning and Inflation challenges in utilities  How we are stacked: 65 person finance team at Western Power The power and challenge of AI in finance Connect with Connagh Hopkins: https://www.linkedin.com/in/connagh-hopkins-a9b3871/ Connagh Hopkins is Head of Business Planning and Reporting at Western Power, where she oversees the FP&A function for one of Australia’s largest electricity network operators. With more than two decades of experience across utilities, property development, not-for-profit, retail, fuel, and media sectors in both the UK and Australia, she’s known for her focus on commercial strategy, cross-functional collaboration, and building high-performance finance teams.

Matt Hudson became CFO of Grammarly – the popular writing assistant tool –  after the company acquired Coda (a productivity tool)- of which he was a founding member.  Now as CFO at Grammarly he is overseeing rapid change at the company which has over 40 million daily active users and $700m in revenue (and a 50 person finance team). Finance is helping pioneer a company vision of  AI redefining every business application and workflow, “reinventing productivity”. To this end, in May 2025, Grammarly raised $1 billion in non-dilutive financing from General Catalyst to fund sales and marketing costs and strategic acquisitions. Since then, Grammarly acquired email startup Superhuman (July 2025). You sense more is coming.  In this episode Grammarly $1billion non-diluted growth investment explained  Being a founding member of Coda (acquired by Grammarly)  How my product expertise plugs into finance  Joining YouTube when it was around $140million in revenue to $3billion by the time I left ( $36 billion today) Will CFOs see an explosion of costs because of AI  FP&A set up at Grammarly and biggest KPIs Bonding over a love of Chili’s

Lauren Pearl is a Business Strategist and CFO Advisor who helps startup teams build data-driven businesses. The 3x founder with over 13 years of startup leadership experience now serves as CFO, advisor, and instructor for over 300 growing companies. She also runs the podcast “Growth Minded CFO” and offers a free course on financial modeling. In this episode: Financial models at startups Sniffing out BS at startups Storytelling as a pitchdeck  Getting startups to engage with finance  Free financial modeling course  Being a punk band roadie  Functionality of Excel  Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenepearl/ Daily CFO newsletter: https://www.laurenpearlconsulting.com/newsletter

Today’s guest barely needs an introduction. Purna Duggirala (aka, “Chandoo”) is a celebrity in Excel circles. Since 2004, Chandoo has been regularly sharing everything he learns working with Excel training hundreds of finance teams, and had roles including as Data Lead, Remuneration Modeling & Analytics for the New Zealand government.  The 16-time Microsoft MVP runs Chandoo.org , which aims to “make you awesome in Excel and Power BI” getting 250,000  visitors per month from all over the world and his YouTube channel has 750,000 subscribers. His stated goal is “to make you awesome at Excel and Power BI”, and produces the go-to Excel resources  from blog posts and videos to full online courses. My Excel Journey and Community building  Skill gaps in FP&A Teams Power BI vs Excel vs Python Copilot – advantages and limits My favorite Excel function Check out https://chandoo.org Chandoo’s Free Data analyst course: https://chandoo.org/wp/free-data-analyst-course/ Connect with Chandoo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/purnaduggirala/