FP&A Today

Stephen Hedlund is head of finance at Rillet, an AI-native ERP which has raised over $100million from Sequoia and  Andreessen Horowitz. In  Steven’s words Rillet is “building the modern NetSuite.”

In this episode:

How Isaac Asimov’s Foundation helped me discover finance 

Experience from enterprise at Walmart to building startups 

Go-to-market (marketing) to Head of Finance Gillet 

The moat for leading ERPs and our strategy 

Being the ICP and marketing voice for Rillet 

“To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

Eddie Reynolds, CEO of UnionSquare Consulting, opens up about the often-fraught relationship between CFOs and CROs. Eddie shares insights from his unique journey—from banking and private equity to being an account executive at Salesforce which forecast within 5% accuracy despite 30%+ growth.

The conversation tackles the critical disconnect between finance and go-to-market teams: Why do CFOs struggle to trust CRM pipelines? What breaks when companies hit $50-100M in revenue? 

In this episode:

How Salesforce was able to forecast with 5% accuracy,

The role of FP&A and CROs in go to market strategy and efficiency

The issues with LTV to CAC ratio in SaaS 

Biggest challenges of the CFO/CRO relationship

Bottoms up annual planning working with finance

Bobby Bray brings his perspective from more than 20 years in banking and consulting with Capital One, Oliver Wyman, and Regions Bank. The retired Navy Captain with four commands talks about strategic decision-making under pressure, working with Fortune 150 C-Suite executives, and the rigor required in FP&A.

He says: “To use an aviation term you need to be able to follow the drop of gas through the engine and understand the different cogs in the engine that turns a drop of gas into thrust, but it also is what turns raw data into usable analytics on the back end.”

In this episode 

A Truly Non-Traditional Path to Finance

Commercial banking as the most educational finance job

Discipline and rigor in FP&A

Cloud infrastructure changes in the past 7 years 

The rigor of a capital market stress test 

Explainability of AI in finance

Five-time CFO Rick Smith has led finance at companies including inVentiv Health Communications, Exos, Parchment, Solera Health before founding Bonfire advisory. He is also the author o fDemystifying the Role of the CFO in Venture and Growth Stage Companies, a no-nonsense approach to the topic. Reviews for the book include: “This book is a must-read if you want to understand how to scale a company as a CFO” and “Should be required reading for CEOs and PE people along with CFOs.”

In this episode Smith provides his take on being a CFO and his long background in FP&A, providing insights on:

The path from FP&A to CFO (without a CPA)

Why I like being CFO at SMBs (sub $50m)

Being a dreamer, artist and buildingFP&A 

Audits vs QOEs 

The unspoken challenges working with PE firms

FP&A and M&A – what you need to know 

Link to the book: Demystifying the Role of the CFO in Venture and Growth Stage Companies

Preston Naegle started his career in private equity at Leavitt Equity Partners (founded by Michael Leavitt, the former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. Negale then moved into the operating world and for more than 2 years has led strategic finance and FP&A at a PE-backed Midway Mechanical Services  in the HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) industry at the company which has completed 15 acquisitions (3 in 2025 alone) within the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing sector across the Western US region. 

In this episode

An origin story in Private Equity

Learning from a “firehose” of business models 

Bringing PE thinking to a head of finance role at Midway Mechanical 

Bringing people with you as you create FP&A, budget and forecasting processes

Choosing an FP&A solution

Enhancing time to insights that bring long-term business partnering and profit growth