EP 008 - Finance as a Growth Driver with Mika Kasumov

Our guest today is no stranger to the complexities and challenges of the startup world. He is a master of navigating transformative change, especially when it comes to scaling startups and optimizing the intricacies of business. He's an entrepreneur, a strategist, a financial expert, and even a go-to-market leader.

Mika Kasumov is the dynamic founder at Abacus & Pencil Consulting, where he's made it his mission to guide Series B & C startups through the intricate mazes of business transformation as a fractional Chief Performance Officer. He's been the cornerstone of various consulting engagements with emerging giants like Mux, Rallyware, Trusted Health, and Sparks Rowing.

His seasoned journey has also seen him as the Vice President of BizOps & Strategic Finance at the renowned MasterClass, the Chief of Staff to the CEO of Pantheon Platform, and the strategic force behind businesses like Upwork, Pandora, eBay, and Sears Holdings Corporation.

But Mika isn't all business. He values growth not just in the boardroom but in life. Whether it's refining financial strategies, mentoring fellow leaders, diving into the nuances of the French language, or exploring the world of fiction, he truly embodies the spirit of continuous learning and growth.
Ladies and gentlemen, a master of transformative change and a passionate learner at heart, please extend a warm welcome to Mika.

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Quotes:

“I really approach the finance function as a driver for growth as opposed to an accounting-oriented cost center.”

“Don't let hubris around your evaluation number get in the way of building a long-term company.”

“Early on in my career, remote work would have actually hindered me.”

“I think that finance can be a competitive advantage. The way successful companies differentiate themselves is when they use the function to be a bridge between departments, to be the connective tissue between what is the investor narrative, how are we pitching, and what are you actually delivering to your customer, how are you measuring the customer outcomes, right? And there's a ton of things in between, like you have all the different teams whose operating priorities need to stack up, need to align, for you to have both a good employee, a customer, and an investor outcome. And I just simply can't think of any other function that can deliver that outside of finance.

“It's about having this parallel track of, here are the things I'd like to do when I have the opportunity to, here are the things I can do today, and here's how I'm gonna create an opportunity for myself to act on the rest of it in 18 months or 12 months or whenever the opportunity arises.”

“The CFO's role is to respectfully challenge, but also support the vision. And there's a delicate balance to play there between saying no to everything, and uncovering and front running risks so that the rest of the company doesn't have to worry about.”

“Strategic finance is fundamentally business partnering. And you have to go meet the rest of the business where it's at. If you have a rev ops team, you partner with your rev ops team. If you don't, you go and build those capabilities within a strategic finance org. And in the best cases, strategic finance is setting the operating case…

…ultimately, the idea (strategic finance) is that you're filling the void between departments and you're doing that by being a good partner for each one of them.”

“As a founder, you need to be concurrently data-driven, like searching for your product-market fit, and have the ability to ignore 90% of the data points out there. And that creates cognitive dissonance, right? The idea is that it's really hard for us as humans to hold to contradictory beliefs in our heads. That's a huge emotional toll, that's a huge mental toll.”

“Technology helps wherever you have a recurring process that just needs to run correctly 99% of the time.”

“It's (technology) not so much about saving time or saving costs of replacing humans with software, it's about replacing human error with software predictability.”

“The best CFOs I've seen often bring in a team member into that (1 on 1 with Founder / CEO). Maybe it's a different person every time, but they know that if founders see the strength of the talent they have on their team, he actually builds credit. They give opportunities for their team to grow.”

“If you have an opinion, if the data says one thing, go out and state it. Don't try to be artificially balanced and play both sides. And if you're wrong, admit it that you're wrong. Be open to feedback, of course.” 

“If you're going out to pitch today, my view is that you wanna go out with a simple deck that doesn't necessarily try to answer every possible question. Every investor is gonna have a different set of questions they wanna look for in diligence. Get to the market first, get to them first, put the simple story in front of them and see if they bite. If they wanna have a second meeting, they will come back to you with a whole bunch of extra questions. But the point is that you'll be able to answer them in context.”

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