Rick Smith
Description
The CFO role in Venture and Growth Stage companies is unique, and the needs of the role dramatically change as the company grows. It’s a difficult, de
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manding job, with high accountability and zero room for error. Remove all visions of glamor.
The CFO needs to be broadly knowledgeable in a long list of seemingly unrelated areas (accounting, finance, data, systems, payroll, taxes, facilities leases, banking, mergers and acquisitions, debt, employee benefits, international …). The list is loooooong.
And there’s no roadmap. MBA programs don’t teach most of this stuff. No one does. That’s why I wrote this book.
Anyone with an interest in how businesses operate under the surface will learn something from this book, including: the attributes of companies and CFOs at different stages, reviewing and understanding financial statements, key aspects of mergers and acquisitions, understanding facilities leases, structuring debt, getting people paid, etc. Basically, the stuff no one thinks about.
Some of it is admittedly boring (but important). To keep you glued to the pages, this grizzled 5X CFO peppers the book with real-world stories (some hard to believe) from his career.
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