Ep. 183: Casey Woo – CFOs are on a mission to grow

Today’s guest is Casey Woo, CFO of Landing, former Head of Strategic Finance at WeWork, and the co-founder of Operators Guild, a knowledge-sharing community for CFOs and other business “operators.” Casey and Adam analyze the multi-dimensional role CFO’s play as business partners focused on driving operations, innovation, and growth.

Connect with Casey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseywoo/

Full Episode Transcript:
Adam: (00:05)
Welcome back to the Count Me In podcast. I'm your host. Adam Larson in today's guest is really interesting. Casey. Woo. Casey's been a strategic financial leader in Silicon valley for the past two decades, investing in an operating high growth tech and tech enabled companies. He is the CFO of landing, the former head of strategic finance at WeWork and the co-founder of operators Guild, a knowledge sharing community for CFOs and other business operators. And that's just what he is been up to lately today. Casey and I put the microscope on the CFO and how the role has evolved from being the sheriff of cost and budgets to now being a company-wide business partner, focused squarely on the most important metric of all growth. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Casey, thanks so much for joining us today on the Count Me In podcast. we're going to jump right into some, questions we're gonna be focusing in on the CFO. And so to start off, what are some common misconceptions or what is the hook's historical perspective on the role of the CFO?

Casey: (01:12)
Yeah, I think I'm probably not going to be novel here in my answer. There is a pretty classic stereotype of a CFO, to borrow a phrase from a friend, you know, there's CFO. No is basically one of them is Dr. No, the, you know, DBER, you know, the nickel and dimer, the no personality, the, yeah, the one that says no to everything in terms of costs and other words like the budget, right? The people think of, you know, my travel and expense reimbursements like that. That's when you get to real stereotypes of just don't you do my team reports, you know? And so, of course at the corporate level, you know, CFOs are, I don't know, misconception, hopefully this is a good conception, but they're the honest broker, right? They're the one who engages with the board as the air quote, pseudo check on leadership, et cetera.

Casey: (02:15)
So there's not some misconceptions, some that's true. Absolutely. You have that. A lot of it now is not true. Yes. We manage budgets and money and have that purview. But I think there's also, what's now called CFO grow rather than CFO know. And I do think there's a healthy way to manage in a very responsible way money, but also, and I think the word is invest, right? So they call it strategic CFO. Money is meant to be invested, I guess, saved as well. Right? So when you're, especially in high growth, VPs are not giving you money to sit on it. It's put it to good use and the word is good. Use, not reckless use. and of course you're going to balance a lot of things. So one is just a strategic minded investor mentality of where you want to allocate resources is I think more what's happening. and it's not just about nickel and diamond. there's also, you know, more personalities CFOs than people think it's very, cross-functional. Some are extroverts, most are not, but they can be a very friendly person who empowers ends a business partner rather than a police force.

Adam: (03:34)
So when we look at the space of a CFO as an operator, you talked a little bit to me about your operator's Guild. What personal experience do you have and what have you gained in this level of expertise?

Casey: (03:45)
Yeah, so, I mean, for those who don't know, the operator's Guild has been going on for eight years. It started as a eight, nine person friend group of operators that we support one another. Now it's about 600. I say this because there's a lot of conversations, there's a lot of learnings. So I'm only going to scratch the surface. A, few things. One, all of businesses, all of startup is, is a bunch of people who decide to get together at eight in the morning to build something, to sell for more than hopefully it costs that's all the businesses or a startup. Let's call it a startup call, whatever you want to call it, just, and notice it's humans, you take away the humans, computer's not going to do anything themselves. And that's number one is business is a game. So when things are crazy or stressful, it's like, no, one's dying here.

Casey: (04:39)
This is not real life and death. It's serious. Don't get me wrong. We are very competitive, but there's a lot of natural dysfunction when you toss in money, growth expectations and people, dysfunction is just basic. So that's kind of a learning. and, also work with good people. It just goes back to the business is just a bunch of people. It's not worth it. You can make your money elsewhere. If it's not with good people who respect you, who you respect them, shared values. It's actually very similar to a marriage it's just not intimate, right? But it's the same thing. Shared values. You go on dates that are called interviews. You get divorces, you know, it's because when things are not matching up, another one is don't let stereotypes or misconceptions tell you how you should act in your role, play your strengths, establish yourself as if you're gonna be a strategic CFO, be one that said, maybe you have a, stronger person who compliments you on the expense side.

Casey: (05:42)
Who's, much more, you know, doctor knows so to speak, right? That're all really, or, vice versa. You're someone that's extremely conscious. You know, you need to marry that with someone that's a little bit more strategically minded and growth minded. Just,, that's just an example, but, play to your strengths, be who you are and hiring is super important. Probably the key to everything, all things in start are just problems. All we're doing is problem solving every day. If you can put together the right team tools, resources, you can solve any problems. So those are kind of learnings.

Adam: (06:19)
Okay. No, that's great. I think that's really nice. and just thinking about the CFO, you talked, when we, my first question, you talked a lot about the misconceptions you knew. I think you laid that out very nicely with the Dr. No, and the Gilbert examples and stuff. but a lot of people tend to under underestimate what the CFO sees because because of this, these misconceptions that can be there. And if the CFO hasn't established himself as like a business partner, it can be very difficult to get a seat at the table. Can you talk a little bit about what the responsibility the CFO has to kind of get there so that they're not underestimated?

Casey: (06:54)
I think the first one is before you get married, you should establish that. I would question a company where CFOs not at the table, not, not because of CFOs, you know, all that. It's just because it's, too important of a function just like CRO or CTO. So that's just point number one, if you're fighting to get there. So something's already a little off and you need a question, how they value and what they expect from the function. If you're in the unfortunate seat of, you're not, don't have a seat at the table. I think it's a very clear, I believe in explicit conversation and communication. It's like, Hey, Mr. And Mrs. CEO, this is a function that's critical to the business. I'm not talking about myself. I'm talking about the function and for the sake of the business and our stakeholders, it's important that I'm in the room or whoever's leading a function. Would you agree or disagree if they disagree? I would seriously consider finding a place where you can make ...