1185: Scaling Smarter in the AI Era | Sarah Riley, CFO, dbt Labs

1185: Scaling Smarter in the AI Era | Sarah Riley, CFO, dbt Labs

When the pandemic began reshaping the world in early 2020, Sarah Riley was helping guide finance at Zoom through an unprecedented surge in demand. “You could see the volume of Zoom almost spiking up by the regions that were going into shutdown,” Riley tells us. What followed was unlike anything most software companies had experienced before. During her four years at Zoom, the company expanded from roughly $200 million in ARR to $4 billion, Riley tells us. At one point, Zoom spent nearly half a billion dollars on AWS infrastructure costs it had not anticipated, she explains.

For Riley, the experience fundamentally reshaped how she viewed finance leadership. Rather than becoming fixated on gross margin guidance or traditional planning cycles, she says the finance team had to continually reevaluate the “strategic heart” of the business as Zoom evolved from an enterprise software company into a platform supporting schools, consumers, and businesses worldwide. “Forecasting and discipline comes second” in moments of extraordinary change, Riley tells us.

That mindset now informs her role as CFO of dbt Labs, where she oversees finance, accounting, and data operations while helping guide the company through its merger with Fivetran. Riley says today’s defining challenge for software businesses is balancing legacy operating models with the realities of AI-driven transformation. “You need to balance that with how do we make sure that we’re investing aggressively enough in capturing what our user base is turning into,” she tells us.

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Avsnitt(1194)

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When Martino Cadoni joined DeepL, he arrived with an unusual perspective—he already knew the company’s product firsthand. Earlier in his career at Klarna, he had helped introduce DeepL as a translatio...

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1195: When Finance is at the Center of the AI Code Revolution | Jean Compeau, CFO, Sonar

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When Jean Compeau joined Sonar as CFO in March 2025, AI coding was not yet dominating industry conversations. By the summer and fall that followed, however, the landscape had shifted dramatically. Tod...

24 Juni 47min

1194: Why Curiosity Creates Better Finance Leaders | Stacey Jenkins, CFO, Aerotek

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Each day, Stacey Jenkins watches a different set of indicators than the quarterly financial results that eventually appear on a report. Candidate applications, recruiter activity, and other throughput...

21 Juni 41min

1193: Building Finance Functions That Shape Outcomes | Jesse Waldron, CFO, Thyme Care

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When Jesse Waldron describes Thyme Care’s work, he begins with the patient experience. Cancer patients, he explains, are often thrust into a healthcare system that can feel overwhelming both financial...

17 Juni 49min

1192: Building Through Disruption | Christina Spade, CFO, Catalant

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Five weeks into her role as CFO of Catalant, Christina Spade is helping guide a company that she believes is positioned for a different era of consulting.Catalant was founded out of Harvard Business S...

14 Juni 51min

1191: From Complexity to Clarity: Building Operational Maturity | David Forlizzi, CFO, Salsify

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When David Forlizzi describes Salsify, he begins with a simple observation: “We all use it every day.” Unlike some of the highly technical software businesses where he previously spent his career, Sal...

10 Juni 38min

1190: Fixing What Growth Tries to Hide | Jaylene Kunze, LegitScript

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When Jaylene Kunze was asked to help rebuild a struggling subsidiary in the United Kingdom, she packed up her family and moved overseas with her nine-month-old daughter. The assignment was one more ex...

7 Juni 49min

1189: Why Finance Should Lead with “Yes, And” | Bruno Annicq, CFO, Wellhub

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