We polled 105 finance leaders at high-growth companies to understand what they’re most interested in learning more about, where they get their information, and what they’re responsible for.

Introduction

Building a modern finance team to support your rapidly morphing, fast-growing company is for trailblazers. Not followers. Not for the faint of heart. To help us build a community for finance trailblazers, we polled over 100 leaders in October.

We wanted to know what they most want to learn more about, and what resources or experts we might be able to connect them to.

We asked our respondents what they are responsible for (these may overlap):

• Finance: 46%
• Accounting: 29%
• FP&A: 7%
• Controller, CFO, or Revenue: 5%
• The rest phrased their role differently but were largely in finance or accounting functions.

Understanding how to operate and the right technology to support that are top of mind

Over 50% of leaders building modern finance teams are very interested in learning more about operating models that can drive success, how their peers are building their finance tech stacks, and how to organize and skill for success.

Fewer were very interested in solving communications problems between finance and IT. This surprised us, as we commonly see communication gaps blocking success. Perhaps it indicates a more fundamental concern that finance leaders don’t appreciate how wide the gap actually is (we’ve written more on this on our blog).

We also asked finance leaders to volunteer other areas of interest they have; many of their responses were variations on the broad themes above:

• Operating/organizational model:
• How to scale without overinvesting too early but not having to redo work later
• Technology needs
• Migrating the finance stack upwards to support growth and new needs
• HR integration between finance and IT
• Best control practices for IT
• Future-proofing technology (i.e., staying one step ahead of the curve rather than reacting)
• The right tech stack for each fundraising stage
• Communication with other parts of the business
• Simplifying finance topics for multiple stakeholders
• Skills
• How to recruit for the right skills
• How finance pros can become functional experts

Learning sources vary widely, but Google and peers dominate

The importance of building community

We fielded this survey because in our conversations with customers, we’ve heard over and over that finance and systems leaders in high-growth digital companies are blazing a new path and aren’t sure where to turn for important advice that’s relevant to their situations.

In the months to come, we’ll be acting on what we heard, from creating ways to meet peers in similar companies, publishing more content, and much more. If you’d like to learn more, please join our email list.