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The CFO-COO Is Coming: Meredith Finn of Front on the Future of Finance

Dela

Front CFO & COO Meredith Finn joins CJ to explain why finance leaders are taking on more of the operator’s job. They break down the CFO-COO dual mandate, how Front funds new bets inside a mature SaaS business, why AI requires more coordination than simply handing everyone new tools, and how finance teams should think about the growing cost of AI.

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LINKS: 

Mostly Talent: https://mostlymetrics.typeform.com/to/cLTxtAsN

Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredithfinn1/

Company: https://front.com/

CJ: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/

Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com

RELATED EPISODES:

Adam Swiecicki - CFO of Rippling

https://youtu.be/JyGJVpmZNac

Aurélien Nolf - CFO of Navan

https://youtu.be/siwzJSRXAvY

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 The CFO/COO Dual Mandate

1:45 Welcome to Run the Numbers

2:52 Front's In-House Podcast Studio

3:41 Meredith's Investment Thesis on Front

7:21 The "Portfolio Career" Analogy

8:35 What She Had to Unlearn as an Operator

13:13 Books on Strategy vs. Execution

16:17 When a CFO Should Also Be COO

18:27 What the COO Hat Actually Covers

20:20 Where the Two Roles Conflict

25:42 Budgeting for AI Token Costs

29:16 Using Internal Usage as a Benchmark

35:40 Funding a Series A Bet Inside a Series D Company

38:04 Sizing Bets: Core, Adjacent, Moonshot

40:04 The Secret to Re-Accelerating Growth

41:46 Going Deeper, Not Wider

43:18 What the Pricing Overhaul Taught Her

47:30 Why Customer P&L Matters

50:11 Lightning Round Begins

51:32 Advice to Her Younger Self

52:33 Front's Finance Tool Stack

53:21 Craziest Expense Ever

#RunTheNumbersPodcast #CFOLife #FinanceLeadership #AIinFinance #SaaSGrowth

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