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 ...