JMI Equity 2024 CFO Roundtable
Over 40 CFOs and finance leaders gathered in Baltimore last week for JMI’s annual CFO Roundtable.
The two-day event focused on the key attributes of CFO leadership, including driving clarity of goals, setting organizational pace, connecting the organization to the investment thesis and empowering teams to execute, creating visibility through data, inspiring through vision, and driving immediate and long-term change. Focusing on these key points, Scott Engler, Co-Founder of PE-Xcelerate, a consulting and advisory group focused on driving excellence for Private Equity executives, supercharged the kickoff by challenging the group to be A-Player Growth Equity CFOs. Scott also provided hands-on business analyzer tools to help the group clearly articulate and evaluate their business models along various internal and external dimensions.
Margo Street and Leslie Altizer of The Nebo Company, a coaching and leadership development firm, capped the day with a discussion of how CFOs drive change based upon how they “see” the needs, strengths, and insights of others, and the systematic implications of change. This allowed participants to reflect and evaluate how to expand their mindset to include not only analytical thinking but “possibility” thinking, which can make them more effective as visionary leaders. The ability to “fix and improve” is table stakes for value creation; the ability to create drives transformation and extreme value.
Scott and Nebo’s sessions acted as strategic bookends to more intimate, tactical discussions. Breakout session topics included benchmarking data, dashboards, and customer metrics, more effectively partnering with other functions, probability modeling, and transaction preparation and execution, among others. Much of this content was generated by JMI portfolio company leaders, providing attendees a forum to collaborate and learn from their high-growth software peers.
Thank you to all attendees, especially our presenters, panelists, and discussion leaders. We are grateful for the opportunity to work with such a talented group of executives.
JMI’s next Roundtable event will be held on June 12th and 13th when our Product, Engineering and Payments leaders and General Counsels gather in Baltimore.
