EP 006 - To Be or Not To Be a CFO with Ananth Avva, SVP and GM Cloud Platform at Altium

Strategy of Finance

Our special guest for the show today is Ananth Avva - the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cloud Platform at Altium, a global leader in PCB design software.

Ananth is a top-performing business and finance executive with over a decade of experience leading SaaS-focused product technology companies as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. His career is a testament to his leadership and strategic prowess.

He has been instrumental in positioning companies as leaders in their respective spaces, such as Wrike in project management, Lastline in the cybersecurity space and Pipefy in the Low Code Application Platform sector.

Ananth is also a mentor and advisor to other startups, a published author, a frequently requested speaker at industry conferences, and a transformational leader who has been actively recruited by PE and VC investors to build revenue, open new international markets, optimize financial performance, build partnerships, and develop high-performance teams.

One of his personal projects is MartialMe, a unique platform that utilizes computer vision pose-detection AI to teach martial arts.

With a vast array of strengths, from executive leadership, strategic analysis, operations management, to product lifecycle, financial management, and technology transformation, Ananth brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table.

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Quotes:

“Learn the business. Like you should actually understand the business.”

“If you're going to go into a boardroom and the number of board members outnumber the management team, you kind of know you're in trouble.”

“(In) Finance, you have the luxury of planning… But the second you start going into go-to-market, it’s chaos.”

“If you have a lot of change combined with a lot of signal coming in from customers, your best defense mechanism, especially if you're in the software side is product.”

“The gold standard for a CFO is someone who can take company public.”

“The role of the CFO shifted drastically to be this growth agent. And so, if you are supposed to quote unquote, articulate the business model and really validate a business model that's going to get us the best shareholder value, the best way to do that is through growth.”

“I really enjoyed the storytelling because there was a lot of feedback that you would get on the metric, but you also got a lot of feedback on the business and the downside risk or the upside risk that you’d have to manage.”

“(Business roles) brings you much closer to the customer. And I think there's a people aspect, which is, just because of the nature of your role, you have to spend a lot more time with product, customer success, marketing, sales, and finance, right? So I think the whole notion of sort of company building or nation building, where you have a lot of stakeholders, a lot of different views, comes through very strongly in these roles versus the classic sort of divisional role.”

“Most people are good corporate citizens and if they know that (full context), then they will hustle to do it.”

“What are the strengths that the founder/ CEO had, and what do I need to do to compliment it?”

“I'm shocked at how little diligence CFOs do before they get into the company. You have every right to go very deep.”

“My wife tells me I don't save lives. So she just says, you're not that important. Your job is not that important. No one's going to die. Just go in, think about it, fix it, and move on.”

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Where to find Ananth Avva:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ananthavva/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnanthAvva

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Where to find Altium:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/altium/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/altium

Website: https://www.altium.com/

Careers: https://careers.altium.com/

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Where to find Rohit:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohitagarwal001/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/podcast_SoF

Email: [e-mail]

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Sponsor:

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