“I Lost Money – It Was Beautiful” – Brad Channer on Why You Should Fail at a Startup at Least Twice

15 snips

Apr 10, 2025

Brad Channer, CFO of UBIO and former actor, offers a unique perspective on the entwined worlds of finance and creativity. He candidly discusses how early failures in startups become invaluable lessons, emphasizing resilience and adaptability. Channer shares insights on neurodiversity, advocating for diverse leadership styles to enhance team dynamics. He also reflects on the cultural differences in the tech scene between the UK and the US, and amusingly recounts bizarre expense claims that highlight the lighter side of financial management.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

ADVICE

Clear Communication

Communicate clearly by focusing on what your audience needs to understand.
Tailor your language to their background and avoid technical jargon.

ADVICE

Meeting Preparation

Prepare for meetings like an actor prepares for a script.
Define your objective, action, and through phrase to stay focused and achieve your goals.

ADVICE

Understanding Your Audience

Understand your audience's communication style.
Tailor your approach to match their preferences, like using face-to-face communication for quality time people.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

In this episode, CJ Gustafson sits down with Brad Channer, the CFO of UBIO and possibly the world's most interesting CFO and accountant. He describes his unconventional career path from acting to accounting and the he lessons learned from some entrepreneurial failures along the way. Brad also discusses communication and leadership, including how his acting background shaped his style in the boardroom. He breaks down the biggest mistakes CFOs make when explaining financials and why some accountants struggle to reach the C-suite even if they’re brilliant on paper. He shares insights on neurodiversity in the workplace and how to unlock its advantages before unpacking why the UK has produced fewer tech giants than the US and the one regulatory shift that could potentially supercharge the industry.

If you're looking for an ERP head to NetSuite: https://netsuite.com/metrics and get the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning.

—

SPONSORS:

NetSuite provides financial software for all your business needs. More than 40,000 companies have already upgraded to NetSuite, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform ✅, head to NetSuite https://netsuite.com/metrics and get the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning.

Planful is a financial performance management platform designed to streamline financial tasks for businesses. It helps with budgeting, closing the books, and financial reporting, all on a cloud-based platform. By improving the efficiency and accuracy of these processes, Planful allows businesses to make better financial decisions. Find out more at www.planful.com/metrics.

Subscript is a modern billing and revenue recognition platform designed for SaaS finance teams that need flexibility and accuracy. From automated invoicing and dunning to compliant, transparent revenue recognition and real-time analytics, Subscript eliminates manual work, reduces errors, and gives you a single source of truth for all your financial data. Book a free demo at subscript.com.

Rippling Spend is a spend management solution that handles your entire company’s spending in one unified system. It enables you to bring your corporate cards, expense management, bill pay, and more into one place to achieve real-time visibility and uniquely granular control with automated policy controls across every type of spend. Get a demo to see how much time your org would save at rippling.com/metrics.

Vanta's trust management platform takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation. Over 9000 businesses use it to automate compliance needs across over 35 frameworks like SOC 2 and ISO 27001. Centralize security workflows, complete questionnaires up to five times faster, and proactively manage vendor risk. For a limited time, get $1,000 off of Vanta at vanta.com/metrics.

Tropic is an intelligent spend management solution that consolidates your spend data and processes into one unified offering, enabling insights and decisive action. From spotting hidden optimization opportunities to automating painful procurement workflows and giving you the best market data to turn vendor negotiations in your favor, Tropic combines smart insights with real human expertise to keep you ahead of the curve. Visit tropicapp.io/mostlymetrics to learn how.

—

@cjgustafson222 (CJ)

—

TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Preview and Intro

(02:32) Sponsor - NetSuite | Planful | Subscript

(05:39) From Actor to Management Accountant

(10:25) Brad’s Bold Move to the UK

(13:02) His Journey into Entrepreneurship and Accounting

(16:07) Sponsor - Rippling Spend | Vanta | Tropic

(20:08) Reclaiming the F Word: Failure

(23:37) Communicating Like a Human

(25:42) Acting Lessons for Accountants

(29:49) How to Understand Your Audience

(35:36) Navigating Neurodiversity in Business

(36:35) How to Adapt Your Communication for Founders

(38:30) Why Some Accountants Don’t Make it to the C-Suite

(40:38) Learning to Ask Questions

(43:29) Leadership in Large Companies Versus SMEs or Scale-Ups

(45:24) The UK Versus US Tech Scene

(47:10) Tall Poppy Syndrome in the UK

(51:38) Long-ass lightning round: Do Your Research

(55:14) Advice to Younger Self

(56:15) Finance Software Stack

(56:58) Craziest Expense Story

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cjgustafson.substack.com