CFO THOUGHT LEADER

What sets John Rettig’s CFO journey apart from most is not just its length—spanning more than two decades—but its unusual symmetry. His CFO career roughly divides into two decade-long tenures: first helping scale a digital advertising firm from $15 million to $250 million in revenue, and now serving as CFO of Bill, where he’s helped lead the company from startup to public market success.When Rettig joined Bill, the company had just $13 million in revenue and a modest employee base. What drew him in, he tells us, was the combination of people, culture, and a product that placed finance operations at the center of its design. It was the first time in his career that he’d worked this closely with a finance-focused technology platform.At the time, Rettig anticipated a 10x growth opportunity—similar to his earlier experience. “It turns out, it’s 100x,” he tells us. Today, Bill has 2,500 employees, serves 500,000 customers, and supports a network of 7 million members. The company processes $300 billion in annual payment volume and has grown to $1.5 billion in revenue.Much of that growth, Rettig explains, has come from addressing the operational challenges of small and midsize businesses. Early efforts to modernize paper-based processes helped shape the company’s current offerings, which span accounts payable, receivable, corporate cards, and cash flow management.“We become the center of their financial operations,” Rettig says of the platform’s role. His focus remains on scaling Bill’s impact across the “Fortune 5 million.”

During his decade at Google, Tim Ritters worked at the intersection of product and finance, helping to launch financial systems in collaboration with engineering, marketing, and product teams. The role gave him early exposure to cross-functional work and large-scale data environments. “Day one, you’re working cross-functionally,” Ritters tells us. He adds that this mindset became foundational to his approach going forward.When Ritters joined Gong in 2019, he says the company had already begun challenging traditional approaches to customer data. “We asked a really interesting question… what could we do if we gathered the 99% of information about your customer that was not in a traditional CRM?” Ritters explains. According to him, that original question continues to shape Gong’s mission today.Ritters tells us that Gong’s platform has since scaled to analyze more than 3.5 billion customer interactions. He says the company now serves approximately 4,700 businesses globally, including organizations such as Google, LinkedIn, Canva, and Anthropic. The platform, Ritters notes, helps customers extract insights from a broader set of data sources—including conversations, emails, and documents—that may not be captured in traditional CRM systems.Ritters believes that AI adoption has made Gong’s value proposition more tangible to prospective buyers. “When [they] peel back the onion… they start seeing some of the incredible sort of results,” he says. According to Ritters, some customers have reported “halving of deal cycle times” using the platform.All of Gong’s growth to date has been organic, Ritters tells us, and he views the company’s trajectory as part of a broader evolution in how organizations approach customer intelligence. “The sweet spot we’re in right now,” he says, “is helping companies make smart business decisions.”

It’s no secret CFOs frequently exit soon after a major acquisition—especially when a larger enterprise takes the reins. But Rene Ho stayed.Ho had been CFO of Taulia, a working capital fintech, when it was still an independent company. After helping lead the firm through its acquisition by SAP, he chose to stay on, guiding the company through integration while preserving what made Taulia unique.It’s a reality Ho doesn’t resist—instead, he works to make those connections scalable. That mindset reflects a broader shift under his leadership. “We’re also embedding our technology more and more into the SAP technology,” Ho tells us, noting that when he joined, the two platforms were sold separately. Now, integration enables “more of a single sale,” smoothing the go-to-market motion.While SAP Taulia continues to align its tech stack, one area remains purposefully independent: the financing operations. “We don’t use our balance sheet to finance the invoices,” Ho says. Instead, more than 30 financial institutions and non-bank entities fund those transactions.

As Cardinal Health nears its second anniversary since the company’s first investor day under CFO Aaron Alt’s leadership, steady progress has been made in its ambitious transformation. Alt reflects on the company’s trajectory since his appointment, saying, “We’ve deployed several billion dollars in acquisitions to drive our strategy.” This shift highlights the company’s focus on specialty distribution and related services—areas Alt tells us offer higher margins and greater growth potential than the company’s traditional core business.Under Alt’s leadership, Cardinal Health has pursued both organic growth and strategic acquisitions, targeting key therapy areas like gastroenterology and urology. According to Alt, the company’s balance sheet has played a critical role, enabling investments and allowing Cardinal Health to return capital to shareholders through increased dividends and share repurchases.With the recent increase in the company’s fiscal year 2026 profit estimates, Alt’s strategy appears to be paying off. “We’re doing what we said we were going to do,” Alt emphasizes, underscoring the transparency and accountability he has fostered during his tenure. Looking ahead, the company’s growth trajectory is set to continue as it leverages acquisitions and internal investments to expand its portfolio and drive long-term value creation.

Discover how AI is revolutionizing financial planning through insights from CFOs at Vimeo, Planful, and FullStory. They share strategies on leveraging AI for cost reduction, risk mitigation, and boosting revenue. A new framework unveils how FP&A teams can catalyze AI-driven change within their organizations. The discussion also highlights the evolving role of CFOs and the importance of understanding AI's impacts on decision-making. Don't miss the exploration of innovative strategies in healthcare and the call for rethinking performance metrics in the age of AI.

When Matthias Steinberg entered the CFO office at MindBridge in 2022, the audit files displayed on his laptop were already being processed by the company’s own AI. KPMG, he adds, was using the same platform to automate journal‑entry testing—work “traditionally done manual.” That shift marked “a big step toward continuous audit,” Steinberg tells us.The platform, he explains, monitors “all relevant financial flows” for two audiences. External audit firms—including “a number of the top 100 in North America”—rely on it to surface anomalies with machine‑learning speed. Enterprise finance teams deploy the same engine as a “monitoring cockpit” that flags vendor over‑charges, payroll errors, and revenue leakage so managers can intervene before profits slip. Replacing after‑the‑fact sampling with continuous insight, it gives auditors and CFOs a single source of truth. By serving both constituencies, MindBridge fuses compliance certainty with operational advantage.Capital strategy now occupies equal attention. Founded in Ottawa, MindBridge had completed several Canadian and U.S. venture rounds; its last raise before Steinberg arrived was led by Silicon Valley’s PeakSpan, he tells us. Charged with “professionalizing the business and also [doing] a fund‑raise,” he orchestrated a recap that introduced Boston‑based PSG Equity and offered early backers a partial exit. The diversified balance sheet, Steinberg says, funds the product roadmap that keeps KPMG—and every controller chasing real‑time insight—a step ahead of the next anomaly. Fresh capital also fuels deeper AI R&D and global reach, he adds.

When Andrea Hecht walks into a finance meeting, she’s not preparing for earnings calls or shareholder Q&A. Instead, her focus is inward—on aligning every financial decision with a mission that begins and ends with AAA members.CSAA Insurance, where Hecht serves as CFO, operates in 23 states and the District of Columbia. It’s not publicly traded. “We’re technically owned by our policyholders,” Hecht tells us, noting that CSAA distributes almost exclusively through AAA clubs to AAA members.That difference in ownership structure reshapes everything—from financial priorities to communication rhythms. “We don’t necessarily have those traditional…quarterly earnings calls,” she explains. “Part of the way I think about my communication is primarily inward…to make sure every decision we make is deeply tied to our strategy.”For CSAA, strategy is inseparable from service. “Our strategy is deeply tied to serving AAA members,” Hecht tells us. That’s especially vital in California, where Hecht says CSAA faces its greatest insurance concentration and the most market volatility.While other insurers have exited the state, CSAA has stayed the course. “It’s been really gratifying to see what we can do,” Hecht says. Balancing capital protection and member coverage remains a daily challenge—one she’s eager to embrace.With AM Best as CSAA’s key external stakeholder, Hecht’s metrics of success differ from peers in public or PE-backed companies. “It’s a really interesting balancing act,” she tells us—and one that redefines what it means to lead finance from the inside out.

When Tom Egan walks a homeowner through the math—“If your house is worth a million dollars and you owe five hundred thousand,” he says—the traditional options surface quickly: load the balance sheet with a costly home‑equity loan or sell and hope you can find somewhere new to live. That binary choice, he explains, is exactly what Hometap set out to upend. The company’s flagship home‑equity investment lets owners “access the liquidity in their home without having to sell or take on debt,” Egan tells us.The mission “to make homeownership less stressful and more accessible” shapes his every decision. By giving capital in the form of equity, Hometap leaves monthly payments unchanged and can even “improve your credit if you use it to pay down debt.” The concept, first sketched by founder Jeff Glass, resonated immediately with consumers; Hometap has completed “18, 19 thousand of these” transactions so far, Egan tells us.Yet the CFO is careful to frame the product as a beginning, not an endpoint. He calls it “a product, not the product,” an opening move toward a platform of offerings that address the full arc of ownership. Growth, he notes, is already visible as other operators enter the market—a sign of “enormous upside.”Egan’s narrative reveals a strategist who sees finance as empowerment. By replacing debt with shared success, he aligns the homeowner’s peace of mind with Hometap’s own performance, turning equity itself into the most flexible currency a family possesses—and signaling a new era for consumer housing finance.

Imagine an accounts‑receivable clerk clicking through four different systems just to finish one routine task. Chad Gold sees that bottleneck instantly. Fullstory’s newly launched Workforce product maps every mouse‑stroke of such employee journeys, then surfaces friction points so companies can “make them more productive, so they can do even more value‑added things,” Gold tells us.The scene encapsulates the finance leader’s thesis: data depth wins. “The companies that have the capabilities to capture the most comprehensive sets of data in a meaningful way are going to win,” he says. That conviction drew Gold—now in his fourth CFO chapter—to the Atlanta‑based behavioral‑data platform. Fullstory records the complete digital experience of each customer, from e‑commerce clicks to SaaS workflows, and feeds the corpus into AI models that flag churn risk or recommend instant actions, such as sending a coupon to a wavering shopper. The result drives revenue and reduces churn, he tells us.For its part, Fullstory has raised capital rounds through Series D and counts Kleiner Perkins, Stripes, Premier, Salesforce Ventures, GV and Dell Technologies among its backers, he tells us. Independent directors Ryan Barreto of Sprout Social and former Atlassian CFO Alex Estevez deepen the bench. After 22 years in finance, Gold values “lines, not dots”—long‑term relationships that provide partnership, not just cash. By pairing that philosophy with a platform built to illuminate every click, he aims to turn invisible friction—whether customer or employee—into the next chapter of growth. Stakeholders across the business will feel the lift, Gold predicts.

Broadcasting from Planful’s Perform 25 conference in Miami, CFO Thought Leader presents frontline finance insights in an on‑location special. CEO Grant Halloran rejects the narrative that generative AI replaces people; instead he calls it the only viable antidote to a looming three‑million‑professional accounting shortage and collapsing CPA pipeline. Halloran outlines a 30‑second, company‑wide forecasting experience that lifts productivity without swelling headcount. CFO Dan Fletcher echoes the team‑sport mantra, explaining how daily pipeline feeds, product‑usage telemetry, and strict ROI tests now steer capital allocation, meetings, and R&D growth. Attendee “on the spot” clips reinforce priorities: scaling FP&A influence, embedding AI securely, and freeing analysts from manual work so they can drive high‑cognition strategy at greater speed through data democratization, faster decision cycles, and collaborative technology roadmaps for modern finance.In this episode, CFO Thought Leader is On Location in Miami, where host Jack Sweeney gathers candid insights from Planful’s leadership and FP&A practitioners. CEO Grant Halloran outlines why AI must boost productivity—not cut jobs—amid a historic finance talent crunch. CFO Dan Fletcher shares how product‑usage data and daily reforecasting sharpen capital decisions. Attendees add rapid‑fire priorities, from scaling forecasts to embedding secure AI.