Who am I, What do I do, How did I get here

I work with technology companies on all things finance. Finance is the language of business. It creates a common lexicon and common currency to compare and understand businesses. While it's not perfect, it's the best we've got and incredibly valuable. Understanding the fundamentals is important in enabling creativity within the bounds of the regulations and accepted principles. For a great overview on financial statements, check out this post by my portfolio company Causal: https://t.co/jCXGSUHoSQ?amp=1

My goal is to help align entire companies to common, high level goals using a common language and consistent data. I work with SaaS companies as well as many other types of companies including consumer, hardware, robotics, and marketplaces.

I have had the great fortune of being able to work with some amazing companies as an advisor like Monday.com, Fabric, Phantom Auto, Vanta, Airvet, Rossum, Avochato, Causal, DataRobot and Demisto over the years.

My background is mechanical engineering and that is the lens I use to look at almost every problem, whether it's technology, business, operations or finance. I love analysis and try to bridge the gap between the quantitative and qualitative aspects of every company based on metrics, people, product and my experience across a variety of sectors.

I worked at Morgan Stanley in tech investment banking where I helped advise on large IPO, M&A and debt transactions, including companies like Facebook, SuccessFactors, Micron, Barracuda Networks and Ambarella. I am a finance geek by nature and by training. I have been trying to understand business and stocks since I was a kid (see the photo below for some hand-spread trading comps when I was ~12 years old). In investment banking, I learned how to execute corporate finance transactions and position, value, benchmark and model companies at a high level. Working with great companies during transformational transactions was a fantastic experience.

I then worked at NEA where I had the great fortune to get involved with some amazing companies and entrepreneurs, in addition to fantastic mentorship from my partners. I was able to take my high level, valuation-oriented transaction experience into early stage businesses and deeper into their operations. I spent a large percentage of my time working with my companies on finance as I recognized that early stage companies rarely have the strategic finance resources they need and in many cases I was able to offer that. It got me into the operations and helped me get a much better understanding of how companies actually operate. I was also tasked with understanding SaaS: How does it work, who does it well, what's the best way to talk about it, which are the right metrics and what do they represent. I had some great resources and spent a lot of my time doing my own theoretical modeling, studying board decks, business models and existing research on the topic. For the last 6+ years I have been nerding out on metrics, business models, analogies, ratios, charts and operations.

I currently spend my time advising startups, investing in startups and building a RevOps company.

The goal of these publications is to share my learnings and insights that I have picked up along the way. I am also hoping to publish some more interactive videos to get into some key concepts and analyses.

I hope you all enjoy. Feel free to reach out with questions along the way.