What Technology Can (and Can’t) Fix for Finance Teams, with John Glasgow

Full Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Diary of the CFO podcast. Today, I'm so delighted to have with me John Glasgow. He is a CEO and founder of Campfire, which is a modern accounting platform for midsize tech companies. Prior to that, he was a top finance leader@build.com and Adobe. Welcome to the show, John. Thank you so much for having me, Wasi.

[00:00:22] I'm really excited to be here and, uh, excited to hopefully, uh, add some value or share some, some fun facts and, uh, insights with some folks listening today. Of course, especially for you being a finance person. Now, the CEO and founder of Campfire. So why don't you tell us about your journey, the story behind how you find yourself, where you are now?

[00:00:45] Yeah, it's a great question. I think about it a lot and everyone asks. Um, and I was, uh, a finance exec at a about a hundred employee company. We were really struggling with our accounting software at the time and, [00:01:00] um, talked to the team and we had kind of concluded there wasn't really anything out there that felt like it was built for us.

[00:01:06] We went on to get acquired, um, by bill.com for about $600 million. It wasn't accounting software company itself, it was invoicing software. Okay. Invoicing software for businesses called Invoice to Go. We got acquired by bill.com for 600 million and um, that was a, a great experience. But once we got acquired, my largest partners, 'cause I went on to lead partnerships there.

[00:01:29] Partners were the accounting software ledgers, um, on the small business and mid-market side. Now that this problem we had at a hundred employees was actually widespread throughout other finance and accounting teams, so really went through Y Combinator of the startup accelerator to build the accounting software I wish we were on.

[00:01:49] And so that, that's campfire. We now have, um, lots of customers coming to us from these solutions. I was frustrated with, and when they, when I meet with someone and they tell me, [00:02:00] here's all the pain points we're having, I, and I tell them I was you, you know, I, I'm coming from, I know your pain. And, and, um, and that's really helped us build the product in the right way because I was literally in their shoes.

[00:02:13] Wow, that's founding story. But compared to a lot of us, for example, we have those pain points, but we don't necessarily go and create something new. So was there something that clicked for you? Maybe a mentor or somebody, something you saw that made you do that jump? It's a great question. I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur.

[00:02:35] Um, uh, 15, maybe more years ago now. My, I have an identical twin brother. Him and I started a company. Um, it was brief. Um, but he actually went on to be a, a, a solo founder about seven years ago and went on to build a really big, successful business. Um, and kind of watching him along his journey inspired me in [00:03:00] many ways to go take the leap.

[00:03:01] You know, we joke, we have the founder, DNA, we have the same DNA, but um, that was one of the inspirations for me to go solve this problem and, and. My, I had a really difficult, um, decision to make. It was, um, the same month my first born daughter was born, accepted into the Y Combinator Startup Accelerator, and I had to decide to leave my big company job.

[00:03:27] I was reporting directly to the CFO at a, at a large public company. Embark on this journey with a much smaller salary and a much, and, um, you know, parental leave isn't as cushy when you're, when you're at this Oh yeah. Business. And so it was a big, high conviction move for me, but it also gave me clarity that like, if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do it right because I have a lot on the line here.

[00:03:51] And so, wow. Just like being, like really executing and focused and so I've kind of divided my time now. There's family [00:04:00] time, my wife and dog, and then there's like work time and I've had to make some sacrifices and you know, hobbies and some other fun stuff that I used to do. I tell my wife that, you know, campfire is my hobby.

[00:04:13] I love, I love coming into work, I love my job. I was okay, kind of offloading some of the other hobbies I had when I worked at a big company. I knew hobby. Oh, that's awesome. So you have an identical twin, A supporting wife. 'cause she said, okay, go. Even though we have a baby here now, probably two now. So a picture lately on LinkedIn, I have a one month old and uh, another daughter.

[00:04:37] Yes. Congratulations. Yeah. And that, that's good to to remember, right? Because we have life outside of our career and how it helps our professional careers. So. Does your identical brother pitch for you too? Or like how did he help you in your, because it must help to be a founder and have somebody that just [00:05:00] look like you.

[00:05:00] I'm, I'm just curious. Yeah. You know, when, when I'm going through things on our journey, you know, he's been through it all. 'cause you know, they're further along, like I said, so. Full. My, my silent kind of co-founders is my wife. And silent is obviously not an official capacity justice, but when I bring problems home, when I bring the, the wins and the losses home to her, a part of the journey.

[00:05:24] And you make a good point, like all of us, whether you're a founder or you know, otherwise, you know, we all have support networks. We all people around us, um, helping us what I call like your personal board, that in your own life you have your personal board. Um. And, um, those are critical people, whether it's family, friends, or just like work mentors.

[00:05:45] These are critical people for your, just like any board on any critical for the success. Nice, nice. And then within your finance career, what are some of the things that you felt really help you make the switch to be founder now to [00:06:00] create your own company, addressing the pain point that you had as a finance and accounting professional?

[00:06:06] Yeah. Outside of like the product development pieces, you know, we, we talk through a lot of it, um, certainly around like, you know, I manage our, our fundraising model. I manage our operating plan. Uh, I've learned a lot about like forecasting, yes, you want to try and get the forecast right, but understanding like the key levers in a business.

[00:06:28] You know, has been really helpful for me of like, you know, if this input equals this output, thinking of like a, a financial modeling way of, you know, operating leverage and gross margin, and maybe you don't need to solve for these things now, but even whether I'm raising capital or whether I'm just thinking about like the long-term path for the company, an end state can look like from like an op, like a financial operating perspective.

[00:06:56] Like how I'm gonna get to that end state, um, has certainly [00:07:00] been an area that's been helpful. Um, being really thoughtful and, and scrappy financially and how we run and operate just because, you know, like on with our burn. Um, and, and then also like dealing with investors and partners. And even, like, I, I ran a lot of the, um, pricing for one of Adobe's products when I was in finance, when we were building out.

[00:07:25] Um, our pricing plan at Campfire. You know, I had some great experience there on like pricing KPIs and key levers that I should be thinking about from a pricing and packaging perspective. So, yeah, those were a couple that that really stood out. Um, beyond just being able to like, tell a story with numbers and being able to prospect a customer or an investor and a new employee.

[00:07:51] Um, one key part of finances, you know, better than anyone is like being able to tell a story with numbers, and that's Yes. And I think we sometimes get [00:08:00] stuck on the being the numbers person, right? So how do you evolve from that in your career? One of the hardest things for me, and this is a very tactical one, um, is I used to always insist on a pc.

[00:08:15] Um, even I went to a company, there was a hundred people and they sent me a Mac 'cause everyone has a Mac there. And I just sent it back. Excel junkie. I love Excel. My keyboard shortcuts. I don't need a match. Um, but part of my evolution, my next role, actually two roles later, was now as a founder. I, I got a Mac not as good in Excel anymore, and part of this was being okay that I need to shift from specialist to generalist.

[00:08:45] Like the, the further up you go, the less technically proficient you are to very specific task. And so for me, a lot of it was letting go and letting go of my depth of Excel. Was something I [00:09:00] had to, I had to do was just accepting that, you know, now I'm, you know, I'm, I'm type, I'm typing and using my mouse in Excel these days.

[00:09:08] But part of that was an evolution of me, uh, into a role that, um, being amazing at Excel is no longer required. And, um, that's just like a microcosm of kind of. Things I've had to adjust, but how can someone like force themselves out of it, even though they're still in the role that deeply involve Excel?

[00:09:28] Like how can they either increase their visibility or improve their storytelling and how can they do it when a lot of their role is still Yeah, you are gonna look at a lot of spreadsheets. Yeah. My big push for finance and accounting folks these days is like find tasks that are very repetitive in nature and automate them and that will, like you're doing, you, maybe you're doing data entry, like you're manually creating an invoice.

[00:09:58] I was doing a lot of repetitive Excel [00:10:00] tasks when I was in finance. Is there a tool or even a macro or whatever version of it is for you? Automate some of this, and then that essentially gives you a promotion in your own way. There's another, maybe there's software that's doing the task instead of Excel opera's doing it.

[00:10:18] You're freeing yourself up to focus on more strategic work. One area, especially with like, you know, everyone's talking about ai. We all need to reinvent ourselves in an AI world, and part of that is like. AI is gonna take over some of these tasks that are very repetitive in nature, stay relevant. It's evolving your yourself and your skillset.

[00:10:40] Um, so I think it's mainly just pushing yourself. The other thing I tell people is whenever I used to present, I used to prepare, you know, a lot of work for like financial models and forecasts, and I started to ask, can I be in the meeting when it's presented? And part of that, and you need to, whether it's the [00:11:00] board meeting or for you, it could just be like your finance weekly meeting that maybe you're not invited to the CFO weekly meeting yet.

[00:11:08] Whatever meeting that is that you're preparing work for, that you're not allowed to attend. Continue to push thoughtfully and gently like to be there and pitch yourself. And what I would pitch myself was like, Hey, what if you get a question you can't answer? That's super technical. I'll just be on mute and you can just call on me and I'll just help you out.

[00:11:30] You know, or I can take, I offer to take notes for people. The meeting for you, you don't need to focus and take notes. Um, and that allowed me to not only be more visible, but also helped pull me kind of out of the day-to-day work and then also get me into more of that, like, you know, and then by, you know, and then I was attending more regularly, and then I would start to have like opinions in the meetings.

[00:11:52] And so part of this was me pushing myself to evolve. On how I think and operate, but the number one thing is just letting go. [00:12:00] Hmm. That's a great hack though. Um, I, I wish I had, I had that earlier in my career. Like, like you said, if you pre, if you prepared one slide into a, in a multiple deck, be the one saying, oh, can I present that one thing?

[00:12:16] Yep. That's very neat. And going back to what you said about ai. Um, and how AI will automate a lot of things and how we all worried about ai. Your solution has ai, chem, fire has AI building. So what are some of the pain points that you feel you automated through that solution first? And what are other things that, that automation will allow finance and accounting teams to do?

[00:12:42] Yeah, it's a great question. Um, the first things we're starting with is, is the, the ones that I was mentioning around, like repetitive works, be like bank reconciliations or transaction matching or, you know, it's like things that are very structured in nature and [00:13:00] over and over again. I think spreadsheets will always have a, a part in finance and accounting, but if it's repetitive task in a spreadsheet.

[00:13:09] I'd like to think we can get it and, and offload it to ai. It would be more for like an ad hoc budget or a one-off, you know, blank workbook. You gotta whip something up and narrowing the spreadsheet usage for non repetition. And so that's where AI is today. Um, some of the areas that we're really excited about is we have a product called Ember that sits on top of all of your financial data, and it's just like chat GBT.

[00:13:37] You can query your data, like show me customer contracts up for renewal this month, or can you look for missing prepaids or help build a Q1 budget, Q4 historicals and assume some seasonality off of prior Q1. Um, and we're, I've been pleasantly surprised at how good it has been, but. [00:14:00] Most people, rightfully so, don't trust AI yet and or will because just like anyone else on your team, you gotta like review its work.

[00:14:09] It needs to be auditable. You need to understand how it got to the conclusion. Um, and you need to be able to like export it to Excel, right? Because we're all finance people. And then tweak it. Yes, I need that button. Export to Excel, there's my download button. And so we've been very thoughtful of like, it's not a black box.

[00:14:28] It's auditable, it shows its work. It pulls the sources that it, and it, and it links to all its sources and it's, and it's downloadable. We've been asking people to think of AI as a member of your team. You give it feedback, like someone on your team. Uh, it gets better as you learn how to work with it and you check its work.

[00:14:47] Just like anyone, like I would never take someone's work from my team and present it to the board. Yeah. Reversed all the same principles would app apply to AI and that, and that's. Helping people rethink about AI, think in a [00:15:00] more appropriate manner, um, allowing them to push more tasks to the ai. That's nice.

[00:15:06] And I, and I like the practical use cases you already have. Um, and then the next step would be yes, sometimes we're like, yes, that's a great use case. How do I bring it to my company? How do I bring it to my team? Like how do you convince people to move through change? How do you lead digital transformations?

[00:15:24] 'cause you've done it when you are in finance and you know how hard it is sometimes to Yeah. Push us through. Change any insights. I think they need to be in the right mindset. I don't know if I can always disabuse someone of their, their view of the world we are seeing. So I saw a stat from McKinsey, uh, this week that of all of the functions within a, a company finance and accounting ranks like ninth out of 11th in terms of AI adoption.

[00:15:55] So we're, we're almost in last. We're not in last, but we're almost in last. There's valid [00:16:00] reasons for it. Mainly around like tolerance for error is zero, right? You can't incorrect, you can't have incorrect numbers. Right? That's table stakes. Um, and we talked about the auditability and everything else. Um, there's a reason that they've been slow to adopt, but we are seeing more board mandates mandating AI on the company.

[00:16:20] Accounting teams have felt they haven't had any tools that have really been thoughtfully built for them to implement ai. Like we see here at Campfire Engineering, AI is heavily used by every engineer at Campfire. Our sales and marketing team heavily uses ai, finance and accounting teams are a couple years behind, and for the reasons I stated that makes a lot of sense as the tools solve for those problems.

[00:16:45] We're seeing not only the board band, but people say, I'm tired of manually creating a thousand invoices for a one week period over every month. Um, I just want someone to do it for me and I want to give [00:17:00] myself a promotion. And that's, that's where it's, we're also seeing so like, bottoms up as opposed to tops down from the board.

[00:17:07] Okay. Okay. And now in terms of actually bringing it, um, to a function, 'cause you felt the pain we have in typical finance and accounting, right? It feels like the business is having all these great discussions, they're making all these great plans and with the last one to know about it and we have to catch up, right?

[00:17:27] So even with ai, right? Like how can we use ai? To help us bridge that gap. Right? Because I feel sometimes like, it's almost like sales and product, right? Sales is like, yeah, we can do it in product is like, wait, where? What did you just sell? I feel like accounting has the same thing with the business overall.

[00:17:50] It's hard. When I was, yeah, in finance, they would, you know, like the sales team would sell a deal that we had no way of visualizing from like, uh, we, you know. Not only the [00:18:00] rev rec policy for it, but also how do we even handle the, the, like, how do we even track usage from a, from how do we even know what to bill somebody?

[00:18:09] Yeah. Finance and accounting. The last to find out about a new go to market, a new geo. It's super frustrating. Um, part of this was this isn't gonna solve it. It, I, I, I can't solve it for you, but one thing helpful was I, I had one slide that I made and I said, here's my charter. I went around to each business unit and I presented to them, here's my charter, here's what I do, here's what you can use me for, and here's maybe a way you should not use me.

[00:18:39] Um, and that helped educate them on when they went to do a new pricing or a new market. You know, maybe I pitched them well and I would usually a little sales pitch. Like, Hey, if you include me, you know, I can help you, like build this correctly. Or we can like, um, make sure it gets done. So then if you sell it [00:19:00] once, it's not no, the second time, because like they'll be like, oh, we sold this deal, and you're like, okay, we can't do it again.

[00:19:05] But if you involve me early, you know, maybe we can scale it and we can actually have a, something that does work long term. So. Again, I can't solve for it, but part of this is just like the evangelizing of your role and when is my all the only advice I can give other than there's a lot of bad actors out there that you're gonna do and there's nothing you can do about it.

[00:19:28] Yes, but that's a, that's a great one though. It's, it's part of, you know, being a good business partner, you saying, this is what you, this is when you need to involve the team. This is when I should be involved. And I think it definitely makes things better when you are involving everyone from the start rather than at the end.

[00:19:47] Because then I feel like we get all the pushback of. These accounting and finance people, again, here they are saying, no, I know it. It's, it's hard 'cause everyone thinks of you like a [00:20:00] cf No. And it's not about, no, but it's like, let's be thoughtful about it, you know? Yes. And that's, and I would always your mind, you know, folks, when they ask for something and I was ready to say no.

[00:20:12] Um, I'd always think, like I, I would tell them we have the same desired outcome here. I want you to be successful. Let's find a way for you to be successful, even if it means like a different budget than what you were expecting, a different headcount than you were expecting. Um, but we have common, shared, desired outcomes is how I would start the meeting.

[00:20:33] Yes. And that's a great way to start, especially when you think about finance and accounting being more of business partners. And I think we don't realize soon enough in our careers that we need to be business partners that we are in this together. Um, what are some of the things you would tell the young generation of finance leaders?

[00:20:52] How can they be better prepared in this evolving role of finance? You know, it's [00:21:00] moving so fast, it's hard to tell people. Yes. Someone was even telling me the other day, like, you know, 'cause as you know, I have two young children, people are saying like, are they even gonna go to college? You know, and things are moving so fast that it's so hard to tell.

[00:21:14] But my advice for folks is where you can be helpful is. Like the kind of your managers and everyone's gonna look to you to bring modern solutions, to bring modern ideas, modern ways of doing things. Um, like I used to be on a personal level. I used to be up on all the social networks. Like I've still have never been on TikTok now, and I don't know, there's probably another TikTok, I'm not on TikTok either.

[00:21:41] So that's two of us. There's the newer versions of tiktoks now. But like I look to the younger generations and I know my nieces and nephews, it's college that, like, what's the hot tool? What's new? What's, what's relevant? Um, you know, that's what you can bring [00:22:00] ideas and fresh ways of doing things. And you can be the, when the, when the board mandate arrives to like, you know, AI needs to be implemented within finance, you can be the one that says, Hey, I just went and demoed 10 AI tools.

[00:22:15] Here's two I like, and you can help deliver, you know, on u uniquely in ways that maybe other folks within the organization can't. So that's, that's your secret weapon being that change agent. Yes. And leading change too. And I feel like. We don't talk about it much, but how the project that you lead in your careers are usually the one that will accelerate your career, right?

[00:22:41] Like, you doing the same thing every day doesn't really help, but it feels like it's the project. The other stuff you do, um, that tends to, if I can say, add the spices to your career. So can you maybe speak of any exciting project you led? How did it go and how did you really help you in your career? [00:23:00] It's a great question.

[00:23:01] And before I answer that one, one piece of advice that's related to this question, the last que is people always tell me, Hey, I'm starting to look for any role I found. The higher up you go in your career, the more the role is gonna be filled by someone is gonna get you the job, um, that you, you already worked with.

[00:23:21] And so you're interviewing for your next role every day and your current role. Is what I tell them is I spent at Adobe, I was a strategic finance. I spent a ton of time on this really large project and it ended up having a great outcome. Um, and my manager went on to be the CEO of invoice to go how transformative I was for his team at Adobe that he brought me to come be an executive at invoice to go.

[00:23:50] So I think like building your resume through the real interactions you have. I tell everyone your current role is gonna get you your next role, and it's gonna be [00:24:00] someone that gets promoted internally or externally that's gonna take you with them. And that is how I found a few roles. I think the one that was the most transformative was probably when we were, uh, in, when I was at invoice to go doing corporate development and finance and partnerships.

[00:24:16] Um, when we, I, I was tasked with either like going to raise like a hundred million dollars series D and we got some great term sheets there. Um, this is my first time raising like large amounts of capital, so I was certainly like learning a lot as I went. Um, and then also like. Exploring a sale of the company, and we ended up getting some great offers on both sides for the sale and the fundraise.

[00:24:42] And so kind of my capstone project was presenting to the board on both options, like blue pill, raise a hundred million and double down or sell the entire company to a great buyer and outcome. And we ended up choosing the sale [00:25:00] route and so then the delivery and execution of the project. Was between signing and closing and then even like some post post-closing integration work was probably the capstone project of my career up until, you know, I went and started campfire and um, became a CEO.

[00:25:18] So that, that, that one certainly stands out to me. Oh yeah. And it's definitely in line with what you had to do to start your own career, right? Your own company, I should say, uh, red pill or blue pill. Do I go for it? And all the, the, the fundraising involved and the presentation involved, I still think maybe your, your identical brothers helping maybe.

[00:25:40] Now I wanna meet him, but it looks like it. It's amazing though, don't you think how the things we do in our career, whether intentionally or not help us in the long term? Yes. Yeah. On a personal level, I mean, people. People don't realize, like being a CEO is really [00:26:00] the biggest sales job at the company. I'm selling new hires, I'm selling customers, um, I'm selling investors.

[00:26:07] I'm convincing people this is a place to be. I'm the face me. And so, you know, in finance, you know, when I was out fundraising, I was selling why you should invest a hundred million dollars in US. When we were acquired, I was out using slides and numbers to tell the story that was this how I sold. But at the end of the day, being a CFO is, is still a sales role.

[00:26:27] You're, you're convincing people on your team, you're convincing, um, just about everybody to deploy capital, um, and, and come join you. And so whatever it is, you know, the, the further up you go, the, the more convincing people to do things, um, becomes part of it. And that certainly was foundational in this launch point and to starting campfire as well.

[00:26:49] Good for you, and it's a great reminder. I should have probably taken sales courses now, like I I, like you said, at at this level, a lot of what you do is sales. I [00:27:00] have, uh, I have a good friend, she, she was a audit partner and she was like, now that I'm a partner, I'm in sales and everybody that I speak to at that executive level, we all feel like we salespeople.

[00:27:11] Yeah. Yeah. It is, it is so true. Um, and even as a, as an accountant, you know, it, it, it's through, it's through every role in some way. Um, getting people to align to your view on things. There's, you know, there's a lot a million books on that effective of the role, the hiring you go and the more relevant that.

[00:27:32] Yes. And what are some of your maybe book recommendation or courses, newsletter do you recommend for somebody trying to build those sales skills? Because I do believe that at some point in your career you end up really being in sales. Yeah. You know, honestly, the number one thing, um, and I, I can certainly make some book recommendations, uh, outside of sales too, I found is all the salespeople.

[00:27:57] Like you can just watch like an actual person's, [00:28:00] there's a lot of books out there, but one that I found most helpful was actually um, is if you know someone in sales, almost all their calls are recorded these days 'cause they're on sales software that records their call asking you call recordings. You're a real kind of sale in seat of someone that's actually out selling today.

[00:28:20] But it doesn't actually sell, like sound like a sales pitch. It's deeply understanding problems, solutions to deeply understand a problem. Um, and, and that is like good sales doesn't feel like sales fundraising. I'm getting them super excited about taking on incumbents, you know? Um, and so it's like solving problems and, and bringing solutions.

[00:28:43] But, um, one thing like udemy.com, Coursera, uh, um, part-time professor, so a lot of those universities have online classes now that are free or low cost. Going on and signing up for some classes. I [00:29:00] think, you know, a sales class. Um, there's the book, um, never Split Lunch, I think is what it's called. Um, uh, never Split the Bill.

[00:29:08] Excuse me. Never split the bill. Okay. Never split the bill. There's some good business books I like my favorite books to, I don't really read anymore. Um, given the whole family and, uh, work thing I mentioned earlier when I was reading, um, I used to really like biographies. Of, um, business people. Uh, the founder of Nike, uh, Phil Knight Shoe Dog.

[00:29:31] Um, there's Ride of a Lifetime, um, which is the, the Disney CEO story, Bob Ir. And so those just like really on Now what I mainly learned through is, um, podcasts. So I, the car, when the car, I drop my daughter off on the way to work. And I listen to a podcast, um, once I drop her off between her being dropped 'cause her and I chat and then I drop her off.

[00:29:57] And then I listen to podcasts. So there's a lot of good [00:30:00] business ones. There's some sales ones out there. One on the sales side is called, um, 30 Minutes to President's Club. It's a little more tactical for actual sales. But um, and then I listen to a lot of tech and AI and finance podcasts just to stay sharp.

[00:30:16] Yes. I love it just to stay sharp, just that alone, I, I feel like it's something that we should all have to do, like all plan to do because like you said earlier, everything. Is moving so fast. Like how do you stay sharp when you have two kids and a growing business and all these other things. For me too, it's mostly through podcast the same.

[00:30:43] I don't read as much as I used to, so I have to find other ways. I, I, I, I subscribe to masterclass. Okay, so I get to, 'cause I, I, I was introduced to it, you know, flying in Delta. I was like, oh, what is masterclass? And I started watching their [00:31:00] shows. But you realize that you have to learn on the go. Yeah.

[00:31:04] That's a great way. Yeah. And you know, whether you're on an airplane or you're driving or on public transit, um. Catching a little, but it's also important like to, to just like decompress too way into work. All this new podcasts on the way home. I really try. Sometimes I'll catch up with people on a call, but I really try and just listen to music on the way home, try and clear my head.

[00:31:26] One of the hardest things I, you know, have opening up a little bit here is like turning off work when I get home. It's like you bring work home with you. You know, kids are excited to see you. You really want to focus on the family. But shutting off the big, you know, meeting you had or the big win or loss.

[00:31:45] And so trying to use music or something, um, during my commute home has been something I'm really trying to do to allow me to, to transition to home life so I can really be present with my family. That's a [00:32:00] good one because I feel like it's harder when you are working remote, so I feel like when I was driving to the office, it gave me time to decompress a bit by the time I was home.

[00:32:13] I was putting music like in my ears a little too loud sometimes, but it got me like, okay, okay, I'm going home and then going to work as well. But now I feel like being remote, it, it's, it's kind of tough because your, your, your bedroom is down here and your office is here. So how do you feel about this remote hybrid situation and how we can actually help you stop bringing work to home?

[00:32:41] Yeah, so I used to be remote, uh, at Campfire. We're, we're five days a week in office. You know, you can see behind me there, there's office buildings. I'm downtown. Um, you know, I think coming out of Y Combinator, they gave us some very strong advice that. Kind of the early formative stages of a company, having the team in [00:33:00] person just allow, is like the highest level of cohesion and, and velocity and operating as one.

[00:33:06] And so that's the approach we've taken so far. Um, I certainly see a lot of amazing businesses get built in remote fashion from day zero. And I'm not saying you can't. What I really looked for in campfire was like what I call tailwinds and headwinds, which is like, and I, you know, the. It's like, how can I create as many tailwinds for our success as possible?

[00:33:27] And to people much smarter than me, you know, at, at Y Combinator, they have thousands of startups in the portfolio, just heating their advice on that to, to build in person. Uh, my, my wife's remote. Um, I miss working on the couch with my dog on my lap. You know, I, I, it's, it's a big investment to be here. Do you think as companies scale and campfire.

[00:33:50] We will be more remote as we scale just because you, you know, you need people around the world and you need offices in other places for global coverage. Um, so it's [00:34:00] coming. And as we have the institutional, as we have the infrastructure to support, um, people in hybrid and remote places, we're certainly gonna like go that way.

[00:34:11] But right now there's no real training. There's no real, you know, we don't have a huge onboarding. Um, you kind of show up to work and you listen to a lot of conversations in the room and tap on someone's shoulder when you have a quick question. Um, we have no meeting and no internal meetings at campfire other than one 15 minute meeting a week.

[00:34:32] It's just, what are you gonna, what are you gonna shift this week? That's the one question. And then you just start shipping and that's who you spend all week on. And so we've. Removed some of the cohesion that you get, um, that that's required of, um, being in a remote world. Again, you can be super successful remote, but we've decided to go for every tailwind we can.

[00:34:56] And I feel like it, it makes sense [00:35:00] from when I look at, you know, my own career. Probably your career was the same where going when you started out your career, you were meeting people and it's amazing when I look back how much I learned from those coffee chat, like break room and you hear something and and you able to connect.

[00:35:16] And I feel like early in your career it does help. Like you said, in the early stage to be in connection with people and then as you grow, you know what you're doing. Yes. You probably understand better how things are and you can do it remotely. I think that's a good point. I was fortunate early in my career, I was at places that, um, we were all going in and so there was a lot of like, I think additional training, it's more around the edge.

[00:35:46] Like if you have a really important question, obviously you're gonna ask in a remote world. You hear someone solve a problem in a way you hadn't thought of this with them. Um, or you'll, you will ask the question that maybe you, maybe you wouldn't ask if you had to hop on a Zoom to ask it. [00:36:00] So there's a lower barrier for everything.

[00:36:03] But I completely agree. Whether you're at a larger company or whether you're more experienced in your career, I think remote can make a lot of sense. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I, I think eventually we'll probably get to hybrid 'cause I think there is benefits in having some type of human connection still. Um, but we'll see.

[00:36:21] We'll see where the world takes us and where AI is taking us. If we'll all be roaming around or floating around in cars. I know, I mean now they're talking about, um, you know, robotic AI and you know, it's, you know, we got the self-driving and here in San Francisco there's self-driving cars with nobody in them driving all over.

[00:36:42] I saw them. I freaked out 'cause I used to work for a company headquarter in San Francisco and I was like, what is this? Yeah, yeah. No, no driver at all. Um, and I think that's kind of a, a, a preview into where I see some of the finance and accounting going on the. [00:37:00] Um, these simpler tasks, you know, there's gonna be no driver at all.

[00:37:04] One. Interesting. I know you're a CPA. One interesting thing we think about is separation of duties from a task, from an accounting perspective is like from an for an audit, obviously you have, you want separation of duties on a work being, but can, can the AI be actually one of the individuals either reviewing or performing the work from an audit standpoint is actually stamping that Ember completed the task.

[00:37:29] As the actual separation of duties with human and AI for reviewing, you know, my work on things I've done, does, you know, will the audit world get started to get comfortable? Where does the liability sit? Um, these are all interesting things that are coming as. AI starts to take over more of the task, but you still need everything to be audited, right?

[00:37:52] So, yes, and it it, it will be like the example you gave of, um, separation of duties, especially for [00:38:00] smaller companies. Sometimes everything is done by one person, but as you mentioned earlier, if AI is a team member, you just enlarge your capacity. No, you, it, it's exactly it. Like I said earlier, everyone gets a promotion.

[00:38:14] That's kind of our, our pitch. We're really not focused on like, you know, replacing everybody. I, I truly believe that like, as long as you evolve yourself, um, and how you think and operate, there's, you know, for a very long time, if not never. There's a lot of accounting and finance that'll never get moved, replaced by ai.

[00:38:37] So like we talked about earlier, continue to modernize and evolve, um, yourself and your skills, and that's the best way to, to stay relevant in this rapidly evolving world. Wow. Thank you so much, John, for being on the show. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:38:56] This was awesome. I was honestly honored to be [00:39:00] on Follow Your Content and here and hopefully folks found some value. If there anyone wants to ping me, they can drop me an email, john@meetcampfire.com. I'm on LinkedIn and yeah, thanks again for having me. Awesome, thank you. And that's it for today's episode of The Diary of A CFO.

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