Casey Woo: My Adventures in Finance from Wall Street to Silicon Valley

Casey Woo is a serial high Tech CFO turned investor. The Harvard educated financier “escaped” a life as an Investment Banking Analyst, at Morgan Stanley to take a big pay cut and join a 10-person startup (“If you wanna do tech, you gotta go to the Bay Area”).

Since then, he has held finance at CFO roles including at WeWork and property tech company Landing before founding an “operators community” turned investment fund FOG ventures.

 In this episode Casey talks to Paul Barnhurst about his journey: 

• How finance was seen as a “second class” citizen when he entered Silicon Valley and how he had to “learn a new language”
• How he built up the Operators Guild “a club of number twos” ( finance, ops, HR, talent, legal, IT) into an exec community of 700 leaders who now run the FOG VC
• What good FP&A looks like at an early stage company
• When early stage companies are making $200,000 $300,000 total is when FP&A can be a powerful addition
• Why FP&A leaders need to focus on business first rather than finance first 
• The CFO’s future as the Office of Business Intelligence that will separate the The Ancien Régime CFOs with those who can adapt
• If CFOs are not “pounding their fists on the table” asking to own data they will not survive

Watch the full show on YouTube

Read the full transcript and blog

Follow Casey Woo on LinkedIn

Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn

Follow Datarails on LinkedIn

FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.

Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.

Get in touch at www.datarails.com