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Run the Numbers

CJ Gustafson

Run the Numbers is a business podcast about financial metrics and business models for CFOs, aspiring CFOs, finance leaders, and ambitious people operating tech startups. Hosted by CJ Gustafson, CFO and writer of Mostly Metrics, the show shares lessons, frameworks, and operator insights from the trenches as a tech exec. Think of it as a playbook for the things CJ wishes he knew earlier in his career, covering SaaS metrics, annual budgeting, forecasting, headcount, equity, dilution, fundraising, and the decisions that drive performance and growth.

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  • 25 episodes
  • a few times a week
  • Avg 46 min
  • English

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  • June 15 · 40 min

    SoundCloud CFO Dan Bettes on Marketplace Liquidity, Music, and Forecasting

    In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ sits down with Dan Bettes, CFO of SoundCloud, at the New York Stock Exchange. Dan breaks down how SoundCloud operates as a two-sided music marketplace, how he thinks about liquidity between fans and creators, and why great finance leaders need to make forecasting feel owned by the business — SPONSORS: Aleph is a modern FP&A platform built for teams that want more than another planning tool. By connecting your ERP, CRM, and other systems into one trusted data layer with AI workflows, Aleph helps you move faster with real-time insights. Get a personalized demo at https://www.getaleph.com/run RightRev is an automated revenue recognition platform that lets your product team ship new pricing without asking finance for permission, and your sales team close deals without creating downstream chaos. Check out their free tool at calculator.rightrev.com It scores your rev rec process, shows what's exposing you to risk, and tells you exactly where to focus before it bites you in the rear end. Check it out at https://calculator.rightrev.com Rillet is an AI-native ERP built for modern finance teams that want to replace NetSuite and close faster. With revenue recognition, close management, multi-entity support, and native Stripe and Salesforce integrations, Rillet helps scaling companies run their finance stack in one place. Hundreds of teams, including Windsurf and Mercor, use Rillet to make the zero-day close real. Book a demo at https://www.rillet.com/cj EY has been part of Silicon Valley since it was just a valley, helping the most successful names in tech go from startup to exit to megacap. With teams across strategy, tax, audit, and transactions, EY helps you get your financials right early, long before your investors start asking for it. You build the next big thing, and EY will help you build it right. Learn more at https://www.ey.com/techstartups SpendHound cuts your SaaS and AI spend by up to 30% using real pricing benchmarks across 10,000 vendors, so you always know what fair pricing looks like before your next renewal. Rated #1 on G2 in SaaS spend management, it's free forever for teams up to 1,000 employees. Sign up by June 12th and get $500 just for getting started. Go to https://www.spendhound.com/cj Brex is an intelligent finance platform with AI-powered agents that capture expenses automatically, enforce policy before the spend happens, and close your books in minutes instead of weeks. 35,000+ companies like OpenAI, Coinbase, Anthropic, and DoorDash already run on Brex. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at https://www.brex.com/metrics — LINKS: Mostly Talent: https://mostlymetrics.typeform.com/to/cLTxtAsN Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielbettes/ Company: https://soundcloud.com/ CJ: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/ Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com — TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Preview and Intro 2:17 First stock: a Vanguard index fund 3:13 Most memorable IPO: Groupon 4:54 Benefits of going public have changed 5:47 SoundCloud and the music industry 7:21 Three eras: physical, streaming, creator platform 8:49 Streaming unbundled the album 10:03 Artists don't need labels anymore 11:40 Sponsors — Aleph | RightRev | Rillet 15:00 SoundCloud's two-sided business model 16:23 Touring replaced the album 17:17 First metric every morning: net adds 18:31 DAU vs. MAU: it's a funnel 19:14 Viral moments and exogenous pops 20:10 LTV and the subscription funnel 21:38 Sponsors — EY | SpendHound | Brex 24:35 Tops-down vs. bottoms-up: reconcile both 26:21 Revenue is an output 27:45 Handling forecast deviation 29:24 How often to reforecast 30:23 The final boss: indirect cash flow statement 33:09 Cash vs. EBITDA fluency 35:04 Plain English and the power of reps 36:52 Tailor the message to the audience 37:45 Lightning round 37:45 Screwed up: miscounted corn at a banquet 38:41 Lean into discomfort 39:55 Craziest expense: a post-flight massage 40:17 Credits

  • June 11 · 35 min

    Bending Spoons S1: How Italy's Software Acquirer Built a $20B Empire From the Discount Rack

    In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ breaks down Bending Spoons’ F-1 filing and the acquisition machine behind AOL, Evernote, Vimeo, Eventbrite, and more. He unpacks the company’s playbook: buy under-optimized digital businesses, transform operations, raise prices, reinvest earnings, and repeat — while asking the core question: how much was built, and how much was bought? — SPONSORS: RightRev is an automated revenue recognition platform that lets your product team ship new pricing without asking finance for permission, and your sales team close deals without creating downstream chaos. Check out their free tool at calculator.rightrev.com It scores your rev rec process, shows what's exposing you to risk, and tells you exactly where to focus before it bites you in the rear end. Check it out at https://calculator.rightrev.com Rillet is an AI-native ERP built for modern finance teams that want to replace NetSuite and close faster. With revenue recognition, close management, multi-entity support, and native Stripe and Salesforce integrations, Rillet helps scaling companies run their finance stack in one place. Hundreds of teams, including Windsurf and Mercor, use Rillet to make the zero-day close real. Book a demo at https://www.rillet.com/cj EY has been part of Silicon Valley since it was just a valley, helping the most successful names in tech go from startup to exit to megacap. With teams across strategy, tax, audit, and transactions, EY helps you get your financials right early, long before your investors start asking for it. You build the next big thing, and EY will help you build it right. Learn more at https://www.ey.com/techstartups SpendHound cuts your SaaS and AI spend by up to 30% using real pricing benchmarks across 10,000 vendors, so you always know what fair pricing looks like before your next renewal. Rated #1 on G2 in SaaS spend management, it's free forever for teams up to 1,000 employees. Sign up by June 12th and get $500 just for getting started. Go to https://www.spendhound.com/cj Brex is an intelligent finance platform with AI-powered agents that capture expenses automatically, enforce policy before the spend happens, and close your books in minutes instead of weeks. 35,000+ companies like OpenAI, Coinbase, Anthropic, and DoorDash already run on Brex. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at https://www.brex.com/metrics Aleph is a modern FP&A platform built for teams that want more than another planning tool. By connecting your ERP, CRM, and other systems into one trusted data layer with AI workflows, Aleph helps you move faster with real-time insights. Get a personalized demo at https://www.getaleph.com/run — LINKS: Mostly Talent: https://mostlymetrics.typeform.com/to/cLTxtAsN CJ: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/ Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com — TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 What is Bending Spoons? 1:03 The Internet's attic: the portfolio 3:11 The metrics rundown 5:44 Revenue: $1.3B, 95% growth 6:04 82% of growth was bought, not built 6:29 Gross margin: 66% 6:50 Subscription mix and NRR 7:33 Net income: basically zero 8:00 Cash: $741M, debt: $4.4B 8:35 Revenue per employee: $2.57M 9:39 Sponsors — RightRev | Rillet | EY 12:42 Organic growth is mostly price hikes 13:50 A house of adjustments 14:54 Add-backs bigger than the profit 15:22 The reorganization line: cost of firing 19:21 Sponsors — SpendHound | Brex | Aleph 22:51 Does the playbook actually work? 23:07 Evernote: the proof point 23:45 Romini: the growth proof point 24:10 AI in three directions at once 25:45 The debt engine 27:50 Red flag 1: material accounting weaknesses 28:38 Red flag 2: pro forma numbers come with a confession 29:00 Red flag 3: App Store dependency 29:11 Red flag 4: no long-term contracts 29:30 Red flag 5: foreign private issuer 29:52 Red flag 6: they've never sold anything 30:19 Cap table and board 31:07 Valuation: 14–18x 33:00 Bull vs. bear case 33:55 Miscellaneous: the S1 is already stale 35:25 Credits

  • June 8 · 53 min

    Vercel's CFO Marten Abrahamsen: Move Fast or Fall Behind

    CJ Gustafson sits down with Marten Abrahamsen, CFO of Vercel, at the NYSE to talk about running finance inside a hypergrowth AI company. They cover AI use cases in finance, rev rec, forecasting, KPI dashboards, PLG, consumption pricing, and Marten’s “speeding tickets vs. parking tickets” framework for moving fast without losing control. — SPONSORS: Brex is an intelligent finance platform with AI-powered agents that capture expenses automatically, enforce policy before the spend happens, and close your books in minutes instead of weeks. 35,000+ companies like OpenAI, Coinbase, Anthropic, and DoorDash already run on Brex. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at https://www.brex.com/metrics Aleph is a modern FP&A platform built for teams that want more than another planning tool. By connecting your ERP, CRM, and other systems into one trusted data layer with AI workflows, Aleph helps you move faster with real-time insights. Get a personalized demo at https://www.getaleph.com/run RightRev is an automated revenue recognition platform that lets your product team ship new pricing without asking finance for permission, and your sales team close deals without creating downstream chaos. Check out their free tool at calculator.rightrev.com It scores your rev rec process, shows what's exposing you to risk, and tells you exactly where to focus before it bites you in the rear end. Check it out at https://calculator.rightrev.com Rillet is an AI-native ERP built for modern finance teams that want to replace NetSuite and close faster. With revenue recognition, close management, multi-entity support, and native Stripe and Salesforce integrations, Rillet helps scaling companies run their finance stack in one place. Hundreds of teams, including Windsurf and Mercor, use Rillet to make the zero-day close real. Book a demo at https://www.rillet.com/cj EY has been part of Silicon Valley since it was just a valley, helping the most successful names in tech go from startup to exit to megacap. With teams across strategy, tax, audit, and transactions, EY helps you get your financials right early, long before your investors start asking for it. You build the next big thing, and EY will help you build it right. Learn more at https://www.ey.com/techstartups SpendHound cuts your SaaS and AI spend by up to 30% using real pricing benchmarks across 10,000 vendors, so you always know what fair pricing looks like before your next renewal. Rated #1 on G2 in SaaS spend management, it's free forever for teams up to 1,000 employees. Sign up by June 12th and get $500 just for getting started. Go to https://www.spendhound.com/cj — LINKS: Mostly Talent: https://mostlymetrics.typeform.com/to/cLTxtAsN Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martenabrahamsen/ Company: http://vercel.com/ CJ: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/ Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com — TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Speeding tickets vs. parking tickets 3:21 Visa IPO in the financial crisis 5:09 Going public has changed 6:45 Private market: 22–24 trillion 9:03 More or fewer public companies? 9:48 Sponsors — Brex | Aleph | RightRev 13:04 KPI dashboard on your phone 14:12 Revenue flux via Slack and Notion 15:37 RevRec tool: green, yellow, red 17:56 V0 is a job requirement 19:43 Speeding tickets vs. parking tickets 20:33 Sponsors — Rillet | EY | SpendHound 23:49 Very few one-way doors 25:02 Finance in hypergrowth 25:39 Three-scenario planning 27:00 Honest with the board 31:00 PLG + consumption at Vercel 33:32 What Marten checks every morning 34:03 Why RPO doesn't work here 35:36 Holiday usage is up 37:10 ICP shifted to solo developer 39:22 Capital allocation in a fast market 41:32 Growth compounds; margin can't 43:22 SaaS gross margins: spicy take 44:24 Cash-burning AI: 2026 vs. 2021 47:29 Are some hypergrowth cos destroying value? 50:00 Lightning round 50:11 Bank of Ireland mix-up 51:10 Don't punt problems forward 52:04 Finance software stack 52:38 Expensed an oven 53:12 Credits

  • June 4 · 37 min

    A CFO Explains Stock Exchanges

    In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ breaks down how stock exchanges became the operating system of modern capitalism. From ship captains raising voyage money, to the Dutch East India Company’s first tradable shares, to coffee house traders, the Buttonwood Agreement, market crashes, Robinhood, and GameStop, this is the story of how markets turned ownership into something liquid, global, and very, very human. — SPONSORS: SpendHound cuts your SaaS and AI spend by up to 30% using real pricing benchmarks across 10,000 vendors, so you always know what fair pricing looks like before your next renewal. Rated #1 on G2 in SaaS spend management, it's free forever for teams up to 1,000 employees. Sign up by June 12th and get $500 just for getting started. Go to https://www.spendhound.com/cj Brex is an intelligent finance platform with AI-powered agents that capture expenses automatically, enforce policy before the spend happens, and close your books in minutes instead of weeks. 35,000+ companies like OpenAI, Coinbase, Anthropic, and DoorDash already run on Brex. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at https://www.brex.com/metrics Aleph is a modern FP&A platform built for teams that want more than another planning tool. By connecting your ERP, CRM, and other systems into one trusted data layer with AI workflows, Aleph helps you move faster with real-time insights. Get a personalized demo at https://www.getaleph.com/run RightRev is an automated revenue recognition platform that lets your product team ship new pricing without asking finance for permission, and your sales team close deals without creating downstream chaos. Check out their free tool at calculator.rightrev.com It scores your rev rec process, shows what's exposing you to risk, and tells you exactly where to focus before it bites you in the rear end. Check it out at https://calculator.rightrev.com Rillet is an AI-native ERP built for modern finance teams that want to replace NetSuite and close faster. With revenue recognition, close management, multi-entity support, and native Stripe and Salesforce integrations, Rillet helps scaling companies run their finance stack in one place. Hundreds of teams, including Windsurf and Mercor, use Rillet to make the zero-day close real. Book a demo at https://www.rillet.com/cj EY has been part of Silicon Valley since it was just a valley, helping the most successful names in tech go from startup to exit to megacap. With teams across strategy, tax, audit, and transactions, EY helps you get your financials right early, long before your investors start asking for it. You build the next big thing, and EY will help you build it right. Learn more at https://www.ey.com/techstartups — LINKS: Mostly Talent: https://mostlymetrics.typeform.com/to/cLTxtAsN CJ: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/ Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com Slacker Stuff: https://www.slackerstuff.com/ Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/slackerstuff/ — RELATED EPISODES: A CFO Explains Secondaries https://youtu.be/pENvBuXhGuk A CFO Explains the Diamond Industry https://youtu.be/fPrho7hvykA A CFO Explains Marketplaces https://youtu.be/LpbH9GpBrSY — TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 The First IPO, and Why It Changed Everything 2:50 Coffee, Buttonwood Trees, and the First Insider Trading Scandal 6:31 The Railroads Built Your Month-End Close 10:17 Sponsors — SpendHound | Brex | Aleph 13:47 Buying Stocks on Credit, and How That Ended 18:13 Merrill Lynch Goes to the Suburbs, and the Paper Almost Wins 21:44 Sponsors — RightRev | Rillet | EY 24:47 NASDAQ, Pets.com, and the Most Expensive Sock Puppet in History 28:49 The Phone in Your Pocket Democratized Everything, For Better or Worse 33:03 The Stock Market Was Never Really About Stocks 36:47 Credits #RunTheNumbersPodcast #FinanceHistory #StockMarket #Investing #FinanceLeadership

  • June 1 · 49 min

    Zapier's CFO on Closing the Books in 5 Days, AI Hiring Bars, and M&A Discipline

    In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ sits down with Ryan Roccon, CFO of Zapier, to cover AI hiring standards, automating month-end close, measuring ROI on AI spend, and why determinism still beats agents most of the time. — SPONSORS: EY has been part of Silicon Valley since it was just a valley, helping the most successful names in tech go from startup to exit to megacap. With teams across strategy, tax, audit, and transactions, EY helps you get your financials right early, long before your investors start asking for it. You build the next big thing, and EY will help you build it right. Learn more at https://www.ey.com/techstartups SpendHound cuts your SaaS and AI spend by up to 30% using real pricing benchmarks across 10,000 vendors, so you always know what fair pricing looks like before your next renewal. Rated #1 on G2 in SaaS spend management, it's free forever for teams up to 1,000 employees. Sign up by June 12th and get $500 just for getting started. Go to https://www.spendhound.com/cj Brex is an intelligent finance platform with AI-powered agents that capture expenses automatically, enforce policy before the spend happens, and close your books in minutes instead of weeks. 35,000+ companies like OpenAI, Coinbase, Anthropic, and DoorDash already run on Brex. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at https://www.brex.com/metrics Aleph is a modern FP&A platform built for teams that want more than another planning tool. By connecting your ERP, CRM, and other systems into one trusted data layer with AI workflows, Aleph helps you move faster with real-time insights. Get a personalized demo at https://www.getaleph.com/run RightRev is an automated revenue recognition platform that lets your product team ship new pricing without asking finance for permission, and your sales team close deals without creating downstream chaos. Check out their free tool at calculator.rightrev.com It scores your rev rec process, shows what's exposing you to risk, and tells you exactly where to focus before it bites you in the rear end. Check it out at https://calculator.rightrev.com Rillet is an AI-native ERP built for modern finance teams that want to replace NetSuite and close faster. With revenue recognition, close management, multi-entity support, and native Stripe and Salesforce integrations, Rillet helps scaling companies run their finance stack in one place. Hundreds of teams, including Windsurf and Mercor, use Rillet to make the zero-day close real. Book a demo at https://www.rillet.com/cj — LINKS: Mostly Talent: https://mostlymetrics.typeform.com/to/cLTxtAsN Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanroccon/ Company: https://zapier.com/ CJ: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/ Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com — RELATED EPISODES: Ryan’s First Appearance https://youtu.be/VIZ_RzfV78I Chris Byington, Head of Data @ Superhuman https://youtu.be/ydH38JnWfww — TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Preview and intro 2:11 Ryan's scope at Zapier 3:17 Why the finance guy runs ecosystems 6:19 AI is a required hire competency 6:46 The four levels: unacceptable to transformative 8:48 How Zapier tests for it 11:50 Favorite interview question 13:06 Sponsors — EY | SpendHound | Brex 16:18 AI changes the hiring profile 17:07 Support becomes customer-facing engineering 18:44 Where AI beats deterministic Zaps 21:00 80-90% of builds are deterministic 22:41 Sponsors — Aleph | RightRev | Rillet 26:00 Month end close on Zaps 27:40 Time saved is a leading indicator 29:53 AI token costs: COGS or investment? 31:51 Performance issue or measurement issue? 33:41 Partner ARR: chasing the wrong thing 35:56 Build around what changes the decision 37:17 The initiative sizing coach 40:00 Escalate on magnitude, not certainty 41:55 The 9,000 integration story 44:02 M&A process and minimum model 46:19 Cash vs. stock: incentive alignment 48:06 CFO's role in M&A: show up early 49:18 Credits

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