The CFO Playbook

How does a CFO help turn startup chaos into scale-up structure, translate numbers into action, and support growth across every part of the business?

In this episode of The CFO Playbook, David McClelland is joined by Brad Channer, CFO at UBIO, the automation company helping businesses connect systems that were never designed to work together.

Brad shares why the CFO role in a startup or scale-up is far broader than finance alone. At UBIO, that means working across fundraising, sales, legal, HR, operations, board reporting, and exit planning — often all at once. He describes the CFO as the “glue” in a business: the person who connects teams, brings clarity, and helps turn data into decisions.

A key theme in the conversation is Brad’s idea of “narrating the numbers.” He explains why finance leaders must do more than report figures — they need to communicate them in ways that founders, boards, and investors can understand and act on. For Brad, strong finance leadership combines technical accuracy with empathy, storytelling, and an understanding of what matters most to each audience.

Brad also reflects on his unconventional route into finance. Before becoming a CFO, he trained as an actor, worked in hospitality and street sales, launched startups, and learned fundraising and resilience through experience. That background still shapes how he leads today, particularly in communication, confidence, and understanding motivation.

The episode also explores fundraising, founder-CFO relationships, and the future of finance in an AI-driven world. Brad argues that early-stage fundraising is often about belief in the founder as much as the business, and that AI will increasingly automate junior finance work — making judgment, adaptability, and communication even more valuable.

Brad’s CFO Playbook principle:
Communicate clearly, know your objective, and make sure the numbers tell a story people can act on.

Useful Links 🔗

UBIO – https://ub.io/
Brad Channer – https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradchanner/

About The CFO Playbook
The CFO Playbook is hosted by David McClelland, exploring how world-class finance leaders use technology, set goals, plan, lead teams, and drive growth.

How does a CFO help a business stand out in a crowded market, execute a bold AI strategy, and lead the company through acquisition without losing focus?

In this episode of The CFO Playbook, David McClelland is joined by Tom DiDesidero, CFO at SmartRecruiters, the hiring platform focused on making recruitment easier and more effective for enterprise customers.

Tom explains why the most effective CFOs are deeply operational, not just financial stewards. He reflects on joining SmartRecruiters at a pivotal moment, partnering closely with CEO Rebecca Carr, and helping the company sharpen its strategy in an increasingly commoditised HR tech market. That meant narrowing the product focus, moving decisively on AI, and building belief across the organisation that the business could move faster than bigger competitors.

Tom shares how SmartRecruiters differentiated itself by simplifying its offering and investing in an AI-powered platform, including its agentic system, Winston. He discusses the importance of making bold decisions early, aligning teams around a clear direction, and turning strategy into execution through disciplined sequencing, milestones, and focus.

The conversation also explores what SAP saw in SmartRecruiters, and what it really takes to prepare a company for acquisition. Tom breaks down the finance leader’s role before, during, and after a deal: getting the data right, creating a credible story, managing confidentiality tightly, supporting teams through uncertainty, and adapting from a fast-moving independent company into a much larger, more matrixed organisation.

Tom also reflects on his wider career journey across software, e-commerce, payments, IPO environments, and transformation moments, and shares his view on AI in finance: use it to automate lower-value work, free up time, and help teams focus on better decisions and more valuable analysis.

Tom’s CFO Playbook principle: move quickly, be decisive, communicate clearly, and keep repeating the why until people understand their role in it.

Useful Links 🔗

SmartRecruiters - https://www.smartrecruiters.com

Tom Di Desidero - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasdidesidero/



About The CFO Playbook

The CFO Playbook is hosted by David McClelland, exploring how world-class finance leaders use technology, set goals, plan, lead teams, and drive growth.

Brought to you by Soldo.

How do you keep finance customer-centric—especially when you’re scaling fast, operating across regulated markets, and navigating crisis moments?

In this episode of The CFO Playbook, David McClelland is joined by Mohamed “Mo” Omaizat, CFO and Managing Director at Taxfix, the Berlin-based, AI-first tax platform helping customers file taxes more easily across multiple European markets.

Mo shares why customer-centricity isn’t a slogan - it’s a leadership system: calendar time with frontline teams, regular rituals, and tying financial models directly to customer behaviour (retention, frequency, cohort dynamics). He also explains how he approaches resource allocation across product, segment, and geographic growth using a customer-weighted ROI lens - and why regulation, at its core, is about trust.

Mo reflects on lessons from investment banking and private equity through to scaling playbooks at Rocket Internet, and the leadership demands of guiding teams through crisis - staying authentic, telling the truth, setting direction, and rebuilding step by step. He closes with a sharp view on AI’s opportunity in finance: automate low-value work (data ingestion, reconciliation), so teams can move up the stack into insight, scenario thinking, and better decisions.

Mo’s CFO Playbook principle: “If you touch it, stick with it—choose wisely, commit fully, and make the trade-offs explicit.”

Useful Links 🔗
Mohamed Omaizat - https://de.linkedin.com/in/mohamed-omaizat-3b951a11
Company - https://taxfix.com

About The CFO Playbook
The CFO Playbook is hosted by David McClelland, exploring how world-class finance leaders use technology, set goals, plan, lead teams, and drive growth.
Brought to you by Soldo.

How do you raise $100m fast and still keep finance discipline as you scale?

In this episode of The CFO Playbook, David McClelland is joined by John Glasgow, CFO and CEO at Campfire (a Silicon Valley scale-up building a modern ERP for growing companies). John shares what it really looks like to run both the vision and the purse strings, including how Campfire raised $100m across Series A and B in rapid succession, why investors sometimes want you to spend more, and how finance leaders can enable speed without becoming the “office of no.”

Listeners will hear John unpack how fundraising becomes easy when the business is genuinely great, what investors looked for at an inflection point, and how a steepening growth curve changes the CFO mindset from protecting cash to deploying it with disciplined intent. He also explains Campfire’s bet on AI for accounting, including building a specialised “large accounting model,” and why many companies cannot unlock AI value without rebuilding their core data foundation.

We also explore the realities of migrating off legacy ERP systems, how implementation can be redesigned to move faster, and what changes when a founder hires themselves out of role after role. John closes with a practical CFO playbook principle: start every tough finance conversation by aligning on the same goal, because you are on the same side of the table.

John’s CFO Playbook principle: “We want the same thing. If you hit your plan, I hit mine. Let’s solve this together.”

Useful Links 🔗
Guest website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnglasgow/
Company (Campfire): https://campfire.ai/

About The CFO Playbook

The CFO Playbook is hosted by David McClelland, exploring how world-class finance leaders use technology, set goals, plan, lead teams, and drive growth.
Brought to you by www.soldo.com

How do finance leaders move from reporting the past to shaping the future — and what will truly matter for CFOs in the year ahead?

In this special end-of-year episode of The CFO Playbook, host David McClelland is joined once again by Sacha Herman, Chief Financial Officer at Soldo, to reflect on the most powerful themes and insights shared by finance leaders throughout 2025. Drawing on conversations from across the season, David and Sacha revisit how the role of finance is evolving — from strategic partnership and collaboration, to technology adoption, talent, diversity, and innovation — and look ahead to what 2026 may hold.

Listeners will hear highlights from guests across industries who redefine what progressive finance really means today. From being a true co-pilot to the CEO, to breaking down silos across the organisation, the episode explores how finance teams are moving out of the rear-view mirror and into the driver’s seat of decision-making. Sacha reflects on the cultural conditions required for this shift and why collaboration — not just with the CEO, but across every function — is now central to finance leadership.

The conversation also dives deep into technology as a catalyst for change. Building on insights from leaders at Nestlé, IBM, and Accel, David and Sacha unpack how AI and data analytics are moving beyond hype into practical, embedded tools that enhance forecasting, accelerate close, and free finance teams from low-value work. Rather than shrinking teams, the focus is on improving data quality, insight, and impact, making finance a more attractive, strategic career for the next generation.

We also explore people and purpose: how diversity strengthens finance teams, why representation matters for building better products, and how finance can help organisations become more sustainable, innovative, and resilient. As the episode concludes, Sacha shares his predictions for the year ahead, not bold promises, but grounded expectations about how CFOs will begin to see real learning and value from AI-enabled finance tools in 2026.
This episode is both a look back at the defining conversations of 2025 and a forward-looking guide for finance leaders preparing for what comes next.