Sruthi Lanka: Why Top Startups see FP&A as Central to Strategy

Engineer-turned-CFO Sruthi Lanka  was drawn  into finance after seeing her parents - themselves brilliant engineers - losing money in the markets. “I couldn't understand how people who could solve incredible math puzzles in their head could not figure out how to make a return in the markets. And so that's what led me down this path of navigating into finance.”

Today she is CFO at investing app, Public.com, the biggest competitor to Robinhood, famous for the “GameStop Frenzy which rattled markets in January 2021. 

 

In this episode Sruthi reveals

• Her vision for FP&A as central to business and executive leadership  
• Her experience of The GameStop Frenzy in late January 2021 which coincided with her joining Public.com, helping it explode from “a relatively young startup to having over a million members”
• The centrality of data or analytics partnering with finance and why some engineering and SQL is an important skill set for CFOs
• Her founding membership of FSuite in which StartupCFOs meet to discuss everything from the best tools to complex challenges they are facing 
• Why a regular monthly meeting with FP&A is “sacrosanct” - in order to optimize what is measured and show  progress against targets 
• The importance of FP&A doing the “hard work” of building “simple” financial models

Watch the full show on YouTube

Read the full transcript and blog

Show Links

FSuite (A thriving, invitation only community where CFOs turn to excel in their career and day-to-day) 

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