The Three Foundations of Strategic FP&A with Chithra Rajagopalan

In the age of AI, one more kind of variable that gets thrown into the mix is the people you hire. Are they orchestrators or are they just followers and task people? A lot of tasks that you're doing, the repetitive ones, AI can do a lot of it.

What are the questions finance leaders should be asking as they're adding AI and they're thinking about cybersecurity? So Chitra Rajagopalan is the Senior Vice President Finance at Obsidian Security with a track record of scaling high-growth SaaS companies Companies like ClickUp and People.ai, she brings deep expertise in building finance foundations, driving strategic FP&A, and harnessing the power of data.

I feel like perfect data is like Santa. You like the concept of it, but it doesn't exist.

It sounds great in theory, but good luck in reality.

Great FP&A, I always believe, is not just reporting. It's when you are able to influence a decision, influence a trajectory of where the strategy is going. Accounting is always going to give you exposure to what already happened. You still need a strong FP&A partner to know, okay, with that information, what am I going to do in the future?

What do you think FP&A's role is going to look like, the professional, in kind of 3 to 5 years?

I think there will be—

Welcome to another episode of FP&A Unlocked, where finance meets strategy. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, a.k.a. the FP&A Guy. Each week we bring you conversations and practical advice from thought leaders, industry experts, and practitioners who are reshaping the role of FP&A in today's business world. Together, we'll uncover the strategies and experiences that separate good FP&A from great FP&A. And this week we have someone who will help us do that. Really excited about— that's had a lot of great roles and experiences. So I want to welcome Chitra to the show. Welcome.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm super excited to be here. Thanks again for the opportunity.

Yeah, I'm really excited to have you. So, Chitra Rajagopalan is a finance leader. She currently works for Obsidian, and instead of me reading her background and you all having to listen to that or fast forward it, I'm gonna let her tell us a little bit about herself before we jump into our conversation.

Perfect. So, yeah, I'm gonna do a quick 10-second background about me and get into the fun stuff. So I joined Obsidian 3 years back. I was introduced to the company and the CEO by our lead investor, Greylock, and I've been with Greylock portfolio companies for the last couple of my gigs. So I obviously have high confidence in all the introductions they make for me. And yeah, and then it was, you know, when I spoke with Hassan, it was like the problem statement was very clear. It was something I got pretty hooked to as Hey, why are we not talking about this more? Like, it really makes sense. Like, I, for me as a finance leader, all this time, security was never like in the forefront, but somebody who's handling highly sensitive data, I'm like, it should be technically. This is not, this is a huge responsibility. So, it was kind of very much product excitement that got me more intrigued. And of course, amazing people. So, it's been a bliss working here for 3 years now. Prior to that was with similar roles with ClickUp, People.ai, and prior to that, I spent quite a bit of time as interim CFO services that we did in controllership, which is focused predominantly on SaaS companies that are venture-backed and going through a hypergrowth scale who clearly didn't have like a CFO internally, but did need finance leadership. Sure. And started my career with Big 4 where I got to do a very different kind of work. So yeah, that's a little bit about me.

Awesome. Thank you. And I can relate to the cybersecurity. I actually worked for DigiCert, if you've heard of them. And then I started my career with the Navy, so security was very high. I worked on a weapons division Navy base with all scientists and engineers that were working on that kind of stuff. And then I worked for American Express. Which was very strict on the security, because you can imagine with credit card data.

Absolutely. So, one of our core ICPs is financial services and banking, especially because of that, like, highly sensitive data, high volume of data, regulatory requirements, and, you know, like, the exposure that they have is very, very intense, right? So, it is definitely a core ICP of ours.

Not surprised at all, right? I mean, Government and banks are, and healthcare are probably 3 of the highest as far as if there's a breach, type of information they have.

Absolutely. And medical, the healthcare field, and telecom is also another one that we run into predominantly.

Not surprised at all. Makes total sense for that industry. Before we jump into that, we'll get a little bit more into kind of what you're doing today. This is a question I like to start every episode off with. I love seeing the kind of diversity of answers and the similarity. So when you think of great FP&A, what does it look like? How would you define it?

I mean, simply put, great FP&A, I always believe, is not just reporting. It's when you are able to influence a decision, influence a trajectory of where the strategy is going. I think that's what you want to define FP&A as. And I think there is a role or a phase in a company's growth where FP&A will play a lot more of a strategic role or like will have a lot more of a predominant contribution, right? Like I think having that strategic partnership in whatever department really brings the glue together for a company and whether it's insights or data and how do you utilize that to make decisions within a department or an org or holistically as a company. I think this is where that bridging the gap is required because accounting is always gonna give you exposure to what already happened. You still need a strong FP&A partner to know, okay, with that information, what am I gonna do in the future?

Makes a lot of sense. And you mentioned there's some stages where it's more strategic. I'm gonna guess you've probably seen that in early startups. It seems like that's where you really like to thrive and you enjoy that involvement as you're moving rapidly and trying to figure out what's next and how do we scale this.

Absolutely. And I think I mentioned to you this before, like being in startups was something that I was exposed to Very randomly, and I just literally, I was like excited about even the small little contribution that you make has a huge impact on the company. Even though I came from the accounting side of things, it really gave me a lot of perspective, a foundational perspective, and I wanted to pursue my career and pivot it a little bit more towards FP&A. It was kind of like an added ammunition and a tool that I had in my backpack. So especially in an early stage company, there is a lot more weightage in getting accounting and actuals in place. But eventually once you kind of start growing, that's where you start questioning things. Okay, how did this campaign that I did, what happened to that? Like, how am I measuring my leads? Did the sales get some benefit out of it? You start asking smaller questions and then it becomes a little bit more of a strategic discussion, right? So I love seeing that evolution. And being there, being able to witness that and kind of taking it to scale and hypergrowth is definitely rewarding.

I can relate to that. What you're talking about is when you're really kind of involved in those decisions. Yes, the accountant's accounting is important. It's good, but it's just a part of the picture. You get to see much more of the full picture in that FP&A role. And I'd love to see what's an example you could maybe share. You mentioned, you know, influencing decisions. So what's the time you've seen great FP&A in action? Maybe something you did or something you've seen someone who works in FP&A did.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So I think I've been fortunate enough to have worked in amazing companies where FP&A teams were a little bit more mature and seen a lot more decision-making that has happened with a set of people that are pretty much concentrated on certain problem areas. Example would be how, especially on a PLG situation, right? Each and every dollar that you're investing in, how does that translate back to top-line revenue? And this was the time where my, most of my career was very much focused on B2B. Suddenly there was a pivot to, okay, we're now gonna do PLG. So what does that even mean, right? So there was a huge learning opportunity that opened up and just understanding how your dollar investment, how does that create beats for you? How does the conversion happen? How do you change the mix to actually influence the top line, whether it's seasonality, whether it's different avenues or sources of marketing dollars that you invest in? Like, how do you kind of make that magic happen with the mix that you're investing in? That was very interesting to see. And obviously this was back in the day when the market wasn't this crazy.

All they wanted was growth at whatever cost, that whole phase.

That whole phase where money was free, I guess.

Yeah, where interest rates were literally pretty much zero.

Yeah, exactly. That phase, that magical unicorn land, once we were all rich.

That's a good term for it. Magical unicorn land. For some reason, economics always come back around. Yeah, you kind of go through those cycles. Dot-com, you know, 10 years ago. I think we're going to see it again with a lot of AI companies. No, tokens aren't free. No, AI isn't free.

Yes, exactly. And now we need to hire more people to manage AI. So it's like we all go through this phase, right? But yeah, I think now with the craziness in the market, where you want to invest quite a bit is in data. Data is your friend as an FP&A person. So really being able to read and understand, okay, what are the nuances you're you're working with, and how do you translate that into actually actionable insights, which kind of gives your executive team the right direction and the right path to go forward? So, I think that probably is how I would look at some of the successes that at least I've witnessed throughout my career.

It's funny how often it comes back to data. It really, you know, being able to analyze—

Trust me, you'll hear me talk about data like nonstop throughout this episode.

All right, we'll just title this episode Data, Data, Data, and More Data.

And Unicorn Magical Land.

There we go, we got it. Thank you for that. I hope my agency is listening. So prior to becoming head of finance, you, uh, you built out the FP&A team at ClickUp. So I know you and I talked a little bit about that before, and as anyone knows, I use ClickUp. In fact, my My notes for this episode are on one side of the screen in ClickUp.

Amazing, I love that.

So, kind of funny to tell. Most people don't know that, but yeah, it's up there. And so, I'd love to know, what was that adventure like? What was it like building it out? 'Cause obviously, they were pretty early. This was what, about 4 or 5 years ago now?

Yes, so this was very early, and we had just raised our $4 billion valuation round. It was around $400 million raise. So, the team was young and it was definitely, we were literally going through a hypergrowth phase and it was predominantly PLG as well. And B2B was not something we had explored. It was something we wanted to do at that time. And initially when we kind of got that influx of money and how we wanted to think about it, one thing I was realizing was that we didn't have, the challenge wasn't forecasting. The challenge was building the foundation. It wasn't about how, okay, we're thinking about, like, FP&A was about business strategy or investor-related topics. It wasn't foundational yet in how do we operationalize from a departmental investment standpoint, 2 different things. So there is, of course, FP&A where you kind of are forward-looking, which is for an outside audience. That's always going to be there, but How do you utilize this when it comes to, hey, what happens if I invest in this? What happens if I spend $100K in this particular strategy versus that one? How does it all translate back to top line? So, that was in there. So, I think initially there was a lot of relationship building that I had to invest in and working cross-functionally, understanding the nuances and understanding what kind of data is sitting where, and this was extremely critical. And I feel like sometimes we take this for granted because then FP&A just becomes something in silo, just working in the corner. I think that's what I was trying to avoid to an extent. So, there was a lot of education and awareness that me and my CFO at that time, we invested in quite a bit was partnering with the team. Like, let's sit down, let's go through what you have. Why are you hiring like 20 people? in this month. Probably don't need that many people.

Probably couldn't hire that many that month if you needed them.

We were hiring quite a bit at that time. You know, like, I think you kind of go through that phase of like, hey, I got all this money, let me just invest, invest, invest. Like, but what is the goal? What is it? What is, where are we headed? Let's work backwards from there, right? So, it's a very different way of thinking. So, there was a little bit of investment there where we had to bring the team together and say, like, hey, this is what we are holistically planning, and how does this all translate back to the departments? How does this— let me help you kind of see through that vision, right? So, I think that is probably where a lot of time was spent. And of course, while we were doing that, we were also investing in the data team because as we are kind of going through this hypergrowth phase, we also needed to figure out some of the answers, like how is this all tying together? And at that time, I think the fact that we invested in the Dara team helped out quite a bit because it gave us so much answers and it was extremely important for the company at that stage and scale. Of course, we had some tech debt that we had to clean up, but I think it was the right timing on that cleanup. It was much-needed investment. So that's what The initial phase looked like.

Yeah. So, I mean, as I'm hearing you, I, I hear a couple things. There's a lot of education, relationship building, a lot of trying to get everybody on the same page of how do we properly use this investment? Because I'm sure there are business leaders who see $400 million, I need people, great, I can hire 'em. And it's like, well, you can, is that the best use of the money? And that's where a broader discussion has to happen. And then, As we've said before, data. So building out that data foundation. I'm curious, I want to get your opinion on this. Where do you think it should sit in a company? Do you think the data team kind of sits under the CFO, under IT, under its own group? Do you have a preference, or is it more about the culture and how it's managed holistically? Kind of what's your take on—

Absolutely. I think it's a great, great question. I have asked this question a couple of times to myself as well. So at ClickUp and People.ai, it was sitting in the CFO org. And when I came on board at Obsidian, I had the data and systems as well. I don't particularly think there is a perfect formula for this. I think it, to your point, I think it's a ladder. It's a culture of data rather than where it's reporting to. And we recently hired a VP of data and IT. He is now handling that. So, once he came on board, I kind of like shed it, transferred that team back to him and said, hey, we want one source of truth, whether it's cross-functional, whether it's something executives are looking at, this is what we want. And you will be that person who is going to be owning it and building dashboards. So a lot of foundational cleanup and what good should look like, I was able to come in and establish that at Obsidian because I've seen the pain of not having it. So it It gave me a little bit of a perspective, but the scale at which we want to go at, I thought it made a lot more sense sitting with the VP of Data and IT kind of a role. But yeah, I don't think there is a real right answer for this. It's more of, you should have a culture of data rather than, regardless of where it reports to.

No, there isn't a right answer. Everybody has an opinion.

Yes.

But if there was a right answer, more people would be doing it the same way.

Exactly.

Hence why the conversation, right? Because we can all have, you know, different thoughts. And I definitely think I had someone once say on the show, you could tell if someone's a modern CFO by what they're doing with data, kind of implying, hey, the first thing I do is kind of want to own the data. And I'm like, I get, especially early-stage companies, I get that idea. I think any CFO today has to have a close relationship to data, but not necessarily own it.

Yes, it's honestly about what you do with it. Right? You can have as much data, but then if you don't do anything with it or you don't utilize it to actually make decisions and surface risk or call out and hold people accountable, it's pointless anyway.

Yeah, I would agree with you. You could have all the data in the world, but if you're not using it, it doesn't do you much good.

Yes.

Kind of stepping back to how you shared building out the team at ClickUp, what advice would you offer if we have someone listening in a similar situation? They're maybe at a hypergrowth company, they're trying to build out FP, Any key lessons learned or advice you would give them about the process?

Absolutely. And I think I've owned FP&A functions in the last 3 or 4 roles that I've been at. It's also like my own learning through experience and my own kind of formula that has worked up until very recently. I think I kind of look at it from a 3-point standpoint. perspective. One is definitely, I think we've talked about this quite a bit, but the data foundation. Like if you don't have good data, it's basically garbage in, garbage out. I think one of the reasons why I delayed building my FP&A team at Obsidian was I wanted to have a holistic view and a centralized location for data to be held. Because I feel like it would be a disservice to the FP&A team coming in until we have some of the foundation checked out. And right now it's working beautifully, right? So—

I wish a few of our companies felt that way. Oh wait, did I say that out loud?

So, I think, no, I mean, I also feel like every company's very nuanced as well. Like, they all kind of go through their own different formulas of what's priority. And I think having that data foundation, I feel like is a non-negotiable. It doesn't have to be perfect. I feel like perfect data is like Santa, like you like the concept of it, but it doesn't exist. So.

Well, it's kind of like the perfect relationship or marriage or whatever.

Perfect. It doesn't exist. Sounds great, right?

Yeah. It sounds great in theory, but good luck in reality.

Exactly. So I think, I think that's also dangerous, like waiting for perfect data and then I'm going to do this. stuff I need to do. I think that's also dangerous to think that way. So what is good enough and what is, as long as you know what the delta is and what assumptions you're making, I think we need to have something in place rather than doing nothing. So that is one aspect. The second one, I think very important for me is the partnership and business mindset. So somebody who has like really good soft skills to have Like hiring the right people basically, who are able to have relationship, build trust, and are intelligent to hold a conversation about the business, because that's how you earn your currency to be able to influence an executive. So, I think half the job is communication, in my opinion. Like, how do you translate some of the data that you have extracted and help your business partner in kind of like helping them move in the right direction. Like that is an art. It's something you need to like really invest in and relationships matter because you're also dealing with different personalities. So that understanding also comes with understanding of the business. You really need to know the ins and outs of the company, how the product works, how it's positioned in the market, what is the specific nuances of the vertical that you play at? What does the competition look like? I think you should be able to have an opinion and you should have an understanding of what are you selling at the end of the day? Are you convinced about what you're selling? And if you're not in that position, I think it'll be really hard for you to be a business partner, in my opinion. And of course, the third thing for me is prioritization and focus. The ability as a team to be able to do that is actually One of the fundamental, I would say like fundamental elements of this whole role, you have like 10,000 problems happening at the same time. You can't, you're not gonna solve everything. So what is that one or two important things that you're gonna solve, which is actually going to move the needle for the business and do that wholeheartedly, efficiently, and beautifully and execute it to your best? I think that's— That also requires a lot of discipline and a lot of cross-functional alignment that, yeah, this is what we are gonna solve as a company, right? So, I think these are the 3 things I would say is extremely important from a hypergrowth standpoint. I'm also curious what you think about this.

FP&A Guy here, and I'm really excited to tell you about an event I'm excited for. If you work in FP&A or enterprise planning, You're going to want to check out the EPM Summit this November in Vegas. What makes it different is that it brings together the entire enterprise planning ecosystem— software providers, implementation partners, analysts, and practitioners— for independent discussions, hands-on learning, and real conversations about where AI is taking enterprise planning. If you're evaluating platforms, planning a Or simply want to stay current, it's definitely worth a look. It's November 16th through 19th at the Bellagio in Vegas. Who doesn't want to hang out in Vegas? Go to epmsummit.com/register to learn more and register for this exciting event. That's epmsummit.com/register. Yeah, I mean, I, I think that's true in a lot of businesses, but definitely Data, because what happens is if you don't focus on data early, it can't guide your decisions. And 2, you're just going to end up with data and tech debt.

Mm-hmm.

So fix it early, because if you have twice as many customers, it's always harder to fix it. The bigger the company, the more people you have. So I'm totally with you. And if you establish it early while you're growing, the decision should be made with data. You're in a much better decision later on than getting to scale. And then trying to change the culture to be data. So I, I think data is definitely important. Relationships and communication. I mean, it's just, it's one of those key things FP&A people need. Does every single person in an FP&A organization need to be a great communicator? No. In a small company where there's a couple, you may need that. You know, as you scale more, you can have those people that aren't, but on a whole, if you don't communicate, you're just not getting things done. And I really like how you said helping the business make decisions. On the communication, I'll share this. I interviewed a guy who said the number one thing he hears when he's hiring, he runs a nationwide hiring firm for today, is the leaders are always saying, I want people that won't just drop the report on the business's lap. I need someone that can interpret it and help the business know what to do with it.

Yep.

I think so often we think our job is reporting. Our job isn't reporting. Our job is to take what's in the reporting and help the business make better decisions. So I really like that. And then the third one you said was prioritization, which you're right, FP&A has a million things. And the prime example I always give here is I worked for a business where about 3 or 4 times a year, the forecast would come due the same week I had to pay sales commissions. And I'd always get a call from my boss going, you're late with the forecast. And I always say, do you want me to pay people or do you want me to finish an arbitrary forecast that doesn't matter if it's today or tomorrow? Never once did they say, do the forecast. It was always, get it done as soon as you can, but pay the people first. And I mean, that should be a pretty easy example, but I know people would be like, well, I'll get the forecast because that's my boss. No, people being paid is the priority.

Absolutely. And I think in the age of AI, one more kind of variable that gets thrown into the mix is the people you hire. Are they the orchestrators or are they the Just followers and task people, right? Because a lot of tasks that you're doing, repetitive ones, like just adding things up and reporting and going through data, like AI can do a lot of it. You wanna hire people who are orchestrators and who are able to think, hey, this is how the function should work and these are the nuances that it has and can intelligently kind of map that out. Because then it's easy for them to, okay, this is how I want the agentic part to work out for me. This is why we are able to do a lot more with a lean team. So, I think that is something I've noticed that is changing in the landscape of FP&A.

So interesting. And I actually just shared this earlier today. It speaks exactly to what you're talking about. You know, one of the questions I ask in every episode, so I've been doing this for 2 years, FP&A a lot, where I ask this question, I always ask, what's the number one technical skill? When I started, 70, 80% of the time it was some combination of Excel spreadsheets, financial modeling. In the last 3 months, I'd say 60% of the answers, maybe a little less, but quite often I hear design thinking, system thinking, data, AI, which gets exactly to what you're talking about. If you're gonna orchestrate a workflow, you gotta be able to think about systems and design and data, not just running a process, but being able to map it and optimize it and figure out the right flow. So I think it's really interesting to watch the shift that's taking place. Not to say that Excel and modeling aren't important. I don't think anyone's going to hire somebody that doesn't know how to use a spreadsheet or build a model. But you also need to be able to be system thinking and design. So in some ways, it's almost like, well, now you're being asked to do even more.

Exactly. Because before you had your head of FP&A, then you had like 3 managers under them, and then you had analysts who reported to the managers. So the hierarchy and the org structure was entirely different where everybody had their own pieces of the puzzle. But right now, like what you demand out of the finance person is a lot more. And this is not just on the FP&A side. I see this on the accounting side as well, right? And I feel like COVID around that time was a reset for finance teams quite a bit.

Yeah.

That was like, it's been nonstop since. It's either the market or a bank run or a pandemic. So we have had a fun run.

Yeah, the, the rate of change over the last decade has been crazy between pandemic, war, technology, you know, and just everything. It's really feels like the only thing we can count on is change and it's going to continue to come more and more and faster and faster.

Exactly. And the back office is where you get the least amount of love, right?

Wait, not everybody loves their back office? I think the time I knew I would back office, I think you'll laugh at this and then maybe you have a similar one, is when we wanted to go to a Tableau conference because we were implementing it, or no, it was MicroStrategy. And I worked in the travel division for this company. So there were lots of free travel stuff flying around. They told us once enough people had signed up for the company that we were free. They let us go. We had to scrounge vouchers from our supplier people. So the hotel and the airfare was free. I think the entire amount of the week and a number of the dinners were covered. My boss covered a couple. I think my entire reimbursement was like $150 for a week conference. They didn't even let us stay in the hotel where the conference is at. We had to stay in the, the cheap one that was free. I'm like, okay, I know I'm back office.

There you go. Exactly, exactly. But, you know, not to throw anyone under the bus, but it's just how the market has been. It's the need from the business has been very different, and everybody's trying to get leaner in operational standpoint. And, you know, money is not cheap anymore, and how you kind of like get perceived in the market is also very different. How you're benchmarked is also different. So, collectively, as As a community, we're all seeing the pain.

No, I agree. I mean, there's definitely a lot of challenges these days. So, I want to shift gears a little bit. Tell us a little bit more about Obsidian Security. You've been there almost 3 years, what that experience has been like, right? Talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, absolutely. So, I think, I believe the most rewarding part of it was kind of like seeing the company grow, so rapidly and evolve and succeed every year. I think for the last, I don't know, 6 to 7 maybe quarters, we have exceeded our numbers. We have met all the goals. We have overachieved on a few of the metrics, and I'm definitely proud of that. We have a world-class team. The company has been— being in the company has been a great learning opportunity for me as well, like working with some of the most intelligent people. And cyber, as you can imagine, is pretty nuanced, and then you kind of, it takes a little bit of a different kind of flavor people in cybersecurity. So it's been a great university in a capsule format for me personally. And the other element is that, you know, like I'm not saying because I work here, but the exec team has been, it's been an amazing executive team and everyone's invested in what's important for the business and what does it take for us to succeed overall? And this makes a huge difference, like the culture and how the executive team thinks. It does trickle down to the rest of the company's culture. And I think we have set a good standard on how we want to go tackle a problem or whether it's a vision of the company or responding to a market. I think it's been a bliss working here and very grateful for, of course, our visionary leader, our CEO, Asan Imam. He's been phenomenally kind of like being our backbone. Like, I think he's done a fantastic job kind of spearheading the team in the right direction. So, it's been great. And where we play is very interesting as a product because think of, I mean, I can tell you from a finance example, right? You as a finance team, you have ERP, you have HRIS, you have a cloud-based FP&A system, you have Slack. These are kind of like the typical stack you work with, and it's communicating to each other at all times. Where security kind of stops is where you authenticate yourself, you log in. Like, who's protecting the data that's flowing between these 2 applications? That's where we play. So, think of anything third-party application, that's the security we protect overall.

As soon as it goes outside a system to another system, you're involved.

Exactly.

Is inside the system.

Exactly, and the scary part is now you put AI in the equation. So, the same API connection between 2 applications is being used by agents as well, who never had to be authenticated to enter in the first place. Now they're over-provisioned, has access to more data than you actually need, and are performing at a hyperscale and kind of like exposed to so much more. And has high exposure to a bad actor coming in and hacking through the surface. So this is the problem we solve, whether it's your SaaS supply chain issue or your agentic, it's actually all part of the same equation. And authentication or your, just because you have 2-factor authentication or an SSO, that's not gonna mean anything because no more hackers are no longer going to an identity and trying to hack that. They're actually within the, in between the application, that's where the most vulnerable sweet spot is for them. And a very recent example has been like the SalesLoft Salesforce attack or the Vercel attack that happened. There was another one that happened, which is Clue, which I believe is a go-to-market tool that got hacked. So, these all exposed customer data that lives inside your CRM.

That's why I have LifeLock. No, I don't have LifeLock. But I do have my credit frozen because I've had my data shared more than once, unfortunately. So I can relate to that. And that makes a lot of sense. You're going to attack the transit versus the home base, so to speak, when something's in transit.

Absolutely. And I think the landscape also has changed quite a bit. If you look at many, many decades of cyber investment has always been on the identity. Whether it's zero trust networks or the Oktas of the world, that's where most of the investment has been. Now, that's no longer interesting for people to go hack. So this is a new era, and we are kind of going through a phase where we don't have much security guardrails, and there is a top-down stress on having to adopt AI. And to go fast. So how do you do that and still be secure and safe about it? I think that's the equation people are trying to figure out today.

So speaking of that, what are the questions finance leaders should be asking as they're adding AI and they're thinking about cybersecurity? I mean, what are the questions they should be going through?

So I think, first of all, I think we should treat it same as purchasing another technology or an application, right? So, is it measurable? Is there a business outcome, or are you just following a hype? So, I think you should partner with your GRC team, your IT team, go through the process and vouch and ask some tough questions. Is my data protected? Am I going to get in trouble for connecting this to other things? I think you need to partner with your internal IT team to make sure that What you— you're taking your part of the responsibility, right? Because at the end of the day, there are definitely a lot of options, and to make it more useful, you have to give it provisions. You have to give it data. So how are you doing it in the most safe, secure way? And rather than having your internal team be a blocker for you, work with them to get the output you want. So, especially on the finance side, At any day, you have to go through sensitive data. Like, it's just part of the job. You have to be responsible along with that. So every single step of the way, ask yourself, like, is my data protected? If you have questions, ask. And if you need help, also ask. And now flip side, how are we using this to enhance productivity for us? I think obviously we are thinking of AI as an accelerator rather than— replacement of a judgment, right? So on that matter, there is still a lot of stuff we were manually doing. I think AI has become definitely a lifesaver for my teams because they do a lot of reporting, a lot of budget analysis, a lot of commentary around BVAs, a lot of research that they do. All of this has kind of like accelerated with AI, and finance is always known for being the late adopters of any technology. Like, we are— we love, like, if something's working, don't touch it, like, let it be. So in that way, I'm glad that my team has been a little bit more AI forward. And of course, we drink our own Kool-Aid and we feel a little bit more secure when we have Obsidian running in the background.

FP&A Guy here. I want to take a minute and share something I've been working on. I've spent several months adding new affiliate programs to my website. Website. Probably wondering why affiliate programs. Well, I can't train you on everything, but I can show you and give you trusted resources with exclusive FP&A Guy discounts in many cases. On my website, I have several of the top FP&A AI people in the world. I have the top certificate programs. I also have other programs like Excel, Power BI, I'm bringing you some of the top people that train in the world. There's Nicholas Boucher with exclusive discounts, David Fortin, adding Carl Seidman with exclusive discount, the top programs, FPAC, FMI, and more. So go ahead and check it out on my website, sign up. And if you have a question on what program is right for you, go ahead and message me. I'll get back to you, LinkedIn, or you can email me. So go to thefpnaguy.com and check out my trusted list of resources for you to upskill yourself. Yeah, no, it's always good to know the data is secure and agree with you. I mean, finance tends to be laggards when it comes to technology. There's many different reasons for that. We could probably spend a whole episode on just that. You're like, yes, we could, but let's not. So, you know, one other question I want to ask is obviously you've been working to, uh, think about how to use AI within your finance department and implementing it. And sometimes I like to call it kind of this generative AI craze. I just asked on LinkedIn the other day, I asked a question, you know, how are you doing with AI fatigue? You know, yes, exhausted, you know, sometimes. And about, you know, 70% of people were somewhere between sometimes and all the time. They're just feeling exhausted with the conversations. About 10% just said, give me more World Cup, please. And about 4% of people said, I just ignore AI altogether. Kind of where are you at with all that? And how do you manage the fact that it just feels like it's a constant cycle of change, of hype, of new things we have to learn? It's not just, oh, hey, AI came. It's first, now figure out how to prompt. Now go ahead and give it a lot of context. Now all of a sudden build workflows with it. It's like, You're continually being asked to learn new skills that you may or may not be, you know, have the aptitude or even the desire to learn. So I just hope to get a little of your thought there.

Yeah, yeah, I love this question. I think, remember the phase when we all went through where it was like, oh, I can white coat this. I think I'm gonna totally build Salesforce by myself. So I think I'm glad that we're out of that funk because Somewhere down the lane, we forgot the token cost existed and there's a cost to experimentation. So whether it's my team or team at the broader scale, I think it has to be outcome-driven. You could spend so much time sitting and experimenting things. Like, what is it actually doing for you? Like, let's start from there.

Yeah.

I'm sure you have better things to do rather than sitting and experimenting through models. I mean, maybe there are some people who want to do that, but I think it absolutely has to start from outcomes. What is the outcome you're trying to drive? How is this contributing to what you're trying to achieve through your role? And ultimately, how is this contributing to the organization? Yes, there is some experimentation you might have to do, but I don't think it should be part of the hype. It should be part of intentional decision-making around what tool to use that best suits you and your organization and the security team to make the best out of. So, in my team, at least, my guidance was that, hey, make a list of things that you're manually doing today, or you feel like, you know, I could outsource this, or I feel like I'm not getting much value out of it, but it's like, stuff I need to do. So let's start from there and see what happens. But from that, what happened is that they started creatively thinking about, hey, maybe there's this other thing that I could do. And then it kind of like bloomed into something beautiful, but it never was like, hey, here you go now, go have fun with it. That definitely was not the guidance we provided because at the end of the day, of course you can sit and wipe things, but is that really what you want to do with your time? And is it actually more cost efficient to do that rather than buying maybe a software that's much more cheaper? And that's kind of like the view that I had on the whole topic.

Makes sense. I get it. What does it say? So no token maxing leaderboards at your company?

I was still trying to forget that phase we went through, but it wasn't as bad, but it was also like, What is going on? Like, and it's like, okay, there is Claude running on one side, there's Codex running on the other side. It's like, okay, pick a lane. Like, what do you guys want to do? Like, why are you doing the same thing on 2 different platforms? So there was a little bit of like that shock. I'm pretty sure everybody went through that. And I feel like slowly it's settling down and we had to, right? Like we had to see the ugly side of everything before we kind of took a step back. But I feel like it, unless it's outcome-driven, you'll probably find yourself in questionable situations again because the optionality is that you, of course, you'll have so many models and so many options out there. You will have fatigue. Like, I'm not surprised people feel fatigue because you kind of don't have that much kind of time to sit and figure this thing out.

No, I agree. And I'm grateful we're past the hype. I still think we see a lot of the kind of, you know, the vibe coding thing. And as I've said, Nothing's wrong if it makes sense to ViCode a solution. I think it's more about workflow than applications. Who's gonna maintain them? I kind of compare it to Excel. Like, I like asking people, how many of you, when you inherit an Excel model, start over? Almost every hand goes up, right? There's a few people that don't. I mean, how many times did you start over when you got a model?

Every time. If I've inherited it, I'm pretty sure I redid it.

Now we're going to inherit somebody's vibe-coded tool that has no idea what the programming means, no training on maintenance or engineering, and expect them to use the same thing.

That is so true. And, and I, I underappreciated how much maintenance these things required, uh, because of course I, I also create a bunch of dashboards and I'm like, well, this thing forgot everything I told them yesterday, but Let me start over, I guess. So I think there was a little bit of, I mean, I wish, I wish, I mean, maybe this is a call to action for all the AI companies out there. Spend some time in training, spend some or something out that actually gives us some best practices and how you guys are doing it within your company. That will actually go a long way in also building a brand and a loyal customer profile.

Agree. Those that can really help understand best practice governance, how to build, not the ones that can just talk about it, but those you can really trust, whether it's companies, individuals, you know, they're going to have a bright future because we're all learning. And the reality is I'd much rather have an expert help me than figure out 100% by myself.

Exactly, exactly. And I think for finance is also a little different because you don't want hallucinated numbers, you get a little bit, you know, on the accounting side, lack of a better word, a little uptight about how you're thinking about numbers in general, right? Like you want the decimals and everything to kind of tie off. I get obsessed about it. I think that is hard for me to palate that, oh, all of this was AI generated. Like, are you sure about that's what we want to do? So I think baby steps, right? But My team's using it as much as they can in different areas, and, and we are also learning as we go.

Yeah, and I, I think that's the, the key is you need to be willing to learn. You need to be open. You need to experiment.

100%.

100%. You gotta find that right balance, and every company's gonna be a little different what they're comfortable with. That doesn't mean one's better than the other, as long as you're constantly, I think, challenging the thinking and trying to find ways to move forward and be more efficient. The examples I often give is I had someone ask me in a webinar, well, hey, could AI do this? I was teaching something in Excel. I'm like, yeah, AI could do that, but you can already do it with a deterministic solution that you can automate called Power Query. Why do you need AI to do it? There's a variable cost to it. You're not sure it's always going to be right. You know, I think it was just kind of that, oh, that's cool. So can I have AI do it? But why would you? You know, I think that balance is what people need to think about, because sometimes it is, I do it. It's cool. I want to invite, we all play with it in our own time. Sometimes—

Absolutely. Absolutely. The other danger that we noticed was with AI, some of the departments, same problem solving was happening by multiple people in different departments. So you're actually duplicating work. This was also like kind of like lack of time. I've heard this from multiple companies. and peers in the industry, like, oh, you already have this? Oh, I just spent like a week doing this. Oh, I also have it. Like, okay, somebody's already solving it. So, it's all over the place, right? So, which is why I was kind of thinking, going back to like really be clear on the outcomes you want to drive. Maybe somebody already has a solution that might be much more faster and easier than you think.

Yeah, probably a good way to track what are the projects you're working on, And track those across the company. You see, okay, these 5 people are working on basically the same thing. Get them in a room and figure out what makes sense before they all just spend a week building something and we waste 4 weeks of productivity. But they just were all tired of dealing with it. So they all said, oh, I can code this and away they went.

Exactly.

All right. So I want to go ahead and move into the FP&A section. This is where I ask some kind of standard questions and then we have a little bit of a get to know you or ask some personal questions for you. And then we'll, uh, we'll let you go here, but I've really been enjoying this. The first one I want to ask In your view, given kind of today's environment, what's the number one technical skill an FP&A professional needs? What's the number one they should master?

I think I would definitely say the orchestration mindset.

That's what I figured based on our earlier conversation.

Yes, exactly. And I think that encompasses a few things. I think we talked about it, right? Like how you think about business systems, how you think about strategy, how you think about execution. How you think about automation, how you think about adding resources. So, if you have that mindset, which is able to orchestrate that along with a business, you know, dynamic business acumen, I think that's the sweet spot.

And you mentioned business acumen. So, what's the number one soft skill we need? We kind of talked the technical. What do you think the number one soft skill is?

I think being able to navigate different kind of personalities. I think as you become a leader in FP&A, you're dealing with an executive team that, hey, been there, done that, different kinds of egos, different kinds of way of problem solving. It's very nuanced. So I think being able to take a step back and understand that, hey, everybody's coming from different kinds of background and have a little empathy in that process goes a long way.

You'll appreciate this when you mentioned a lot of different personalities. Do you know who Jack McCullough is? Have you ever heard of him?

Yeah, I think so.

So he's a, he's the CEO of CFO Leadership Council. He's written a couple of books. He's done a podcast.

Okay.

One of the books he wrote was called The Psychopath CEO.

Okay.

It's got like almost a survival guide for CFOs. And there was a study done and, you know, he kind of painted it a little bit, but basically they found someone at the C level likely to be a psychopath as somebody in prison. The percentage. So he joked, you're likely at the board meeting as you are at the prison to be sitting with a psychopath. So talking about learning different personalities, I always think of that, the executives, when he shared that on one of my podcasts. It's a fun, fun listen. Something, there's something for you to think about.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

And managing personalities. Not that I'm saying you have one, but it just kind of made me laugh.

Who knows? We are yet to work together.

You wrote a whole book about it. So if you need to know how to Thrive, you're a psychopath CEO. There you go. I wanna get your opinion. I mean, obviously everybody has a different thought on this. What do you think FP&A's role's gonna look like, the professional, in kind of 3 to 5 years? What do you kind of see changing or staying the same? What's your thoughts?

Yeah, I think there will be a shift. I think we're just on the verge of automation. I feel like, I mean, I'm really curious about this by, like, for myself personally as well. Like, where, what happens to the Anaplans, the Pigments of the world, right? Like, how do they play a role in all of the AI shift? There is a huge movement happening in the ERP world, right? Where they are adopting so much AI that they're able to become ERP+. So how does this all shift? shift in tooling and systems happen where what happens is that you will naturally shed people who are traditionally thinking. People won't be able to keep up and it'll be really hard for them to shift into the new mindset. So, which means you'll see a lot more FP&A folks or finance folks who are more dynamic, a lot more business mindset people and who are more strategic. than just doers. So I think that natural transition will happen where your doers are basically your systems at this point. So I'm really, really curious on how that all plays out, but I think that's kind of like where the world is headed. I don't see huge finance teams anymore. I don't think that's a thing. Eventually these things will get like narrowed and leaned down quite a bit. I can also see how the relationship between offshore teams and core teams sitting in the HQ, like how that is gonna play out would also be interesting. But yeah, these, these are some of the things I think about.

No, I appreciate that. I think that's interesting. And now I wanna move on to the section where we get to know a little bit more about you personally. So the first one, you're very involved in, I think it's Blossom Projects. Tell us about that, how you got involved, what it is. I know it's a not-for-profit if I remember. I think it's People in India that you're working, or other kind of countries with disadvantaged?

So Blossom Projects started like 12 years back. So this was set up by a wonderful lady from Bay Area. So she went to a Buddhist camp and she met this individual who was actually helping students graduate high school because they were part of a suppressed community in in a part of different parts of India where they had, they just needed help because they were not being supported by the community. That inspired her quite a bit. So she took on, she retired and, and we formed a board. So I'm the president of the board and, and we kind of rebranded, rebooted the whole organization. So what we do is give marginalized youth a second chance to life. Think of any underprivileged kids who didn't have a chance to education, not because of any other reason, just because they were born into a certain tag in the society. So that's what we are trying to help, and that's, we are just here to provide education for kids who actually deserve and were not given a chance. So we run a residential program. They come in, they stay with us for a good 9 and 9 to 10 months. They graduate high school, either they're given a path to higher education or they're given vocational training to actually start make a living. So, we kind of cut the chain of poverty that way. And, these are kids who are actually going to college for the first time in generations, right? So, yeah, it's a very humbling thing and I don't know who I would be without it.

Do you have a kind of favorite experience or something you could share? I imagine there's a lot with that. I mean, anytime you get to see people.

Yeah, one, I think one of my favorite absolutely is there was this young little kid. She was, she was actually a victim of sexual abuse and within her community. So she at night, like, ran to a police station, got the man arrested, came to us and She, you know, this was the first time she actually got some attention, right? And she was like, I just needed a safe place to stay. That's, that's all I needed. And we were able to provide that for her. I mean, she came to us very malnutritioned, traumatized, and she ended up graduating high school and ended up pursuing college. So the— this is just one of the stories, by the way, and we have many more. Like that. So most of the students who come to us are very much, you know, they, they're malnutrition, they're extremely traumatized. They don't have family members to support them, usually come from alcoholic family or have maybe raised by a single parent who's kind of like a, just a daily laborer. So very, you know, like extreme poverty, poverty of a situation and is what their background is, even just 3 meals a day is a life win for them, right? So, it really gives you perspective in life. You know, we talk about all of these things that are happening and we are kind of in a bubble. There are people still struggling out there to just make ends meet. And for them, AI is not even a thing, right?

Yeah, it reminds you what's important. You get caught up in the world of work, but at the end of the day, One of my favorite quotes is, service is the rent we pay for the world we live in.

Yes. I love that saying. And I think that's truly, truly remarkable way of thinking about life, because I think at the end of the day, we are all here to help each other out and let's do our part, even if it's a little bit.

Nobody asks how big our bank account is when at our funeral. So, all right. One more question here. And then we'll, uh, let you go. If you had to build a playlist, we're going to go a little direction here, prepping for the board meeting, what are you putting on it? What's on your playlist as you're prepping for that board meeting?

So I'm more of a podcast person. So I—

Oh, my podcast is on, right?

Yes. Your podcast is always on while I'm prepping for board meetings.

All right. Now that we've got the false stuff, what's really on there? What are your podcasts?

So one of, some of my favorite ones, of course, I love Andrew Huberman. I love Diary of a CEO. These are my 2 go-to that I always love. There's Mel Robbins that I really like. So I usually have a podcast that's running in the background, but usually when I'm prepping for board meetings, I have nothing happening. This is more when I have to do like mundane stuff that I know is more manual. I need to like click through numbers, you know, be on my Excel wizard mode. That's when I have something kind of like running in the background, or, you know, sometimes it's just few episodes of Friends or How I Met Your Mother, something brainless, and I don't have to think about it and it's just like background noise. Uh, yeah, that's, that's what I do.

Got it. All right. Gotta ask one more get to know you, 'cause I just, I saw this. I don't remember where I read it. I think it was in a magazine, uh, article that you did. I can't remember the name of it, but you've called yourself addicted to startup chaos. So not, I'm not worried at the startup part, but what do you love about chaos?

Great question. So I think I am a builder. I love taking nothing and making into something that's useful for myself and other people. I love the journey of that. And I think chaos was addictive because I noticed that sometimes when we make best decisions when we are at the moment, everything is on fire, just go get shit done. That's when you do some of your best work. And I've since then noticed that, you know, like it's very interesting how human mind works. You're procrastinating for the whole time and then suddenly everything is on fire and you're getting, you know, you're as productive as you might not even have thought of. So I think I did get addicted to that. Plus, you know, like I think startup is the best way to learn real life scenarios, and there's no university that can provide you this. And in a big company, I feel like, you know, I've been there, and it was more of, you're kind of like part of this small machinery, and you're kind of like contributing in a certain way, but you don't see the impact much, and it's just not working for me.

Yeah, you're a cog in a machine. I get it. Some people like want to be able to see the whole thing. I can say you learn a ton, Doing a startup, having built a business for the last 4 years, I can definitely relate to the, the learnings that take place, especially finance, a little different, but when you're the one who has to sell and do marketing and definitely have learned a lot, I would be better at FP&A. And I say this all the time, I'd be better tomorrow for the last 4 years, what I've learned running my own business.

Amazing.

Not that I'm saying I'm going back, but I would definitely have a different appreciation. So I, I can appreciate that. All right, last question. If someone wants to get in contact with you or learn more about Obsidian, what's the best way?

So if you want to contact me, you can always email me at my first name at obsidiansecurity.com, or you can shoot me a note at LinkedIn. Happy to answer any questions or provide any information I can. And if you want to learn more about Obsidian, we have a page where you can request a meeting or just shoot me an email or a message on LinkedIn.

All right, great. Well, thank you so much, Chethra. I really enjoyed the conversation. I appreciate you carving out some time for me. I know our audience will get value out of it as well. So, thanks for being on the show.

Absolutely. Thank you. This was amazing, and thank you for making it super conversational. I learned a lot as well. And yeah, thanks again for the opportunity.

That's it for today's episode of FP&A Unlocked. If you enjoy FP&A Unlocked, please take a moment to leave a 5-star rating and review. It's the best way to support the FP&A Guy and help more FP&A professionals discover the show. Remember, you can earn CPE credit for this episode by visiting earmarkcpe.com, downloading the app, and completing the quiz. If you need continuing education, credits for the FPAC certification, complete the quiz and reach out to me directly. Thanks for listening. I'm Paul Barnhurst, the FP&A Guy, and I'll see you next time.