Scaling Smart: Building Investor-Ready Finance Operations in a Global Fintech Market

For today’s fast-growing fintechs, global expansion isn’t just about revenue, it’s about operational readiness. As companies scale, CFOs face increasing pressure to deliver investor-grade financial operations: clean audits, faster closes, global compliance, and real-time visibility across entities and currencies.

In this joint session, leaders from Zone & Co, NetSuite, and Five V Capital will share real-world insights on how high-growth fintechs are building the operational infrastructure investors demand. We’ll explore how CFOs are evolving their roles, where ERP and automation make the biggest impact, and how strong financial operations influence funding, valuation, and long-term scalability.

Whether you're preparing for global expansion or raising your next round, this session will show how future-ready finance leaders build systems that scale — and attract capital.

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Join Zone at NetSuite's Inside the Suite event on September 16, 2025 in Brisbane!

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Transcript

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Tori Rudolph: So welcome, everybody that's just joined. I'm Tori Rudolph, head of Strategic Partnerships at FinTech Australia, and we are thrilled to present this webinar hosted by Zone & Co today. Before we start, I would like to acknowledge that FinTech Australia is presenting and recording this webinar on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. I'd also like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the various lands on which you all work and join from today, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people participating in this webinar and pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging.

And with that Zone & Co is one of our valued partners here at FinTech Australia and we're really excited for the session today, Scaling Smart: Building Investor Ready Finance Operations in a Global FinTech Market.

So with that, I will hand over to Chad, wondering the Chief Financial Officer at Zone & Co to introduce our panelists and lead today's session. Thank you, Chad.

Chad Wonderling: Thanks so much, Tori, and, and great to be here with everybody. Thank, thank you for joining us. And just as we get started, I would like to to introduce my fellow panelist, Annaliese Kloe, who's with, who's with NetSuite, and also Harriet Lambert with FiveV Capital.

Pleasure to thank you for joining us, and pleasure to be here with, with both of you. Thank you. Awesome. So, look folks, I, I think.

It's not that, that we are in a period of change. It is that, is that change all around us is accelerating in, in this day and age. And I think it, it is. The CFO sits at a very unique intersection of, of the change that is indeed accelerating, within, within the space today.

And, and I think I recently heard, maybe some of the folks out there have heard this, but it's I recently heard that the CFO is the new age, CEO, and that is the Chief Everything Officer. And so one phrase that I often use, or, or, or, or, or took to is, is if, if no one owns it, the CFO owns it.

Reason being is that, the CFO more so than any time in history is not the back office operator, but instead is the, is the strategic advisor and really the growth partner. And I think we've seen that, we've seen the role of the CFO expand, but we've also seen the expectations expand from of, of the CFO and what is expected of the CFO.

So I think at the core of the CFO duties is, are, are really, are really the basics of scalability, creating the environment for growth that permits data as well, that permits and promotes being really transaction ready. Okay. And creating the infrastructure finance for financial operations that are indeed investor ready. Okay. In a sense for those transactions.

So before we get into the content and as we deep deep dive right away into this content, which we're really looking forward to as we consider the, the evolution kind of, of, of finance within the FinTech space, first, I would like to ask one, , from your perspective as you consider kind of the, the, the context and the role of the CFO from your experience at, at NetSuite, kind of where are you seeing kind of the pressure points in finance leaders as we think about the role today and how that role has evolved to be more of the strategic advisor within your customer base at NetSuite?

How are we seeing that?

Annaliese Kloe: Yeah, I think, thanks Chad. I think it's, it's really the demand for real time data is becoming really important and getting insights from that data. So that's, so you need to have tools and infrastructure that is all in one place is real time. And is it really easy to access. So that is, that is probably the biggest thing.

The digital transformation is happening in a million ti million miles an hour now, and that what you said before, the rapid pace of change is just driving the need for those insights, being at the forefront where you don't have to go digging for them and have an army and an analyst to try and pull that information out of the system.

Chad Wonderling: Yeah, that's great.

Harriet, as we as, as you think about it from your seat, from really the investor seat, and as you and as you are evaluating investments, how much weight do you put on kind of the, the role that sort of the finance team plays in the business and their ability to, to deliver quick insights as you get in to do your due diligence?

Harriet Lambert: So I would say, we put, I mean, it is a lot of emphasis and naturally when you are going to look into investing in a business, the relationship that you form first is with the finance team because they're the people that can give you the answers the quickest. And they're the closest to a lot of the detail.

I'd say a couple of things around the changing role is as investors, we are now looking at different cuts of data. Traditionally, we'd be looking at potentially just your financial, you know, your P&L, balance sheet, cash flow. Now we are much more looking at the different types of data, like pulling in from different forms of the business and reconciling that as well with what the financials say. And so I think that that's becoming much more pertinent when we are looking at an investment.

And I would say that the CFO as well, to highlight your point, that the, the, the everything they're across everything. And now more than ever, I think about the investments that we have made and the CFOs are across absolutely everything.

Chad Wonderling: Yeah, it's, it's, that's a great point. And I think, you know, what I've seen in my experience is, is a bit of the, the. The CFO is the owner of the business model, which. Beyond just the finance and beyond just the data. The, the, the, the CFO is, is the owner of the business model in the sense that, to Harriet's point, and also marrying that with what Annaliese mentioned, is the data access to the data, but then being able to really pro use that data to provide insights relative to that business model.

And then you marry that up if you think about getting into an investment, Harriet, your team is as the CFO in the CFO seat, you have to really deeply understand when it comes to being investor ready, the investment thesis that that investor has. What is it? How are they going to drive value? What is, what is it from their perspective that is appealing to them and being able to marry the data, the insights, the business model and that investment thesis up. I think really it's, there's really only one role within the company that can do that. And that is, that is definitely the CFO.

So if we transition to the next slide and just, just consider this, you know, it is oftentimes as I've, as I've had other colleagues and just seen through experience. CFOs getting into their roles, building the investor ready infrastructure. And oftentimes what I refer to as you know, preparing for a transaction, you don't know when it's gonna happen, but you've gotta be ready in the event, in the event that it does is look what, what got you here definitely will not get you there.

So building and creating that infrastructure for scale is going to be really, really, really critical. And, and so, you know, from your perspective, Annaliese, going back to you is, as you think about. Creating scalability and allowing finance teams to, to really our role in finance and our role from a systems perspective.

What I also, what I often remind our teams of is to enable the business, to allow the business to do what they want to do, obviously within certain confines and points of control. But what are the common pain points you are seeing as, as companies out there and customers that you interact with on a daily basis work through kind of, and work towards their scale?

What are those pain points?

Annaliese Kloe: Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Chad. I think when you're, when you're scaling a business, you really need to think about the technology that is going to support you as you grow. So adding more people into the system to work within the processes and be able to do all the normal things like invoicing and getting visibility of what's going on. But then you also need tech that enables you to expand and whether that's locally or globally, and be ready at your fingertips in real time.

When you're scaling a business things move at a million miles an hour and you have to have technology that is. Accessible and available, which gives you that, those insights. I keep coming back to insights because that was probably one of the most important things that that really because my background while I'm at NetSuite now, I, I developed a software business for field service management. Scaled that and exited that business to Oracle and did that on the NetSuite technology platform.

So when you, when you really start and you've got a handful of people, and then your business starts growing at 80% year on year, or 100% year on year, the technology needs to support, support the business as it grows. So the pain points you see as you scale is that tech not supporting, moving from somewhere like Australia to to the US and all of the compliance issues associated that with that. And then obviously going into the UK as well.

And then, so that's just actually putting footprints in all of these countries. But then what, if you wanna see. Sell your, sell your products into different countries, maybe even in the Middle East or in Mexico, in all these other countries like we did.

You need to have infrastructure that supports that. And when you're scaling a business and you're doing it at pace. You do not have time to sit there and think, oh, I need a whole new ERP to be able to do this, you need a technology platform that is actually going to be foundationally strong, integrated and is real time and accessible.

When I say accessible, being able to just log in from the internet anywhere around the world and have the information at your fingertips. So they're probably the key things. And when you've got the data all in one place, you can then get investor ready insights and you can pull in the metric, pull out the metrics that you need for investors, and that creates a lot of confidence when you're talking to investors about your business.

Chad Wonderling: That's great. And, and Annaliese, just as a follow up to that, as you, as you refer to and speak, the, the kind of pacing and really what you're speaking to is you're speaking to the accountant, accounting and finance function, almost keeping pace with the business. What we often see as companies scale is the investment is, you know, really in one of two places within the business. It's, it's within, it's when it's within product or R&D and then it's within go-to market. Very and, and then trailing well behind is either G&A and finance.

How do you think about, and how do you advise finance leaders to ensure that that gap is tight and closed? Because if that widens too much, then finance, we're gonna be way behind. We're, we're gonna be struggling. How do you con, how do you advise kind of CFOs and finance leaders out there to pace it at such a proper level to where there is that proper investment relative to the business?

Annaliese Kloe: Yeah. I think, I think if you, if you have when you're scaling a business to exit, let's take that for example. You've got an end goal, which means you really should be across a lot of the exit metrics you need. So you roll that back through the finance team and what information you need to capture, how do you need to track whether it's the, the rigor of the sales or the spend or the recruitment, hiring or whatever.

You've just gotta be across that. So the earlier you invest in finance, and like you said, Chad, I think the finance, the finance guys get lumped with operations as well. So I would say in small business that your CFO will be a COO as well. So they'll, they'll be doing process system efficiency improvement and that's actually, that's very important and things, when you're scaling a business, the roles change really d dramatically. Like you'll, you'll go from needing generalists in your business that have to be, you know, putting their hands into everything to get things done to specialists in different areas.

What is, what is super important though, is to is to lean on technology to do the heavy lifting of you know, admin tasks and process tasks. For example we were using NetSuite. We were able to build in all of our our CRM flow, producing our software contracts straight from the opportunity record straight within to do a quote to a customer, which actually could be an that was also the invoice.

It gets paid from the customer and it's all in one system so that you don't, you are actually not going outside the tech to do anything. So from a finance point of view, you've got all of the information on your fingertips. So when you're trying to do, you know you know calculations, cost of customer acquisition, and you, you're doing all these, you know, ASP metrics and a whole heap of stuff. You've just got all the information where you need it to make the calls.

Chad Wonderling: Yeah, that's, that's great. Now, Harriet, as you, as you think about whether it's, it's an existing portfolio company. Or you are considering an investment and as you, as you consider kind of the scalability sort of the finance function and the business growth, you know, when, when you come across this kind of like operational debt, which could be defined as just like, you know, the, the accounting and finance function lagging behind the rest of the business.

Like how much impact. How much does that impact your confidence in a company and, and in and in and potential investments ability to kind of scale and continue to grow efficiently? Talk us through that.

Harriet Lambert: Yeah, sure. So I would say that it is more often the case they're not. We find that, as you've outlined, that the finance team is lagging behind the rest of the business.

So I would say it's not a new challenge that we'd face. It's not novel. It's quite common, in fact. And to your point around needing to supercharge the business, as an investor, we expect to come in and if you think that the business is flying before you receive investment. The anticipation that it will is it will go even faster post investment.

So that's definitely something then we weigh up when we are coming into a business, and one of the things, the first things we assess is the systems architecture. And is the business set up like org structure? Is it, is it all is it set up for this supercharge of growth? And I, I, I can think of a couple of examples actually where the system was right sized for the business at the current scale, but based on the plans from the rest of the management team and the global opportunity and things the, because it wasn't set up for success the minute you start trying to achieve these goals, you'll hit roadblocks.

And so one of the big things I would say is that whilst the system might be good for now and probably for a year ahead as an investor, we sort of ,take a five to seven year horizon around how we look at investment. And so we are wanting to make sure the system is set up for this, the seven year journey, not necessarily the one to two year scale up.

Chad Wonderling: Yeah, that's a, that's an interesting point. So take us back to you know. As you guys evaluate the architecture and kind of almost begin to do sort of your initial due diligence, talk us through what you look for.

One, what you're, what you're sort of looking for or what are the key signals of, okay. You know, this company has, for a lack of a better phrase, some pretty strong sort of, you know, entity level operating controls from a finance and accounting perspective. Talk us through that, kind of, that architecture that you guys evaluate at Five V and let us into that.

Harriet Lambert: Yeah, sure. So I guess the way that we are looking at information, we are gonna ask for multiple different cuts of the same thing. And so it's not necessarily a system that we see. It's more can a finance team and a business keep up with lots of questions.

And so we are gonna, yeah, as I said, we're gonna ask for, you know, revenue cut by all these different ways. We're gonna ask for customer lists, we're gonna ask for all of that sort of thing. And we are wanting consistency of information and also timeliness. And so if we can see that we are getting responses when they're expected to be there and we can also see that the, the data is matching up with the story is being told. And we can see these proof points, we can see that this, that, that there are controls there and the system is, is set up, the business is operating. And, and investor ready, I guess.

Chad Wonderling: Yeah, that's, that's great. Now I think as we think about being investor ready, I think what it really comes down to, if I could probably describe it and partially.

From my own experience and even to a degree of my own failures, is that it's, it's really all about speed. Okay? From speed to close, speed to insights, speed to data, and it's, and it's about kind of creating that, that infrastructure and, and, and, and that, and that framework. And in addition to really nailing the basics.

And I think particularly within, you know, the the world that we're in today, there's a little bit of, you know, when it, when it comes to, to AI, we wanna turn the doing by leverage, leveraging AI to do the doing into us being us, being really the, the, the reviewer. So I would say Annaliese to you as we think about speed and velocity and access to data, you know, which you've talked about in addition to insights, where are you seeing kind of the biggest gains from, from automation at scale as we think about kind of that need for speed?

Annaliese Kloe: When you think about all your processes and systems, automation should be the top of mind. Automation and standardization as much as you can to certainly in your systems and processes to be able to do things at volume.

The world starts to look really different once you, start growing at significant pace and if you don't automate and standardize what you do, you will try and hire an army of people to help you, which will cost too much, and then you'll just burn cash so you are better off really having a look at what does volume look, look like, and this is where your CFO can really help.

So do some forecast planning, top down, bottom up positioning, and really start to think about if we have scenario planning, once we get the run rate of X amount of sales or X amount of revenue, what does that look like to the business and how do we actually lean on the tools and the technology available to really automate as much as you can? Because once, once you, once you get posts and you start picking up speed, it's nearly too late. Because you just have this massive backlog, which costs you too much money to keep up with.

Chad Wonderling: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think kind of the, in order to kind of create the highway and the infrastructure for speed, I think it really comes down to nailing, nailing those basics upfront and such things and such examples as, from, from from cash, the AP the AP ledger, just nailing and having those basic things down from reconciliations to just like the basic framework. That will allow and promote. because if you can't get cash, right, if you can't get AP right, and those subledgers right, then, then then good luck with the, with with the other stuff. And granted, those things are boring. There's nothing glamorous about those things. But those things are really table stakes, particularly as we think about being, as we think about being investor, investor ready.

Now, Harriet, from your side is like, look. You know, no matter how great a a finance function is, you're not gonna give, you know, you're not necessarily gonna give increase the multiple that, that you, that you, that you would pay for an investment just because of their, their, their finance function.

But the what is kind of like the cleanliness and the infrastructure of a finance function within a business. What does that tell you about the company as a whole, and to what degree might that be appealing to you or give that company in some way a, a unique edge or even help speed up deals as you think about, you know, time to close?

Harriet Lambert: Yeah. So I think fundamentally when we are looking at investing in a business, we don't just go out and find a business. We've done a lot of research to get to that point. We've, we've looked at the quality of the market, we've looked at the players within that market.

We've looked at the, the products, the services, the position, all of that sort of thing before we ultimately come to the point where we'll approach a company. And so we are looking at all of that quality. And then when we are looking at who we want to partner with, it's all about building that trust.

And so if you can prove that you've got as to the point of, of these boring, you know, these reconciliations and these AP and all of that sort of thing, if you can prove that you are rock solid on that and you are quick to finish quick to complete, quick to close all of that it just goes towards building that trust.

We can trust that you are the partner we want to partner with within this industry to capture that growth. And so it's not, it's not as you said, necessarily gonna win the deal, but it all goes to trust.

Chad Wonderling: Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's a good one. And, and I think the other thing to remember, at least from the CFO seat is, is when it comes to being an investor ready and, and considering investments and capital from outside investors, it is it is really the CFO that is seen as the steward of that investment, and it really does come down to that trust. So, so that's a great point.

Now, even as we take it a step further beyond just scaling infrastructure and data, but, but Katie, as, as, as we, as we go to kind scaling globally, you know, as I referred kind of in the opening is like, look, finance has gone from the back office and now not just not to the, to the operating front office floor. But, but in the degree of course to, to, to the boardroom as a strategic advisor. And, and, and it's the infrastructure really what, what earns you that seat at that table by having those table stakes nailed with that, now I'll hand it over to, to Annaliese to kind of show how fintechs are using cloud native ERP to to centralize and, and, and to scale.

Annaliese Kloe: Yeah, thank you. The nice, nice slide here, which has some bullet points there, but I, I can talk through a little bit of my experience and touch on some of these points as, as we go through. So in 2018, I started a company, I split it from our other business, which is an incubator for some product tech for NetSuite and field service management solution, which is now NetSuite's FSM solution.

But that really started in 2018 and we, we started with a startup with a handful of people, so five people, and then really grew that over a four or five year period. Until we exited with Oracle NetSuite. So it's a, it's a really nice little use case. I can talk through some of the challenges and what was really important with investing in the right infrastructure and also that sort of automation piece we talked about before.

So. When we think about scaling globally, the infrastructure and the technology that you select is really important. And it's important based on what your overarching strategy is. We we always thought to scale globally, so if you are thinking about scaling globally or even, interstate, you know, you need technology that is very flexible, that can grow as you grow.

So we, we chose NetSuite because it was a it was a cloud-based, native, cloud-based infrastructure, and it has the ability to add multi-subsidiaries, multi-currencies, support sales and revenue throughout multiple countries throughout the world, so that is really important.

The other thing which was really important was the flexibility of the technology and also its ability to customize it where you want to. Now, I talked about standardization and trying to leverage the tech as it is, but you also need to still have technology that if you've got some secret sort of herds and spices, how you want your business to run. You need to be able to have that flexibility in the decision making and your process flows. So that was also really important. And then being able to have those real time insights.

So probably the first thing, the one system with global reach that was super important for us. So we started in Australia. We we grew our business over into the North America, so US and Canada had to set up operations in both those locations, be able to manage all of the finance compliance and tax compliance all in the one system.

So now you've gotta do multi-country reporting. You've got like I said, all the tax issues in the US based on state that you need to manage as well. So that was, that was a bit of a challenge as well. So, and then of course going to the uk you've got a lot of additional challenges there with how the technology needs to manage customer data and those sort of things.

So being able to have tech that globally can grow as you grow, but also the cost of the technology scales as you scale. So you only need to spend the money when you actually need to bring the people on. So that was, that was really, really important.

When the technology is not fragmented, when you've got an ERP solution and all of your software is on the one platform, you can have a leaner team and you can have those real time insights coming in because you're not transferring data or taking data out and putting it somewhere else to try and get those insights.

I talk a lot about insights because the insights when you're running at pace is what you need to focus on. You need to see what's working, what's not. And that's really super important. The, the metrics, Harriet already mentioned some of the metrics that are really important, and that is, that builds investor confidence.

So if you have all your ducks in a row, you can slice and dice to your data, your revenue where the sales are coming from, which markets are successful, which locations are successful which are not why they're not. I would also say investors and Harriet you can jump in, but investors also wanna know if you lose customers, who you lost them to when you lose them. Why? And so that capturing that data, if you, because that's probably no one does this well, but I can tell you the amount of times I was asked by investors, churn data, churn insights, percentages. It was just, it was crazy. So make sure you capture that if you're looking at scaling and exiting. So that was really important as well.

So they're, they're the sort of things. And then obviously having technology that to build in automated workflows to be able to not do the double touching and double entry and all of those things are really important.

Chad Wonderling: Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Thank you, Annaliese. That's awesome. It's kind of one of these things too, Annaliese, as you're talking about that before Harriet, we turn to you. It's kind of, you know, I always think about in terms of finances, like particularly in a growing company, it's like we should be solving. Next year's problem today, and that's about getting out ahead and thinking about you know, scalability, for example, or, or globalization if we're going to a new country and getting that infrastructure in place to, to solve next year's problem today in that direction.

Now, Katie, if, if we go forward to the next slide, Harriet, what I, what I would love is to walk this group through from the, from really the investor standpoint. How you see, how, how you see kind of the finance function, your teams getting ready for funding and growth. Tell us more, a bit about Five V, but also walk us through kind of the framework that you guys think about an evaluated company specifically to the finance function.

Harriet Lambert: Yeah, sure thing. If we go to the next slide. So I can give you a background quickly to Five V. So Five V is a Australasian mid-market private equity fund. We invest in businesses across Australia and New Zealand and right across the business life cycle, we, I said we're a private equity fund. We invest from venture capital, we've got a fund there. We've also got a growth capital and then a traditional later stage PE fund.

So yeah, as I said, we invest in businesses at all, in all areas of the, of the investor spectrum. We also are industry agnostic, so we really just like partnering with excellent management teams who've built excellent businesses and growing industries. So yeah, and, and ultimately have global ambitions.

So that's a little bit about Five V and I guess how we approach investing. I've touched on a lot of these points before but have I worked through it. So I wouldn't say that having a a poor finance function or you know, a not poor, but you know, perhaps less advanced than other parts of the business is a deal breaker by any sense. But it definitely does make an investment harder to make if there is deficiencies there.

So, as I touched on the first point definitely is around trust. We wanna be able to trust that the numbers that are being presented to us and the story that management is portraying to us is correct.

And so we are wanting to be able to get real, real time data to be able to prove that on time. We've mentioned time and speed, and so that's one thing around how fast the business is going, but then also how fast a deal can move. So deals are often really, really slow until they're not. And we get to the point of formal diligence starting and then they're fast by design. And so typically in an investor we are more equipped to move fast on this. This is my day-to-day job. And so it takes longer for the business to get information. And if this does take longer. The more exposure you have to risk and not necessarily business performance risk. I mean more things like tariffs or geopolitical things or, you know Five V as I said, we're investors. So we look often looking at other investment opportunities. And if we are waiting on information, a different opportunity might come up and we might be, you know, drawn towards that. So these are not often in your control.

And so you need. You need the, the systems to be able to provide the data in a timely manner. I'd also say, as I mentioned, we are gonna ask for different cuts of information in different ways. So say management are portraying to Annaliese's point earlier around customer churn, we've only lost two customers.

We are gonna ask for the data on that and we are gonna wanna marry that what a management team is telling us with the data and having this information. In a timely fashion just mitigates the deal risk materially. I don't know, Chad, maybe you can comment on that being on the other side of the table around the speed that we can move and, and, and the need for quick information.

Chad Wonderling: Yeah, I think, I think that there's an element of when you get into a process like this, there's an element of being able to, I'll say stay ahead, but definitely anticipate and almost trying to choreograph where that potential investor is going.

And so bottom line is you just have to try to be ready. And then I think it's one of those things too where, look, we all get thrown into, in, into these situations as, as finance professionals, we're maybe we're brand new, we've gotta do some cleaning. But at the same time, Harriet and her team, her team come into it.

And so there, there is kind of like the, the, the trust element or rather than trust, I would say like time can create doubt as well. So I think just being cognizant of that. But also too is, is, is is doing kind of like your homework through, whether it's learning through your own experiences or through the experience of others or situations like this, from learning from, from, from Harriet is. What can you expect and what can we expect and what should our teams expect from what Harriet and say her teams are going to ask? And that will allow us to be a bit more proactive or certainly less reactive to try to mitigate that time. That would create doubt or lessen trust.

Harriet Lambert: Yeah. The, it is a good point around trust and leads me to the next point around. So we're, as investment professionals we make absolutely no, we do not hide from the fact we are not operators. I cannot come in and operate your business, nor do I want to. I will leave that to you because that's what you are experts in and that's what we are backing.

And so I would say that another point around this sort of information and that sort of thing is, you are almost interviewing, you are, it is almost an interview for yourself. So we are not investing in the business, we're also investing in the team. And so while it's not, while, you know, having a strong finance function's not gonna be the driver of the investment, during a whole, the whole period, it really will be.

So we're we are evaluating during this time, is this actually the right team as well to deliver the growth and the scale up story that we're, we are backing so. It is a little bit of an interview process as well. And so having that in the back of your mind is important. And then the last thing is you are wanting to create a bit of a halo.

So, as I said, we've found the best business in a growing market with the best systems. We you know, potentially we might even be able to pay more for that because we've fallen in love with the business. And I think if we go to the next slide I cover this off here, so.

Selling a business is a function of a multiple and, and earnings. And so you are wanting to be able to, you know, get the highest, highest price for you at the time when an investor comes in. And so you are wanting to be able to maximize value. And a lot of this comes down to the why and and, and you know, you, you are saying we're gonna grow, but we need proof points.

So things like paying a forward multiple. So convincing a buyer myself that your next year's earnings is locked in. So you can prove with data that you've got a pipeline of opportunities you've won, you've got a win rate. And we can prove that. We can see that there. And then the next thing, so, you know, paying a forward multiple and then.

Potentially a higher forward multiple because you can prove that historical churn is lower or you, you've got a really long-term performance. You know, it's, it's only going from left to right in a chart. You've got really, really high retention ratios, all of those sorts of things. So there's lower risk of the revenues that you are, you are forecasting.

And then the last thing is around the cash flows as well, is that convincing us that there's actually lower level, not only is the revenue backed locked in, but the cash flows also gonna be high. You've, you've looked at, you know, we can analyze margin, we can analyze pricing, all of that. And so you can get to the end of end of it and say, Hey, you know, I know you said this, but we've proven up all of these points and so now you can pay a much higher price.

Chad Wonderling: That's, that's great. That's great. That's awesome. And it's, it's really all around the the, an element of predictability that you're speaking to Harriet that reduces some of the risk that you guys would take as as, as in as investors. But it, but it, but in order to be able to kind of articulate and really demonstrate that you've gotta be able to have the systems and the infrastructure to be able to to be able to kind of come, to kind of share that, to drive that and convince the investors of, so that's, that's great.

That's awesome. Folks that are here. I would, we would certainly welcome. On behalf of Harriet and Annaliese, any questions that, that you might have any, any, any, any thoughts? By all means, feel free to, to drop 'em. We, we would welcome those here over the next few minutes if there's any of those.

Harriet. I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put this one over. Well, let me first answer, let me first answer it because Chelsea, great question you asked. And then it would be awesome too if Harriet could engage. This is a great one, Chelsea, is how does the CFO engage with PE firms? I'm curious to, to hear what Harriet has to say, but here's what I would say is.

I would say first off is one, obviously know your business, but know what PE firms know what, who might be interested in your business. That's probably number one. And then I would say the other thing too is while aligning with your existing investors and owners, begin to strategically develop some sort of informal, maybe it's formal, relationships with, with potential or prospective investors with the idea that what you're doing is, I use the analogy of, of connecting dots. Okay. You're talking about the business. You're talking about performance. You have a conversation, six months later. Oh, hey, I said that we are gonna grow top line 15%. We actually slightly exceeded, we overperformed by 17% or we fell slightly short, but we grew margins by X percent. And you're beginning to kind of create those dots and with, with a number of investors, with very targeted ones that might be interested on targets for your business and and, and you're educating them about your business.

That's how I would say that. As you consider that, Harriet, I'll turn it over to you.

Harriet Lambert: Yeah, so it's a really, you've phrased it really well, so investments aren't made overnight, so it is so rare that we will find a great business, have a first meeting, and then three months later we've invested that just, that never happens.

It's so much more common that we've been following a great business for 1, 2, 3, I mean five years. Up to five years we've been following the progress of a business. And so and Chad, to your point, you know, hearing little tidbits about, oh, we're growing a little bit faster now, or, you know, we said we'd do this. We said we'd launch this new product. We'd said we'd go into this new market hearing, these little pieces of information along that time before you're ready for investing it gets us up the curve.

We can do research in the background, so it means that when you are ready to go, we'll already know the business. We won't have to prep as much in the background, and we can, we can we'll be prepared to invest quicker than others.

And it is about, it is just a, again, it builds that trust. So we're partnership investors we're investing alongside a management team. We are not gonna come in and, you know, take the whole business a hundred percent. And this is like most investors and so the more trust you can build in the team by having a longer term relationship, the, again, the more investor ready you'll be.

Chad Wonderling: Yeah, that's great. And I'd say probably the other thing, Chelsea too is you know, play that long game and is, and is by, by by, by being kind of like proactive as opposed to, oh my gosh, you know, our owner for family owned says that he wants to sell the business next week.

Then you're, then you're a bit back on your heels, play the long game, get out ahead of it. Identify those, those potential homes that might be good homes or, or, or, or investors. And then as Harriet said, begin to kind of develop that trust and you're really kind of earning your own credibility as well.

Annaliese Kloe: Yeah, I would also say that. You need to know. You need to have very good clarity of thought around your business, what you're doing, where you're going, why you wanna go there, and why you feel that they would be a potential good partner for you.

So sort of you gotta know your shed. If you're gonna have these conversations, don't just go in and half cop going, oh, I should do that. You gotta know your numbers, you gotta know everything straight up. I would say, and also very important is know what you want. Like, have very good clarity of thought and about, you know, where you're going, what you wanna do. Otherwise you'll be having these conversations that don't really go anywhere.

Chad Wonderling: Yeah. That's great. Did we have any other questions?

Annaliese Kloe: Yeah, there's a couple there, I think manage the transition of the business from acquisition to completion. Any words of advice, transition, acquisition. I just did that. Well, but it was with Oracle, so that was a journey. So after working through a million lawyers yeah, it's the, you know.

That is Harriet, you might wanna jump in from an investor standpoint, but it is, it is it is a big journey. There's, there's a lot of pressure on a lot of people to keep providing information and numbers and keep the business moving at pace of where you wanna go. So it is, it is a lot of work and it's, it is very challenging.

Harriet, what do you think?

Harriet Lambert: Yeah, so I'd say, I mean, under most sale agreements there are clauses where information needs to be provided between this period between signing and completion. And I would say, yeah, to your point, Annaliese, around just making sure that it keeps going the way it should be going.

Yeah, I don't, I mean, Five V take an approach where the minute we sign, we almost start helping the business then. So we, we wanna make sure that , there's no gap between the two. I mean, some of these time periods between signing and completion can get quite long depending on when, what regulation and what approvals you need and things like that.

So yeah, I would just say don't do anything dramatic and make sure that the business keeps going in the right direction.

Annaliese Kloe: Yeah. You gotta keep hitting your numbers, hitting numbers. You don't want, you do not want your revenue to drop off or yeah, your logo count to drop off at all.

Chad Wonderling: And and, and, and, and then there could be a, a few different directions this question was asked from, but if it is it, I would say this is, if it's res, if it's with respect to integrating a company that say you might acquire. Or that your company might acquire? I think one of the key critical factors as you think about the integration of say that acquisition or investment that you made is one is first very fundamentally is I really identify and define, and this is not just within finance, but across the entire executive team, the, the success criteria, and then work very cross-functionally to to really drive towards, towards that investment criteria. Because where I've seen integrations fail is maybe where that success criteria isn't very well done.

Moderator: Okay. Last one is, what reporting slash compliance standards do PE firms expect portfolio companies to adhere to?

Harriet Lambert: So there's never an expectation before we go in that the business will have like, you know, super high quality. You know, all, all i's dotted and t's crossed. But I would say going forward, we have an obligation to our investors that all of the, your finance, all of your reports and things will be audited by typically you know, a, a big four maybe big six, whatever, whatever number we're up to now audit firm. And so there's definitely a requirement for that. And then the other thing I would say around compliance standards, it definitely depends on the different businesses.

So Five V is a B Corp. And so we're the first. We used to be the only, now we are the first Australasian B Corp certified investment firm. And so what we mean by that is we as a firm are B Corp. We don't have to invest in only B Corp, but it means that we have an obligation for our investors to be reporting things like ESG emissions and all that sort of thing. And I would definitely say that that's going forward a much bigger focus.

And so it, it depends around. The different businesses and the different industries. There's no sort of a clear cut. You know, you must, you must follow this regulation in this, but I would say there's definitely expected to be a step up in compliance and reporting following taking investment.

Chad Wonderling: Yeah. And the other sort of probably point or a little kind of twist I would put on this is like. You know, if we, if we go back to, you know, Harriet and her team doing due diligence and even to the earlier question about, Hey, how, how do you kind of reach out and engage with PE firms is from, from our table and from our sort of from our seat as the CFO is like, we should be doing our own due diligence.

On our own potential investors as well. And I think Annaliese mentioned it by using the phrase, it's like, who do we wanna partner with? And I think as part of that sort of overall consideration and diligence of that potential future partnership, we should seek to understand what are the reporting requirements that certain PE firms that we're considering might require.

Because the reality is, is everyone's a little bit different. While there might be a number of commonalities, there might be various twists and various caveats that we should be aware of before we walk down the altar together.

Tori Rudolph: Fantastic. Well, we might wrap there just on time. If you're interested in learning more, you can head to the following websites. I know that you can also connect with our speakers on LinkedIn and continue the conversation there. I'd like to sincerely thank Zone & Co for hosting today's session. I know that I learned a lot and gained a lot of awesome insights.

Thank you, Chad, for driving that discussion and for sharing your insights. And lastly, thank you Annaliese and Harriet for sharing your learnings and your expertise.

Thank you everyone.