Tom So

As finance has started to take on more responsibility and influence within organizations, the technology enabling CFOs and finance teams has lagged. Most finance workflows, such as annual planning, quarterly actuals reporting and reconciliations, tend to be managed within disconnected spreadsheets with no automation or collaboration capabilities.

I’m talking about using in-product levers to grow, in place of or in conjunction with external marketing and sales channels. When people can try your product for free, they experience the value of your product before making the decision to pay. This turns more people into happy users, creating more opportunity for them to tell their friends, who in... See more

Investors advising early-stage teams should avoid pushing for growth ahead of product/market fit. As an industry, we all know that this ends in disaster, yet the pressure for premature growth is still all too common. Startups need time and space to find their fit and launch the right way.

The best story of my own snacking behaviors comes from my time at Stripe. I was focused on revamping the engineering organization’s approach to operating reliable software, and decided that it might also make sense to start an internal book club.