From Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to Energy Transformation: Connagh Hopkins
From Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to Energy Transformation: Connagh Hopkins
Connagh Hopkins is Head of Business Planning and Reporting at Western Power, one of Australia’s largest electricity network operators. Connagh shares her fascinating and unconventional journey from working on the global licensing for “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to navigating Australia’s energy transformation.
In this episode:
- Who Wants To be a Millionaire success (powered by Lotus123)
- The Consolidated 10 year plan at Western Power
- Scenario planning and Inflation challenges in utilities
- How we are stacked: 65 person finance team at Western Power
- The power and challenge of AI in finance
Connect with Connagh Hopkins: https://www.linkedin.com/in/connagh-hopkins-a9b3871/
Connagh Hopkins is Head of Business Planning and Reporting at Western Power, where she oversees the FP&A function for one of Australia’s largest electricity network operators. With more than two decades of experience across utilities, property development, not-for-profit, retail, fuel, and media sectors in both the UK and Australia, she’s known for her focus on commercial strategy, cross-functional collaboration, and building high-performance finance teams.
CFO Grammarly – behind their $1 billion in non-dilutive financing and how we do FP&A
CFO Grammarly – behind their $1 billion in non-dilutive financing and how we do FP&A
Matt Hudson became CFO of Grammarly – the popular writing assistant tool – after the company acquired Coda (a productivity tool)- of which he was a founding member. Now as CFO at Grammarly he is overseeing rapid change at the company which has over 40 million daily active users and $700m in revenue (and a 50 person finance team). Finance is helping pioneer a company vision of AI redefining every business application and workflow, “reinventing productivity”. To this end, in May 2025, Grammarly raised $1 billion in non-dilutive financing from General Catalyst to fund sales and marketing costs and strategic acquisitions. Since then, Grammarly acquired email startup Superhuman (July 2025). You sense more is coming.
In this episode
- Grammarly $1billion non-diluted growth investment explained
- Being a founding member of Coda (acquired by Grammarly)
- How my product expertise plugs into finance
- Joining YouTube when it was around $140million in revenue to $3billion by the time I left ( $36 billion today)
- Will CFOs see an explosion of costs because of AI
- FP&A set up at Grammarly and biggest KPIs
- Bonding over a love of Chili’s
Why Financial models are essential even at early stages of a company – Lauren Pearl
Why Financial models are essential even at early stages of a company – Lauren Pearl
Lauren Pearl is a Business Strategist and CFO Advisor who helps startup teams build data-driven businesses. The 3x founder with over 13 years of startup leadership experience now serves as CFO, advisor, and instructor for over 300 growing companies. She also runs the podcast “Growth Minded CFO” and offers a free course on financial modeling.
In this episode:
- Financial models at startups
- Sniffing out BS at startups
- Storytelling as a pitchdeck
- Getting startups to engage with finance
- Free financial modeling course
- Being a punk band roadie
- Functionality of Excel
Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenepearl/
Daily CFO newsletter: https://www.laurenpearlconsulting.com/newsletter
What Keeps Excel as the heart of business: Chandoo
What Keeps Excel as the heart of business: Chandoo
Today’s guest barely needs an introduction. Purna Duggirala (aka, “Chandoo”) is a celebrity in Excel circles. Since 2004, Chandoo has been regularly sharing everything he learns working with Excel training hundreds of finance teams, and had roles including as Data Lead, Remuneration Modeling & Analytics for the New Zealand government.
The 16-time Microsoft MVP runs Chandoo.org , which aims to “make you awesome in Excel and Power BI” getting 250,000 visitors per month from all over the world and his YouTube channel has 750,000 subscribers. His stated goal is “to make you awesome at Excel and Power BI”, and produces the go-to Excel resources from blog posts and videos to full online courses.
- My Excel Journey and Community building
- Skill gaps in FP&A Teams
- Power BI vs Excel vs Python
- Copilot – advantages and limits
- My favorite Excel function
Chandoo’s Free Data analyst course: https://chandoo.org/wp/free-data-analyst-course/
Connect with Chandoo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/purnaduggirala/