Episode 208

Dan Newman

heads FP&A at RingCentral, a $2.5B public SaaS company (a platform for business phone, SMS, contact center, workforce engagement management, video collaboration, and messaging) , where he has overseen a  period of 10X growth. Discussing a career comprising consulting, being a financial analyst at Salesforce, private-equity-backed startups, Dan discusses building financial models towards a sale, navigating the shift from 30% growth to efficiency, and AI processes.

In this episode

• Building the FP&A team at SchoolMessenger and pivoting to a sale 

• Joining RingCentral at a $250m run rate and a six-person FP&A team towards $2.5billion

• Why revenue is rarely as simple as it looks 

• Business partnering in an age of efficiency in SaaS

Caroline McAuliffe is Senior Vice President, Head of Corporate Finance (FP&A and Procurement) at Fannie Mae. In its Q1 2026 results, the government-owned mortgage giant boasted 33 consecutive quarters of profitability and $3.7B in net income in the quarter—delivered by a team of 7,000 employees. In this episode Caroline reveals the FP&A mindset and processes behind this success.

• The career progression from audit to controllership, and FP&A
• Combining procurement and FP&A 
• Shifting from an annual budget cycle to a 2-year rolling forecast
• How AI is transforming repetitive low value work including AI “flash reports needed supporting 50 officers at Fannie Mae
• Secrets to being a CTA (Challenging Trusted Advisor) at Fannie Mae 

In the third in our series on finance business partnering we are joined by David Manela, who has had the role of CRO and CMO at Fiverr, Ideei, and Vivre. As managing partner and co-founder of Violet Growth he is in high-demand at some of the hottest scaling companies, designing a  growth operating system that “speaks the CFO’s language from day one”. It is tailored to companies spending more than $10m annually on marketing and sales - with digital as the main growth channel.
“Spending a dollar in marketing is no different than spending a dollar in infrastructure, on say a forklift that you might need for your warehouse. You need a return on a specific schedule, and you need a percentage of returns on that schedule. Don't start with a campaign, start with a financial goal.”

In this episode on the highlights and lowlights of the FP&A relationship with marketing, David talks:

• His background from audit to marketing and P&L responsibility at companies 
• Marketing as an “investment” not a “cost”
• The power of getting a marketing forecast  based on cohort behavior 
• Payback period and capital constraints at Fiverr
• Disconnected and expensive mistakes in business partnering 
• The power of AI in marketing and finance