From an Investment Banker to a Start-up CFO

How I Got There…

It was a pretty normal day in Spring (around the end of April 2019) at work and I was reviewing a prospectus of the potential Corporate Bond Offering that our team was working on. We were going to send it to the financial regulator for approval.

Out of the blue, I got a call from a great HR professional, who I had met 2 years before. She told me about a job opportunity at a group of Start-up companies (related to Fintech & Crypto) where quite a forward-looking Serial Entrepreneur and a Crypto Enthusiast was the biggest Investor.

I was an Investment Banker at Galt & Taggart, the largest Investment Bank in Georgia and the 100% subsidiary of the LSE listed company – Bank of Georgia. It was my dream job and I considered myself extremely lucky to be and work among some of the smartest and brightest people in Georgia. I have frequently said that getting to Galt & Taggart gave me the same feeling as going through the hardest mission in a Video Game from childhood and seeing the displayed message – “Achievement Unlocked”.

Oh, the call…

So, I have politely told her that I was not planning on changing my job, but that I would still go to the introductory interview to find out what the position and the strategic development plans were.

Long story short, after lots of consideration, heartbeats and various advices from colleagues and friends, as the title of this article suggests, I accepted the offer and became a Start-up CFO in August of 2019.

Some Points One Should Consider Before Making Similar Decision…

One of the biggest challenges that you will encounter when you take a managerial position at a Start-up company (or maybe at any other kind of company) is the process of correctly delegating work to your team. You do not know much about their strengths and weaknesses, what they are passionate about, how to motivate them, etc. Thus, you have to spend quite some time at the beginning and create employee profiles in your mind so that to be able to easily pick them for various tasks when needed.

Probably, an enormous difference that you see right from the start at a Start-up company is the lack (or sometimes non-existence) of the corporate culture. I do not think anyone who has not worked for both types of organizations can understand this and how important good corporate culture is for the company to function well.

It is also quite hard to sacrifice interactions with the business clients that you frequently have as an Investment Banker for the new relationships with the limited audience of partners when you become a Start-up CFO. Additionally, you also pay less attention to the news of different industries and start to concentrate mostly on the industry in which your business operates. This new reality eventually diminishes your valuable up-to-date knowledge of various industries.

Another fact that you will most certainly face at a Start-up is the lack of policies and procedures. Even though there could be some in place, the vast majority must be initiated and implemented by you. This becomes quite a hard task given that there are lots of other important things that you should take care of which uses up much of your time.

Some Final Words

To sum up, despite the challenges mentioned above (and despite some that were not mentioned) I believe I made a great decision to take this challenging job and started to get different type of experience that I could not get as an Investment Banker. Of course, there are and will be lots of difficulties along the way but the potential benefits for your personal and career development that will become evident over the long-term, will most likely outweigh the costs associated with leaving the job that you considered to be the one that you loved and “fitted to” extremely well.

If you are interested in backgrounds (and more) of some of the best Start-up CFOs out there, you should have a look at this page https://www.toptal.com/finance/startup-cfo