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And now, onto the show.
From DataRails, this is FPA Today.
Welcome to FPA Today.
I'm your host, Glenn Hopper.
And today, we have the privilege of speaking with Lorena Zboulis, the Chief Financial Officer of Nord Security, a global leader in cybersecurity and privacy solutions, renowned for its flagship product, NordVPN.
Under Lorena's financial leadership, Nord Security has achieved significant milestones, including two $100 million financing rounds, most recent of which elevated the company's valuation to $3 billion.
Lorena's journey to this pivotal role is marked by extensive experience in investment banking and corporate development.
He served as Vice President at Molus & Company in London and New York, focusing on mergers and acquisitions across various industries.
Upon returning to Lithuania, he joined Surfshark, a rapidly scaling portfolio company of Nord Security, overseeing operational finance and corporate development activities, before being promoted to the CFO of the full Nord Security Group two years ago.
His strategic vision and financial acumen have been instrumental in Nord Security's growth and profitability.
Beyond his professional achievements, Lorena holds a bachelor's degree in management from the University of Warwick and has completed executive programs at the Wharton School and Said Business School at the University of Oxford.
His leadership continues to drive Nord Security's expansion and innovation in the cybersecurity sector.
Lorena, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up at Nord Security.
Yeah, so thanks a lot for the intro, Glenn.
I fairly extensively, I can just add a couple of points.
So I was born in Bred in Lithuania.
I moved to the UK to attend university.
And after that, I spent initially eight years of my career in investment banking in London and New York, learning the ropes of financial and strategic analytics and deal making.
After that, I decided to make a pivot in my career and move into more of a managerial operational role at a rapidly scaling startup.
And I also decided to change geographies and come back to my home country of Lithuania.
At the time, it was a fairly bold move.
And you know, my family and my close friends circle tried to talk me out of it.
But I felt a strong conviction of coming back home and joining what at the time was a vibrant but still much earlier stage startup, tech startup ecosystem.
So I joined Surfshark, which at the time was a company of around 20 or so people.
Now it has more than 400 employees.
It had only recently started commercializing its first product, Surfshark VPN.
And I really have the benefit of seeing a business scale very rapidly.
I was the first hire in an operational finance team.
My role comprised a fairly broad breadth of responsibilities, as is common for a startup at that stage.
I contributed to building out the digital payments infrastructure, given that it was a SaaS business.
So we needed to make sure that we have the right infrastructure to collect digital payments from our users, starting from credit cards going on to PayPal, you know, app stores, crypto.
I also started building out financial reporting, analytics, treasury capability.
And I did that role for a couple of years.
And after that, I was tasked with a fairly grand project of leading the funding round for the broader North Security portfolio.
So before that, North Security products were fairly decentralized.
And it was a bootstrap company.
And the founders of the company decided that it was right time to raise institutional capital to increase the credibility of the company on a global stage and help it accelerate further with its growth.
In order to do that, we needed to set up the right infrastructure so that we could attract external capital from tier one financial investors.
And I was tasked with leading that fundraise process for the full group.
It was a fairly tough and challenging process.
We realized that we're nowhere near ready to do that and do that quickly, because we needed to make sure that we have the right clean data in place that we have a fairly coherent equity story and business plan, the business wasn't used to thinking in those terms.
It was thinking about the next quarter, or maybe the next quarter after, and looking at cash inflows and ad flows, but not really thinking more coherently in terms of how to communicate that to a sophisticated set of investors.
So it took us just under a year to execute that funding round.
It was quite interesting because the company was already doing more than $100 million in revenue.
So it was a fairly substantial scale.
Conventionally, it would be called a seed round because we were doing it for the first time.
But it's an odd seed round if you're raising $100 million.
As a result of that, we went to a fairly broad range of investors.
We spoke to large -cap VC funds, growth equity funds, private equity funds that did minority rounds.
And over time, narrowed down the list to a few.
And ultimately, it turned out into a very successful project for the company and we raised $100 million at 1 .5 billion pre -money valuation, becoming the second unicorn out of our home country of Lithuania.
And following that process, the founders of the company entrusted me with the responsibility of being the group CFO.
So I was the first CFO of the whole group.
As I mentioned before, the specific separate family of products was being managed in a fairly decentralized way from an executive management standpoint.
And the finance function was the first one that was kind of combined and centralized at the group level.
And I have the pleasure of being entrusted with that responsibility.
So I've been in that role for for two years now.
Okay. And Matt, there's a lot to unpack there.
And the idea of raising a seed round when you're already doing over $100 million in revenue, I imagine valuation was tricky because I would think typical VC, they're looking for the hockey stick and they're concerned about valuation.
If they're coming in at 1 .5, what's the upside potential here?
But the fact that the company had been bootstrapped and was that financially successful at that point probably opened the doors to some bigger VC firms and everything was, was it challenging telling the Nord security story?
And I mean, as you were reaching out to the different investors, because I think, you know, a lot of people, if you're, I know, Nord has a pretty strong advertising budget.
I know I've heard a lot about about the VPNs and the company in general.
But how did, how were you received when you went out to raise funds?
Yeah, I think the first impression of the funds was very favorable because I think just the very nature of the fact that you can bootstrap the business to such scale is impressive in and of itself.
I think there was a slight sort of, you know, valuation discount resulting from the fact that, you know, we're a Lithuanian company.
It would have been probably quite different.
Had we been, you know, a company out of Silicon Valley or London or New York.
But I think we've, you know, we've dealt with that fairly favorably.
Also the fact that the cybersecurity vertical within which we're operating VPN to some investors that were not as aware of the space, it may have carried a slightly negative connotation because sort of the legacy reputation of VPNs before they became mainstream cybersecurity technologies that really
protected people's privacy and security online.
It had slightly, you know, negative connotation in terms of what those things were used for in terms of content access and sort of, you know, negative content access, etc.
But when those funds that went into further diligence and really understood the fundamentals of the business and really understood kind of the industry tailwinds benefiting the broader cybersecurity space and really built conviction around the management team and the culture of the company.
That's probably one of the bigger selling points that were also pretty evident from interacting with us.
You know, I think that helps build a strong conviction for the funds.
Yeah, just a fascinating story.
And I think, and we'll get a little more into that, I want to dive into the role there because as the first CFO for the company, you were doing all this fundraising before you had the CFO title.
And I guess coming in with a company already at that size, and then you take over the CFO or you're actually you're the first CFO two years ago, what were your main challenges then?
And what strategy did you deploy to kind of get, you know, first funding round, you went through another funding round increased the valuation.
Walk me through the process there when you took over as CFO.
I'd say the challenges were twofold.
So before we had a centralized finance function that was well invested in finance within the broader business or chart was perceived more of a sort of like compliance role compliance in terms of tax audits.
There was a little bit of FP &A at the broader group level, but it was in a, you know, done in a fairly basic setting, looking at cash in and cash out.
So my first challenge was to kind of bring finance to a strategic decision making table at the company.
And in order to do that, I had to really invest a lot into the finance infrastructure.
I had to make sure that we clean up a lot of this legacy finance debt and go through the very basics.
Look at our chart of accounts, look at our GL entries, make sure that we have the right reporting structure in terms of how we look at COGS, how we look at our sales and marketing expenses, how we look at our OPEX.
Then I had to make sure and, you know, get the buy -in from the company founders that we can upgrade our technical infrastructure to make the availability of data and of analytics in a more timely fashion.
So we've improved our ERP system and made it more scalable, made it more applicable to the needs of our very rapidly growing business.
We've invested into a financial reporting tool set that would allow us to see the performance of the broader company group and of the specific products in a fairly detailed way.
Look at their unit economics, look at their P &Ls and cash flows and whatnot.
We've implemented an expense management platform.
We've implemented a treasury management platform where we can see all our bank cash flows and monitor them and invest any additional proceeds.
We're in the process of putting together a procurative pay system, which ensures that we have, you know, appropriate cost management, that we have the right approvals in place in the areas where we spent, etc.
And as a result of that, we have a more comprehensive financial suite of data and of metrics that can be deployed to make strategic decisions for the company.
So that's kind of like the first big initiative.
The second big initiative was really to invest in building, you know, good relationships with the key stakeholders within the company.
This part is often underestimated and we tend to think of the technical skills as being the core in order for you to effectuate change within the company.
But in my case, the key stakeholders that I had to deal with from commercial folks to engineers to product development people, I needed to make sure that I have their buy -in.
Because in order to make some of the changes I talked about, it required those folks to really contribute to that.
And I guess the final thing was, given it was a new role and it required reorganizing the finance function as it was before.
I mentioned earlier that we had sort of some finance folks scattered throughout different products in order to combine them.
It required quite a lot of organizational change, which for some people was not comfortable because it required them to get out of the comfort zone.
But I think we have now a really well -functioning finance team of around 90 people spread across several departments.
So, FP &A, accounting, financial control, procurement, treasury and finance systems.
It's been a challenging but very rewarding professional experience from that perspective, particularly doing it for the first time at a company of such complexity.
It's interesting. It sounds like this was an organic move for you, but thinking about business partnering in recent years and how finance and accounting people getting out of the ivory tower of just the accounting function and being true partners across the business.
A million years ago when I started in finance, there was this idea that the finance people were somewhere between a narc and a referee that we were just airing everyone's dirty laundry and they didn't have any say in it.
It was a very adversarial relationship in my first finance role because we'd fight with them about the budget.
We'd fight with them about their KPIs and all that.
And this business partnering is so important.
Since you've built these relationships, I'm imagining obviously it's not just you, it's your team.
Tell me a little bit more about the business partnering there.
Yeah, I think you're referring to some good examples that you have to fight with the finance folks over budgets and over any sort of incremental expenditure, etc.
I think if you approach your role as a business partner and as a business enabler, it kind of changes the pendulum to your favor a little bit.
But I think in order to do that, you really need to be well equipped and well prepared and sort of make sure that you earn that respect from other stakeholders of the company and you earn the seat at the big boys table at the decision making table.
So I think, as I mentioned earlier, one of the first things that we try to do is to kind of clean up the finance debt, particularly when it comes to data, and make sure that we have a very clear picture of the union economics of the business of the key areas where we earn incremental profits and where we
lose money. And that also requires a very good understanding of the business per se.
And that's another thing that I really try to sort of ingrain within my team, particularly to the new joiners.
They can be very strong experts within their particular technical domain.
They can be very strong experts of IFRS accounting or US GAAP equivalent in the States.
But you really need to understand how a SaaS business works, how we sell our products, what are the go -to -market channels, what are our biggest cost areas?
Because as a result of that, you will be able to better interpret the data and have a more meaningful relationship with the folks within the organization that benefit from that data to make their own strategic decisions.
And that requires very strong buy -in from the finance team that requires also strong buy -in from the key stakeholders of the company, key senior management of the company.
Having said that, I think it's also important to note that from my perspective, I benefited from fairly good tailwinds within the organization as well.
We had raised our first institutional round of capital.
There were certain obligations from our new investors that we had to adhere to.
So, for example, we needed to report on our business performance on a monthly basis in a fairly comprehensive way.
We needed to start doing annual budgeting.
The first time that we did annual budgeting, it was a very painful and lengthy and inefficient process.
We're now doing it for the third time this year.
It's much quicker and much more smooth.
When we started looking at the business in a more long -term analytical way, we also made some fairly important strategic decisions.
And once we had that better visibility as a result of the help from the financial data and from the bigger effort and focus from the key management stakeholders of the organization, when we started doing longer -term strategic and financial and product roadmap planning, we saw that certain products in our
portfolio, which we have around 15 now, didn't make viable financial sense.
There was just not sufficient product market fit.
So, we had to make a fairly big decision to sunset a couple of products.
We are now in a much better position to be able to invest in our new product portfolio.
For example, most recently, we launched an E -Sim product in the telecommunications space, which will have a very nice cybersecurity feature set associated with that.
It requires a lot of investment in order to really gain market share.
We have very clear visibility of how much capital we can deploy and what sort of unit economics we can expect and what sort of impact it would have on the group level when it comes to our growth metrics, our margin, our business composition, and even look at relative public market valuation benchmarks
if, let's say, we wanted to IPO the company one day or if we wanted to attract further capital or if we wanted to make an exit, how would we be conked against some of our public market peers?
Yeah. I love hearing all that because everything that you're talking about is how you're transforming the idea.
We're moving away from it, but there's still an idea in business a lot of times that finance and accounting is a cost center.
When you talk about giving that level of insight, sort of the data -driven clarity, that's how we move from that.
It's no that we are a strategic partner that is helping you go from a hunch to a hypothesis that we can then move on.
The idea that giving that product level reporting and you mentioned data and analytics a lot there, and that's really key.
I'm wondering, you mentioned when you took over as or when the CFO role was first established that there was a little bit of light FP &A, and obviously you've expanded that kind of to the next level.
Tell me about the task you set for FP &A at Nord Security.
Having been in that startup world for so many years myself, thinking about that first year of the budget, especially at the scale where you guys were, it's so difficult when you don't have, maybe the chart of accounts wasn't set up right, maybe the departments and divisions and geographies were not clear,
so you're trying to do that first budget without having a good picture of run rate and trends by the areas you're trying to budget.
I'm throwing a lot at you there, but I'm picturing sort of FP &A, the approach, the reporting, and then converting that into budgeting and sort of the evolution of the office since you've taken over.
I think our FP &A team is really benefiting a lot from the very hard work that their colleagues in accounting and financial control are doing in terms of making sure that the data with which they work is sort of clean and clearly structured.
Now, FP &A is obviously more of a front -facing role when it comes to dealing with the key stakeholders within the company.
The way we structure our FP &A department is based on several specific focus areas.
We have a financial modeling team that works the key product owners when it comes to modeling out different scenarios for the business and modeling out one year when it comes to the budget or three years out when it comes to our more high -level strategic roadmap for the business.
We have a business partnership team that holds the relationship with key product heads and the key cost categories and really dives deep into them and is able to provide specific insights to the business.
For example, we have business partners that look after our calls, that look after our G &E expenses, and work with the cost owners for those respective categories.
Then we have a financial reporting team that is responsible for reporting our high -level results, diving deeper into specific product performance, unit economics comparing our performance versus our key competitors and the broader tech universe and things like that.
The final FP &A team is those folks that are responsible for making sure that our data is accurate and clean and readily available.
So the data team works with making sure that we have the right chart of accounts and general ledger entries.
The data team works to make sure that our operational and financial data that we use in the company to make financial decisions is as clean and accurate and is interpreted in the same way and just to elaborate on that point because it may not be very intuitive.
So we manage our business on a cash inflow basis or financial billing basis because we sell software of various duration from monthly plans to two -year plans.
Before we started implementing some controls around data reporting, there was a mismatch in terms of how different teams interpreted these inflows.
Some looked at gross billings, some looked at net billings post refunds, some interpreted refunds as and when they happen, some interpretive refunds as and when the initial purchase takes place.
So what the data team is doing is making sure that we have a very clear set of rules in terms of how that data is reported and we have a very clear set of steps within the technical infrastructure, how that data is created, distilled, and actually transformed into what is usable by the key stakeholders.
So that's the high -level overview of our FP &A team.
Now, obviously, there's still a number of challenges involved and it's not always smooth sailing.
But I think it's a very big value driver for the finance team and for the broader organization.
Yeah. And that kind of goes along with before the show we were talking and you said that your priority as CFO is putting the right ingredients in place to make the finance function more forward -looking, more automated.
Can you tell us a little bit more about how you see a forward -looking finance department and what you're doing in that direction?
Absolutely. So I think one of the key ingredients of making that finance function more forward -looking is to make sure that you have the right technological infrastructure that can help you do that.
And I touched upon that briefly at the beginning of the conversation in terms of various tools within our tech stack that we deploy at the moment and we continue adding to that.
The other element is to make sure that the financial data that we create is applicable, quick to digest, and relevant for the business to help drive strategic decisions.
And the third element is to make sure that we have the right financial infrastructure in place to help the business kind of maintain its rapid growth pace.
For example, as North Security, we're in a very innovative product development stage at the moment.
We have launched around three new products last year.
We're in the process of quickly launching a few additional products in early 2025.
So my team needs to be in a position where they can quickly adapt that and provide the right financial infrastructure for the key decision makers in terms of being able to really understand what are the growth drivers of those new verticals, what are its unit economics, how much capital we can deploy
at the global business level, and also how that impacts the broader group performance and metrics.
So I'd say it's kind of like a symbiosis of these factors.
How do you evaluate the success?
I mean, when you're looking at, you have your map of everything you want to do across your different departments in your organization and you've got your KPIs for them, but what do you see as the differences from when you took over FP &A to where they are today and sort of the impact and the kinds of reporting
that you're doing now versus early on now that you've kind of evolved and built out your team?
Yeah, absolutely. So that's the capability of the FP &A team when it was established two years at the group level and what it is today has really evolved.
So initially, we started with very basics of being able to report the performance of the business at a fairly high level.
At the moment, we're able to showcase the performance of the business in a very detailed product level way.
So I guess the impact that that creates to the key decision makers and shareholders of the company and then product heads, it's quite profound because they can use that data to make strategic decisions that can drive their business.
We talked about the finance department in general, but I think you also, and how interesting it was to be raising at already doing over 100 million in revenue, but another interesting thing about Nord Security is at the size where the company is today, it's still founder -led.
So I want to touch on that a little bit because typically, the founders maybe, they come in, they bootstrap, but they get it to a point and PE comes in or whatever, and there's shifts and you have a different management team in place, but for Nord Security to have grown to this $3 billion valuation,
still founder -led, you're the first CFO there.
Tell me a little bit about the organization in working with the founders who've been there from the whiteboard blue sky days to where it is now.
Yeah, absolutely. So from my perspective, it's my first CFO role in my career, but when I compare the experience with my peers who work in a different organizational setting and where there's an executive, professional executive management in place, I'd say that setup and the experience is very different.
I have great privilege of working with the two founders of the company who have this unconventional organizational setup because they hold the co -CEO title and they both manage the business on a daily basis.
They have a very complementary skill set in terms of their background.
One is more technical, the other is more go -to -market oriented.
They have a complementary personality.
They even have a complementary daytime routine.
One is more of an early riser, the other goes to bed quite late.
So it's like this around -the -clock operation.
But I think the benefit of working with founders is that first of all, they know the business inside out.
They've been here from the very start.
They've hired all the initial couple of hundred of people.
Now we have 2 ,000 at Nord Security.
So at some point, they all obviously shifted away from that responsibility, but they've hired all the key management roles to match the real cultural requirements of Nord Security.
I would say they're also much less risk averse than those folks that would have been hired from the outside to leave the business or that would have a higher accountability to a more complex shareholder ecosystem.
I think the founders of Nord Security are also very keen to empower me with the freedom to make decisions and to drive the growth of the finance function.
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Okay, so this is maybe primarily for our US audience.
I want to talk a little bit about Lithuania because certainly everyone in the EU knows what's going on there.
But before we talk about Lithuania kind of as this is this tech hub that it's become in recent years.
One of the things you said was that coming back to Lithuania was a pivotal part of your career.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Yeah, absolutely. Lithuania is home.
First of all, it was a pivotal point in my career, more from a personal standpoint.
But I think from a professional standpoint, the Lithuanian tech ecosystem has developed a lot over the last 10 years.
We now have three tech unicorns.
We have a number of companies that are very successful and that have built global businesses.
And there's a couple of reasons for that.
First of all, there's a strong entrepreneurial mentality among the Lithuanian population.
Even during the 20th century when for a large part of that period we were under the Soviet occupation, Lithuanians stood out as having that high entrepreneurial spirit.
They would hustle and try to make better life to the extent possible within the communist economic regime.
Lithuania has a strong scientific talent coming out of the university.
The local market is quite small, which in and of itself is quite attractive because when you start building a business, you need to start selling abroad and thinking internationally from day one.
Because the purchasing power of the local market of under 3 million people is just not sufficient to really scale the business.
North security is a case in point where a very geographically diversified business, half of our revenue is coming from North America.
And we started doing that from day one when the business was founded 10 years ago.
There's a very strong knowledge sharing ecosystem within the broader tech community in Lithuania, which the community itself is not that big.
And sharing that institutional knowledge is very helpful.
So for example, when we're going through the funding rounds that we did, there's some very niche practical knowledge that you can gain from that experience around contract negotiations, around who the appropriate investors would be for your business and how to have access to them.
And we were very keen to share that knowledge.
So I think from that perspective, the country is facing very, very strong tailwinds.
I was fortunate to actually join the local ecosystem at the time when it was going through a very rapid sort of scaling and progression.
And I think there's a long way to go still.
And probably the final point I'd like to make from that perspective is that there's the Lithuanian diaspora from abroad is coming back more and more because the vibrant tech ecosystem is really offering great employment opportunities in areas where you can make an impact and in areas where you can work
on a local product and grow it to a global scale.
And that's actually at North Security, probably one of the bigger motivational factors for the vast majority of employees, because they're working on building leading cybersecurity products that are particularly within the core segments of Nord around personal security and privacy.
They're building products that are leading in the world in terms of revenue, in terms of user account, in terms of brand awareness, and that's a very strong motivational factor.
And it sounds very similar to the sort of evolution of Israel a few years ago as a tech hub.
And you mentioned early on when you were talking about the fundraising, that you had to take a bit of a valuation discount because you weren't in London or New York or Silicon Valley or whatever.
Do you see, I mean, with three unicorns already in Lithuania, I mean, do you see that the sort of global acceptance and the building and sort of respect of the country and understanding, do you see that changing and evolving?
Yeah, absolutely. I see it firsthand.
So I spend a lot of time talking to investment banks, talking with the global investor community, just to make sure that our name is out there.
And we have optionality if we want to do any subsequent capital raises or if we wanted to do any sort of corporate development activities like grow in organically through M &A.
And the perception of Lithuania is really strong from that perspective as a result of the legwork that companies like Nord and a bunch of others have done.
Israel is obviously much more advanced in terms of the tech innovation and in terms of the funding capability from that perspective.
But I think the sort of the camaraderie and the sense of community, I can draw a lot of parallels to the example that you gave.
In the US, there is a significant shortage of new CPAs, new accountants coming in into the industry.
Finance historically, you just keep getting saddled with this whole idea that you're a cost center and that you're not providing value, that you're just backward looking and all that.
But I'm wondering, because you're in this ecosystem with the other companies, how finance is kind of viewed there.
I think it's more of a supply and demand kind of thing because the more global businesses you have in the local ecosystem that are complex in terms of the product suite, in terms of the pricing, go -to -market and geos, the more of an opportunity you can have to deploy FP &A or finance more broadly to
showcase strong capability and to deliver good value to the business.
So I think the tech ecosystem and its development probably has a strong contribution to that because probably, Nord Security is a good case in point where you can have FP &A and finance function more general at a strong incremental value.
And I think there's more and more companies within the regional ecosystem that are of that capability where you can make finance more of a strategic rather than a back office function.
Well said. As we're going through this conversation, really, it's just amazing to me, this being your first CFO role and your background and everything that you've had to sort of figure out and put in place there.
And I understand that before you took the CFO role, there was certainly a finance function there, but for you to take it to go from that first funding round to the next funding round and now a $3 billion valuation, that's a high of stakes role for your first CFO.
And when I talk to all of our guests, I'm always interested.
And a lot of times for maybe an FP &A analyst or an FP &A manager, I'll ask them what's top of mind for their career at the moment, what they're trying to learn or master.
And I think it's, I always like to ask CFOs the same question because I think for people who are aspiring to the role, everything they're doing is to get to the role.
But with everything that you have going on, I know it's not, oh, I've reached the mountain top.
Now I can just coast on my laurels.
So I'm wondering, what's top of mind for you career wise at the moment?
And is there anything new that you're trying to learn or master now that you are a couple of years into the CFO role?
It's a great question.
I think one of the things I try to spend more time on is outside the realm of finance within my organization and focusing more on the more technical side of things, particularly products and engineering and really trying to better grasp the core drivers of the business, not only from a commercial standpoint,
but from the technical and engineering standpoint.
Because I think in order to be a well -rounded CFO or C -level executive, more broadly, you need to have a very strong grasp of understanding of what's really driving the business.
And in a tech business, technology is a very fundamental part of that.
So I'm personally, to answer your question, I'm spending more time on the product front.
I think organizationally, we're now in a position where we can also engage in interesting corporate development activity.
We have the balance sheets capacity and investor funding to undertake M &A.
So I'm spending more time on corporate development initiatives as well.
It's interesting when you talk about learning the other areas of the business.
And I think about this just across finance in general, you have to have obviously that serious domain expertise for all the finance and accounting and everything you know there.
But I feel like years ago, it could be...
And maybe there are still companies that still have this mentality of, I am the domain expert in finance and accounting.
It doesn't matter what the widgets are.
I'm doing the reporting.
But to really add that value, you have to broaden your knowledge.
You have to know the business you're in.
Because if you're just reporting them as numbers, it's hard to dig deeper and unearth the value.
And whether it's, oh, I'm the CFO now and I have to evaluate our finance tech stack.
And so I have to have sort of some IT level of skills and understanding to know what software we're using to...
I need to understand the products and the engineering behind them so I can understand the R &D that goes into it and the margins on each product and everything.
But that's where we're going to continue to add value.
And it's kind of an expansion of the business partnering, I think, is just the global understanding of the business.
Yeah, absolutely. And look, it's not easy because the agenda of your daytime job is already full.
So you have to make that additional effort to invest in creating the right environment so you can get that knowledge and inform the right relationships with the appropriate stakeholders who can support you on that endeavor.
But I absolutely agree with you.
I think you... in not only in finance, but in any other kind of technical domain, you'd be a much better expert if you understand the full picture.
And I keep sort of trying to push my team to do the same.
We are running close to the end of our time here, but there's a couple of questions.
And we always ask these, I always love hearing the answers, especially this next one I'm about to ask.
We're going to go a little more on the personal side.
But what's something that not many people know about you?
Maybe that they couldn't find out by just googling you or finding online.
So this information is not yet online.
I'm a new dad. My daughter is two months old at the moment.
And her pictures are not online yet, but the camera roll is full of them.
And I would say, you know, my CFO and the FP &A technical experience is not very complementary with raising a young baby, but maybe it'll come in handy at some point in the future.
So that's great. Well, congratulations on that.
Let me preface this.
I always love asking CFOs this question because I was a CFO for 15 years.
And before I was a CFO, I loved sort of the way that you get cred among your other finance people is how great you were in Excel and your model building.
But now, when someone asks me about Excel, I feel like I've forgotten so much because you're not into the models as deep as you used to be.
And I was talking to another CFO the other day.
And we were laughing about if you're talking to a room full of people, and you do something like VLOOKUP.
They all just kind of rub their heads and they're like, oh man, you're showing your age right there.
But I still default to VLOOKUP instead of Index Match or whatever.
So it's very different when I ask a very technical programmer or an analyst or someone who's in it every day versus CFOs.
Or I've even had PhD students on where I asked this question.
But I'm going to throw it out with all that exposition in knowing that you're probably not building models like you did your days in investment banking.
But what is your favorite Excel function and why?
I was getting anxious already when you were framing the question that you asked me like that.
You're right. I'm not a power user of Excel anymore, as I used to be.
But I recall that one of the functions that I used when I stopped being a finance user in Excel that I found neat, I may be mistaking as to what it's called.
I think it's called Data Validation.
It's basically a function where you can create a drop -down menu and choose different scenarios that are particularly helpful when you're building an operating model of the business.
I helped build an operating model and I showed it to the CEO and founder of the business.
He could click through several scenarios and the model would get updated and it would show the business's cash position and other units economics.
And he found it really cool and neat.
But granted he wasn't an Excel power user, he barely knew how to navigate through Excel.
So it wasn't that difficult to impress him.
But yeah, I recall that was a fairly neat question.
But my prime Excel days are behind me.
Yeah. I'm so glad you mentioned that one because I haven't thought about that, but I remember corporate finance institute, I did their FMVA certification.
One of the case studies they had or one of the things they had you do was you go through and build the three statement model with that good best case, mid case and worst case scenario.
And being able to have that flow through the income statement balance sheet and statement of cash flows and have it all work well.
It is very easy to impress at that point, my senior is above me, the CFO or whoever.
And that was back when we were doing most of our budgeting still in Excel and smaller company.
I guess you could get away with it more.
But yeah, that's great.
And I love that function as well.
And it is I mean, it is useful to to be able to just click through that quickly and see it how it kind of rolls through the all three statements.
So before I let you go, how can our listeners connect with you, follow you and learn more about Nord security and what you're doing?
I would say LinkedIn is the best way if you if you send me a message or a connection request.
I'd be really happy to take the conversation further.
Well, Lorena, thank you so much for being on the show.
Really enjoyed that.
Thanks, Glenn. It was a pleasure.
Thank you very much.
