What I think I'm good at (ie experienced in):
- Capital Markets (understanding raising capital/ir - the technical/analytical side, not the sales side)
- Accounting / Finance - (forecasting, reporting, ad-hoc analysis)
- Data Analytics (SQL, Excel, Get & Transform)
- General Technology (I'm a lot nerdier than the average finance person) e.g. I'm currently teaching myself Python, worked in a agile, CI/CD dev team
- Project work (data mapping, process mapping, drafting contracts, reviewing)
- General Commercial Understanding (Developing business strategy, writing up business cases)
- Implementing processes (e.g. getting non-dev teams to use Confluence, source control, dev environments, 'agile' project flow)
- Commercial Problem solving (I know it this sounds highly generic, but I really like having a difficult commercial problem and coming up with a solution. Oddly I only enjoy this ins a business situation, I haven't found puzzles interesting)
So the description for this kind of role would look something like:
Applicant required to help us move into a new market/commercialise a new product.
Applicant needs to be able to help us raise capital and manage investor expectations.
Being comfortable with working with large data sets is a must as the applicant will need to use it to identify markets, product gaps and also develop reporting tools.
This is a new role so the applicant must be willing to setup new procedures and processes for the organisation and have an emphasis on creating the right kind of culture.
The applicant needs to be experienced in developing and presenting business cases at an executive level, in doing so the applicant will need extensive experience in building financial models and reporting.
The applicant will also need experience executing the business plan so this can includes general project management, process flow, working with sales, legal and marketing.
The applicant should also be looking to automate as much as possible and likely come from an agile workplace.
Applicant must be happy to work in a small team and doesn't believe that there are any tasks out of their remit (i.e. a 'can-do' attitude).
Roles which cover this:
- CFO (I'm not at a CFO level, but likely to be missing the more data/tech side anyway)
- Head of Strategy (likely to be missing the execution/process setup side/reporting)
- Head of Commercial Development (likely to be missing the execution/process setup side/data, side/capital raising)
- Consulting (not from a consulting background, but yes consulting could cover all of them but I don't want to be a consultant, I'd much rather get my hands dirty).
Very broadly you could say that the domain/area is 'commercial development' (i.e. setting up the company's strategy), but this would still be missing out on the day-to-day things. But I don't mean I want to be doing BAU tasks (e.g. I don't like doing reporting, but I'm happy to setup the reporting - because I believe it's a task which you should just try to automate rather than have someone do).
I'm pretty industry agnostic (though might be good to stay in payments given its hot at the moment). I don't want to be a large company though (I want to feel like I'm making an impact on the company).