Navan, a corporate travel management platform, hired its new CFO, Amy Butte, with a specific goal in mind: Get the company ready to go public.
But before she accepted, she had to ask herself two questions: Did she have it in her to take her third company public? And would she regret not accepting? The answer to both was obviously a yes.
“I truly believe—as a believer in public markets—we will be able to benefit for all the reasons that you would go public,” Butte, who has experience taking other companies public, including the NYSE as its CFO, said. Those benefits? “It’s brand, it’s lower cost of capital, it’s an acquisition currency, and it’s also an acceleration of the maturation of a company.”
But to pull off this potential IPO, Butte knew she’d need a crack team.
Assemble. Butte outlined the guiding principles she followed to build out her team. She needed people who could fill “job descriptions that maybe weren’t there before” at Navan, due to the strategic path down which the company was headed. She also needed to find people who’d work well as part of a team. “I like to say that finance is a team sport, particularly if you’re going through an IPO process,” she said.
“I probably have a little bit more EQ [emotional quotient] now than I did 10 or 20 years ago,” she said. “So when I thought about building the team, it was a combination of matching that cultural intelligence and that cultural passion.”
Butte looked externally, but also wanted to retain employees “who were really beloved by the organization.”
“Finding people to bring back [and] people within the org who were beloved and who would be the biggest promoters of the changes taking place within the finance function was also really important,” she said.
Gaining strength. Butte said there’s a name her team uses to describe themselves that encapsulates their expanded scope. Team FTW, a play on the acronym “for the win,” stands for “finance, technology, and workplace.”
“As I’ve learned, when you contemplate producing data as a public company, those systems [and] those controls are so important,” she said. “So actually there seems to be more of a connection between systems and IPO readiness than there is necessarily the systems that people use day-to-day, and engineering. It really goes a little bit to processes, controls, efficiency across an organization, and we’re trying to leverage that connectivity.”
Cultural phenom. Butte also aims to instill a working culture that empowers women and working parents. She noted that four of her seven direct reports are women, and all of her new hires are women.
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“I think that also sent a really strong message to the organization, particularly in a tech company, that we were supporting, promoting, encouraging women,” she said.
Jeff Shadoian, Navan’s VP of global real estate and workplace, who’s been with the company for nearly six years, said there are “two different mindsets” found in finance functions: the tactical, day-to-day decision-making, and strategic thinking. Butte falls in the second camp, he said.
“When Amy walked into Navan, she’s a presence, and that’s something I think that deserves respect,” Shadoian, who reports directly to Butte, told CFO Brew. “Over time, she’s brought in strong leaders, empowers them to make decisions, allows them to make decisions. [Butte] doesn’t need to focus on the weeds; I think she has people around her [for whom] that’s part of their job.”
He also said Butte is data driven in her decisions. “Forget all the corporate fluff,” he said. “She wants the truth. She wants it fast. And from her perspective, numbers don’t lie.”
“I think it’s important to hire the best people you can,” Butte said. “The fact that we were and are able to attract women into a technology company says a lot for Ariel [Cohen, founder and CEO]’s leadership, but also says a lot for how I view this team and how I operate as a manager.”
Butte is also heavily involved in Navan’s employee resource group called the Women’s Leadership Network. The group meets quarterly with the objective of providing “a way for us to learn from each other, as well as a way for people to feel comfortable reaching out” with questions, she said.
A number of people on the finance team, including Butte, have children. “We all work exceptionally hard, but we also know how important family is,” she said. Family matters take priority, she said, “and I think that’s probably something different for me this time around.”
Necessary preparations. Butte recently brought the team together for in-person meetings. The first day, Butte taught the team on what it means to “be IPO ready,” she said. On day two, the team went through everything they needed to prioritize to reach that level of readiness.
“I think my job is to help people feel educated so they see the path that I see of where we need to go,” Butte said. “And it’s not just staying in silos, it’s not just seeing a task, but can they see the vision of where we’re going?”