Preparing a Company for IPO: The Treasurer’s Critical Role | Treasury Careers Podcast

Mike Richards, CEO, The Treasury Recruitment Company: This week’s show, we hear from Steph Lane. I originally reached out to Steph because I saw that she was talking about in a LinkedIn post about how treasurers can be key to a successful IPO. I wonder whether she’d be on the podcast where she can answer some of these questions. Tell you what, here’s some insights from Steph, first of all, before we kick off the show.

Stef Layne: Yeah. It was a lot of phone calls and texts, and do we pull the trigger or not? I think the biggest thing on my mind was if I pull the trigger and move this money, I’m going to be part of the reason a bank failed. Because we had a significant amount of cash sitting with the bank, and the bank was an incredible partner to us.

Stef Layne: Technology first. We had a great relationship and there’s nothing like breaking up on a single day when there’s noise in the market, when there’s a run on the bank. And so for me, relationships are super, extremely important. And so a lot of it was the debate internally with myself of I’m really gonna disappoint these.

Stef Layne: Sure.

Mike Richards: How did you make sure they didn’t burn through as treasurer? Did you say? No, I’m not signing that or what?

Stef Layne: Yeah. No. So we had our debt agreements in place to draw on if we needed them. Right. But post IPO as when you go public, the goal is to bring in a lot of liquidity. Yeah. And so what we were able to do, we had actually promised.

Stef Layne: The street and some of our investors that we would be free cash flow positive after the first year. And so I led an initiative across the entire company to to bring awareness to cash flow and working capital within the company no matter what your role was in the company. And we called it yo Free Cash Flow just to make something catchy.

Stef Layne: Every month I would get up on stage and talk about how cash comes into the company, how cash goes out of the company, how you and your role can influence how cash is used in the company. If you’re a sales rep, getting a prepayment brings cash in the door quicker than if it’s a monthly payments, for example, vp, T and E.

Stef Layne: All those little things that you as an employee can influence even though you think you can’t when you’re not in a finance role. So it became very catchy. You would see people walking around the hall saying, you’ll free cash flow if they saw somebody. Wasting money or traveling extravagantly and stuff.

Stef Layne: And ultimately we made it free cashflow positive after that year and we made something fun out of it.

Mike Richards: Welcome to this week’s Treasury Career Corner podcast, where interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I’ll talk to treasurers about how they build their careers, where they are now, where they see

Stef Layne: both themselves and the treasury permission going to next. Let’s get on with the show

Mike Richards: in this week’s show. Delighted to be joined by Stefanie Layne. Stefanie is a finance leader and she’s been through three IPO journeys, prepared companies for public company rigor while operating effectively in private company environments right the way across. But as always, with the show, I’m gonna let Stefanie chat us through.

Mike Richards: Steph, if you would take us back to the beginning. How do you discover finance? The treasury. I’ll shut up and I’ll let you do the talking over to you.

Stef Layne: Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, Mike. Thank you. I’m really excited to be here. This is gonna be fun. So, treasury career. Yeah. I have to say it started with somebody believing in me.

Stef Layne: I actually had no idea what treasury was, and excuse me. The treasurer at the company I was working for came over to me one day. I was an accounting administrator and said, Hey, why don’t you come work in treasury? I think you can do this. And I had no idea what it was. And so that was early. Early on, I joined as a junior treasury analyst of an energy company, and that started my career in Treasury.

Stef Layne: So 25 years later, there was one guy who came over to me and said, Hey, I think you can do treasury From there, I did treasury at an energy company at Calpine for five years, experienced the Enron debacle bankruptcy, and all the fun that comes along with working in oil and gas. Uh, after that I joined PayPal and that started my tech career.

Stef Layne: Spent eight years at PayPal, eBay, and from there joined multiple tech companies, box TripActions, which is now Nvo and ultimately landed at Kalvia.

Mike Richards: And then if we go back to those early days when you were, you joined PayPal back in the early two thousands, if you like. Yeah. What was it like then versus now?

Mike Richards: And it’s evolved a heck of a lot. What was it like? In the treasury area in particular?

Stef Layne: Yeah, that’s a great question because it used to be eBay and PayPal were one company, right? And so at the time, I was working in the PayPal division for the first five years, and it was a really awesome role because treasury actually gets to manage the customer’s cash.

Stef Layne: And so my role was to manage. We’ll put a B in behind it. Billions of dollars of PayPal money that sits in the infrastructure within PayPal and making sure the currencies and the money is where it needs to be when a, a customer needs to use their PayPal funds. And so. It was really interesting to see the network behind a consumer facing product like PayPal and be able to manage the cash.

Stef Layne: At the time, we actually were able to invest the cash in the US and earn a yield on customer cash, which was really cool. And so that was also really interesting to, to make money on customer money and then ultimately make sure it was. Accessible when the customer to to use it. Yeah.

Mike Richards: So it’s a bit like insurance in a way where you have customer client funds and things.

Mike Richards: Yes. How do they keep the segregation, without going into too much confidential detail, but how do they keep the separation?

Stef Layne: Yeah, so there’s actually separate bank accounts. So across the globe there’s PayPal. Corporate accounts, and then there’s PayPal, what you call FBO for the benefit of others accounts, so you keep the cash completely separate.

Stef Layne: There is a process that used to be monthly called upstream, and what you would do is you would take the balances of the customer cash and any profit or any excess funds, you would upstream it to the corporate, so almost like an intercompany, and you would make sure you had a one-to-one liability of the asset ratio on the PayPal funds, the customer funds, and everything else, quote unquote was extra, and that would move over to corporate to run the business.

Mike Richards: You are talking about treasury operations over hundreds of bank accounts and Yes, different currencies. It’s early on in your career and relatively early technology wise, so how did you manage all that ’cause and avoid mistakes and things like that?

Stef Layne: Yeah, it very manual actually. But believe it or not, back then we launched SAP as a treasury workstation, but we did a lot of wires, a lot of intercompany, ensuring that the money, like I said, was in the right bank account at the right time, in the right currency.

Stef Layne: So when you’re looking at 30 currencies across the globe and somebody in London needs to withdraw their funds. You have to make sure you have enough Sterling in the account to cover it. And so it was a lot of intercompany. We didn’t do a lot of the corporate VP payment type of work, but a lot of intercompany funding to make sure the cash was where it needed to be at the right time.

Mike Richards: Yeah. And then you did the finance leadership. Program there. Yeah. What was that like at the time and how did that develop you as a treasury person?

Stef Layne: Yeah, so I was five by then, 10 years into my treasury career. Yeah, five at the energy company and five at PayPal, and I got the itch to do something different.

Stef Layne: My team was rocking and rolling. We were doing great. I went to our treasurer at the time and said, I think I’m gonna leave the company. I think I wanna do something different. I wanna be challenged. And she actually encouraged me to apply for the FLDP Finance Leadership Development Program, and I got selected, there was six of us each year.

Stef Layne: It was a two year program across four different six month assignments, including an opportunity to go live in Berlin, Germany, and do work at the PayPal office in Germany for six months with my husband and two boys. So that was really cool, but I really wanted to see. If Treasury was my home. Yeah. And I wanted to try accounting and fp and a and ended up landing a job at the end of that in m and a integration, which was very different than Treasury, but working on the integration of major acquisitions like Venmo and Braintree at the time.

Stef Layne: And so, yeah, so that gave me a little bit of exposure. I ended up leaving PayPal to go do a treasury job at Box, but it was nice to kind of see different functions in finance.

Mike Richards: And how was it different then that you went, as you said, you went, what was Box? I mean people know PayPal, eBay, but who are Box?

Mike Richards: Yeah, I know them. You know them, but can you explain who they were at the time? Sorry, probably as well.

Stef Layne: Yeah, A private company, a cloud content management. So many people know Dropbox, which is more of a consumer facing product. Box, is more of a business facing product. Yeah. And so we were a private company at the time, took the company IPO after a couple years and.

Stef Layne: That was a really interesting role because they were burning cash. All of the headlines at the time were box is gonna go public, but they’re burning too much cash. And so to be in a treasury role at that time was really interesting because yes, we were fueling the business with cash at the time.

Mike Richards: So how

Stef Layne: did you make sure, so it took.

Mike Richards: How did you make sure they didn’t burn through as treasurer? Did you say? No, I’m not signing that or what?

Stef Layne: Yeah. No. So we had our debt agreements in place to draw on if we needed them. Right. But post IPO as when you go public, the goal is to bring in a lot of liquidity. Yeah. And so what we were able to do, we had actually promised.

Stef Layne: The street and some of our investors that we would be free cash flow positive after the first year. And so I led an initiative across the entire company to to bring awareness to cash flow and working capital within the company. No matter what your role was in the company. And we called it yo Free Cash Flow just to make something catchy.

Stef Layne: Every month I would get up on stage and talk about how cash comes into the company, how cash goes out of the company, how you and your role can influence how cash is used in the company if you’re a sales rep. Getting a prepayment brings cash in the door quicker than if it’s a monthly payments, for example, ap, T and E, all those little things that you as an employee can influence even though you think you can’t when you’re not in a finance role.

Stef Layne: So it became very catchy. You would see people walking around the hall saying, you’ll free cash flow if they saw somebody wasting money or traveling extravagantly and stuff. And ultimately we made it free cashflow positive after that year, and we made something fun out of it.

Mike Richards: And how do you do that?

Mike Richards: Particularly influencing people that aren’t in treasury, as you say, in AP or ai. Yeah, something like that. And they’re going well. Yeah, but is that really my job? And you’re going right guys, is everyone’s job. How do you get your hearts and minds?

Stef Layne: It wasn’t always easy. Right? Again, it was hard to figure out how they can influence it.

Stef Layne: And, and we didn’t wanna cut costs, we didn’t wanna cut headcount or hit expense. We wanted to just be smarter about our cash. And so we tried to do fun things like we had a, a baller of the month, right? Somebody who thought very creatively about how we were spending money and came up with an idea that we were able to implement as silly as.

Stef Layne: This is very petty, but asci as having five different granola bars in the snack room. It’s like, do we need five different granola bars? Maybe we only need one or two. And just coming up with ideas where there might be a little bit of leakage in any, any role across the company. And it worked. We had a big celebration and I was surprised how many people got excited about it and we made a little game out of it.

Stef Layne: So it was, you wanted to be involved in it. You wanted to win a cool piece of swag that said you have free cash flow on it or something. It was fun.

Mike Richards: And you’d gone from private company to IPO and everything else. Yeah. What was that like for you in terms of being a treasurer and internally, externally? How did that influence you?

Stef Layne: It’s obviously a big shift, most, most felt across the whole culture of the company. But as treasury, the rigor obviously steps up a notch. You’re now influenced by the external market. You have to hit that free cashflow number that you’ve committed to. So everything becomes tighter, a little bit more structured, so comes into play where you have to all of a sudden manage controls and all of your banking portal access and things like that.

Stef Layne: So, so I would just say the rigor. Amps up a little bit in addition to the culture, feeling a little bit more grown up while you’re trying to maintain that, that startup mentality. It’s really challenging on the culture, I think, and the three IPOs I’ve done, it’s very difficult to stay lean and scrappy like a startup once you become public.

Stef Layne: Right? But. I would just say the rigor.

Mike Richards: So how do you keep the growth mindset when it’s, you’re not now the big bad wolf and saying, no, give us your cash, come on, put the granola bars away. You know what, how do you then

Stef Layne: yeah.

Mike Richards: Influence it as a treasurer?

Stef Layne: I think think the simple things. So two of those companies were founder led and the founders still being involved.

Stef Layne: Having those monthly all hands where teams get together and they share that. As transparently as possible, the key metrics of the business still with the employees. And you talk a lot about it just being a moment in time, right? Nothing really should change for most of the, the folks working for the company.

Stef Layne: It’s just we’re listed on the stock exchange and we have a little bit more rigor. But otherwise, continue to do your job and continue to be excited about it. Don’t get wrapped up in what the stock is doing. ’cause we all know the market is uncontrollable. So, yeah. So I would just say trying to keep the fund.

Stef Layne: The transparency as high as you can given the public company rigor you need to put in place

Mike Richards: and what came next after box and things. And what was the next couple of moves

Stef Layne: after box? One of the, one of the yo free cashflow initiatives was implementing a new travel tool. TripActions, which is now Nvo, and so I worked really closely as an early adopter of their platform to launch TripActions at Box.

Stef Layne: In doing so, I got really close to the CEO and the head of customer success. We even went to Japan and launched travel for TripActions in Japan, and it ultimately led to a role working as the chief of staff to the CEO at. Trip actions at the time at Nvo, and again, took the opportunity because it took me out of finance for a little bit to see a full company how a full company operates across go to market, r and d and G and A.

Stef Layne: And so I got to be his right hand person for a year until COVID hit. And as, as global travel came to a screeching Hals our growth

Mike Richards: global travel and

Stef Layne: zeros. Yeah. So unfortunately they had to lay off a third of the company and I was one of those people that was in that Nice to have a partner to the CEO role.

Stef Layne: Yeah. Uh, and ended up finding myself for the first time in my career. Laid off gratefully. I was able to find a role at Unity Next, and I joined, I led the treasury team at Unity. And brought them through IPO and spent just a short time there before the opportunity at Klaviyo popped up.

Mike Richards: So who are Klaviyo and explain them to me and the audience.

Stef Layne: Yeah, so Klaviyo is a, basically a marketing platform that allows you as a merchant to send messaging to your. Customers via SMS or email, right? So it’s a cloud. It’s a marketing automation tool that allows you to target your particular customers with different incentives and programs to increase the purchasing power of your customers.

Mike Richards: And when and which customers, who are the customers of Klaviyo and stuff? So with the person on the street have heard of them or would they not know them or not?

Stef Layne: Probably not. They’re a Boston based company and I’m sitting in California. So it was really cool to work for a, an East coast company. And, but however, I did realize that a lot of the Bay Area, Silicon Valley had no idea what Klaviyo was.

Stef Layne: So it was an interesting role to have in a company that wasn’t so well known like a PayPal in the Bay Area.

Mike Richards: So how did you go? ’cause as you say, there were some household names, PayPal, eBay. We knew we use it, but this is. It’s got a great story, but what, talk us through it.

Stef Layne: Yeah, so I think probably the closest competitor that many people do know is MailChimp.

Stef Layne: Yeah. And the other way I really explained it is Black Friday, cyber Monday when your inbox just blows up with all these special promotions. Yeah. For the holiday upcoming holidays, Klaviyo is a platform that enables that for retailers. Right. So once you kind of explain it that way, and then, and a lot of people will say, oh, you’re the one that sends me those pesky SMSs.

Stef Layne: And yes, you have to remind them that today’s age you have to opt in and opt out of those. So if you, those ever bug you reply was stop, and you, and they turn off. But yeah. So once you kind of bring it down to something that they can relate to it, it becomes very, they understand

Mike Richards: they wanna be part of it and stuff.

Stef Layne: Yes.

Mike Richards: So you’ve been in the position of treasurer in these three, three IPOs. Yeah. What do you think has been underestimated, perhaps on the personal side, professional side? Yeah. Getting in the lead up to the IPO, do the IPO, you’re through it. There’s sort of three parts of that journey each time. And you’ve done it three times over, I mean,

Stef Layne: yeah.

Mike Richards: And you’re still doing it, so it’s like how we calm down. Yeah. What? What do you think people would need to prep for? Or if someone’s listening, oh goodness. I’m about to do my first one. You’ve done three. I mean, it’s a bit rude. Yeah. Come on.

Stef Layne: Yeah, it’s a bit rude. I

Mike Richards: love that. Ah, I just do it. Yeah. Whatever.

Mike Richards: Endlessly. Yeah,

Stef Layne: I think, I think you don’t know you need a treasurer. Right away. It’s not the first hire, let’s be honest, right? You’re gonna hire a VP of finance or somebody. But hiring treasury early on is similar to hiring, like internal audit before you go public. Like the sooner you can get somebody in the door that is looking at working capital.

Stef Layne: Obviously internal, it’s looking at SOX controls, but looking at working capital. The perfect example I would say is the Silicon Valley Bank, uh, crash. Yeah. Because I was early into treasury at Klaviyo, I was able to create accounts already to diversify if anything happened and we had places to put our US cash on that day.

Stef Layne: Many peers in my network were calling me that day saying, I don’t know what to do. All of my money is with Silicon Valley Bank. I have a bank account in Poland. Should I, should I convert all of my dollars to Polish Lottie and send it to Poland? And I’m like, you don’t have another US Bank.

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Stef Layne: And so I think little things like that.

Stef Layne: Optimizing interest risk management, corporate insurance, you have to double down on when you IPO around. All of your policies as a public company, equity planning, all of a sudden your RSUs are vested, right? And you have this massive tax obligation on IPO dates. So there’s a lot of cash related things that happen that you don’t think about in the journey, and the sooner you can bring in somebody with a treasury mindset.

Stef Layne: Maybe not even a treasurer, but somebody with a treasury mindset that can help set that infrastructure. The more success you’ll have when that cash comes in the door on the IPO Day.

Mike Richards: And it’s a great example of Silicon Valley Bank and or when, you know, yeah. Up there. So how do you decide what should be centralized versus remaining local?

Mike Richards: How do you split that? What’s your checklist if you like? ’cause again. As you say, you are on the phone going, you don’t have another one. Yeah. What do people need to do?

Stef Layne: Yeah, I am a big fan of keep it simple, stupid, the KISS model. Right. Don’t overcomplex. Things if you don’t have to. So don’t open a bunch of international bank accounts.

Stef Layne: It will tie you down and it will slow you down for the future. So I would say keep it simple. Always have two US banks at least, where you can move money to and from internationally. We used a global bank because we found the efficiencies is higher if you have it in a single bank, that you could move money more easily and get all your reporting.

Stef Layne: And so internationally we. We opted to use a global bank and not diversify internationally, but my motto is to keep it simple, think about how often you’re gonna have to move money. Where’s AP coming from? Where’s payroll coming from? Where are the customers paying into? And just. Make sure you have coverage that you can manage the risk that banks are not too big to fail.

Stef Layne: We’ve learned a couple times now. Yeah. And so just always making sure you have a backup.

Mike Richards: Now, I loved it your, when I looked through some of your background and resume and things like that. I often try and tell people what they’ve achieved. It’s not about what you do and it’s not your job description.

Stef Layne: Yeah,

Mike Richards: that’s your job description. That’s not your resume and stuff. Now on yours, it was great. You’ve talked about leading the capital preservation four, 6% of which is great and it’s impressive. Plus also, can you explain to us during that hybrid cash within those, and walk us through what those first few hours were like from.

Mike Richards: It’s like everything going pop.

Stef Layne: Yeah, it was a lot of phone calls and texts and do we pull the trigger or not? I think the biggest thing on my mind was if I pull the trigger and move this money, I’m going to be part of the reason a bank failed. Because we had a significant amount of cash sitting with the bank, and the bank was an incredible partner to us.

Stef Layne: Technology first. We had a great relationship and there’s nothing like breaking up on a single day when there’s noise in the market, when there’s a run on the bank. And so for me, relationship search super, extremely important. And so a lot of it was the debate internally with myself of I’m really gonna disappoint these.

Stef Layne: Fantastic partners that I’ve worked with that have helped us get to where we are. We, a couple months before IPO, I’m have to pull all my money and be part of what could potentially bring them down and so that, and consulted with my board. I had a couple board members that I reached out to ’em and said, here’s what I’m thinking of doing.

Stef Layne: It was early enough in the day. Are you on board with this, the CFO as well? Yeah. Like, Hey, this is what I’m thinking. I wanna leave this much money as a cushion because guess what? Payroll’s going out. Today, it’s a Friday. And so there were some certain things that I said Is this too much exposure? Leaving teens of millions of dollars versus hundreds of millions of dollars and got a couple buy-ins and then we executed and yeah, that was The rest is history.

Stef Layne: Yeah, it was intense. I mean, our money didn’t move until. At the Fed window close, and it sat in the queue with everybody else’s money for the entire day. So it was a very stressful day. But

Mike Richards: yeah,

Stef Layne: and then by the, oh, by the weekend, things had calmed and there was a plan and all of that, so it ended up being the right decision.

Stef Layne: But all in all, okay, for most companies by that Monday.

Mike Richards: And what did that experience teach you or change about how you maybe look going forward about diversification? Or could you take away things? This is as much what you take away as what you learn at the time as well.

Stef Layne: Yeah, so we didn’t actually even have it in our investment policy.

Stef Layne: A lot of times you don’t put a lot of working capital related metrics and controls in there, and so we added. That we couldn’t keep more than, I think at the time, like 50% of our cash in a single institution. So we updated the investment policy to include some controls around where cash sit, excuse me.

Stef Layne: And then on the investment side, no more than 20% in a single bank if you decided to put funds in banking institutions. So we updated the investment policy. I’ve always been a big fan of having a couple options for US funds. And so continuing to diversify, I think I learned, the biggest thing I learned that day is to trust your gut.

Stef Layne: I had saw a former treasurer make it through 2008, the fiasco of 2008, when Bear Stearns went down and we had a ton of money and I watched the treasurer make a decision execute and go and not look back and was able to get money out of the institution on that day. And so from that experience, I knew I had to go with my gut and.

Stef Layne: Move the money and I could always put it back on Monday if things were okay, but I just gotta get it out and safe.

Mike Richards: So I originally you connected because you did some articles and stuff like that, and I just loved it sort of thing where you were talking about, oh. Why you need a great treasurer on that path to IPO, but also about you.

Mike Richards: You’re very much into your teams and things like that. What do you think is key about a team leader or without? Without over-engineering it sort of thing?

Stef Layne: I think building a bond with your team is important. I’m human first. And I’m scared in this AI centric environment we’re moving into, I think your people are extremely important and I think creating a bond with them and a Scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back mentality where you cover for each other.

Stef Layne: So for example, at Klaviyo, I lead the money team. We called it the money team, which was pay payroll. Sales, commissions and treasury, and we came up with the money team because it was one way to unite a payroll person to a treasury person and a commissions person to a payroll person, because ultimately anything that touched money and the cash that went out the door had to funnel through our team.

Stef Layne: So I think it’s super important. Especially in a Zoom culture too, to create relationships with your people and keep it human as much as possible in this tech forward world we’re living in, because at the end of the day, you spend more time with your colleagues and your family on some days, right? Yeah.

Stef Layne: And so making it fun when it can be fun. We used to say, I put the fun in finance because you’ve gotta make it fun. It is stressful, it is hard, but. Building a team of people that care deeply for one another is probably the most important thing. And learning from each other. You never, I never thought a treasury person would be super interested in how payroll was processed.

Stef Layne: Right? Or a payroll person fully understanding what it takes to calculate commissions and what happens upstream by the time that payroll file gets to them. So again, cross training, building the team environment where. You got my back. I got your back. I wanna learn what you do. I wanna respect your career and what you do and your function, I think is super important.

Mike Richards: And how do you build that in a, as you say, a zoom, first world sort of thing and Yeah. And virtual stuff. But that’s a lot harder, isn’t it?

Stef Layne: It is. And I believe in, in person connections. Mm-hmm. Right. So at Klaviyo, I, like I said, I live in the Bay Area and Boston is a. Not a short flight away. And so depending on your budget, obviously it’s best to meet in person at least once a year.

Stef Layne: I think that’s where you really take the layers off. You kick back. You have a drink, you laugh, you do something fun. We always had a monthly meeting where somebody would bring a, an icebreaker and just try to get to know each other on the human level. We did a succulent making class. Some silly things that we, all the things we used to do during COVID, we tried to continue to do, just to bring a little bit of joy.

Stef Layne: And then teaching. So in some of our monthly meetings, we would have somebody come and share something they’ve built in AI for if adding efficiencies in a very manual process, and then just sharing and building awareness of what the other people around them on Zoom are doing.

Mike Richards: Yeah. And you’ve got these, so you’ve got a number of the team members, treasury professionals in particular.

Mike Richards: Yeah. They want the broader finance roles. You’ve been through those roles, if you like. What gaps do you see most often, or where do you think people, are they head down in their treasury roles? Where are they missing stuff or what should they be thinking about?

Stef Layne: Yeah, I think you need to understand what’s going on around you in finance.

Stef Layne: Um, a few examples that come to mind are ap What is our AP processes? Are they doing AP runs every day? Are they doing ’em on a Wednesday? Are they doing ’em twice a month? What makes sense for the cash side of things? Do you need to fund those accounts daily or do you need to have the money there on a particular day?

Stef Layne: So building strong partnerships with. Your AP team, for example, your AR team, how are we billing? How are we collecting? How much out there is out there uncollectible? Is there a big customer that we’re expecting a payment from that’s going to shift my cashflow dramatically. Right? How are credit cards processed if you bill and collecting credit cards, working with those folks on how money.

Stef Layne: Basically thinking end to end on how money comes in and out is super critical. And then on the fp and a side, I would say building your free cashflow forecast is often a very close partnership with fp and a, how they’re budgeting, what they’re planning on spending, what headcount is doing, which impacts payroll expenses.

Stef Layne: And so tying a lot of that budgeting process to your free cashflow forecast will give you a tighter, closer forecast.

Yeah.

Mike Richards: And with yourself. You are. You are in the market at the moment. We’re looking for different things and stuff, so, you know, what do you see as the biggest issues, the biggest challenges for treasurers coming down the line at the moment when you are perhaps talking to people and you are saying, well, have you thought about this?

Mike Richards: And they’re like, oh, right. I haven’t thought about that. No. Yeah. What do you see as the biggest things coming along? Obviously technology’s on front of everyone’s mind, but that’s been around for, yeah. Yeah. What are you thinking?

Stef Layne: I think that’s kind of cool. Some of the technology that will make even just forecasting and investing and reporting and some of those things much simpler.

Stef Layne: I am interested in stablecoin and some of those tech, that technology, it wasn’t super applicable in my prior role, so I don’t know how that’s going to evolve. I’m curious about that. I haven’t dug, dug deep into crypto or any of that. As a corporate treasurer, I kept it very, again, safe and secure, and so I think there’s a lot of cool.

Stef Layne: Tech, not technologies, but cool ideas, I guess I’ll say out there that are gonna change the way Treasury works it. It’s interesting, we move millions of dollars, but we never see those millions of dollars, so it’s always been a digital experience for us, right? People go, oh my gosh, you wired. That much money in your monopoly money.

Stef Layne: It’s not real. It’s, I don’t ever see the money. Right?

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Stef Layne: Yeah. So how much is stablecoin and those things where it’s a communication channel between banks or between vendors and a gonna change things will be, I think, really interesting. And the role of banks in the future,

Mike Richards: and you’ve had this amazing career so far and all these different things.

Mike Richards: What advice would you give to you looking back as you reflect on each of the steps and things? What would you say?

Stef Layne: I think, uh, I’ve become a Jill of many traits. Which can be seen as very positive, but it doesn’t fit a particular box. And so maybe CFO, maybe CFO someday. ’cause I think a lot of the great CFOs have had treasury experience or understand what’s going on in the cash side of the business, not just the p and l.

Stef Layne: But I often wonder if I should have stuck it out in treasury. Longer and learned the deep capital market side of things. I’ve personally never put an FX hedging program in place. We’ve analyzed it at all the SaaS companies I’ve been at, but it’s never made sense to put that program in place. And all of the, the work and the reporting and the.

Stef Layne: The idea that you still have exposure, it’s just a different type of exposure explained. So every time I’ve analyzed that, it hasn’t been something that the company has wanted to do. So I think I would’ve loved the opportunity to go deeper in capital markets and foreign exchange. Gratefully working for companies that are on the IPO mission.

Stef Layne: You get to work on the cash side of things and on the investment side of things, you get a lot of great experience managing cash, but not a ton of experience managing debt and foreign exchange hedging programs. And so I love that I’m a Jill of many trades because I can appreciate all of my partners in finance.

Stef Layne: But it doesn’t pigeon, it doesn’t pigeon me into a treasurer role, but it does make me wonder, did I go too broad? And the quest to continue to learn. Have I gone too broad? Across finance.

Mike Richards: And when you are, you and I go to conferences and various things, which are the ones that you are really attracted to?

Mike Richards: You’ve talked about all this new stuff coming through. Are there any other areas you think that people. Need to be focusing on. This is for treasury professionals who are listening today. Yeah. And I’ve got a follow up question, but I only ask one question. I’ve got better at this. What do you think people need to be, which ones should they be sitting in that room and learn?

Stef Layne: I hate to be cliche, but I say anything AI focused, any opportunities have done and develop. With other finance people. There are several banks and new AI companies that are offering these vibe coding sessions where you sit down and you build, you could build a dashboard, a reporting dashboard, which has been a huge ask from treasurers.

Stef Layne: Yeah, in a matter of hours on some of these new AI platforms. It’s just not inherent in our skillset. But from some of the ones I’ve attended, even in an hour or two, sitting with some of these very technical folks, we can vibe code, and we can create this stuff. So I think that those are the most interesting at this time.

Stef Layne: And then anything that will introduce you to some of these AI companies that will benefit your teams efficiency in the long run? Yeah. Would be where I would spend my time.

Mike Richards: And that’s what, so the more junior guys should be trying to do that over the next two to three, well, 12 monthly, 12 to one, well, one year to three years.

Mike Richards: That’s where they need to be focusing. Or what other things should, any other advice that they should be thinking about.

Stef Layne: I think relationships are incredibly important. And so a lot of your treasury role will be with external partners and not internal partners. I’ve talked a lot about internal finance, but your bankers are there to help you and.

Stef Layne: Financial institutions, yes. They have their sales pitch. They need to also make money. Yeah. But they’re also a huge resource for, hey, we’re thinking about doing a stock buyback. How would you structure this? What has so and so company done? What have you seen before in your clients? And so I think your ability to, uh, expose some vulnerabilities and build these relationships with external partners is.

Stef Layne: Also very important as early on in your career as possible, it gets, because they’ll follow you. They’ll help you. Yeah. They’ll be there for you if you need them, as well as you become an incredible resource for them, giving them exposure to what’s happening in the inner workings of a business. So I think being able to build relationships externally is also super important.

Stef Layne: Okay.

Mike Richards: So we’re gonna put your LinkedIn details in the show notes, and we sort of wrap up every week with. The advice for the more junior folks, mid-level senior guys. What are your takeaways for each of those levels?

Stef Layne: Yeah, so entry level, congratulations on finding treasury. It’s the one of the best kept secrets in finance.

Stef Layne: Keep it up. It’s a really cool job, I think. I think cash is the most important metric of a company. I think. Accountants can make revenue and expenses look differently due to rules where cash is cash. And so congratulations on finding treasury as a career. I think you’re off to an awesome start mid-level.

Stef Layne: I think I would say when technology isn’t going to solve the problem, fight for that headcount. Treasury is always a very lean machine team and very. I find it very difficult to get resources to build the treasury team, so make sure you are asking for what you need so that you don’t put the company at unknown risks.

Stef Layne: A lot of times you get overlooked in treasury, and so I would say if you’re mid-level and you need that help, help. Get it, ask for it, fight for it, because you can’t do it alone in most of these companies. And they’ll, you can be a silent sufferer in treasury and just run everything as efficiently I possible until something breaks.

Stef Layne: So I would say that’s the mid-level to the upper levels. I would say continue to partner with your peers that have influence over how the company spends money. Go to market was a really interesting, uh, partnership for me. I had never spent a lot of time to go to marketing, but they’re driving all the sales, all the revenue, all the cash, all the contracts.

Stef Layne: Like getting to know those folks is an extremely, excuse me, extremely important because they’re driving how the. Money comes into the company. And so don’t just keep your focus as a, as an exec leader to g and a and in the CFO function, make sure you understand and get yourself invited to those meetings across r and d.

Stef Layne: Even engineering. What are they doing? What are they building? Can your team build something similar and especially go to market on how are we pitching the product to the customers? What is our contracting arrangements? So to the senior, most people, I would say. Make sure Treasury is known across the company and partner with as many people outside of finance as you can.

Mike Richards: Steph amazing. I’m gonna leave it on there ’cause you’ve got great final words. Thank you very much.

Stef Layne: Thank you.

Mike Richards: Thank you.

Stef Layne: Thank you. Thanks Mike.

Mike Richards: Thank you.

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