Seeing the Small-Firm Value John Daly, now president of Executive Education Inc., a developer of continuing-education seminars for finance executives, held several CFO positions earlier in his career -- his first at Edgewood Tool and Manufacturing, a service-provider to the automotive industry that was later acquired by Tower Automotive. Though he had no previous experience closing a company’s books, say, Edgewood saw value in his combined background in public accounting and IT.
Initially, as the company’s only finance officer, Daly learned the responsibilities of the corporate-finance function; later, he tapped his IT skills and his experience from accounting firms Arthur Andersen and BDO Seidman to offer strategic advice as Edgewood — and his finance team along with it — grew.
While he says that the small-company path to a CFO career “worked for me,” he echoes Dergel’s caution that “it’s probably not for everyone.”
For Julie Bradley, now CFO of online travel-review site TripAdvisor, landing her first CFO role at e-commerce services provider Art Technology Group was less a matter of company size and more about working for a public company. She had served for five years as finance vice president at Akamai when she began targeting her first CFO role. “Going from VP of finance to CFO is a difficult move,” she says, “because everyone wants prior CFO experience, and more specifically, they want public company CFO experience.”
After considering CFO opportunities at both public and private companies, Bradley eventually “decided on ATG because they were the leader in e-commerce -- something I could personally talk about -- had a strong management team, and were a public company.” Though ATG was relatively small in revenues, with $25.7 million when Bradley joined in 2005, the growth-oriented ATG offered a dynamic opportunity for a first-time CFO. Bradley presided over double-digit revenue growth from increasing partnerships and new products. Toward the end of her tenure she oversaw ATG’s acquisition by Oracle, which was just completed.
Bradley’s public-company experience is especially relevant in her current role as the first finance chief of TripAdvisor, which just separated from Expedia and is expected to issue a spin-off IPO. Overseeing finance and and a future IPO at the travel-media company, which had revenues of $485 million in 2010, is a major step after the much-smaller ATG.
But it gave credence to advice she received from a mentor earlier in her career: “CFO roles at private companies were like the local bus — they come around often, but don’t always get you very far. CFO roles at public companies are like the express bus — they don’t come around very often, but often get you far.”
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