Back to Finance: Why I’m Joining the Board of Vic.ai

You can’t run a financial planning company for six years and not develop a certain affection for working with the office of the CFO. It doesn’t hurt when, despite your exterior marketing shell, there’s an inner finance person down there underneath.

Since selling Host Analytics five years ago, I’ve tried to stay in touch with my finance roots. I’ve done some advisory work on the FP&A side of the house (e.g., advising the rocketship that is Pigment) and kept in touch with up-and-comers like Mosaic and Causal. I’ve worked with CPQ disruptor CacheFlow. I’ve kept an eye on next-gen spreadsheets like Rows and invested in a sense-maker called Decipad. But, other than being lucky enough to make an investment in FloQast, I’ve not done much on the other side of the house: the land of accounting and controllers. Until now, that is.

I’m pleased to announce that I’m joining the board of directors of Vic.ai, a company focused on bringing the benefits of AI to the accounting department, selling solutions used by hundreds of firms worldwide. Vic.ai has raised over $110M in VC financing from top-tier investors including Cowboy Ventures, Notable Capital, and Iconiq Growth.

Here are some of these reasons why I’ve decided to join the board:

• Founder/CEO chemistry. The independent director role is all about working with the CEO on the challenges of building and scaling a company. In the past few months, I’ve spent quite a bit of time with Alex and am certain that we’ll enjoy working together to accomplish great things.
• Working with Alex is like teaching the 301 class, not the 101 class. He’s already a successful entrepreneur, having built and sold his first company in 2014 after nearly a decade’s work. So it’s a more challenging and demanding job than usual. He keeps me on my toes.
• I like marketing and selling to finance teams. They’re busy people. They’re not the most experienced buyers (unlike marketing or IT they don’t buy a lot of stuff). They’re a staff function so priorities can change overnight. They don’t like fluff. Finance is the show-me state of corporate functions. That makes marketing and sales somewhat more challenging, but more rewarding once you nail it.
• I like what Vic.ai does. The product solves practical problems for busy people who know they need to be experimenting with and learning about how AI can help them improve operational efficiency. I think the product-market fit is outstanding.
• The benefits are real and tangible. With due respect to my Future of Work friends, we’re not selling intangibles like stronger culture or improved collaboration. We’re selling improved cash flow, time saved, money saved, and errors reduced. Hard benefits. Yum.
• The VC investors are great. It’s been great to meet Ted and Will from Iconiq, Jeff from Notable, and Jillian from Cowboy. While I have worked with some of their partners in the past, I’ve not yet worked with them and am super excited to do so. It’s also great to reconnect with Greg from Costanoa with whom I worked closely for years at Alation.

I don’t know the whole team executive well yet, but have been psyched to meet the CMO Mark and the CRO Ben, and any Kellblog reader will know I have one message for them: sales & marketing is a three-legged race, so let’s perfect the art of working together.

Finally, I also look forward to working with cofounder Kristoffer and to helping him and Alex take Vic.ai to the next level.