FP&A Today

Glenn Hopper
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FP&A Today is the podcast for Financial Planning and Analysis. The weekly show dives into the challenges and opportunities within the world of FP&A, interviewing FP&A leaders, CFOs and other finance pros in order to give you the freshest insights and takeaways. Each week our top guests provide actionable advice about financial planning and analysis – from career goals to navigating challenges, and powerful Excel tips. Our weekly show provides unrivalled insights for navigating FP&A. FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails. Datarails is the AI-powered Financial Planning and Analysis platform for Excel users.

  1. 4 DAYS AGO

    From Big Four to Fiverr: How Esti Levy Dadon scaled Finance at the Gig Marketplace

    Esti Levy Dadon, Executive VP Finance, Fiverr ,started in public accounting at Ernst and Young, before leading the finance function at Fiverrr. Since joining the global marketplace in 2016 she steered the company to a successful IPO in 2019. In her words: “In almost 10 years at Fiverr  I’m still waiting for things to be boring and repeatable, but it never happens because things change all the time” In this episode: Building finance from the ground up at Fiverr  The path to IPO and the financial work required  Challenge of building a robust forecasting model for a public company Creating a finance team to last Business partnering process at Fiverr Traits for hiring in FP&A at Fiverr    Mindset FP&A perspective shift to connect you to the business

    47 min

  2. 3 SEPT

    From Data to Decisions - How Wasabi's FP&A and BI Teams Execute at Scale

    What do FP&A professionals need to understand about data work and BI and the work that BI is doing? Marcos Bento, Director BI, at Wasabi Technologies: “They need to translate business requests in English in a way that the BI folks can translate that into codes. That’s where the magic happens.” In part two of our deep dive with Marcos Bento (BI) and David Suter (FP&A) from Wasabi Technologies, we explore the execution side of their successful data partnership. In this episode: Our 130-Iteration Journey: Net retention metric evolution Cost per dollar of new ARR (and how settled on it) Storytelling across technical and executive audiences Lean team compositions (4-person FP&A, 5-person BI) Power of the problem solving skillset in our hiring

    41 min

  3. 25 AUG

    Building a high functioning partnership between BI & FP&A

    Wasabi Technologies (a Boston-based cloud storage company with over $530M in funding, a decade of hypergrowth, 450+ team members, and multiple exabytes of storage deployed) sets high standards for its finance and analytics teams.  Both teams are under pressure to deliver fast, accurate, and actionable insights. Marcos Bento, Director Business Intelligence at Wasabi Technologies and David Suter, Director, Financial Planning And Analysis at Wasabi Technologies join us for a special two-parter. They delve deep into how their teams work together, across functions to turn raw data into real-time financial intelligence. In this episode:  Building and gaining trust between BI and FP&A  Getting from “10% out” to within a couple percentage points for forecasting  KPIs such as dollars per terabyte  BI and FP&A as investigative reporters  Predictive analytics: forecast in the 6 or 12 months working with sales  The manifesto for AI at Wasabi

    43 min

  4. 14 AUG

    A "Systems Thinking" Mindset for FP&A Success - Daniel Gardner

    Daniel Gardner is operational finance business partner at FirstGroup Plc, a leading UK-based provider of public transport. Daniel brings a unique perspective shaped by a diverse finance career across iconic consumer brands like L’Oreal, the Body Shop and Hunter Boots, where he led major forecasting overhauls and drove commercial transformation. Now at First Group, he is leading the development of a cloud-based forecasting system for a billion pound division, working with more than 50 stakeholders to deliver scalable real-time insights.  In this episode he talks about the power of “systems thinking” in the CFO’s Office as a way of understanding how different parts of an organization (or any complex system) interconnect and influence each other.”If there’s an area, I’d say that FP&A could do with its systems thinking. Structure makes behavior and behavior makes structure. So it travels in a loop, which means that to make changes in an organization, you either have to hire people who do not exhibit the behaviors naturally or you’ve got to change the structure and alter the incentives that are producing the problems.” In this episode: Bringing my philosophy-training to finance  Six week finance transformation at Hunter Boots  Getting from lagging to leading indicators  99% of People Problems Are Really System Problems Python+ Excel (practical examples)

    52 min

  5. 31 JUL

    “I am done pretending" - my honest take on finance and FP&A” – Sarah Schlott

    Sarah Schlott, Senior Director of Finance at Tray, a leading point of sale system in entertainment,  joins Glenn Hopper to tear down the sacred rituals of corporate finance. Rising from billing temp to strategic finance leader, Schlott who has been in corporate finance for 18 years, delivers brutal honesty about what’s broken in FP&A and how to fix it. She challenges everything from annual budgets to variance analysis (“forensic accounting in disguise”) while advocating for a bottoms-up, operator-first approach that actually works. In this episode: The power of aggressive curiosity in finance  My most accurate forecast was also the one that failed  My views on variance analysis  Running a $100M forecast in Excel  Why we shouldn’t treat the annual budget as a “golden idol” Moving away from a “spreadsheet guilt trip” every month  From Singer-Songwriter to Finance Leader Connect with Sarah Schlott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahschlott/

    56 min

  6. 22 JUL

    From Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to Energy Transformation: Connagh Hopkins

    Connagh Hopkins is Head of Business Planning and Reporting at Western Power, one of Australia’s largest electricity network operators. Connagh shares her fascinating and unconventional journey from working on the global licensing for  “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to navigating Australia’s energy transformation. In this episode:  Who Wants To be a Millionaire success (powered by Lotus123) The Consolidated 10 year plan at Western Power  Scenario planning and Inflation challenges in utilities  How we are stacked: 65 person finance team at Western Power The power and challenge of AI in finance Connect with Connagh Hopkins: https://www.linkedin.com/in/connagh-hopkins-a9b3871/ Connagh Hopkins is Head of Business Planning and Reporting at Western Power, where she oversees the FP&A function for one of Australia’s largest electricity network operators. With more than two decades of experience across utilities, property development, not-for-profit, retail, fuel, and media sectors in both the UK and Australia, she’s known for her focus on commercial strategy, cross-functional collaboration, and building high-performance finance teams.

    49 min

  7. 17 JUL

    CFO Grammarly – behind their $1 billion in non-dilutive financing and how we do FP&A

    Matt Hudson became CFO of Grammarly – the popular writing assistant tool –  after the company acquired Coda (a productivity tool)- of which he was a founding member.  Now as CFO at Grammarly he is overseeing rapid change at the company which has over 40 million daily active users and $700m in revenue (and a 50 person finance team). Finance is helping pioneer a company vision of  AI redefining every business application and workflow, “reinventing productivity”. To this end, in May 2025, Grammarly raised $1 billion in non-dilutive financing from General Catalyst to fund sales and marketing costs and strategic acquisitions. Since then, Grammarly acquired email startup Superhuman (July 2025). You sense more is coming.  In this episode Grammarly $1billion non-diluted growth investment explained  Being a founding member of Coda (acquired by Grammarly)  How my product expertise plugs into finance  Joining YouTube when it was around $140million in revenue to $3billion by the time I left ( $36 billion today) Will CFOs see an explosion of costs because of AI  FP&A set up at Grammarly and biggest KPIs Bonding over a love of Chili’s

    56 min

  8. 13 JUL

    Why Financial models are essential even at early stages of a company – Lauren Pearl

    Lauren Pearl is a Business Strategist and CFO Advisor who helps startup teams build data-driven businesses. The 3x founder with over 13 years of startup leadership experience now serves as CFO, advisor, and instructor for over 300 growing companies. She also runs the podcast “Growth Minded CFO” and offers a free course on financial modeling. In this episode: Financial models at startups Sniffing out BS at startups Storytelling as a pitchdeck  Getting startups to engage with finance  Free financial modeling course  Being a punk band roadie  Functionality of Excel  Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenepearl/ Daily CFO newsletter: https://www.laurenpearlconsulting.com/newsletter

    1h 2m
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About

FP&A Today is the podcast for Financial Planning and Analysis. The weekly show dives into the challenges and opportunities within the world of FP&A, interviewing FP&A leaders, CFOs and other finance pros in order to give you the freshest insights and takeaways. Each week our top guests provide actionable advice about financial planning and analysis – from career goals to navigating challenges, and powerful Excel tips. Our weekly show provides unrivalled insights for navigating FP&A. FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails. Datarails is the AI-powered Financial Planning and Analysis platform for Excel users.

Information

  • Creator
    Glenn Hopper
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2025
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2022 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    FP&A Today

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