Chargebee's Champions of Change Podcast Chargebee

Jodi McDermott, Chief Product Officer at Dude Solutions, is Vikram’s guest on the podcast this week. A data-driven product executive with more than 20 years of experience in digital technology, analytics, and product management, Jodi has worked with companies such as Gartner, comScore, Inc, and SHL during her illustrious career. She brings this vast amount of experience and knowledge to her conversation with Vikram here today.
During the interview, Jodi discusses such topics as agile development, strategic planning, product growth, and the importance of prioritizing specific activities to achieve business outcomes. She then looks at how to ensure client satisfaction and upsell a client, financial concepts like budgeting, the impact of COVID-19 on her business, and how building strong relationships with people are critical. Jodi and Vikram finish by discussing how different business functions need to come together while crafting a product strategy. Listen in today to learn all about strategic planning, growth, and product management from this truly outstanding leader in the field.
The Finer Details of This Episode
    -Questions you need to ask during the strategic planning process
    -The importance of conducting research and listening to your customers
    -How to find a product-market fit
    -The things that go into the product growth phase
    -The importance of empathy during a crisis
    -Aspects to consider during a merger or an acquisition
    -Involving your team members in the strategic planning process

In today's episode, Vikram welcomes Shelley Perry, the CEO and Managing Director at Scalelogix Ventures, which is a company focused on guiding scaler founders and leaders to navigate their growth stage. As someone who lives and breathes growth challenges, Shelley has a lot of wisdom to share in terms of playing the scale game, making smart bets, and coming out of a crisis stronger. Vikram and Shelley start the conversation by reflecting on prior recessions and the main differences between them. Then, Shelley goes on to share her key learnings about the impact of recessions on businesses. According to her, there are some significant opportunities to pursue during these slowdowns, both for businesses and their people.
Next, Shelley shares an interesting analogy that she calls 'the messy middle' in which she compares business scaling to those complex teenage years when you want to be both an adult and a child. But as she points out, when it comes to scaling a startup, you have to first spend some time being a child in order to develop the business properly. Then, once it’s up and running, you can finally be an adult. Then, Shelley shares some key takeaways regarding startup scale and growth. She says that if you want to grow your company, you should listen to what the data tells you and learn from it as much as possible. Finally, she suggests laying out all the puzzle pieces, making a conscious choice of your next business moves, and always keeping your finger on the pulse of your business.
The Finer Details of This Episode:
Looking at the recession through different lensesWhat we can learn from prior recessionsThe messy middle analogy Scaling a startup by looking at what the data tells us Having constructive conversations during tough timesUnderstanding that everything in your business is tightly connectedLetting go of the old to make room for something newLaying out puzzle pieces and making conscious business choices

On the podcast today, Vikram welcomes James Solomons, an entrepreneur, renowned speaker, business leader, and enthusiastic podcast host. James currently serves as the CFO and C0-CEO of Xref, a global reference checking and identity verification platform that empowers organizations worldwide to make great people decisions. James has spent most of his time in public practice, evolving from a tax accountant to a CFO, and today, he shares with us this remarkable career journey and the importance of the evolution of CFOs and organizations as a whole.
James begins by discussing the origin of Xref, how Xref eases the hiring process in the workforce, and the transformation of his career, starting out as a tax accountant but growing to become a CFO. He also reviews the rules he follows as a CFO, and explains one of his favorite phrases, “Humanize the numbers”, which essentially means breaking down numbers in languages that teams aside from finance can clearly understand. Being a hiring company, the great resignation affected Xref significantly and James shares some of the changes that he had to make as the CFO in response. The show rounds off as James advises those in the workforce to always invest in referenceable relationships.
The Finer Details of This Episode:
The story of XrefJames’ career journeyHis evolution from accountant to CFOBecoming a cyber-resilient CFOThe impact of the great resignation on James and XrefJames’ interesting statisticsInvesting in referenceable relationships

Joining Vikram on the show today is Julien Balmont, the Co-founder and CTO of Zenchef, a Paris-based restaurant management platform. When it began in 2011, Zenchef was an online directory of menus, and, in 2014, they pivoted to a marketing management platform that helps restaurants feel the digital presence, manage their websites, and speak to customers directly. Currently, they aim to scale their current customer base of a little over 6,000 customers to 25,000 by 2024.
Today, Julien talks about scaling up and the challenges of building an Agile team, as well as what sparked the Zenchef idea, how it evolved, and the different components of the Zenchef software. He then defines Agile and how he leveraged its principles to scale and goes on to emphasize the value of customer-centricity in scaling. Julien also notes that, when times got tough, Zenchef utilized the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) methodology to steer the business back in the right direction. Finally, Julien explains how working together as a group plays into the hard metrics like lifetime value and customer retention.
The Finer Details of This Episode:
0:00 Introduction
1:29 What sparked Zenchef
4:02 How Zenchef has leveraged the Agile mindset to help scale
9:15 How to rectify misalignment of teams when scaling
11:54 Zenchef’s response to the pandemic challenges
14:51 Julien's key learnings/unlearnings from his Zenchef journey
17:49 How good team relationships play into the hard metrics
19:26 Julien's thoughts on Zenchef's recent acquisition of Billee
21:21 Julien’s recommendation for dining in Paris

Joining Vikram on the podcast today is Clementine Svartz, the Head of Finance at Spendesk, a company that makes corporate spend management easy. Spendesk recently joined the Unicorn Club mid-2021 and has experienced exponential growth right from its inception. Despite the challenges that come with a fast-paced growing company like Spendesk, Clementine and her team run a tight financial ship. Today, she shares her expertise on how SaaS companies can experience growth in their finances as well as her thoughts regarding the role of a financial controller in a company.
Clementine begins by sharing the outstanding growth Spendesk has experienced year over year and the part she has played as the head of finance. She discusses the metrics and KPIs that come into play when measuring the financial growth at Spendesk, and also discusses how the role of the financial controller has evolved over time, thanks to automation and digitalization. The episode comes to a close with Clementine sharing useful tips for finance controllers and those looking to improve their knowledge in tech finance – insights that you absolutely cannot afford to miss.
The Finer Details of This Episode:
0:00 Introduction
1:40 Spendesk’s growth over the years
4:25 How Clementine balances growth and cost as Spendesk's Head of Finance
7:46 Metrics and KPIs used to measure growth in a SaaS company
8:52 The role of financial controllers in fundraisers
13:21 How to develop a new mindset as a financial controller
16:21 Implementing the use of technology to improve the finance industry
20:09 Using metrics to make timely decisions
23:33 Advice for those looking to learn about tech finance in SaaS

Today, the remarkably gifted leader, teacher, coach, and thinker, Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia joins Vikram on the podcast. In 2014, Carlos founded Product School, now the global leader in product management training. With over a million members, including mentors from companies like Google, Facebook, Netflix, Airbnb, PayPal, Uber, and Amazon, Product School boasts an enviable network of individuals, and is the largest community of product managers in the world. Like most product managers, Carlos has several talents up his sleeve. Besides building Product School, he's written a book called The Product Book, organizes conferences such as ProductCon, and is a self-taught orator who's spoken at more than a thousand events and conferences around the world.
Carlos discusses the origins of Product School, a solution that helps people build data products much more efficiently than traditional education, and goes on to explain the types of product managers and their roles and responsibilities. He also  identifies one all-encompassing quality of product managers: they are generalists, not specialists. Carlos then takes us through a day in a product manager's life, how product managers handle all the functions they deal with, and why they need to be rich in empathy. Throughout this episode, Carlos shares the wisdom garnered during Product School's eight-year growth journey, including how to scale without compromising quality.
The Finer Details of This Episode:
0:00 Introduction
1:23 Product School
4:26 The growth journey of Product School
7:14 How to scale without compromising quality
10:01 Different types of product manager
12:57 The different functions product managers work with and the empathy needed for each
15:14 How to know when you have a product-market fit
19:24 The evolution of product management
22:32 Carlos’ top product management frameworks and methodologies
24:57 Carlos’ startup advice