Run the Numbers

In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ Gustafson sits down with Gordon Coyle, a 40-year commercial insurance veteran, to demystify one of the most anxiety-inducing topics for founders and CFOs: business insurance. Drawing on decades of experience with startups, scaleups, and regulated industries, Gordon breaks down what leaders need to know about D&O, E&O, cyber, and general liability, why investo...

[Original air date: June 19, 2025] In this episode, Alex Immerman, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, joins CJ to discuss the CFO role and how it’s changing in the era of AI. He explains what the components of a company’s AI agenda the CFO should own, how and where it should be leveraged in an organization, and why, if you’re preparing to go public, AI needs to be mentioned in your S-1. He breaks dow...

[Original air date: May 8, 2025] When it comes to investor relations, an organization’s communication strategy should be a key instrument to support its business strategy. While this may seem obvious, so often we get this wrong. In this episode, CJ hosts a masterclass on investor relations with Samuel Levenson of the Arbor Advisory Group and Jon Neitzell of Andruil Partners, focusing on the strate...

Mostly Growth on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MostlyGrowth Mostly Growth on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mostly-growth/id1842238102 Mostly Growth on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3KDtaLaXx1obFp5PUhZ6V3 In this year-end episode of Mostly Growth, CJ Gustafson, Kyle Poyar, and Ben Hillman reflect on what it actually takes to build a modern media business around newslette...

[Original air date: June 5, 2025] How can finance leaders identify where their capital is silently going to waste and where it can be better used to drive growth? In this episode, CJ interviews Russell Lester, the CFO of Tropic, where capital allocation is both the product and the mission. Russell introduces the concept of “spoilage”, deployed capital that fails to deliver its intended value. He a...

In this special, table-turning episode of Run the Numbers, CJ Gustafson steps out of the host’s chair as Paul Stansik—Operating Partner at ParkerGale and author of the Hello Operator newsletter—takes over the interview. What began as a planned discussion on annual planning best practices quickly evolves into a candid deep dive on Mostly Media, CJ’s growing niche B2B media business, and the thinkin...

Mostly Growth on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MostlyGrowth Mostly Growth on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mostly-growth/id1842238102 Mostly Growth on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3KDtaLaXx1obFp5PUhZ6V3 In this episode of Mostly Growth, CJ Gustafson, Kyle Poyar, and Ben Hillman unpack a wide-ranging set of predictions and observations about where go-to-market strategy,...

In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ Gustafson sits down with Larry Contrella, General Partner at JMI Equity, to unpack how JMI invests in software without financial engineering or roll-up strategies. Larry explains how the firm builds conviction through founder relationships, long-term partnership, and a product-and-brand-first view of durable growth. They discuss how JMI supports companies thr...

In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ Gustafson sits down with Brian Brown, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer at Rocket Companies, to unpack how Rocket has built a differentiated, full-stack fintech business far beyond its mortgage roots. The conversation explores Rocket’s approach to long-tail monetization, the strategic importance of mortgage servicing, and how recapture rates become a dura...

Mostly Growth on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MostlyGrowth Mostly Growth on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mostly-growth/id1842238102 Mostly Growth on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3KDtaLaXx1obFp5PUhZ6V3 In this episode of Mostly Growth, CJ Gustafson and Kyle Poyar explore the hidden mechanics behind focus, competition, and value creation across both consumer culture an...

Blake Grayson, CFO of Docusign, joins CJ Gustafson to discuss how a company that redefined e-signature and became a verb is now navigating its next chapter in intelligent agreement management. Drawing on more than a decade at Amazon—where he helped forecast AWS and worked inside some of the company’s most operationally demanding businesses—Blake explains how financial discipline, operational depth...

Cassie Young brings hard earned lessons from a career spanning CRO roles, customer success leadership, turnarounds, and now investing as a General Partner at Primary Venture Partners. She talks about building and rebuilding go to market teams, why sometimes you should fire customers on purpose, and how churn is a lagging indicator that hides deeper retention issues. Cassie shares strong views on o...

Mostly Growth on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MostlyGrowth Mostly Growth on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mostly-growth/id1842238102 Mostly Growth on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3KDtaLaXx1obFp5PUhZ6V3 In this episode of Mostly Growth, CJ Gustafson and Kyle Poyar bounce between sharp SaaS insights and delightfully weird internet culture. They start with an unexpected...

CoreWeave CFO Nitin Agrawal joins Run the Numbers to unpack the finance engine behind one of the fastest-growing AI infrastructure companies on the planet. CJ and Nitin dive into what it takes to build financial discipline in an environment where business models are being invented in real time, discussing the company’s 700% growth last year and massive first-quarter performance as a newly public c...

In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ sits down with Greg Henry, CFO of 1Password and one of the most commercially minded finance leaders in tech, to break down why he left the public-company grind at Couchbase for a PLG-driven security business and what he’s relearning in the private sphere. Greg explains how forecasting changes when the product does the selling, how to think about comp and pric...

In this Thanksgiving-week Mostly Growth episode, CJ Gustafson and Kyle Poyar ditch the serious finance talk for a looser, drinks-in-hand conversation with Ben Hillman, bouncing between CJ’s nostalgic emo-punk concert adventure, the curse of vanity license plates, and the epidemic of “Y-axis crimes” in founder charts. They riff on Spotify Wrapped copycats, YouTube becoming living-room TV, kids’ You...

How do you know when a company is ready to go public? And what do you do to prepare for this? Chirag Shah, CFO of Motive and former CFO of Kong and Cornerstone OnDemand, joins CJ to share insights from his experience of scaling businesses from $30 million to nearly $1 billion and tripling ARR. He talks about taking companies public and how he helped take one private again in a $5.2 billion deal. I...

Serving SMB mid-market customers is one thing, but when you go upstream to enterprise sales, everything changes: go-to-market strategy, the sales process, how you structure deals, even how you define customer value. Today’s guest, Andrew Casey, has helped scale four SaaS companies: ServiceNow, WalkMe, Lacework, and his current company, Amplitude. At ServiceNow, he worked closely with Snowflake’s M...

Brian Balfour, Founder & CEO of Reforge and former VP of Growth at HubSpot, joins Mostly Growth to explore why product-market fit is a moving target. He introduces the concept of the Product-Market Fit Treadmill, a state where rising customer expectations and competitive pressure make it harder than ever to stay ahead. Brian breaks down how AI has accelerated PMF collapse, explains the hidden cost...

In this special episode of Run the Numbers, CJ Gustafson records live from Campfire’s AI Finance Forward conference in San Francisco, serving up a trio of rapid-fire interviews with top-tier finance leaders. First, Daniel Kang, CFO of Mercury, breaks down the quality of fintech revenue streams, the mechanics of float in a falling rate environment, and what investors really value. Then, Brad Floeri...

In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ Gustafson sits down with Vanna Krantz, former CFO of Disney+ and Grindr, to explore what it takes to lead finance through massive inflection points. Vanna reflects on building Disney+’s subscription model from scratch under Bob Iger’s leadership and the pressure of launching a global product with no precedent. She discusses forecasting as both science and art...

In this episode of Mostly Growth, CJ Gustafson and Kyle Poyar dig into what it means to be useful rather than just right at work, exploring how communication, empathy, and impact matter more than technical precision as careers mature. They share candid lessons from their own paths—CJ’s focus on making others look good to earn promotions and Kyle’s evolution into a domain expert through public writ...

In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ sits down with Jeff Bernstein, managing partner at Riveron, to unpack what really happens when a company decides it might be time to go public. Jeff draws on his experience across banking, hedge funds, operating roles, and advisory work to break down IPOs, dual-track processes, and the surprising realities behind price discovery—including why a 20x-oversubscr...

In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ Gustafson sits down with Colin Gardiner, General Partner at Yonder VC and former Chief Revenue and Product Officer at Outdoorsy, to unpack what really drives successful marketplace businesses. Colin shares lessons from scaling a peer-to-peer RV platform, where the biggest unlock came not from casual users but from power hosts optimizing utilization and yield...

In this high-energy episode of Mostly Growth, CJ Gustafson, Kyle Poyar, and Ben Hillman dive into the hidden levers of SaaS growth and what truly separates startups that scale to $20M+ ARR from those that stall out. They explore eye-opening data from 6,500 companies, revealing how the best improve net retention, raise pricing, and re-engineer their revenue models over time. Alongside the metrics,...