1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted

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S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Support for CFO Thought Leader comes from Intuit QuickBooks BillPay. Say goodbye to manual bill entry. And NetSuite, the number one AI cloud ERP. Hello, this is Amy Wang, CFO of Procurify, and you are listening to the CFO Thought Leadership Podcast. This is episode 1182.

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S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

I kind of asked him questions and I just instinctually said, I think that's a mistake. I don't think we should do it. He's like, well, we're going to have no engineers in two months if we don't do this. Because, you know, these bids are crazy, etc. And I sort of reflected on my time as a banker. I said, listen, here's what I can tell you is the SPAC markets imploding, the IPO markets shut, that ripples down to the private markets. So the money is going to get cut off. So I'm not sure.

0:57

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

how long this is going to last. It kind of feels like we're in a very toppy moment of the market. This was probably early in 2022. And I said, here's what we'll do. And we sort of agreed on a much smaller amount. I said, you can have this pocket of money and go have at it. Go comp increase whoever you want. And then literally a week later, hiring freeze at Facebook or Meta, hiring freeze at Google, and just sort of trickled throughout the tech industry.

1:26

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

And I'm just glad I followed my instincts because it could have gotten, you know, it would have been a lot more challenging. It's how we needed to really save costs. Hi, it's Jack. On today's show, we speak with Andre Mansell, CFO of Neum. What happens when the person guiding finance has spent years making decisions where hesitation carried real consequences?

1:55

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Our guest today brings a perspective shaped by high-stakes environments, fast-moving markets, and now one of the most ambitious battlegrounds in business, global payments. Cross-border money movement remains too slow, too expensive, and far too opaque for a digital economy. Yet fixing it requires more than technology. It demands judgment, discipline,

2:23

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

and the ability to separate noise from what truly matters. Our talk with CFO Andre Mansell begins after this. Every business is asking the same question. How do we make AI work for us? The possibilities are endless and guessing is too risky. But sitting on the sidelines is not an option because one thing is almost certain. Your competitors are already making their move.

2:55

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

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3:22

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

It knows. And you've got total flexibility because now with NetSuite AI Connector, you can use the AI of your choice to connect your actual business data and ask every question you ever had from key customers to cash on hand to inventory trends. Plus, automate those tiresome manual processes. Let's see your competitors do that.

3:46

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Right now, get the business guy demystifying AI free at netsuite.com slash cfotl. That's netsuite.com slash cfotl, as in thought leader.

4:07

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Hello, CFO Andre Mansell is with us. Andre's path to the finance office is anything but conventional. He began as a U.S. Navy aviator, leading missions at sea before moving in to investment banking, where he advised high-growth internet companies on IPOs, financings, and M&A. He later stepped into operating CFO roles at Chow Now.

4:33

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

and now Niamh. Today, he helps guide a fast-scaling global payments company. Andre, welcome. Thank you very much, Jack. Pleasure to be here. So this is a very rare interview for us. We don't always see naval aviator. And again, I'll emphasize, you're in the Navy roughly about nine years, but you were a Navy aviator for seven of those years. The obvious question is how...

5:00

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Navy shaped your leadership, but take us back and share with us that decision, that initial decision to join the Navy and become an aviator. Yeah, it was, uh, certainly I wasn't one of those kids that, uh, grew up with, with pictures of, uh, you know, aircraft all over my walls and models and that type of thing. I kind of fell into it.

5:19

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

I'm from a relatively small town in Northern California called Yuba City, played a lot of sports. And early on, I realized I had a bit of a knack for leadership. And my father was an Air Force pilot, flew B-52s. And so it was in the back of my mind, but not necessarily something that I wanted to do or sort of dreamt about doing.

5:45

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

And I started to learn about different opportunities to get college paid for. And of course, the Navy ROTC scholarship was one of the options that I heard about. A guy on my football team had gotten the scholarship the year before. I became very interested, knowing I had to figure out how to pay for college. Eventually started applying to some of the academies, applied for ROTC.

6:07

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

And got it. I got it and was thrilled to get it. And they basically give you a blank check and they say, go find a school that has an ROTC program. And if you get in, we'll pay for it. It's one of the best deals out there, period. I took advantage of it. I went and saw the USC campus and I said, I'm in. And off I went.

6:30

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Really started that first chapter of my career. Did not know I wanted to be a pilot and just spent the next four years learning and studying engineering and becoming, you know, laying the foundation of what would become my naval aviation career or my naval officer career.

6:48

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

And yeah, so when it comes to your, when you get to your senior year, it's just like anything else. They say it's time to select. You put in your choices. And my top choice was aviation. I said, you know, I don't, I really don't know what else I'm going to do right now. So this looks like a pretty fun career path, something I'd enjoy. And I put it in and I got it. And off I went to Pensacola, Florida. Spent about two years. Was, I would say, a decent student there. And ended up.

7:18

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

getting my wings of gold in 1999. And they selected me for SH-60 Bravo Seahawks to fly helicopters. And that was how the journey began. Exciting. You mentioned near the start that...

7:33

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

You had leadership qualities or perhaps others looked towards you as a leader. I think that's how you first realize you're a leader. Others are following you. Others are listening to you. Yeah, I don't know. I think, like I said, I played a lot of sports and I just highly encourage young people to play sports. It's a big part of my life. It still is.

7:56

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

it develops leadership quality. You learn how to work as a team and, and, um, in the void of leadership, you have to have a leader. And oftentimes I would just step into the role when needed, not always, but, but when needed, um, you know, became student body president, really enjoyed that really enjoyed, um, sort of guiding some of the decisions and the sort of foundation did boys state in high school as well. That was a big foundation of leadership. And, um,

8:22

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

And you just learn the principles. And I talk about a lot of this LinkedIn series and we talk about sort of the things about leaders and how you can learn them early on, how you can apply them to business and apply them to investment banking, apply them to anything. But really it's stepping into a void. People need direction. And oftentimes it's just the person who steps up and puts himself out there.

8:47

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Your leadership style today, how did the Navy contribute to that? Oh, man. The Navy, so much. I use it every day. I have what I call the NEOM finance team principles, and they're all from the Navy.

9:07

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

The military really teaches you about putting others in front of yourself. But specifically as an aviator, you're an aircraft commander. So you're in charge of the aircraft. You're in charge of the lives of the crew. You're in charge of the aircraft. And so every decision you make has pretty high impact, especially when things get a little hairy.

9:32

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

things like the way I'm a very hands-on leader. And the way I describe it to people is I've got my hands on the control, right? Then I'm going to give you the controls, but I'm going to kind of have my hands somewhere near the controls in case you do something dangerous. And that was very common, actually, when I was in the cockpit and you're flying with a, you're going to go land on the ship with a junior pilot. There's a cyclic, which, you know.

10:00

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

It tilts the rotor, and then there's a collective, which helps you kind of go up and down in a helicopter. And as you're coming to land on a ship, you cannot be too low. Like, being too low is highly dangerous. You can put the aircraft in the water. I know friends that have done it. And so when I would do those flights and those night landings in particular, I would have my hand underneath the collective so that if they tried to drop too much, I would stop it.

10:25

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

And so when I talk to people about, you know, my hands on, I say, okay, I got my hands on the controls. I pass you the controls. Then they're your controls, but I'm kind of monitoring. I got my hands very close to the controls because I'm not going to let this thing crash, right? Once I watch you for a while and I see that you're a good aviator and that you got good instincts and good decisions, then I'm going to put my hands on my lap and sort of just observe you for a while.

10:48

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

And eventually I'm just going to step out of the aircraft, which is sort of a, you know, doesn't actually happen in a helicopter, but it does happen in other types of aircraft. And it's your aircraft, but we got to get there first. I'm not the type of guy that's just going to say your aircraft, let me know how it goes. And, you know, I'll check in in a month. Like that's just not my style and right or wrong. Um, I've had success with it. Um, and I tell people like, it's, it's not going to be easy the first few months, but I can guarantee you're going to learn more than you ever will.

11:17

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

And so that's sort of part of my leadership style. And that's 100% from the military and in particular from the aircraft. And you receive your MBA while you're still in active service. Is that right? I did. I had the best deal in the world, which was my commanding officer in the squadron recommended me to teach ROTC at UCLA. I wanted that job in particular.

11:42

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

because it was open and I could go to a, you know, a top MBA program while I was teaching ROTC, which was service I still owed to the Navy. And so I basically lived on the UCLA campus for the better part of three years, was there, you know, seven in the morning, would leave sometimes at 10 at night, you know, start with the midshipman in the morning, leave with my, you know, MBA student, you know, sessions at night and that type of thing.

12:05

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

But I was able to sort of knock two birds out with one stone, if you will. It was a fantastic experience. And that paved the way for banking, right? I did not know what I wanted to do when I was still in the Navy. I couldn't tell you what an investment banker was. I did not know the term when I was flying. I studied for the MBA exams while I was on a ship with a paper book. This was all happening. I just sort of made the decision. It's time to...

12:34

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

It's time to depart this. I did not want to do this in 10 years. I was on five ships in three years. It's very hard on your personal life. I just said, I think I'm going to take a bet on myself and do this. And through the MBA program, you get all these opportunities. You see all these really amazing people, these presenters, these alumni. And in the classes, I was getting dusted by all these guys and gals.

13:01

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

And this one gal in particular was in one of my groups my first year. And I was like, what did you do before business school? And she's like, well, I was an investment banking analyst. And the more I sort of started paying attention, the people that were just running circles around everyone were these investment banking analysts. I was like, what is that? Like, what is that career? I started digging in. And then after a while, I said, I think I might.

13:27

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

having to act for something like this. And I don't know if they'll take me, but I'm going to throw my hat in the ring and see what happens. Uh, and that's exactly what happened. And is it for the next 15 years, you're basically in the banking realm. Is that right? 10 of those years you spend at RBC. I think that's worth mentioning. You're someone who's.

13:44

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Sticks with the mission. I had absolutely no desire to stick around banking. Like I joined to learn. My plan was to do a couple of years and figure out what's next. I ended up being in a phenomenal group in the internet group at RBC. We've sort of built it from scratch. We were doing small deals, high velocity. But for me as a young...

14:10

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

uh, a young associate, I was getting so much exposure to CEOs and CFOs and founders. And, and I was actually able to bring in clients. It was such a small plot. I was, I was just, uh, involved in a lot of pretty, pretty big things as a very, at a very junior, uh, at a very junior sort of level. Uh, but then I stuck around for 10 years, uh, ended up being the number two person in the internet group. And that's when I made the decision to make a very big bet on myself and depart.

14:39

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

to go run an internet group globally for a middle market bank called Stiefel. And I went ahead and did that for about three years. Amazing experience. I got to work directly with Tom Weisel, one of the most iconic investment bankers in the tech industry today. I'll never forget that experience.

15:00

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Of course, at that point, I got a chance to run the global internet team at Credit Suisse and made that decision. So it's a series of bets on myself, all on the internet. And what I'll tell you is, even though I wanted to leave, investment bank was one of those jobs that you start to scale. You realize a few years in that like...

15:22

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

I kind of know what I'm doing all of a sudden. And I didn't think I knew what I was doing a couple of years ago. And it's pretty empowering. You build confidence. I'll never forget when I was at RBC, I was starting to, I think it was a third year associate or first year VP. My MD left the room and the client, we were at a dinner. The client's like, what do you think? What do you think about this? And I had happened to have done a deal very similarly, I don't know, like six months before.

15:52

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And I said, well, you know, I don't, I don't have a ton of experience, but, but I just closed this deal. And this is what investors thought. And in my opinion is, is, is X. And, and, and I remember the CEO going like, okay, that makes a lot of sense. Like, okay. We started having a conversation about it. And it was like a, a very important moment for me because I, I was like, like that guy just listened to me. I had something valuable to say to a CEO. And I think it was like,

16:23

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

I think he listened to me and I think he's actually going to take my advice. And it was, it was a very defining moment. Cause I was like, this is pretty cool. This is pretty cool.

16:31

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

When you think of that chapter now, your banking chapter, this very hefty chapter, what did banking teach you? Banking teach you a ton. I mean, I think one of the most important things it does for a future, it helps you assess a business, right? The health of a business. Because as a banker, you're not operating, but you're really looking at the, you know, I'll call it the 30,000 foot view. You know, what are the margins? What are the growth rates?

16:57

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Quick assessment of the executive team. How big is this TAM? What are the multiples in this space? Does the market like this type of business? Does the market hate this type of business? And you start to learn that and it starts to compound and you really get good at it. And as an investment banker, it becomes instinctual where you look at a margin and you just say,

17:20

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

there no like something's wrong here like why are why are these businesses so profitable and this particular one does the exact same thing all the everything's the same and this one's margins are negative like what's going on something is going something is off right and it gives you those instincts that you otherwise wouldn't have and you kind of take them for granted until you get into the uh the cfo role and you realize like that's not an instinct that everybody has like really understanding

17:46

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

the different metrics and how companies are viewed. And, you know, over the course of 15 years, you really get good at it. And you're around a lot of other bankers that have different views and perspectives and investors. And I think all of those type of things really, really help. You lead banking and you do, you step into a CFO role, but there might've been opportunities sooner for you. What was the timing there? Why did it suddenly make sense? Yeah, well, I,

18:17

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

I loved investment banking. I'll start to say that. It was one of those things where I was having the time of my life. I really enjoyed it. Some people think I'm insane for saying that, but I really did. The people you work with are just of the highest caliber. It's high intensity, high octane, and you're really going after a lot of things. I only left investment. I always knew I wanted to be an operator. I did have an itch. I always had an itch to be an operator.

18:43

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Um, my wife got sick of me talking about it. You know, you see all these other, uh, global heads of internet taken off to be CFOs or COs or CEOs and that type of thing. And, and really, you know, you take so many.

18:55

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

so many companies to the finish line. As a banker, you're sort of sitting there at the end of the road and popping the champagne with them, but you're not there along the journey. And I'm kind of, I enjoy the grind. I enjoy the building part and always had the itch, but it was way too soon. I was not ready. Just so happens that when I was at Credit Suisse, they had a big...

19:17

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

uh, very public blow up in 2021, top of the market. I was having one of the best years of banking, no, the best year of banking in my career by far. Um, it was post COVID just deal activity was, was going crazy, but, but my firm.

19:34

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

something was off. Like we had just taken a very large multi-billion dollar write-off and a lot of the more tenured bankers that had been there for 20, 30 years were starting to leave. And that made me very nervous. And I had to make the decision, do I stay? I was getting calls from every bank on Wall Street because they were all trying to take resources from Credit Suisse at the time. So did I want to go leave to go to another bank?

20:00

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Or do I want to do something else? And I just happened to get the call from Chow Now.

20:05

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

I knew Chris, the CEO. I had done some deals in the space. I had done a pretty relevant deal in the space and everything felt right. I knew three of the board members already. It just felt like a, call it like a soft place to land, a good place to start my CFO career. And I knew and trusted the voices around the table because I called them all and said, what's really happening behind this business? Is this a good move? And of course we all rallied.

20:32

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

I collectively made the decision and I made the jump.

20:35

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

You rose to the ranks of the banking industry at the same time. You're sitting across the table from all of these CEOs and CFOs during that career, all these mid-market companies with these strong visions, whatever they might have been. And then you yourself become a CFO as an operator and you're leading these organizations. How has your beliefs about leadership maybe been modified or changed? Anything?

21:04

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

I think the core foundational pieces of my leadership philosophy have not changed at all. What I would say has changed is my approach to leadership and maybe some of the cultural aspects of the way I lead.

21:22

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

You know, investment banking and the military and being in a tech company are, I can't explain how different they all are. They're very, very different. Military, you're on a team, you're collectively going after a mission. And if I say, Jack, I need this done. Yes, sir. And you're doing it. And there's no questions asked. Like, that's it. Done. Like, and I don't have to ask you again. Like that's just, that's happening. When you get into investment banking.

21:47

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

It's a little bit more of a mercenary's business. You get these highly paid individuals, you get these very lean teams, people are working around the clock, and it's a much more aggressive-toned business. It's not soft and cuddly. Tech is far more soft and cuddly.

22:06

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

It can, you know, investment banking and tech are very far. Those two just alone are very different. But you're all going after a goal. Like in investment banking, if there's a goal two weeks away, like we're going to get it done. Like it's just going to get done. There's no blockers. There's no delays. There's no, this is going to get delayed. It's going to be another couple of weeks. Like it's getting done in two weeks, like just one way or the other. And then technology is a very different animal, right? You have a team, but it's a...

22:34

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

It's just different, right? It's different. And so one of the best pieces of advice I got, one of the co-founders at Chow Now, I brought some of my investment banking culture, if you will, to the tech industry. And I was trying to figure it out. And he said, look, Andre, he's like, you're one of the funniest, silliest, goofiest guys out there that I've met.

23:04

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

but you've kind of had this exterior shell that you feel you need to have. I think because of your, you know, your, your, your history in the Navy and your history of investment making, which is very much the way that they, they train you to be. Uh, he's like, you know what? We don't need to do that here. He's like, if you actually like, like the difference between the rest of the company and me is I get to see that every day. He's like the rest of the company doesn't. They just see the CFO and the guy that's out there doing this. He's like, so why don't you try this? Why don't you try?

23:34

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

just being yourself with the rest of the company, like let down the guards. You don't got to be this military guy. And it was some of the best advice I've ever gotten. Cause I always felt that you can't, you can't show that you can't, you know, you can't do that. And, um, I credit to us, credit him to this day. Um, Eric Jaffe, he just, just, um, one of those soft pieces of advice that you weren't asking for, you didn't sort of see it coming and, uh, can change your whole career.

24:01

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

We want to find out about Neum now. What does Neum do and where is it winning today, this company? Okay, so Neum is a really exciting business. First of all, it's my first fintech, you know, career of internet. First fintech, first payments business. But Neum is a leading infrastructure for cross-border payments globally. If you think about...

24:26

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

We move money from one region to the next globally. This is a $100 trillion market. It is massive. This is a massive. And if you think about the current system, especially if you're a business and you have to move money cross borders, what is it? First of all, it's very slow. Second of all, it's expensive. And third, it's extremely opaque. I can tell you this story. I was meeting with the CEO of one of the largest banks in Korea.

24:55

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

And she has a son that was going to college, I think at Northwestern. And she was...

25:00

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

to me how difficult it was to get the tuition check over to him. They had to call each other and refresh the bank accounts every single day. That's the problem we're solving. We move money in real time, cross-border, at highly competitive rates.

25:16

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

all over the globe in a way that's never been done before. So we are disrupting the global payment economy. And when I think about like the type of things that we're doing and the opportunities ahead, it's really, that's what drew me in. And obviously the founder CEO has a very big ambitious vision on where he's going to take this business.

25:39

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

How has Neum's growth been funded over time then? What's the history here of the capital structure? Right. So the capital structure is, we've raised about $350 million from some of the largest investors in the world, folks like GIC, Tomasek, Riverwood, Bond, Visa, Vertex. And so it's primarily been through equity capital. We do have other...

26:06

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

fixed income arrangements with other folks in our space to fund liquidity. This business takes a lot of liquidity. So the equity capital is really, think about it like business building, product building, team building, and the liquidity capital is really to help fund the money movement around the world. You've got to have excess capital, excess working capital all over the globe at every given time. Plus you have safeguarding requirements. This is a very complex business in terms of capital requirements.

26:37

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

So what's driving the growth of this business today?

26:43

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Really, it's a couple of different things. One, we invested very early on in the platform and infrastructure. So when you think about what does it take to build a cross-border money movement company, really, you've got to have regulatory, you've got to be compliant. We are a highly, highly regulated business. You've got to have regulatory and compliance licenses in every jurisdiction that you operate. You've got to have a corresponding banking network, which is where you have, you know,

27:12

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

relationships with actual banks all over the world. And we have a team that just builds that corresponding banking network all over the world. You've got to have a product that works, right? This is a business that...

27:24

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

If your money doesn't show up, I promise you, you will hear from the client and you will hear immediately, especially if you're moving money in real time. And so it's really expanding those corridors, getting clients onboarded and sort of, honestly, it's just getting out of our own way in certain times where we just need to get some of these clients onboarded that are transitioning from traditional SWIFT system or the banking system to someone like Neom.

27:51

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

where they can move money in real time, uh, very, you know, in very large volumes and very complex situations where we're moving money in 40 or 50 different markets in 15 minutes in 20 different currencies. That's hard to do. So that was fueling our growth is just blocking and tackling, uh, building the foundation of the business, uh, and sort of scaling, getting ready to scale.

28:17

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Is there something that would, you know, you're always fighting something that can slow down this business, some of those dynamics you were just describing?

28:25

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Is there something that you're constantly watching? Yeah. I mean, well, first of all, I think from the current business, the clients that we have today, we pride ourselves in, you know, straight through payments, like the payments that go through, they don't get blocked. Or if they get blocked, they get resolved very quickly. So we're looking at like our CEO has a whole dashboard of metrics and they're, you know, these are not like.

28:53

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

This is not going from 80% to 90%. This is going from like...

28:56

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

you know, 99.3 to 99.45. Like those are the type of metrics that were, that's just keeping the business going. But for me as a CFO, I'm looking, you know, constantly at our various business lines because we serve enterprises, SMBs, we still serve consumers. That's the foundation of the business. I'm looking at transaction counts. I'm looking at transaction volumes, take rates, all of those types of things on a daily basis to see where things are headed.

29:24

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Is there something that maybe you stopped tracking that when you first stepped into the role, you thought, you know, this has got to be more significant? Is there something I stopped tracking? I would say that when I started, you know, I try to keep it very simple, right? This is a very complex business. You can get lost in some of the noise if you spend too much time.

29:49

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

looking at every single detail. So I try to focus on the metrics that really matter and drive the business. So I stopped looking at, I would say, some of the more nuanced metrics for some of the smaller

30:00

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

parts of the business and really focused on where the future of the business, which is the cross-border enterprise payment, the volume, the net revenue retention of certain clients. Those are the things that I've really focused on. I've just tried to ignore some of the noise and not get lost in too much of the data. We would like to try to better understand your investment decision-making. How does Niamh decide where do you invest next?

30:26

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Right. Well, we were very much a founder-driven organization. So when we think about investments, it's really, we think about either new products.

30:38

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Or new corridors. Those are really the way we think about expanding the business and investing in growth. You could go, I mean, there's a lot of different ways to build new corridors. You can, you know, obviously this digital currency space is creating a lot of new regulatory issues out there. But just in fiat currency regulatory licenses, you have to be really careful because these corridors are very complex and very expensive to build.

31:07

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

careful about which ones you go after and which bets you take. So our CEO drives that vision and we back it up with data. We say, this is the size of the market. This is what we think we can make in terms of money. And it never happens a year one. This is the type of thing where...

31:21

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

You invest in year zero, you might see a dollar in year one, and then you're not going to see real revenue until year two or three. So you really got to sort of build that roadmap for new corridors. And we're talking about global enterprise clients. So these are folks that they have clients all over the world. So a new corridor is new revenue for them and new revenue for you. You're just serving your client better. And then new products, they're just new ways to serve our clients in better ways.

31:50

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

a product called Verify, which is, you know, if you have a Venmo or PayPal and, you know, there's maybe like...

31:58

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

a hundred Jack Sweeney's on the app, it's like enter his last four of his phone numbers. So we know that it's going to the right Jack Sweeney. It's something like that, but we're doing that for enterprises. That product is in extremely high demand. That was one that we listened to our clients, took about a year to build, and now it's out there in the marketplace. And we have some very large clients interested in some pretty large roles of that. We've also built things like

32:24

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

that you and I probably wouldn't find all that sexy, but things like no-code solutions for bank where, you know, banks are built on some legacy technology. So building them a low-code or no-code way to integrate into Neum's API is highly valuable for banks all over the world. So we've, you know, products, corridors, and then people.

32:47

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Is there a set of clients who aren't using your offerings yet? Something you're aspiring to this new product, perhaps? Where has it yet to go? So there's plenty of clients that aren't using real-time payments. We're seeing that the market start to evolve. When I think about where the space is, it just, you know, with my internet banking days, it reminds me of where e-commerce was in 1999. We're very small, you know, if you sort of add up,

33:17

S… Speaker 3 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

me and all of our competitors combined, we're going to maybe be one day of JP Morgan's total volume, maybe. So the banking system really dominates the market still, but it's the same thing back in 99 with e-commerce. People are like, why are we paying to e-commerce? It's so tiny. It's just like a spec on the system, but it's just over time, it's just a better way to operate, right? It's faster, cheaper, more convenient for the consumer.

33:39

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

I draw a lot of parallels to real-time cross-border payments. It's a better way to do it. And we're in the very, very early innings of this sector. We always like to talk about AI with our guests, AI strategy. Where is AI being used today at Niamh? Yeah, AI is becoming a very, very important part of our future.

34:06

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

You know, I won't go as far as say it's being used everywhere right now, but it's about to be. We just signed a very large license with one of the large AI providers and the demands are very high. We did an AI hackathon about six months ago and really made a big push for people to rethink the way they operate in the various parts of the business. We actually got 183 submissions. It was one of the most engaging.

34:35

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

exercises that we'd ever done as a company. And we gave out real prizes and we're solving real problems with some of the things that were solved. But our business is ripe for AI. We've got a lot of areas where there's spreadsheets, manual interventions, that type of thing. And AI is playing a big part in it, including finance, including finance.

35:02

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

How is AI changing finance at Neum? Or is it, how will it change finance at Neum? Which one would it be?

35:14

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

It's already started to change finance. One of the things that we do when we close the books every month is we have reconciliation between our platform and effectively bank statements. And our platform is very accurate. We get to call it 99% accuracy, but there's always a nuance where...

35:36

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

There's a small percentage of transactions that are not recognized by our system. And it's usually because of a difference in the way the name is written, that type of thing. That manual intervention, we're talking about millions of transactions, can take weeks to reconcile manually. And so we've figured out a way to do that with AI in the matter of hours.

35:59

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

that type of unlock within our financial system is happening all over the place. And we're just in the early days of it. You know, we got to be real careful because we're talking about people's money and lots of transactions. So we can't just sort of go too hog wild on it. But we're being careful and being prudent. But it is a real unlock within our finance department. Hey, well, it's time to ask our guest for a finance strategic moment. Andre, I'm sure you've had quite a few of these. What comes to mind for you?

36:33

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

There's so many of them. I think the one that jumps off the page for me is very early on in my CFO career. So I just left banking. It had probably been three or four months into the job. And one of the senior technology executives brought me into an office and said, we've got a crisis on our hands. We're losing engineers.

36:58

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

They're all going to Google, Facebook, et cetera. And we need to do an across-the-board comp increase. It was something crazy, like 30%, 40%, which would have been a lot of money. And I kind of asked him questions, and I just instinctually said, I think that's a mistake. I don't think we should do it. He's like, well, we're going to have no engineers in two months if we don't do this because these bids are crazy, et cetera. And I sort of reflected on my time as a banker. I said, listen.

37:28

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Here's what I can tell you is the SPAC markets imploding, the IPO markets shut, that ripples down to the private markets. So the money's going to get cut off. So I'm not sure how long this is going to last. It kind of feels like we're in a very toppy moment of the market. This was probably early in 2022. It just feels like this is a bad decision at this particular time. And so we had a discussion.

37:55

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

But it was hard. It was very hard. He was really pushing me. And I said, here's what we'll do. And we sort of agreed on a much smaller amount. I said, you can have this pocket of money and go have at it. Go comp increase whoever you want. And then literally a week later.

38:13

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

hiring freeze at Facebook or Meta, hiring freeze at Google, and just sort of trickled throughout the tech industry. And I'm just glad I followed my instincts because it could have gotten, you know, it would have been a lot more challenging at times when we needed to really save costs.

38:31

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

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38:59

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

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39:28

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

and reduce manual work by half. Make the switch to QuickBooks Bill Pay today and master your cash flow. Learn more at quickbooks.com slash bill pay. Again, that's quickbooks.com slash bill pay. Terms apply. Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments, Inc., licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. We now...

40:00

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

like to have you look back in time again for us and think about the first 60 days you were in the CFO role. Something surprised you. Something you didn't expect. As many CFOs that you had observed or met, you didn't expect this. Something...

40:21

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

I think if I had to give myself advice going back, it would just be pace yourself. When you say something, it was really everything. Coming from the banking seat, you really do not understand how a company operates. You don't understand data and analytics. You don't understand FV&A really to a technical level. You understand how to model a company's growth and put a percentage on it and build some KPIs, but you really don't understand what drives

40:51

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

the, the sort of guts of a business. So I, you know, I, I tried to learn all of that. I would say all at once, I tried to hire a bunch of people all at once. I would say going back, slow it down, pace yourself, um, one thing at a time.

41:08

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

learn it in bite sizes, and it'll start to compound. And I think that's very natural for many highly motivated people, but I definitely try to sprint out of the starting gates when I probably should have been walking to a jog. What insights or advice would you share for those finance executives that are still on the CFO path but haven't yet arrived? A couple of things.

41:34

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

The first thing I think is pretty important, which is just play the long game. And just remember your journey has just begun, right? Don't feel like you're behind or you got to catch up. Play the long game. And please don't burn bridges along the way. You're just at the beginning of your journey. Second thing, be curious.

41:55

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Do the reading, ask the questions, talk to your peers. I find that curiosity is one of the things that I see missing more and more. And it's a very important thing to have, especially in finance. How does the business operate? What are the drivers? Those type of things. Please be curious. And the last thing I'd say is just do the little things, right? Operate with integrity.

42:19

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Use the golden rule. So treat others as you wish to be treated. Show up on time, be organized, communicate well, and drive your task to completion. So those are just a couple of things that I would give the younger generation as they're sort of thinking about their career and moving forward. It's not much, but those things just alone will make a big difference.

42:42

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Well, we'd like to ask our guests to reflect a little on the personal side for us. Is there something most people don't know about Andre Mansell? I think most people don't know that I'm a pretty avid, I'm a very active father. I'm a coach. I'm a head coach of, I've been head coach for all my kids' basketball teams, which is a fairly large.

43:06

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

time commitment to be the head coach of a basketball team. Uh, but I love it. I love it through and through. Uh, I'm also into woodworking. So I've built, um, some of the furniture in our house. Uh, I really enjoy doing that type of stuff. Does that go back in time? Is that something you picked up, uh, years and years ago, or is that a new, uh, interest? I think the furniture part is fairly new, but the woodworking, um, I did a mentorship when I graduated high school for, uh, a college professor who was building a,

43:36

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

an extra bedroom in his house and he hired me to work for him the summer and be his apprentice. So he taught me about, um, you know, woodworking. He taught me about electricity and water and we, we built it together. It was the two of us that built an extra room, fireplace, uh, you name it. And it was a lot of work, but I learned, I learned a lot about building and what it takes to, to, to put something together.

43:59

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

What about a book or maybe a resource for us? Anything that influenced you along the way, something that changed your thinking on something, or maybe it's something you escape with? I kind of go back and forth. I'm really into a, I'm in a biography phase right now. I've been reading a ton of biographies right now, reading The Last Lion, which is Winston Churchill's biography. It's amazing. But I think from a business perspective,

44:28

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

One that I really enjoyed was Ben Horowitz's book. It's called The Hard Thing About Hard Things. It's about startup life and really some of the tough lessons that you get operating in a startup environment. And then the other one that we actually just made a mandatory reading for our offsite is called Amp It Up.

44:47

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

uh, from Frank, Frank Slootman, the, um, the chairman of, of snowflake. It's, that's a really good book and it really gets you fired up about getting back to, to operating and, you know, moving a little quicker.

45:00

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

Well, we're up to our final question where we're going to ask you to look forward finally. And we're interested in your priorities for the coming 12 months as a CFO. What would those priorities be? I'd say a couple of things.

45:17

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

deliver automation to the finance team. That's very important. I sort of mentioned AI, but there's automation that needs to happen all over the place. I think also I'm at the stage where I've been here about a year and a half. Step back and really rethink the way that the finance team operates. Make sure that we've got the right teams tackling the right problems, that type of thing. And one of the things that's, you know, the priorities that's been given to me is really look at our margins and find ways to

45:43

S… Speaker 2 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

increase our gross margins, increase our EBITDA margins, et cetera, through the use of data and analytics. So it's really, I think it all boils down to using data to impact more strategic decisions at a company or at our company. Andre Mansell, thank you for joining us on CFO Thought Leader. Thanks so much for having me, Jack. This was really fun. We may have forgotten to tell you. Will you forgive us?

46:23

S… Speaker 1 (1182-Mancl-CFOTL-converted)

CFO Thought Leader is now on video. You can watch our episodes at cfothoughtleader.com or check out our YouTube channel. Same great CFO insights. Now with faces.

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