Driving Sustainable Growth: How to Align Business Goals with Profitability

In January 2020, most finance leaders were seeing ASC 606 as a closed chapter. However, for Braze’s newly appointed CFO, Isabelle Winkles, this new revenue recognition standard would quickly move to front-and-center. While ASC 606 was merely a speedbump for seasoned professionals—especially for a 25-year finance veteran like Winkles—it posed a notable challenge within Braze. Many employees had never worked at a public company that had adopted the standard, making it a crucial area where alignment and understanding were essential.

Winkles recognized that her role wasn’t just about managing finances—it was about educating and aligning teams across the organization. She knew that technical rules alone wouldn’t resonate with the sales team. Instead, she framed the conversation around tangible business impacts: “You have to explain to the sales team, ‘Hey, guys, if we start giving people too much time to pay, this is going to change our financial profile, and we will be valued differently by the market as a result.’”

“Pay just as much attention to your own and others’ failures and the behaviors that you wish to avoid as you do to your own and others’ successes and the strengths that you wish to emulate.” –Isabelle Winkles, CFO, Braze

By connecting financial nuances with outcomes that mattered—like market valuation and compensation—Winkles ensured that her message landed where it belonged. “You start explaining this to people,” she added, “and they say, ‘Oh, okay, so this will change the stock price valuation ultimately, which will impact my compensation.’”

For Winkles, the key wasn’t just mastering technical details but also crafting a message that the broader organization could embrace and act upon. Success came from engaging teams across functions, fostering alignment, and ensuring that every part of the company understood the financial implications of its actions.

CFOTL: Tell us about Braze … what does this company do, and what are its offerings today?

Winkles: Braze is a comprehensive customer engagement marketing platform that primarily sells to B2C. Usually, it is the marketing organizations within these brands that tend to be the buyers of our platform. Essentially, we enable marketers both to be good listeners to the end users who are engaging with them through digital platforms and also to provide their client base with real-time, relevant, engaging messaging—both in- and out-of-product.

If you are engaging with an app through your smart TV, an Internet website, or your iOS or Android device, there is a high likelihood that any messaging that might come to you—whether via email, SMS, WhatsApp, or a product pop-up or in-app notification—will have been aided by Braze, which is probably powering this interaction behind the scenes. The idea is that we enable the marketing organizations of brands big and small across the globe to be good listeners, to live In the moment, and to be able to provide relevant and engaging product messaging to their end users.

Isabelle Winkles’ Priorities for the Next 12 Months

Isabelle Winkles' priorities as CFO of Braze center around achieving sustainable growth while adhering to operating income and margin expansion goals. She aims to return Braze to a "rule of 40" company and reach profitability by Q4 without compromising strategic investments. Isabelle emphasizes balancing disciplined financial management with long-term business growth, ensuring that FP&A functions serve as collaborative partners in optimizing resource allocation. Her focus is to align short-term earnings cycles with Braze's broader strategic objectives.