How CFOs build a Goldilocks “just-right†budget – Jeff Epstein ex-CFO of Oracle
Paul Barnhurst
Helping FP&A Professionals provide value to their businesses | Founder of The FP&A Guy | Host of 3 popular Finance podcasts | Microsoft MVP
Show Notes
Jeff Epstein is an operating partner at Bessemer Venture Partners leading its CFO Council where he helps CEOs and CFOs at their 200-portfolio companies share best practices. Epstein, one of the most famous names in finance, is former executive vice president and chief financial officer of Oracle, with a market value of over $200 billion.
Prior to joining Oracle, Jeff served as CFO at public and private companies, including DoubleClick (acquired by Google), King World Productions (acquired by CBS), and Nielsen’s Media Measurement and Information Group. Earlier in his career, he was an investment banker at The First Boston Corporation.
In this episode:
- From Wall Street to first-time CFO
- Running finance at Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy and Oprah-TV hitmaker King World
- The skills needed to be a top CFO
- The 3 routes to CFO: Auditors, Wall Street or FP&A
- What Andy Gove OKR setting can teach us about budget setting
- What is the right percentage of time to hit budget goals?
- Balancing between Elon Musk (Papa Bear) and Charlie Munger (Mama Bear) in setting targets
- Giving people the opportunity to overachieve
- Best case/worst case/base case at Oracle
- The delicate balancing act of Wall Street guidance
- Using a stagger chart
- Why FP&A is so critical; how? the biggest strategic decisions involve FP&A adviceRevisiting the? processes as Oracle bought Sun Microsystems
- Merger integration strategy worked on our sales compensation
- Truck drivers and sales commission – a must-listen-to story
- How in 1983, at the Washington Post, I learned from Warren Buffet and ended up scrambling to buy 4 shares of Berkshire Hathaway. Guess how much it’s worth now?
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Absolutely fascinating insights on aligning revenue goals with company culture! ?? It reminds me of what Peter Drucker said - Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. Your discussion serves as a pivotal reminder that setting the right revenue goals is indeed a form of leadership. ???? Keep up the great work! #Leadership #RevenueGoals
Head of Transformation and Innovation - Baltic Banking Corporate Financing
1 å¹´Excellent podcast on how to think of budgeting through probabilities and the recommended achievement rates based on what budgets are for. It's important to keep in mind why we're doing budgeting in the first place. And personally I'm happy again to find a perfect resource for my FBP blogpost series (https://www.roosimagi.com/) scheduled for the end of the week, as also happened when writing on strategic implications early November when Audible's Head of FP&A was on the podcast. Need to stop now browsing socials to continue drafting the last post of the FBP series... ??
Financial Planning & Analysis | Budgeting & Forecasting | Business Partnering | Credit Control | Chartered Accountant (ACCA)
1 å¹´Enlightening podcast ??
? I help FP&A professionals accelerate their careers with LEVERAGED* training. * We leverage the 80/20 rule to focus on the 20% of skills that get you 80% of results
1 å¹´I'm glad the first take away included company culture. Culture is often ignored, but as Peter Drucker is credited with saying, "culture eats strategy for breakfast". ?? The people side of things is often ignored in most budget processes.??????????
I teach Finance Teams how to use AI - Keynote speaker on AI for Finance (DM me if you need help)
1 å¹´Glad you two got together! There is so much to learn from Jeff!