📬 Building blocks: The future tech stack

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What a pleasure it is to answer your questions every week. Remember, you can submit them anonymously if they are particularly tricky or sensitive.

👉 Send me your questions by filling out this form.

We’ve got some great topics. Here’s what’s on tap:

Now, let’s get into it.

Bob from the UK asked:

Love the content and insights; really helpful and refreshing!

I've just started supporting a £15m-turnover manufacturing business using an old version of Sage200 sitting on a physical server. Looking at the system disruptors (e.g., Campfire) coming into the market, I can't see any yet that would be good options for manufacturing businesses, but I assume that I am missing something.

We're working on getting the basics right through standardizing and simplifying processes, making sure we've got the right people doing the right roles, and doing simple things like using PowerBI to help with reporting.

Your 'Unbundling the ERP' series (and especially the 'Finance Stack of the Future') has got the grey matter whirring... but I'm struggling to think how to step through things right.

Any advice is very gratefully received!

Thanks, Bob. I've had this question a lot since that series, and the short answer is: Yes, I think you are missing something. You are still thinking in the mindset of “one system to rule them all.”

Here is a different way of thinking about it.

Old software is really hard to connect to other systems, and an on-premise Sage 200 sitting on a physical server is about as old-world as it gets. New software is designed from the ground up to talk to other new software. That is the whole point of the unbundling thesis.

In a manufacturing business, the two biggest problems your ERP solves are:

These are different problems. They have historically been bundled together out of necessity, not because it was the right answer.

The better approach is to find the best of breed in each (for your business) and make sure they integrate cleanly.

The modern disruptor accounting platforms (and Campfire is a good example) are built with open APIs and curated ecosystems of specialist tools around them. Inventory management, procurement, payroll. They are designed to plug together rather than do everything themselves.

So instead of looking for a new SAGE, break the problem down into the core workflows you need to solve for, find the best option at each atomic level, and then work out how you stitch them back into a coherent stack. And then how you sequence upgrading them.

The work you are already doing, standardizing processes, getting the right people in the right roles, and building reporting in Power BI, is a good foundation, but you are definitely going to be limited by your ERP quality; so, when the time is right, face into that.

TLDR: Don’t look for one system to replace Sage. Break the problem into accounting and manufacturing (+ others as necessary), find the best of breed in each, and build a connected stack.

Shaka Nestoris from Africa asked:

Hi Secret. Thanks for the incredible content library you’ve built; it has directly benefited my career (special recognition to the Playbooks), and I’ve only been a subscriber for six months.

My question is about leveraging the internet to grow a career and connect with kindred spirits. For someone with a limited presence and no history of public sharing (assuming blockers are overcome and the intent is there) what should they do in their first 90 days to get started?

Background Context: Financial engineer with eight years of experience.

What is your advice for simply getting started?

Hey Shaka. First up, thanks for treating Secret CFO as a whole ass category in your information diet. That’s cool.

I get asked this question a lot… so I figured I’d tackle it once for everyone:

The internet is extraordinary because of its ability to organize people around interests rather than geography. If you set up a local society for beer mat collectors, you would probably be the only one at the meeting. Do it on the internet and you will find thousands of equally unhinged beer mat fans soon enough.

When I started writing about the CFO role on Twitter in 2022, I genuinely assumed no one would read it. I am not being falsely modest. I did not think anyone would care about my opinions on when EBITDA is and is not useful or how I structure an earnings call. I was wrong pretty quickly.

Here are a few things you can learn from my journey:

You must enjoy it. Consistent output is the only path to building anything. That has always been true, but it matters even more now when you are competing against AI content cannons firing at full volume. You can only sustain quality and consistency if you actually enjoy the act of creating, not the idea of it, not the outcome, but doing it.

Pick your lane. There are broadly two paths. You can be the generous expert, giving away hard-won insight from the inside out. Or you can be the honest learner, sharing what you are figuring out in real time. Both work, but be upfront with your audience about the deal.

Niche down. Follower counts, likes, and impressions are all vanity metrics. The only things that matter are real influence and true fans. You could build a massive business off 1,000 people who genuinely love what you do, much more easily than an Instagram account with 1m followers. Be so specific about who your content is for that it feels like you are creating it only for yourself. That is where the magic happens.

Find your voice. Content is splitting toward two ends of a barbell. Commoditized, high-volume AI slop at one end, and real craft at the other. If you want the latter, voice and personality are everything. People tell me they love the personality of Secret CFO, and that means more to me than anything else. Because it is me, and that feels a little like validation, I guess 🤷‍♂️. People who know me well say they can hear me saying the words they read. Same inflections, same turns of phrase, same silly jokes and cynicism. Occasionally, some people tell me they do not like it; that is fine too. The point is, it is genuinely me. Authenticity of voice is more important than ever, especially in the age of AI.

Focus on one channel. Pick a format and a platform with a tailwind right now, and go deep on it. I did that almost by accident with Twitter threads. The obvious one today is short-form video. LinkedIn is extraordinarily noisy right now and hard for new voices to break through without an obvious differentiator

Write about what you actually know. The content that builds real influence is inside-out, lived experience translated into insight. Outside-in theorizing, however well packaged, does not land the same way with a sophisticated audience. They can smell it. If you are a Head of FP&A, do not write about what it takes to be a CFO. You honestly have no idea. Instead, write about running an FP&A function, something you know from the inside. That is where your credibility lives and where you are interesting and useful.

I will give you a live example without naming names. There is a prominent finance creator who runs a content industrialization machine. High volume, AI-assisted, coordinated by a ghostwriter, and cross-promoted across the many accounts they control to drive reach. Built on aggregating other people's ideas and voices (including mine). There is a reason so much of it sounds the same (but slightly off somehow…)

Most of their content is plausible enough to fool someone early in their career, but it does not hold up to scrutiny from anyone who actually has real CFO experience. Then recently, that same person published something clearly drawn from actual real personal experience. A situation they had genuinely lived, and it was completely different … a fantastic, valuable, read.

Now, the most important advice. I get asked about how to get into finance content creation a lot, and I always set the same homework. Almost nobody does it. To be clear: anyone who does and does it well, I would probably offer a job.

Commit to one piece of short-form content every day for 30 days. At an hour a day, it is doable. If you get to day 30 and you are still enjoying it (even if you don’t have much success) then this is probably for you.

There is a second phase after day 30 that will help that content find real reach. But I am not going to tell you until you prove you can do the first one.

TLDR: Niche down, find your voice, pick one channel, and write only about what you know from the inside. Then start by creating one piece of content every day for 30 days.

Mark from Munich asked:

I'd value your view on the ideal next step in my career.

My background in brief: 5 years in controlling → 4 years in finance transformation consulting across PE-backed and listed businesses → 3 years as country FD/CFO of a tech scaleup (incorporation to €1xx M revenue) → 3 years as standalone CFO of a Series A startup.

Two gaps I'm aware of:

1. I've never worked under a strong CFO. As country CFO, I reported to the CEO; so board management and other senior CFO soft skills I've largely had to self-teach (your newsletter has been very helpful here!).

2. My current company is small (c. €3M ARR). The first two years were strong; the third stalled on GTM. I'm proud of what I delivered (a solid Series A raise and steering the business through the GTM reset to a healthy financial position), but the current scale doesn't reflect my prior experience.

I am moving to London and trying to decide whether I should pursue another CFO role at a Series B/C stage scaleup, or a CFO-1 at a larger PE-backed business under a strong CFO.

My instinct is that the CFO-1 route is the smarter long-term option. It would help me close the soft skills gap and rebuild "scale credentials". But I'm concerned that taking a "step back" in title could create a problem further down the line.

Mark,

First up, I think you are overvaluing what you call ‘scale’ and undervaluing something more important: owning financial outcomes.

The latter is important to being a great CFO. You are in your first proper CFO role now, and your business has hit its first roadblock. That’s fine… it happens, but to show you’ve graduated to a new level of scale, you need to show you can break through roadblocks.

Great that you’ve reset the cap structure and the GTM, but has it worked? It sounds like you don’t know yet, and you’d be leaving mid-sentence. So I think your CV will lack the proof points you need to make an easy jump in as CFO at a Series B / C, especially in a new market to you in London. The best argument for a bigger role in startups is scaling the one you are in.

I’m not saying you won’t get that bigger role, just that I wouldn’t assume it’ll be easy.

On the CFO-1 in PE route.

I think this question comes down to where you want to end up long term. That’s the question you need to answer first.

If it is PE-backed businesses, now is actually a good time in your career to make that move. PE CFO roles are genuinely hard to get without the right pedigree, and a few years as a number two under a strong PE CFO is one of the most efficient ways to build it. It’s a very different craft, with a whole separate ecosystem, and learning it from the inside is worth more than the title you give up.

But if you want to stay in startups and scaleups, then stay in that world, however, do not assume the Series B/C CFO seat is waiting for you. You may need to earn it through one more cycle at a business that actually scales.

TLDR: Resolve the current story before you leave if you can. A country move and a scale jump simultaneously are a lot to ask any market to absorb. The CFO-1 route closes a real skills gap and buys you additional credibility. But the decision rests on where you want to be long-term; there are different paths.

A few of the biggest stories that every CFO is paying close attention to. This is the section you might not want to see your name in.

CFO treated herself to a life of luxury on company’s dime

Designer apparel and luxury furniture on a company card, for five years, at a company whose CFO was also the person responsible for catching this kind of fraud. The fox didn't just guard the henhouse. She redecorated it.

KPMG slices off 10% of US audit partners

The voluntary retirement push fell short, so now it's involuntary…

AI suppliers are reaping the benefits of the build boom

This may be the best time in history to be a shovel salesman.

ICYMI, here are some of my favorite finance/business social media posts from this week.

Last week in SimCFO Weekly, I introduced you to Otis, your VP of Finance at Numa. This week, meet Ray Wade, your president of the sneakers division.

Day one as CFO, Ray drops a CapEx form on your desk. $50 million for a new Smart Sneakers production and distribution facility. He needs it signed by end of day, or “we’ll have a capacity problem later in the year.”

You haven’t seen a set of management accounts yet. The business is bleeding cash. And Ray is the guy you’ll need on your side for the next 12 months.

So you make the call: approve or reject his proposal with not a lot of information. Either way, you will have to explain your position to the CEO. SimCFO scores the justification, shows you what landed, what didn’t, and what a sharper version of that same communication would look like.

Most CFOs sign their first $50M check on the job, this is the practice rep.

Let me know what you thought of today’s Mailbag. Just hit reply… I read every message.

Last weekend’s Playbook laid out a blueprint for how to find the ROI in AI.

In last week’s Boardroom Brief, we investigated the risk of hidden AI price hikes.

Disclaimer: I am not your accountant, tax advisor, lawyer, CFO, director, or friend. Well, maybe I’m your friend, but I am not any of those other things. Everything I publish represents my opinions only, not advice. Running the finances for a company is serious business, and you should take the proper advice you need