A unicorn’s CFO on the benefits of company-wide storytelling and how she turned ‘a random assortment of skills’ into a toolkit
Good morning. Finance chiefs play a critical role in creating company strategy, and a big part of their job is the storytelling of financial data—with the board and investors. But what about keeping employees in the know, especially at a billion-dollar startup?
“We try to be transparent about the performance of the business with our employees,” Lauren Cooks Levitan, CFO of Faire, told me earlier this week when we sat down for a chat in New York City. “It's really important in a mission-driven company, in particular, to have everybody understand how the work they're doing is impacting the customer—and impacting the overall performance of the business.”
San Francisco-based Faire is a wholesale marketplace that connects hundreds of thousands of independent retailers with global brands. The startup has raised almost $1.3 billion since its launch in 2017 from investors such as Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Faire has over 1,000 employees—down from about 1,200 last fall—mostly in the U.S. but also in Canada and the U.K.
Among the 100,000 brands available on Faire is Momofuku Goods, David Chang's popular specialty food brand. Faire is also the recommended wholesale marketplace partner to Shopify.
As a private company, Faire doesn’t have to report quarterly earnings, but the C-suite does have to present results to the board and to an audit committee. And then at the next all-hands employee meeting, leadership shares “not only what we shared with the board, but we'll also share the feedback they gave us,” Levitan said. “And if there’s a difference of opinion from the board, we'll share that. We think it's important that people know.”
Levitan said she also hosts CFO office hours every quarter, and "some of the questions are hard, I’m not gonna lie." It's also hard sometimes breaking down complex financial data for broader audiences, so she tries to simplify it and "focus on a couple of core principles" such as growth and profitability frameworks.
"Even if they're an engineer, for example, or might not necessarily be trained in finance, they at least understand where we are on our journey," Levitan added. She's also set a personal goal of working to increase financial literacy among all employees.
Levitan began her career on Wall Street but has more than 30 years of experience in retail. She became finance chief at Faire in 2019, coming from the same role at Fanatics, a leader in licensed sports merchandise. Earlier in her career, she cofounded Moxie Capital LLC, a private equity firm, and built the consumer retail franchise of Cowen & Co., where she served as managing director and senior research analyst. All the while, she told me, she was adding key skills for a CFO.
“I’ve worked in store operations, merchandising, in equity capital markets, direct consumer interaction, I did M&A,” she explained. “I was collecting what looked like a random assortment of skills, but they actually are the CFO toolkit.”
Have a good weekend.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
María Soledad Davila Calero curated the Leaderboard and Overheard sections of today’s newsletter.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
