#12 Going Deep (2.0) & Full-Time CFO Thoughts

Welcome to the new members of @TheFundCFO crew that have joined in the last [6] month[s]! Thanks for your support and spreading the word! Every [week] or so (#goals), we’ll bring you actionable tools, real-world experiences, and insider insights for #VC CFOs and fund managers, #LP investors, and general industry enthusiasts. #OpenLP

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Going Deep @ Chapter One

Six months ago, I wrote my last post where I talked about going full-time as CFO at Chapter One & The Modern VC CFO, transitioning from a mile wide to a mile deep. I’ve spent my time focused on three key areas at Chapter One:

  1. All Things CFO: owning finance, operations, and supporting a growing team (15+ global team members) and portfolio (100+ companies)

  2. Investing Support: underwriting, memos, market research, portfolio construction, VC reserves analysis, risk management

  3. LP Reporting & Fundraising: tracking our portfolio of 100+ investments, reporting to our investors, writing and sharing updates, launching new funds

An Amazing Team + Learning From The Best

Two of the most rewarding things thus far have been (1) helping build an amazing, full-stack team and (2) learning from some of the best in traditional and crypto VC.

An Amazing Team: we’ve been lucky to add some awesome team members this year. During the recruiting process, we ask people to map out their dream role. This has helped inspire all of us to think bigger and accelerated our trajectory and growth. It’s been re-energizing to be around high-performing team members.

Learning From The Best: we’ve also established a learning culture from our investors, relationships, and research shared by some of the best in traditional and crypto VC. We’ve leaned into conversations & research with Sequoia, a16z, Multicoin, Tiger Global, and Fred Wilson @ USV to continue to build a strong foundation.

When I think about our team + the investors we’ve learned from, I feel this vibe :):

Bringing Back Writing & Establishing A Writing Culture

While we’ve been building, we haven’t been writing and sharing our learnings enough. It’s time to bring that back!

Writing forces clarity of thought across almost anything, notably CFO/finance best practices, investing, and investor reporting for this audience ;).

We’re continuing to push ourselves to establish a writing culture at Chapter One. We’re doing that via investment research, weekly pod recaps to teammates, investor updates, and refining our finance and other playbooks.

We’re making a renewed commitment to writing to help us continue to grow, both individually and as a team. I’m also excited about the feedback and conversation this will lead to as we share learnings and insights.

What’s Next? Mid-Year Review & Outlook Updates

We’ll be at the mid-point of 2022 in just 7 days. What are we thinking about at this time of year? The short answer is reviewing the first 6 months and updating our outlooks / forecasts for the rest of the year.

A recent post by Standard Metrics laid out a nice quarter-end timeline. We have similar timelines in our playbooks for a number of different functions, including quarter-end reporting, which is the focus of this one. Enjoy!

That’s all for today folks! Thanks for your support and spreading the word! Share this on Twitter or LinkedIn to help grow “the crew!”