Why Financial models are essential even at early stages of a company – Lauren Pearl
Lauren Pearl is a Business Strategist and CFO Advisor who helps startup teams build data-driven businesses. The 3x founder with over 13 years of startup leadership experience now serves as CFO, advisor, and instructor for over 300 growing companies. She also runs the podcast “Growth Minded CFO” and offers a free course on financial modeling.
In this episode:
Financial models at startups
Sniffing out BS at startups
Storytelling as a pitchdeck
Getting startups to engage with finance
Free financial modeling course
Being a punk band roadie
Functionality of Excel
Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenepearl/
Daily CFO newsletter: https://www.laurenpearlconsulting.com/newsletter
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1:01:37
What Keeps Excel as the heart of business: Chandoo
Today’s guest barely needs an introduction. Purna Duggirala (aka, “Chandoo”) is a celebrity in Excel circles. Since 2004, Chandoo has been regularly sharing everything he learns working with Excel training hundreds of finance teams, and had roles including as Data Lead, Remuneration Modeling & Analytics for the New Zealand government.
The 16-time Microsoft MVP runs Chandoo.org , which aims to “make you awesome in Excel and Power BI” getting 250,000 visitors per month from all over the world and his YouTube channel has 750,000 subscribers. His stated goal is “to make you awesome at Excel and Power BI”, and produces the go-to Excel resources from blog posts and videos to full online courses.
My Excel Journey and Community building
Skill gaps in FP&A Teams
Power BI vs Excel vs Python
Copilot – advantages and limits
My favorite Excel function
Check out https://chandoo.org
Chandoo’s Free Data analyst course: https://chandoo.org/wp/free-data-analyst-course/
Connect with Chandoo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/purnaduggirala/
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1:02:31
Top 10 Burning Questions in FP&A
In this special episode Glenn is joined by Nate Saperia to answer the 10 most burning questions in FP&A. Nate brings nearly 20 years of finance experience including at Accordion, Spruce Finance, Hess Corporation and GE. At Saperia Consulting Nate specializes in real-time dashboards, financial planning, and interim CFO/FP&A leadership.
The questions:
Q1: How can I use AI in FP&A?
Q2: What do you think of FP&A solutions?
Q3: How can you get to driver based decision making
Q4: Fastest levers FP&A teams can pull with margin pressures rising?
Q5: How can an FP&A function trust the financial data it’s using when it doesn’t control the data?
Q6: Should the CTO or CFO own the data?
Q7. Skills to get from M&A Financial due diligence to FP&A?
Q8. FP&A Internship, what advice?
Q9. Things I wish I had known earlier in FP&A?
Q10. What’s the future of Excel in FP&A?
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FP&A "Wow" Moments at $10m companies
Australian-born Luke Mulcahy started in FP&A at larger businesses including Coates Group (internet leader in Sydney) and manufacturing company Sherwin-Williams. But for nearly 4 years he has loved having “wow” moments of finance insights with smaller companies. closer to the $5-10million range, where powerful insights are taken straight from finance to the CFO. In his words: “You can have those moments a lot more frequently with small business owners and just tell them what they’re, what they’re missing, what they haven’t got eyes on.”
In this episode:
Forecasting energy consumption for a utility company in Australia
The fear and strategy of becoming a fractional CFO
The ideal set up for FP&A in small businesses
Why big companies often have big data problems (and cleaning that data)
Big FP&A wins in small business
Solving the date problem in Excel
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49:42
Data Analytics and AI for FP&A Teams
This special episode formed part of FP&A Con 2025 which saw a record-breaking 1500 registrants.
The guests:
Nathan Bell, Managing Partner, VAi Consulting, is among the most in-demand experts. Bell has unique experience– having started in computer science, before leading finance teams at Native American Bank, Digital Media Trends and Gartner– where he advised hundreds of FP&A teams facing chaotic data situations).
Anna Tioma former CFO of Sandoz and Softeq. Most recently she has pivoted to become a fractional CFO at Blend2Balance.
Anna Yamashita, Solutions Consulting at Data Rails who has worked across SAS finance throughout her career where she helps FP&A teams implement modern performance management solutions.
In this session:
How AI is being applied in real FP&A workflows today
Predictive analytics as the gold standard
Getting to a single version of truth with AI
ROI in AI
Mastering Data Management
Misconceptions about AI in finance and security
Co-pilot, prompts
Bonus: Security and AI
FP&A Today is the podcast for Financial Planning and Analysis. The weekly show dives into the challenges and opportunities within the world of FP&A, interviewing FP&A leaders, CFOs and other finance pros in order to give you the freshest insights and takeaways. Each week our top guests provide actionable advice about financial planning and analysis – from career goals to navigating challenges, and powerful Excel tips.
Our weekly show provides unrivalled insights for navigating FP&A.
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