Making the jump from the corporate world to leading finance for a startup is the ambition of many senior finance professionals. We were keen to explore how they can make that transition through a series of interviews with finance leaders who have already successfully made the move. We asked them about challenges they encountered, the lessons they’ve learned and their advice for others looking to follow in their footsteps. The series is designed to provide both inspiration and actionable insights for anyone considering their long-term finance career goals.

Our first interview is with Sanjay Bowry, CFO of Tech scaleup Gravitee.io. He started his career working in listed businesses including Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Phillips before transitioning into the world of startup and growth-stage tech businesses. Having since worked with CohortApp, people.io and Vita Mojo there isn’t much he hasn’t experienced as a finance leader.

What was the motivation behind making the move into the startup/scaleup world?

I started off my career after university on the Tesco finance graduate scheme. From there I moved within retail to Sainsbury's, getting the chance to move to Hong Kong, India and Bangladesh to work on global sourcing. I ended my corporate career at Philips in automotive lighting based in Hong Kong as the commercial finance manager working on the exit to private equity.

The main reason that I moved from the corporate world into start-ups and lately scale ups was the fear of missing out. I saw that, startups in the technology sector were really getting ahead of steam, and I wanted to be part of it. I always saw myself as a bit of an entrepreneur as a child having started food stalls at school, and I started my first mobile app business while working at Philips, I got some funding and then decided to go into it full time.

Later on in my journey and after a few more attempts at being a founder, I realized that my skills laid better as a CFO helping the CEO/Founders of companies scale and make strategic decisions.

How did you find the transition/what did you find the biggest challenge in making this step?

As an entrepreneur myself, when I started off my own business it was difficult.  I was in a foreign country didn't have any security and to take that jump was obviously scary. You need to really trust yourself. What I also learned about myself then was I was willing to live life with risk. I think that’s an important thing for all entrepreneurs. So my biggest advice is to get comfortable, whilst being uncomfortable.

From a CFO point of view, I think the biggest change from a corporate world to a startup, is your ability to change direction and be involved in a broad range of topics, rather than focusing on one area which you may find in the corporate world.  Personally, I have found that one day I have been in the detail, doing VAT returns, uploading receipts and even expense management or depending on what stage your company is, working on more strategic stuff like analysing data to make hiring plans, fundraising and M&A. It's quite broad and requires different skill sets along the journey.

What do you think made the transition successful for you personally?

As a CFO, I think what made me successful is that I wasn't purely a technical accountant. I am a management accountant, and my core skill was analysing data and explaining that data to people around the organisation. When it came to fundraising, which is what a lot of the early-stage businesses needed to do, I can make models quite quickly and I could make them quite flexible to where they needed to be and understanding what they wanted.

I like to pride myself on being a people person. I've managed big teams in the past, and that led me to managing teams in the organisations I have worked in and not necessarily in Finance.

Lastly, I love the industries and the companies I have worked in. I know a lot of people will say this, that if you love your job, you don't really work. I don't necessarily believe that, but if you love what you do, work feels a lot better, and you want to learn a lot more. I wasn't necessarily that excited to do a VAT return on my first day, but I was quite interested in learning how it works and that has continued into everything I do.

What were your long-term career goals when the move and do they remain the same now?

I laugh at myself looking back at my long-term career goals. I went to a start up with the dream of being the next, Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. I really felt like that was where I wanted to be, and although that would be nice my goals have certainly changed.

My long-term aspirations are I just want to be involved in creating something which is long standing and potentially changes an industry in its own little way. For me, it's now about being involved in companies that I really believe in, their mission and their vision, their product strategy and why they're doing what they're doing. So being able to see a long-term tangible benefit.

My last company was Vita Mojo, which is helping change the hospitality world in the way that the world manages restaurants, money and food. My current company, Gravitee, we are changing the API management space.

I really believed in to those two visions, and that's really what I love doing, as well as working with great people now. Now I’m a CFO, I want to hire great people around me and help them achieve their goals.

What does your current role entail?

Currently my role in Gravitee has three different aspects.

One is heading up the operations team. Operations at Gravitee means managing the company’s KPIs and managing the data to ensure the company is on track to hit its goals.

Secondly is managing the people side of the business this has four strands, people operations, people experience, employee relations and talent management. Talent includes recruiting and retaining talent into the company. As a company we are generally growing about 20 to 30 people a year.

The third part is finance, which is broken up into: financial modelling and reporting, day to day financial controls, and special projects, whether that be fundraising, acquisition strategy, and anything else that might come my way.

What do you like about it most?

I've always enjoyed strategy, in Gravitee or in any CFO scale-up role, you’re always looking forward and asking yourself questions. These could be things from how to I benchmark the company’s core metrics to others in the space, do teams have enough resource and where can we be more efficient.

Finally, what piece of advice would you give to people in making the move to joining a startup?

Three pieces of advice that I would give are:

Do something that you enjoy or that you're interested in to start with. Otherwise, you probably won't enjoy it. You'll be given a lot of different tasks, a lot of different, responsibilities that may not fit into your normal 9 to 5 at corporate level. If you enjoy what the company's doing, then you'll enjoy those tasks a lot more.

Secondly, is to read. Read around topics in the startup world, read around topics in your industry. If you're going into a SaaS business, make sure you understand the metrics as they can be very different. Immerse yourself into your work and you will be rewarded quicker in its enjoyment.

Thirdly, to be successful in my opinion is networking. Most of my jobs have come through different aspects of networking. My first job back in London I was pitching my own business, and I ended up joining forces with another person who was pitching their business. My current move at Gravitee came through doing a CFO talk at a VC, that I didn't know previously. There's some great communities and great resources that you can join.

Talentedge has over 15 years’ experience helping startup, scaling and established tech businesses to build effective finance teams that support and drive growth. As industry specialists, we have an incredibly strong, diverse talent pool that have sector specific skills and experience. If you would like to find out more about how we can help you find exceptional finance talent for your team get in touch with me at thomas.west@talentedge.co.uk

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