Laurynas Zabulis, CFO at Nord Security, is playing a starring role at one of Lithuania’s most famous success stories. Cybersecurity unicorn, Nord Security, went from being bootstrapped to a $3billion valuation in 12 years. Laurynas became CFO after a stint at Surfshark (which merged with NordVPN in 2022). His achievements at NordSecurity include leading the first funding round for $100m – technically a “seed” round he says (unusually the bootstrapped enjoyed revenues of over $100m when it approached investors). Laurynas is also building a purpose-driven finance team of 90 talented people across the department to deliver a “forward looking finance function” that propels growth at the leading startup. Laurynas has set out a powerful mission for FP&A whose vision to “earn respect from stakeholders at the company”, “have a seat at the decision-making table”, and use data and detailed knowledge of growth drivers to “make strategic decisions that drive our business”.

In this episode:

Moving back to my home country of Lithuania, from London. after success in investment banking (and not listening to those who tried to talk him out of it)
Battling the “negative connotations” of VPNs when talking to investors and and building conviction around the management and culture of the company
Bringing finance to strategic decision-making at the company including a CFO tech stack focused on “availability of data and of analytics in a more timely fashion”
Investing in building finance relations with stakeholders in the company (from engineers to product development)
Building a finance team of 90 people based on data, tech, and stakeholder engagement
FP&A analysis powering painful decisions to sunset certain products
Our FP&A team structure at Nord Security and the results we expect
Benefit of working with founders and the culture this provides
The Lithuanian tech ecosystem and finance opportunities

Connect with Laurynas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurynas-zabulis-0206333/

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