How do you know when a company is ready to go public? And what do you do to prepare for this? Chirag Shah, CFO of Motive and former CFO of Kong and Cornerstone OnDemand, joins CJ to share insights from his experience of scaling businesses from $30 million to nearly $1 billion and tripling ARR. He talks about taking companies public and how he helped take one private again in a $5.2 billion deal. In this episode, he explains what signals indicate that a company is ready to accelerate its growth, the art and science of building sales capacity, and how to balance efficiency and growth in hypergrowth mode. He also covers how to achieve a great valuation without a strong performance, the biggest headache on the road to IPO, and whether you should IPO in the first place or remain private.

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Chirag Shah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chirag-shah-787b1b20/

Motive: https://gomotive.com/

CJ on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/

Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com

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RELATED EPISODES:

From $30M to Almost $1B: A Guide to Hypergrowth, IPO Prep, and Navigating the Public Markethttps://youtu.be/_pJfdN5p-ik

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 Preview and Intro

00:02:57 Sponsors – Mercury | RightRev | Tipalti

00:06:49 Motiv CFO Intro & Company Background

00:07:01 Product Market Fit as a CFO

00:09:26 Lessons From Taking Companies Public

00:11:04 Preparing for Life as a Public Company

00:11:26 Moving From Finance Into a GM Role

00:12:50 Learning the Business Beyond Finance

00:14:23 Empathy for Sales & Carrying a Quota

00:15:51 Sponsors – Aleph | Fidelity Private Shares | Metronome

00:19:03 Asking Better Questions After Operating Experience

00:21:23 Knowing When to Accelerate Growth

00:23:16 High-ROI Capacity Signals

00:24:51 Scaling Requires Supporting Functions

00:26:19 The Art + Science of Adding Reps

00:27:53 Sales Team Buy-In Before Scaling

00:29:15 Reading Product-Market Fit Through Sales

00:30:08 Where Scaling Breaks First (Enablement)

00:31:36 Importance of SE / SC Ratios

00:33:13 Timing Supporting Hires

00:34:32 Maintaining Momentum While Scaling

00:36:33 Longest Pole in IPO Prep: Predictability

00:38:47 Building Confidence Through Consistency

00:40:45 Large Deals Swing Small Companies

00:42:41 Growth Still Drives Quarterly Volatility

00:44:43 Investor Education as a Core IPO Task

00:46:00 Harder to Make Big Changes Publicly

00:47:39 Managing Morale in Volatile Markets

00:48:33 Taking Cornerstone Private

00:52:32 Advice: Know Why You Want to Go Public

00:56:18 Efficiency Without Sacrificing Growth

01:00:58 Operating Roles Prepared Him for CFO

01:06:23 Finance Software Stack Overview

#RunTheNumbersPodcast #Hypergrowth #IPOreadiness #CFOInsights #MostlyClassics

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cjgustafson.substack.com

Chirag Shah on Scaling From $30M to $1B and Prepping Companies for IPOs | Mostly Classics

Run the Numbers