Being a CFO and other topics

Not just finance, hobbies too ....

Author: Michael Page 1 of 8

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-potter-2689a94

Public company CFO.

Born in Montreal and currently living in the greater San Francisco area.

The OpenClaw logo, featuring a stylized lobster and the wordmark.

My Technology Life – AI Agent

By

On February 7, 2026

In AI, CFO, Gaming, RPG

A Quick Warning Before We Start

Before getting into the substance of this post, it’s worth being explicit about the environment this work was done in.

OpenClaw is not a secure system. I would not expose it to the internet, and I would not run it anywhere near a machine that held sensitive data. This experiment was conducted on an isolated Linux box that is more than ten years old, deliberately segmented away from anything that mattered. That isolation was intentional, and I would consider it a prerequisite rather than a nice-to-have.

With that caveat out of the way, here’s what I learned.

The more technical information is this post comes from AI allowing me to cosplay as someone with a much deeper background in this field. I haven’t coded since I was a teenager running a BBS on my Apple //GS. Everything described here was implemented by directing AI tools — primarily Claude — with research, validation, and conceptual framing done through ChatGPT.

This was not a case of me dusting off dormant engineering skills. It was an exercise in seeing how far careful prompting, iteration, and architecture could go without writing code myself.

I started with what seemed like a reasonable question: could an AI agent take an RPG PDF and convert it into a usable Fantasy Grounds VTT reference manual? Fantasy Grounds is the tool I use to run RPG with my friends and I very often have to get adventures into the program.

The test case was a Mothership RPG adventure. Not particularly long, but representative of the kind of layout that makes RPG books pleasant to read and painful to process. Multi-column text, sidebars, boxed callouts, tables, and frequent typography changes all coexist on the same page. Humans have no trouble with this. Machines very much do.

The first thing that became obvious is that PDFs do not contain “text” in the way we usually think about it. They contain positioned glyphs. Reading order, paragraph structure, and emphasis are all emergent properties created by the human brain. When you extract text naively, you get all the words, but not the story they were meant to tell.

Standard PDF extraction tools did exactly what they are designed to do. They gave me the words. They just gave them to me in the wrong order. Columns were interleaved, paragraphs were broken every line, sidebars merged into body text, and tables disintegrated into streams of numbers and labels with no structure left intact.

At that point, the obvious temptation was to let the LLM “just read the PDF.” After all, large language models are very good at understanding text, right?

That approach failed in subtle but dangerous ways.

LLMs are quite good at repairing relationships when the underlying structure is mostly correct. They are far less reliable when asked to infer structure that was never presented to them in the first place. RPG books are full of ambiguous layout decisions, and when an LLM guesses, it does so confidently and silently. Sidebars get merged into rules text. Paragraphs are reordered to match genre expectations rather than author intent. The output looks clean, but it is wrong in ways that are difficult to detect later.

The approach that actually worked separated responsibilities very strictly.

First, the extraction phase focused entirely on facts. Using PyMuPDF, the system extracted every word along with its exact coordinates, font size, font face, and bounding box. The output was ugly and unreadable, but nothing was lost. Every signal a human reader subconsciously relies on was still present, just not interpreted yet.

Second came layout reconstruction. This was where most of the complexity lived. By working from geometry instead of text flow, it became possible to detect column gutters, read entire columns top-to-bottom instead of left-to-right across the page, and reconstruct paragraphs based on vertical spacing rather than newline characters. Hyphenated words could be repaired deterministically. Headings could be inferred from typography rather than guessed from phrasing.

This step also addressed the most visible problem with PDF extraction: the explosion of extra line feeds. Those line breaks are not semantic. They are artifacts of line wrapping. Once reading order and paragraph boundaries are reconstructed using spacing and font metrics, most of those spurious line breaks disappear before an LLM ever gets involved.

Only after that cleanup did the LLM enter the process, and even then its role was constrained. It was allowed to repair flow and normalize text, but not invent structure, reorder content, or generate XML. Markers for headings, emphasis, sidebars, and tables were preserved explicitly so the model could not “helpfully” smooth them away.

The final stage — generating Fantasy Grounds XML — was deliberately scripted and deterministic. Fantasy Grounds is unforgiving, and rightly so. IDs, tags, ordering, and escaping are not things you want a language model remembering across thousands of tokens. Once the content was clean and correctly ordered, turning it into XML was a mechanical problem, not an AI problem.

Tables turned out to be the most treacherous area. Early attempts to detect them aggressively led to false positives where multi-column prose or credits pages were misclassified as tables. The safer approach was to be conservative to the point of under-detection, preserving text as text unless the evidence was overwhelming. A less-perfect table is preferable to corrupted rules text.

One of the more humbling realizations came late in the process. The PDF had no table of contents, but it did have bookmarks. Those bookmarks reflected the author’s actual organizational intent far better than anything inferred from layout alone. Once the pipeline followed them, chunking and navigation improved immediately. It was a reminder that many “AI problems” are really failures to leverage existing metadata.

From a CFO perspective, the conclusion is straightforward.

This took longer than doing it manually. Considerably longer.

I spent over $100 running smaller, simpler test cases just to understand where tools failed, where token usage exploded, and how errors manifested. That spend did not produce output. It produced learning. For a single RPG module, this is not rational. Manual conversion would have been faster and cheaper.

Where this starts to make sense is repetition. Multiple modules. Consistent layouts. A reusable pipeline. At that point, the upfront investment begins to amortize.

There is also a broader organizational lesson here. Running this through a rough, developer-oriented agent on an isolated machine worked, but it was far from ideal. A more user-friendly agent, or involvement from an IT team, would have reduced iteration time, lowered token waste, and improved safety. There is real value in tooling and support, even — perhaps especially — when AI is involved.

This was a successful experiment, but not an efficient one. I would do it again only if I planned to do it many times. As with so many automation efforts, the real question is not whether it can be done, but whether you are willing to do it often enough for the investment to pay off.

Sometimes the most useful output isn’t the finished product. It’s understanding where the break-even point actually lies. And what you learn along the way.

I ran OpenClaw on a very old HP ProLiant MicroServer (Gen 7) with a Turion II processor. I blocked incoming access using standard Linux hardening, isolated it on its own VLAN, and did not install any additional skills or allow the agent to browse the internet. That was intentional, given the known security risks around prompt injection attacks and malware delivered through unscreened skills.

All files used by OpenClaw lived only on that machine, and it had no access to my other systems. OpenClaw itself can run on fairly low-end hardware, since the heavy lifting is done in the cloud. If you want a more robust — and still relatively inexpensive — platform to run it on, with the added benefit of access to the Apple ecosystem, many people use Mac minis.

Mac Mini M4 on Amazon.com

If you want to find OpenClaw (the speed of the internet moves fast and months from now this may not be the hot new tool), look here:

OpenClaw AI Bot

Excel and Powerpointn icons as hockey players doing a faceoff. SEC logo on the puck..

IPO Process – Underwriting, Forecasts, And The Road To Launch

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On February 3, 2026

In Accounting and Reporting, CFO, Investing, Investor Relations, Working With Investment Banks

While you are grinding away on the S‑1, there are many other work streams running in parallel. One of the most important—and least talked about—is getting through the underwriting process. The S‑1 gets you most of the way there, but it is not enough on its own. You also need to provide the banks’ analysts with a detailed financial forecast.

This is very different from life once you are public. Under Regulation FD, you do not share your detailed internal forecast with sell‑side analysts unless, for some very unusual reason, you have already made it public. During the IPO process, however, you are still a private company, and those public‑company disclosure rules do not yet apply.

This forecast matters a lot, and it needs to be carefully balanced. There is always a temptation to push the numbers—stretch the growth assumptions and aim for a higher valuation at the IPO. In my experience, the less public‑company experience a leadership team has, the stronger that temptation tends to be. That is a meaningful mistake, and it can have consequences in several different ways.

The first is credibility with the sell‑side analyst. This is someone you are likely to have a relationship with for years. The more aggressive your forecast, the more questions you will get. Analysts are very experienced at talking to management teams, and they are good at figuring out when numbers lack a solid foundation. Even if you can technically defend the assumptions, they will still wonder why you are pushing so hard. These analysts work closely with potential investors and will be fielding questions about expectations. You want them transmitting confidence, not concern.

The second issue is the pressure you put on yourself to hit your first few quarters as a public company. The IPO process feels like a sprint, but being public and creating long‑term value is much closer to a cross‑country run than a 50‑yard dash. Missing your first quarter right out of the gate can be catastrophic for credibility. It is very hard to reset expectations once you stumble early.

The third consideration is internal to the banks themselves. Your banking team has to take the deal in front of their internal committees to get approval and a green light to proceed. Everyone in that room has seen dozens—if not hundreds—of IPOs. Their job is to control risk. A management team that appears overly promotional or willing to stretch the truth to grab incremental valuation is a risk factor.

This does not mean you should sandbag the numbers. It means you should make sure you do not need perfect execution and a lot of luck to hit the first few quarters. If you need another practical reason to stay disciplined, remember that you are going to be locked up for at least six months after the IPO. There is no immediate personal benefit to being overly aggressive right out of the gate.

This forecasting exercise also feeds directly into the final negotiation around the expected IPO price. It sounds great to see the stock skyrocket the moment trading begins, but that simply means you left money on the table. A healthy first‑day pop sets a positive tone. An excessive one is just capital you failed to raise. You might recapture some of it later through a secondary offering, but it is far better to price the initial deal thoughtfully.

At the same time, you are also building the roadshow presentation. In the successful IPO I was part of, this was heavily driven by our founder and CEO. He had previously gone through an unsuccessful roadshow, but the business had changed dramatically by the time of this one. Building the presentation inevitably involves bouncing back and forth with the business section of the S‑1 to ensure that every claim and message is properly reflected in the prospectus.

I was fortunate that our founder drove this process. He had deep institutional knowledge of the company and a clear sense of what mattered. Roadshow presentations are strange things. Sometimes they are the focal point of investor meetings. Other times they barely get looked at, and the conversation turns immediately into Q&A.

You will also use this presentation to record the virtual roadshow, so it will be seen by a large number of potential investors. I generally recommend including a few “halo” slides that act as launching pads for key investment themes. Not everyone naturally finds their rhythm in an investor meeting, and a well‑structured presentation can help create momentum. Our CEO did not really need it, but for many teams it can be valuable support.

I am always amazed by how much time gets spent on presentations. This one is more important than most, but it is still a massive time sink. There are so many cooks in the kitchen that the final version is often worse than an earlier draft. In addition to the usual internal stakeholders, your lawyers and the banks’ lawyers will give it an extremely thorough scrub. Eventually, it does get done, and you inch closer to launch.

Usually the last major hurdle—assuming the market is open—is final approval from the SEC. I have written previously about responding to SEC comment letters, and the process is not fundamentally different here:

Responding to a comment letter from the SEC

The stakes are higher and the time pressure is intense, but the mechanics are the same. The key difference is that you generally do not have the option of saying, “We will improve this in the next filing,” even for relatively minor disclosure issues. The SEC will want it fixed now.

You need to move quickly as you approach your intended launch window, but it is worth remembering that the SEC does not want to stop you from going public. Their job is to make sure you are following the rules. You may not even receive a detailed review—or any review at all. If you planned properly and staffed the process correctly, this stage should be manageable. If the SEC uncovers multiple accounting or disclosure issues, however, the process will stall, and it will be obvious to everyone why.

Once you clear this final step and your banks confirm that the market window is open, you instruct your lawyers to notify the SEC that the S‑1 is effective. At that point, you actually launch. My next post will cover what happens once the process moves fully into the roadshow and selling phase.

Stylized racing sim PC

My Technology Life – Building a Racing Sim Gaming PC

By

On January 31, 2026

In CFO, Gaming, Mergers and Acquisitions, Racing Sim

In September 2024, Corsair Gaming acquired certain assets of Fanatec, the racing simulation business of Endor AG, through a German insolvency process. I had been casually interested in racing sims for years, but my hands-on experience dated back decades—a plastic Logitech wheel and pedals used for early Need for Speed titles before life moved on and the hardware disappeared into storage.

Corsair had long identified racing simulation as a compelling adjacent market. The company’s founder and then‑CEO is a genuine car enthusiast—deep into vintage cars, trucks, and motorsports—and we had explored acquisitions in the space starting shortly after our IPO. Most of the established players weren’t interested in selling, so Corsair began prototyping internally. For a while, the area outside the CEO’s office doubled as an ad‑hoc test lab for early concepts.

Once Fanatec joined the portfolio, my “learn by doing” instinct kicked in. The acquisition came up constantly in investor conversations and internally as well, and I wanted first‑hand experience with both the hardware and the ecosystem. That meant building a dedicated PC tuned for racing sims.

Understanding the Racing Sim Workload

One of the first things I learned is that racing sim titles tend to stress systems differently than mainstream AAA games. They’re often less GPU‑intensive in raw shader throughput, but more sensitive to frame‑time consistency and CPU latency—especially in physics calculations and AI. You don’t need the absolute fastest GPU on the market, but you do want a balanced system that can deliver smooth, sustained performance and leave some headroom for the next few years of software updates.

GPU: 5070 vs. 5070 Ti

My main internal debate was between the NVIDIA RTX 5070 and the 5070 Ti. I started with a 34″ ultrawide monitor, but a 49″ display is commonly recommended for a more immersive sim experience. The Ti’s main advantages are slightly higher compute performance and 16GB of VRAM versus 12GB on the standard 5070.

At the time of purchase, the RTX 5070 was available at MSRP, while the 5070 Ti carried about a $150 premium. There aren’t many benchmarks that isolate racing sims specifically, but given their relatively light GPU demands—and my single‑monitor setup—I opted for the 5070. Six months in, running maximum settings at 3440×1440, I’ve had zero performance issues.

Note: If you plan to run triple monitors or VR, the extra GPU headroom (and memory) of a higher‑end card becomes much more compelling.

CPU, Motherboard, and Platform Choices

My CPU selection followed a pattern I’ve used for years: one tier below the absolute fastest (and most expensive) option. The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D stood out thanks to its 3D V‑Cache design, which is particularly beneficial for gaming workloads that are sensitive to memory latency—racing sims included.

In contrast to many modern games that are GPU‑bound, racing sims often lean harder on the CPU. Consistent frame pacing matters more than peak FPS, and the 7800X3D excels here. I paired it with an MSI MAG B850 Tomahawk MAX WiFi motherboard, chosen primarily for platform stability, strong power delivery, PCIe 5.0 support, and straightforward BIOS tuning.

Memory and Storage

I installed 32GB of DDR5 memory at 6000MT/s (CL36), which at the time felt like a comfortable sweet spot. This was months before DDR5 pricing spiked, and in hindsight it was the right call. While racing sims don’t consume enormous amounts of RAM, background applications, telemetry tools, and future‑proofing make 32GB a sensible baseline.

For storage, I selected a PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD. The practical difference in load times versus Gen 4 is modest today, but the drive is exceptionally fast and eliminates storage as a bottleneck entirely. Large track files, frequent updates, and replays load instantly.

Case, Cooling, and Power

For the rest of the components, I stayed within the Corsair ecosystem. My employment at the time aside, Corsair consistently delivers high‑quality components, and having seen the design and manufacturing process up close, I’m confident in their long‑term reliability.

The FRAME 4000D case was a pleasure to build in. Component mounting is intuitive, airflow is well‑engineered, and the cable‑management channels and cutouts are clearly designed by people who actually build PCs. Clean airflow matters more than aesthetics in a sim rig that may run long sessions, and the case delivers on both.

I’ve become a big fan of the iCUE LINK ecosystem. Daisy‑chaining fans and the AIO pump with a single cable dramatically reduces clutter and improves airflow. For this build, I skipped the LCD screen on the CPU cooler—my wheelbase blocks the view anyway—but on a primary desktop rig, I’d absolutely recommend it.

Power comes from an 850W fully modular PSU, which provides ample headroom for transient GPU spikes and keeps the system well within its efficiency sweet spot.

Six Months In

After roughly six months of use, the system has handled every racing sim I’ve thrown at it at maximum settings without complaint. Frame times are stable, thermals are controlled, and the machine fades into the background—which is exactly what you want from a dedicated sim PC.

I’ll follow up with a separate post focused on the Fanatec racing sim equipment itself. As for software, Le Mans Ultimate has been my standout favorite so far.

System Configuration

  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 12GB GDDR7 Founders Edition
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D (8‑Core, 16‑Thread)
  • Motherboard: MSI MAG B850 Tomahawk MAX WiFi (AM5, DDR5, Wi‑Fi 7)
  • Memory: VENGEANCE® 32GB (2×16GB) DDR5‑6000 CL36
  • Case: FRAME 4000D Modular Mid‑Tower
  • CPU Cooler: iCUE LINK TITAN 360 RX RGB AIO
  • Case Fans: iCUE LINK RX120 RGB Triple Kit
  • Power Supply: RMx Series RM850x Fully Modular
  • Storage: MP700 ELITE 2TB PCIe Gen 5 NVMe M.2 SSD
  • Monitor: AOC CU34G2XP 34″ Curved Ultrawide (3440×1440, 180Hz)
Unstable stack of SEC filing papers. Several pages swirl showing edits.

Doing an IPO: The Reality Behind the Process

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On January 29, 2026

In Accounting and Reporting, CFO, Investor Relations, Working With Investment Banks

There is a lot of information available online about IPOs at a very high level. As with my other posts in this series, my goal here is to connect theory with my actual experience. In this post, I focus on actually doing an IPO—drawing on the transaction I helped lead roughly five years ago, along with more than 20 years of broader equity capital markets experience as a public company CFO.

This post is written for CFOs—and for those who want to become CFOs—because the IPO process is as much a test of the finance function and its leadership as it is a capital markets event.

An IPO doesn’t just test the company. It tests the CFO, the finance team, and every system beneath them.

Choosing the IPO Path: Traditional vs. SPAC

When we set out to pursue an IPO, we focused on a traditional underwritten offering. We did speak with several SPACs, but the valuations were not as compelling—and became even less attractive once we factored in the additional costs and structural complexity inherent in SPAC transactions.

At the time, SPACs promised speed and certainty. In practice, the economics simply did not work for us. That will not be true in every situation, but it is a decision that needs to be made with eyes wide open and a clear understanding of the trade-offs.

Your Core Advisors: Lawyers, Auditors, and IPO Specialists

Traditionally, your two primary advisors are your lawyers and your accounting firm. Your banks also advise you, but during the underwriting process there is an inherently adversarial dynamic: you must clear their internal risk processes before they will support launching the deal.

Today, there is an additional category of advisor that can be extremely helpful—IPO advisory firms that specialize in managing the process end to end. These firms are typically compensated through a share of banking fees and help guide management through what is otherwise a complex and unfamiliar process.

We used an advisory firm (Solebury Capital in our case, though there are others). For smaller companies, and particularly where management lacks deep capital markets experience, these advisors can materially reduce execution risk.

Getting the Right Lawyers and Auditors (and Paying for It)

It is critical that both your lawyers and auditors have meaningful IPO experience. In the case of auditors, they must also be SEC-approved. This is one of the first points in the process where fees increase noticeably—market credibility and IPO experience come at a premium.

You may need to switch firms entirely. Auditors, in particular, must be engaged well in advance. Ideally, they will have completed at least one full annual audit before the IPO process begins and resolved any issues related to reliance on a predecessor firm’s work.

Lawyers are somewhat easier to bring in later for the registration process, even without a long operating history with the company.

Hard CFO Career Advice: This Process Will Expose You

Here is some very direct CFO career advice: the IPO process is a stress test for you, your finance team, and your systems.

Once auditors know their opinions will be included in an S-1 used in an IPO, their risk tolerance drops sharply. They will be demanding—and appropriately so.

If your people, systems, or processes are not ready, that will become apparent very quickly to the entire IPO team. The finance function comes under an intense spotlight. You can lose the confidence of the Board, and the risk of replacement is real.

No one is really your friend during an IPO. The work has to be done before the spotlight turns on.

There is a reason you often see a new CFO brought in six to twelve months ahead of an IPO.

Marketing Readiness and the Company Story

You should already have your core marketing points prepared. Even an early, imperfect version of the company story helps attract banks and investors.

Today, it is rare for a company to go public without having completed multiple rounds of private financing, often with investors who also operate in public markets. Those interactions matter more than many CFOs initially realize.

Choosing the Banking Team

Once you are ready to proceed, this is the stage where you select your banking team. Ideally, you have been investing in banking relationships while still private and have a meaningful starting pool.

If not, an IPO advisory firm can be particularly helpful.

Even if you do have relationships, they may not be with the right analysts or sector teams. While there is significant focus on choosing the lead bank during the bake-off process, you will ultimately work with a syndicate. Use the process to signal that smaller banks matter—even if they are not selected as lead.

The Team Matters More Than the Bank Name

This is an important concept: the bank’s name appears on the cover of the S-1, but it is the banking team that actually works with you.

You want the A-team, not the C-players at a prestigious firm. Internally, this comes down to respect. Bankers want to make money by solving problems efficiently. They do not want unnecessary friction or rework for the same economics. The bank’s internal staff know who their A-players are and what trouble their C-players will cause, so make sure the team representing you is strong.

During the bake-off, do not over-index on brand. Lean on your advisors and your own judgment about the individuals involved. Consider which banks bring the better sell-side analysts. The bank ultimately will step in and do what they can to get the deal done, but everything will be easier with the best team.

Strong teams get cooperation—from the bankers themselves and from the broader institution behind them.

Why Experience Matters (and Why Advisors Help)

Going through this process reinforced the value of our IPO advisory firm. Companies typically do one IPO. Even with internal capital markets experience—in our case, I was the only executive with prior IPO experience—you do not have the transaction repetition your advisors bring.

Auditors are less helpful here due to their role constraints, but they can recommend experienced law firms and partners. If you are VC-backed or PE-owned, your investment partners are also an important resource. Members of the broader management team may bring useful experience from prior financings or acquisitions as well.

The IPO Is a Sales Process

Some companies spend years nurturing banking relationships and presenting their story as a potential IPO candidate. Others gain similar experience through extensive pitching during venture fundraising or private equity acquisition processes.

If you are one of those companies, the next stages will be easier.

At its core, an IPO is a sales process.

The S-1: The Center of Gravity

The S-1 is the central document that drives nearly every aspect of the IPO process. Broadly, it consists of three main sections: the business, the financial statements, and the risk factors. Extensive appendices include material contracts and governance documents, such as share class and voting arrangements.

While significant effort goes into the investor presentation, that document is also filed with the SEC and is, in many ways, an extension of the S-1.

The drafting process is highly iterative—first within management, then across a broader internal group, and finally with the SEC once a near-final draft is filed. Confidential filing allows much of this work to occur outside public view until late in the process.

Risk Factors and Exhibits

Risk factors and appendices are generally the most straightforward sections. They are heavily lawyer-driven, and you benefit from reviewing filings of comparable public companies. SEC filings are not copyrighted, so language can be adapted where appropriate.

Management’s role is to ensure risks are complete, properly ordered, and reflective of the business. This section exists primarily to protect the company—if a risk is disclosed, investors have been warned.

The appendices require careful attention to which contracts will become public. Confidential treatment may be available for certain provisions, but disclosure is part of life as a public company, including detailed executive compensation disclosure. This also tests your document retention systems, as signed final versions are required.

The Business Section and the “Box”

The business section has the greatest marketing impact and the largest working group. It must satisfy SEC scrutiny while still presenting the company in the best possible light.

At the front of this section is the “box”—a concise summary set apart on the page that distills the company’s story. This content feeds nearly all other marketing materials and is reviewed relentlessly. Every claim must be substantiated. If you describe yourself as a “leader,” expect to prove it.

Despite being the least technical section, it often receives the most edits. My strongest recommendation is that the CEO own the final narrative voice. They will be doing most of the talking during the roadshow, and the document should sound like them.

Financial Statements: Where IPOs Get Won or Lost

Across the three S-1s I have prepared, the financial statements section always took the longest, produced the most surprises, and attracted the most SEC comments. Auditor scrutiny increases dramatically, and previously cordial relationships can become strained.

Every accounting policy must be fully documented. Disclosures must meet technical requirements, including MD&A and segment reporting. Poor segment decisions can create both compliance and marketing challenges.

I began my career at a Big 4 firm, became a Chartered Accountant, worked extensively in internal audit and controls, served as Controller of a public company, and had been a public company CFO for 14 years before leading this IPO. Even with that background, success depended entirely on having a strong SEC reporting team.

Experience helps—but systems, people, and preparation determine outcomes.

That team existed because earlier attempts to go public had uncovered material weaknesses across Finance and IT. Much of my first six months was spent rebuilding the close process and reporting to public company standards. If you are considering an IPO within the next year, you should be upgrading staff and systems now.

Preparing for SEC Reporting Standards

You will have help. Accounting firms provide detailed SEC reporting checklists. But your people must be capable of meeting the higher standard.

While SOX compliance is not required before going public, you should be close enough that it would not fail.

You are the CFO. Even without a deep accounting background, responsibility ultimately rests with you. Invest in better people and put in the time.

Filing the S-1 and Engaging the SEC

Once the S-1 is in strong draft form, it must be filed. While ongoing SEC reporting can be handled internally, the S-1 filing itself is typically managed by a financial printer specializing in SEC formatting and XML requirements. Errors here carry real risk.

Lawyers often have strong preferences for specific printers. Negotiate aggressively and evaluate multiple options—you can often secure favorable pricing for the first year of filings.

The process is far more streamlined than it once was. You are not staying overnight at a printer (Palo Alto was the location for me) where typists work on their Wyse terminals typing into Interleaf or whatever special system they used. Drafting happens in Word, with later conversion by the printer. You still need to review formatting and the final text in the printer system carefully, but by this point the financial statements should be in excellent shape.

With the confidential filing complete, the SEC review process begins.

Looking Ahead

In the next post, I will walk through the remaining stages of the IPO process, including SEC comments, the roadshow, pricing, and execution. By this point, however, you will know whether your finance organization is truly ready to be public.

Business man chasing dollars with stock charts around him

IPO – The Other Ways to Get There (and Why They Usually Aren’t the Best Choice)

By

On January 26, 2026

In CFO, Finance, Investor Relations, Working With Investment Banks

In my prior post I made the case that, in most situations, a traditional underwritten IPO is the best path to becoming a public company. That does not mean it is the only path. There are several other ways to end up public in the U.S. markets, and as a CFO you need to understand them well enough to evaluate whether they are genuinely better for your company—or simply more tempting in the moment.

What follows is not a legal or structural deep dive. Law firms do that very well. This is a CFO’s view of the tradeoffs.

Direct Listings

Direct listings get a lot of attention, largely because they avoid underwriting fees and feel more “modern.” In practice, they are only viable for a very narrow set of companies.

A direct listing works best when a company already has strong brand recognition, a large and diversified shareholder base, ample liquidity, and no need to raise primary capital at the time of listing. In other words, the market already knows the company well and wants the stock.

For most companies considering going public, those conditions simply do not exist. Without underwriters driving the process, building demand, and helping establish an orderly market, the risks around price discovery and early trading volatility increase materially. That doesn’t make direct listings bad—it just makes them inappropriate for the vast majority of IPO candidates.

Reverse Mergers and SPACs

Reverse mergers, including de-SPAC transactions, solve one problem extremely well: certainty.

You know you are getting public. You know when. You know the structure. You are not dependent on an IPO window being open three months from now. From a CFO perspective, that certainty can be very appealing, especially after living through aborted IPO attempts.

Another advantage is that you typically do not file a traditional IPO S-1. While disclosures are still extensive, the path is different and often faster.

Those benefits, however, come with meaningful tradeoffs.

The biggest issue I have seen is the absence—or weakness—of the traditional banking ecosystem around the transaction. Without a strong underwriting syndicate, you often lack coordinated sales coverage, aftermarket support, and high-quality analyst research. That can lead to thin trading, poor liquidity, and valuations that fail to reflect the company’s fundamentals.

SPAC structures also tend to carry costs that are easy to underestimate. Dilution from sponsor promotes, warrants, PIPE discounts, and redemptions can be substantial. While underwriting fees may look lower on the surface, the all-in cost of capital is often higher than it first appears.

Reverse mergers are not inherently bad, but they trade IPO execution risk for post-transaction market risk—and that trade is not always obvious at the outset.

ADRs / ADSs

ADRs and ADSs are primarily tools for companies that are already public outside the U.S. They are mechanisms to package foreign shares into a U.S.-compliant instrument.

They are not, in practice, an IPO alternative for a private company deciding whether to go public. For that reason, they are usually a footnote in this discussion rather than a core option.

Spin-Offs

Spin-offs are a different animal entirely and typically apply only when you are already part of a public company.

There are two primary ways to execute them. One is selling shares of the subsidiary into the public market, effectively raising capital. The other is distributing shares to existing shareholders of the parent company.

Each approach has very different implications for capital structure, investor base, tax treatment, and management incentives. From a CFO standpoint, spin-offs are less about “going public” and more about capital allocation, strategic focus, and value realization. They can work extremely well, but only in very specific circumstances.

The CFO Lens

All of these alternatives exist for a reason, and in certain situations they are the right answer. What they generally do not do is eliminate risk—they simply move it around.

The traditional IPO concentrates risk upfront in execution and timing, but it also brings structure, market education, analyst coverage, and tools to manage early trading. Many alternative paths reduce upfront uncertainty while increasing long-term market and valuation risk.

As a CFO, your job is not to chase novelty or certainty alone. It is to understand which risks you are taking, which ones you are transferring, and whether the resulting public company is actually stronger five years down the road.

In the next post, I’ll tie these structural choices back to what actually happens during an IPO process—and what most people outside the room never see.

A stylized 20-sided die with no numbers and a teal face showing.

Playing RPGs Online with Fantasy Grounds: A Decade of Experience

By

On January 24, 2026

In Gaming, RPG

Playing Dungeons & Dragons Again — Online, Revisited

In 2016 I wrote about dusting off my old RPG hobby and trying out Fantasy Grounds as a way to play Dungeons & Dragons again with friends scattered across the globe. At the time, online tools were rough, the costs were unclear, and the logistics of actually running a game online felt like half the adventure.

The world has changed a lot since then — and Fantasy Grounds has changed with it.

Fantasy Grounds Is Now Free

The biggest update is that Fantasy Grounds no longer requires a paid license just to play.

As of late 2025, SmiteWorks made the base Fantasy Grounds virtual tabletop completely free for both Game Masters and players. You can now download the program, host games, and join sessions without paying an upfront license fee. Previously, you needed an Ultimate License or a subscription just to run a game; that barrier is now gone.

There are still licensed content packs you can purchase — official rulebooks, adventures, tokens, and high-end maps — but the core platform, including its robust automation and ruleset support, is available to everyone.

This is a major change. It dramatically lowers the barrier to entry for new players and new GMs, and it makes Fantasy Grounds far more competitive with other free or low-cost virtual tabletops.

Feature Enhancements Since the Original Post

When I wrote the original post, Fantasy Grounds did many things well — automation of rolls, character tracking, combat management — but it lacked some of the visual polish and ease of use modern gamers expect. That has changed significantly.

Animated Maps and Visual Effects
Fantasy Grounds now supports animated maps and tokens, adding motion and atmosphere to encounters. Subtle animation brings environments to life in a way that simply wasn’t possible before.

Dynamic Lighting and Line of Sight
Lighting effects, fog-of-war, elevation, and line-of-sight are now first-class features. Players see only what their characters can see, which adds tactical depth and immersion similar to a physical tabletop with terrain.

Improved Map and Prep Tools
Multi-layer maps, tiles, decals, and better drawing tools make game preparation faster and more satisfying. Building encounters visually is no longer a chore.

Web-Based Content Access (Beta)
SmiteWorks has introduced an early web reader that allows access to your Fantasy Grounds library from a browser. It’s useful for reference and prep without launching the full application.

It’s still not perfect. There is a learning curve, and the interface is not as slick as some competitors. But it is far more capable and refined than it was ten years ago.

What hasn’t changed is the strength of Fantasy Grounds’ automation. Major RPG systems are very well supported, allowing GMs to enter rules and adventures once and then let the software handle the mechanical overhead. That frees you to focus on presentation, pacing, and storytelling rather than bookkeeping.

For Dungeons & Dragons (both the 2014 and newer editions), Fantasy Grounds can roll and track initiative, manage spell durations, handle saving throws and damage, perform skill checks against DCs, determine hits, and apply damage to characters and NPCs automatically.

The visual presentation ties this together, showing the map and exactly what each character can see — assuming line of sight is configured — which significantly improves player engagement.

Multiple Games, One Platform

What’s surprised me most is how Fantasy Grounds has evolved from “play D&D online” into “play almost anything online.”

Since writing the original post, I’ve run or played more than ten different RPG systems using Fantasy Grounds, including:

  • Cyberpunk Red
  • Traveller
  • Swords & Wizardry
  • Star Trek RPG
  • Shadowdark
  • Mothership
  • Aliens RPG
  • Dungeons & Dragons 5e
  • …and several others across sci-fi, fantasy, and old-school genres

That breadth highlights the strength of Fantasy Grounds’ ruleset architecture. Once you learn the platform, moving between systems is far easier than learning a new virtual tabletop each time.

Another key strength is SmiteWorks’ extensive licensing agreements. Many rulebooks and adventures are available pre-entered in native VTT format. This is a massive time saver — you spend more time playing and less time preparing. And if you prefer to homebrew, the built-in tools make entering custom material straightforward and fast.

Video and Voice: Discord, Zoom, Teams

The original post mentioned Skype and Teamspeak (remember those?). The communication landscape has shifted just as much as the VTT space.

Today, most groups pair Fantasy Grounds with:

  • Discord for voice, text, and screen sharing
  • Zoom for hybrid video/voice sessions
  • Microsoft Teams for groups that prefer structured scheduling

Fantasy Grounds still doesn’t include built-in voice or video, but modern third-party tools are far more reliable and integrate smoothly into a typical game night.

Wrapping Up

If you’ve been curious about playing RPGs online — whether your friends are scattered, your local group faded, or you simply want to try something new — Fantasy Grounds today is far more accessible, richer in features, and more enjoyable than it was when I first returned to the hobby.

It’s still not completely plug-and-play, and you should expect some setup and learning. But with free access to the core platform, animated maps, strong automation, and broad system support, Fantasy Grounds has grown into a mature and capable way to keep tabletop gaming alive — even when the table itself is thousands of miles away.to advanced tools — make it a powerful choice for virtual tabletop gaming.

A grail with $ signs and charts on it

IPO – How to Grab This Holy Grail

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On January 22, 2026

In CFO, Finance, Investor Relations, Leadership, Working With Investment Banks

In the first year of my most recent job, I finally managed to get an IPO done. I had been close a couple of times in the past, but in each of them the market took a dive right when we were close to launching. One time the 2008/2009 financial crisis hit and the window slammed shut. The next time the leading company in the space suddenly imploded and almost instantly went into a hard bankruptcy. The market as a whole was still open, but there was zero investor appetite for the type of company I was trying to get over the finish line (yield co).

We had done all the work in each case with the S-1 done and the banks lined up, but if the market is not taking deals, no one cares about all the work you did. That is my first caution about doing an IPO, a lot is not under your control.

I want to expand that idea to the career of being a CFO.  There is really no guarantee that an IPO will happen. I have been approached many, many times by recruiters looking for a CFO for a pre-IPO company. Many are said to be 3 to 5 years out. Others within 2. Over the years it has to be 30 to 40 different approaches. 2 companies actually made it public and I worked for both. One after I left and then the window opened again and the one I just left and I succeeded at taking it IPO.

IPOs are pretty rare and never a sure thing. Even the company I succeeded at had tried once before and had the bad luck of immediately following Facebook and that initial attempt failed.. The market reaction to Facebook’s IPO created real hesitation for anything adjacent. As much as it is exciting and potentially pretty lucrative, be thoughtful before accepting a job where a lot of the attraction is the IPO. The further away the expected IPO is, the lower the chance it will happen when it is expected. Usually you are not taking pure start-up risk if the company is seriously considering an IPO, but it is riskier than average, so can you recover from failure? Remember that the consequences of failing typically fall most heavily on the CFO, even if the real issue is not financial.

Why Do an IPO?

Earlier in my career I went to a CFO interview for a pre-IPO opportunity and ran into a founder CEO who did not want to do one and wanted to argue with me about it. Once I got past the annoyance of the disconnect between the recruiter’s pitch and the job the hiring manager had, the discussion basically boiled down to the company was cash positive and had no barriers to growth because of a lack of capital. Ultimately that company stalled a little and got bought out by a larger public company and the CEO / Founder was let go, but at the time, it was doing well and we had a hard to and fro about the pros and cons of being public vs. private.

For me, it only makes sense for a company to go public if the weighting of these five factors clearly points in that direction. This is not a checklist exercise—circumstances vary, and the Board and management team must deliberately weight each factor to determine whether being public truly strengthens the company.:

  1. The company needs access to permanent scalable capital
  2. Shareholders, including early employees, need liquidity that the private market cannot provide
  3. The company requires acquisition currency
  4. The extra credibility, brand augmentation and market positioning is a big positive
  5. It is needed for talent attraction and retention

There are real downsides to being public, including a potential lack of flexibility because you now need to meet external expectations and in a way that there is no hiding from timing and execution. You also need a robust financial reporting system and a strong forecasting ability. Your ongoing audit, legal and insurance expenses will jump in a pretty significant manner.

So if you are part of the management team and looking at it or interviewing to join to be part of the process, you can sum up the choice into one question, “Does being public make the company strategically stronger five years from now – net of cost, distraction, and loss of flexibility?” Or, in my case having lived off and on in Silicon Valley for several decades and not done an IPO “Do you want to take the chance and just do it so you join many others here in the experience?”

Years ago and still embedded into some foreign stock exchanges is the profitability criteria. However, there are so many unprofitable and earlier stage companies that have gone public (common in drug development and many tech companies) that profitability is often just a valuation footnote.

How do You do an IPO?

There are actually quite a few ways you can get public in the USA, and these are some of the main ones:

  1. Traditional Underwritten IPO – One (usually many more) investment banks take a risk position and then bring the company public.
  2. Direct listing – The company lists their shares directly on an exchange.
  3. Reverse Merger (may be a de-SPAC) – Merge with an already public company in a way that results in you controlling it. Has become much more of a tailored transaction using SPACs.
  4. ADR/ADS – Package up foreign shares in a compliant instrument and list on a USA exchange.
  5. Stumble into it – have enough shareholders that you qualify under SEC rules. Could be Reg A+ or Reg D.
  6. Spin-offs from already public company.

I don’t want to try and make a comprehensive document of all the different ways to do it. There are much better sources via law firms that explain the legal mechanics in detail. Instead I will concentrate and discuss the ones I know the most because of personal experience, and the one I was successful at was a traditional IPO.

To start with, I will make a sweeping statement: in almost all situations, a traditional IPO is best.

Being underwritten by banks and going through the full SEC registration process forces a level of rigor that most private companies simply have not needed before. Drafting and refining the S-1 is not just a disclosure exercise; it is an operational stress test. Financial reporting, controls, forecasting discipline, risk articulation, and internal processes all get examined, challenged, and tightened. Companies that survive this process emerge far better prepared to operate in the public markets than those that try to shortcut it.

Equally important is the role of the banking syndicate itself. The lead and co-managing banks bring together investment banking, equity capital markets (ECM), research, sales, and trading into a coordinated effort. The ECM team, in particular, has deep, current knowledge of the IPO investor universe—who is allocating capital, what themes are working, what valuations are realistic, and how demand is actually forming across different types of funds. This is not theoretical insight; it is informed daily by live deal flow and constant feedback from institutional investors.

That knowledge is critical in shaping the equity story and preparing management for the roadshow. The banking team helps refine the narrative, pressure-tests messaging, and ensures that management can clearly and consistently articulate strategy, growth drivers, risks, and capital allocation priorities. The roadshow itself is not just a marketing exercise; it is a real-time discovery process. Investor reactions feed back into pricing, sizing, and allocation decisions, all with the goal of creating a stable, high-quality shareholder base from day one.

One additional advantage that should not be overlooked is ongoing analyst coverage. As part of a traditional IPO, the underwriting banks initiate research coverage after the quiet period, providing the market with a structured, independent framework for understanding the company’s strategy, financial model, and long-term prospects. This coverage helps educate a broader investor base, supports liquidity over time, and creates an ongoing dialogue between the company and the market—something that is difficult to replicate without a full underwriting syndicate.

Finally, a traditional IPO provides a tool that alternatives simply do not: stabilization. In volatile markets—or when sentiment shifts unexpectedly—the underwriters have the ability to support trading in the early days after the offering. This is not about propping up a weak company; it is about managing technical pressure and ensuring an orderly market while the investor base settles. That option alone can materially reduce downside risk in the most critical period of a company’s life as a public entity.

Taken together, underwriting discipline, rigorous preparation, informed investor access, ongoing analyst coverage and the availability of stabilization create a framework that maximizes the odds of a successful transition to the public markets. In most cases, that structure is not a burden—it is a competitive advantage. You need to pay for it via underwriting fees, but I think you get more than what you pay for.

I will explain my views on the other methods of going public in my next post and then have one more post to weave in my experience to what typically happens in an IPO.

Strategy, Cadence, and Winning — Lessons for CFOs from Miyamoto Musashi

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On January 19, 2026

In CFO, Finance, Leadership

The word “strategy” did not originally come from business. Its roots are military. In fact, the widespread use of “strategy” in a business context only seems to have emerged in the 1960s. Before that, it referred almost exclusively to warfare. The Greek root of the word relates to generalship and battlefield leadership.

Wikipedia offers a good summary of strategic thinking, drawing on military theorists like Carl von Clausewitz and B.H. Liddell Hart. Stripped down, the idea is simple: strategy is the use of all available and appropriate resources to achieve political—or, in our case, organizational—objectives.

Sun Tzu famously said in The Art of War:
“If you know yourself and you know your enemy, you will not lose one fight in a hundred.”

I personally find Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings even more instructive, particularly for business. In the Earth Scroll, Musashi discusses strategy at length, including its application to commerce—remarkably, in the 16th century.

“In the way of business, there are cadences for making a fortune and cadences for losing it. In each way, there exist different cadences. You must discern well the cadences in conformity with which things prosper and those in conformity with which things decline.”

This idea of cadence is critical. The CFO sits at the center of the organization as cash is converted into reporting and analysis. That position gives you a foundation for understanding the rhythm of the business. But numbers lag reality. Recognizing patterns early usually requires looking outward—to Sales, Purchasing, Operations, and the market itself. Being strategic is not about owning multiple functions; it is about understanding the rhythm of the business and knowing when to act.

Musashi outlines nine principles for practicing strategy:

  1. Think of that which is not evil.
  2. Train in the way.
  3. Take an interest in all the arts.
  4. Know the way of all professions.
  5. Understand advantages and disadvantages.
  6. Learn to judge quality.
  7. Perceive what is not visible on the surface.
  8. Be attentive to even small things.
  9. Do not perform useless acts.

Much of this applies directly to leadership. Do not cross legal or moral lines—doing so can derail an entire organization and your own career. Avoid useless busywork. Focus on actions that actually create value. Learn broadly, not just within your own discipline.

Musashi also emphasizes people and leadership at scale:

“In grand strategy, you must be victorious through the quality of the people you employ, through how you utilize them, through ruling correctly, and through applying the law of the world in the best way.”

Individual skill matters, but victory at scale requires leveraging others. This applies directly to the CFO role. Your job is not to win every fight yourself, but to enable the organization to win.

He reinforces this idea repeatedly:

“It is necessary to know ten thousand things by knowing one well.”

And:

“You should not have a predilection for certain weapons.”

In business terms, this means not relying on a single tool or framework. CFOs often try to win purely with numbers. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Even if you dislike leverage, borrowing may be the right decision. Strategy requires adaptability, not ideology.

Musashi is also very clear about the ultimate purpose of strategy: to win.

“The true Way of strategy is to fight and win.”

In business, winning does not always mean aggressive expansion. Sometimes winning is surviving a down cycle. Sometimes it means conserving resources until the cadence shifts. But consistently winning requires deliberate strategy and execution. Not losing is not the same as winning.

If you want to be a strategic CFO, you must help your company win. There are no shortcuts. Finance tools alone are rarely sufficient. A strategic CFO understands how to marshal internal capabilities and leverage external resources when it matters most.

As for how to become that kind of CFO, I’ll admit I don’t have a perfect formula. I’ve been fortunate to work at companies that grew and succeeded, but I still see myself as being on the path rather than having arrived.

Musashi’s advice resonates here:

“Temper yourself with one thousand days of practice, and refine yourself with ten thousand days of training.”

When you are not executing, you should be practicing—developing skills, developing people, debating scenarios, and rehearsing decisions. When the moment comes, you will act faster and with more confidence if you have already thought through the possibilities.

This post is only a broad overview of strategy and how it applies to the CFO role. In future posts, I plan to go deeper into specific actions and real-world examples from my career. I’ll also return to Musashi from time to time—both as a strategist and, for those interested, as a sword fighter.

Strategy, at its core, is about winning. A strategic CFO understands the cadence of the business, knows when and how to act, and helps the organization use all of its available tools to prevail.

That, in my view, is what the title should actually mean.

The Five Rings: Miyamoto Musashi’s Art of Strategy

Above is an Amazon link to a translation of The Book of Five Rings.

CFO looking thoughtful gazing out a window

Being a Strategic CFO (and Why the Term Is So Often Misused)

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On January 15, 2026

In CFO, Finance, Leadership

I think the term I hear most often when a recruiter calls me about a CFO opportunity is that their client is looking for a “strategic CFO.” I also see no shortage of articles in the finance trade press on the importance of being strategic, or on how the modern CFO must go beyond the traditional role.

I’ll start by saying that many of these articles rely on a very narrow—and frankly inaccurate—definition of what a “traditional CFO” is. In many cases, what they describe sounds more like a Controller or Head of Accounting than an actual CFO. I can forgive this to some extent; claiming to offer a bold new insight makes for a more clickable article. Still, many of these pieces feel shallow and suggest a limited understanding of what CFOs have always done.

One of the most common claims is that a strategic CFO must be “forward looking.” This one puzzles me the most. Even basic accounting is inherently forward looking. The going-concern assumption alone requires analysis of the future. Budgeting, forecasting, cash flow modeling—these are core finance skills, not optional add-ons. Some finance leaders are better than others at building relationships outside the department and therefore get better insight, but that too is a foundational finance skill. Finance typically sits at the center of the company’s information flow, particularly because it monitors cash. That position actually makes relationship-building easier, not harder. Being forward looking, by itself, does not make a CFO strategic.

Other articles encourage CFOs to “go beyond finance” and take on broader operational roles. That advice is also somewhat puzzling. A CFO is already part of the senior leadership team and is often one of the primary internal and external faces of management. Most CFOs have worked across multiple functions earlier in their careers, and some of us even came to finance from other disciplines.

That experience is valuable—but trying to run other functions can be disruptive. Everyone already has one clear boss: the CEO. They do not need a second one. A good CFO keeps the organization accountable to its goals, especially financial ones, while enabling success rather than trying to personally run everything. The CFO is often the bearer of bad news by default, acting as the reality check when plans miss their targets. That role already requires enough political and interpersonal skill without creating unnecessary confusion about authority.

This advice also varies by company size and stage. In smaller or earlier-stage companies, the CFO (if that is even the title) often has all administrative functions reporting to them. IT reporting to the CFO is not uncommon. As companies mature, however, functional leadership becomes more defined. At the same time, the CFO role becomes more complex—venture funding, capital markets, investor relations, treasury, and fundraising all consume significant time and energy. There is limited usefulness in trying to run every function once the organization reaches that level of complexity.

That does not mean the CFO should stay locked inside the finance department.

A CFO can help Sales close deals by structuring contracts properly, reducing currency risk through hedging, and ensuring revenue is recognized correctly from day one. That only happens with strong working relationships. CFOs can help Purchasing negotiate better supplier contracts, often playing an effective “bad cop” role, and sometimes bringing financing relationships to the table to ease pressure on terms. Legal and IT are often natural allies. COOs usually appreciate help driving down costs or evaluating locations for new facilities. CFOs are also frequently asked to lead large, cross-functional initiatives.

All of this makes you a better CFO. You make better decisions. Your team does too. Communication improves. You build credibility, which makes difficult conversations easier. When you later complete a major M&A transaction, integration and synergy realization are far more achievable because you already understand how the business actually works.

But none of this, by itself, necessarily makes you the “strategic CFO” that your CEO or board says they want.

At this point, you may be a very good CFO—just without the label.

To understand what “strategic” really means, I think we need to go back to the root of the word itself. I will explore that in my next post.

Myrdin3D store logo. Name with 3D blocks.

Learning by Doing

By

On January 13, 2026

In 3D Printing, CFO, Leadership, RPG

When I joined my most recent company as CFO, I realized fairly quickly that there was one area where my direct experience was thinner than I would have liked: online and retail sales. I understood the numbers well enough—margins, contribution, customer acquisition cost, lifetime value—but understanding something conceptually is not the same as having lived it.

I’ve always believed that the fastest way to truly understand something is to do it yourself. Reading, asking questions, and reviewing reports are all useful, but there is a different kind of learning that only comes from personal accountability. When it’s your time, your money, and your decisions, the lessons tend to stick.

So instead of just studying e-commerce from the sidelines, I opened a small Etsy shop: myrdin3d.etsy.com.

The intent was never to build a meaningful business or side income (although it did and continues to do fairly well). The goal was learning. I wanted to experience firsthand what it actually takes to market and sell products online, from the ground up, without a team or infrastructure to hide behind.

I leaned into one of my hobbies and selected products that I believed would do well based on personal experience and observation. That alone was an education. It forced me to think like a customer instead of an operator: what problem does this solve, why would someone buy it, and what alternatives already exist?

From there, the real learning began.

I had to write advertising copy. Not board-level messaging or investor narratives, but short, direct descriptions that had to earn attention in a crowded marketplace. Writing copy that converts is a very different discipline than writing a memo or a strategy deck. You learn quickly what is clear, what is confusing, and what simply doesn’t matter to the buyer.

I had to take product photos. That sounds trivial until you try to do it well. Lighting, angles, backgrounds, consistency—it all affects perception and conversion. Seeing how dramatically presentation influences demand was a useful reminder that value is not just created; it is communicated.

Pricing was another area where theory met reality. I set prices with explicit margin targets in mind, but I also had to respond to market expectations, competition, and perceived value. It’s one thing to talk about gross margin in the abstract. It’s another to watch a product sit unsold because you missed the price by a few dollars—or to realize you left money on the table because you underpriced it.

I also learned more than I expected about intellectual property and commercial rights. Selling physical products forces you to think carefully about what you can legally sell, what designs are protected, what licenses are required, and where the boundaries actually are. This is the kind of knowledge that is easy to gloss over until you are personally exposed to the risk.

Perhaps most importantly, the experience gave me a better appreciation for the operational friction that exists in online sales. Order flow, customer questions, fulfillment issues, returns—all small individually, but very real when you are responsible for every step. It reinforced how easy it is, from a leadership position, to underestimate the cumulative load placed on teams closer to the customer.

None of this turned me into a world-class e-commerce expert or even close to in skills to the experts we had that did it every day. That was never the goal. What it did was give me a much more grounded perspective. When discussions come up about pricing strategy, marketing spend, product positioning, or margin pressure, I’m no longer relying solely on secondhand knowledge. I have context. I’ve felt the tradeoffs.

This experience also reinforced something I believe strongly about leadership: intellectual curiosity matters, but it has to be paired with action. Curiosity alone is passive. Doing something—even something small—forces discipline, humility, and learning in a way that observation never will.

As CFOs, we don’t need to be experts in every function. But we do need to understand the cadence of the business and the realities our teams face. Sometimes the best way to do that is to step outside your role and try something uncomfortable, imperfect, and very real.

For me, that meant opening a small Etsy shop and learning by doing.

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