#97 My Route to Finance Leader in a Fast Growth Fintech with Danielle Keeven VP Finance at Paddle

Danielle Keeven has had quite a journey to get to her current role as VP of Finance at paddle.com. She has crossed the globe and changed industry sectors. She has gone from roles in large multinationals to working in high-growth startups. Danielle shares her experiences with Kevin Appleby on this week’s GrowCFO Show.

Originally working in the Caribbean for large US multinationals such as Marriott and Hyatt, Danielle swapped to working in Europe for booking.com, then moved out of hospitality completely to work in fintech. This was a huge change and she tells us all about the challenges she faced in the episode.

Danielle Keeven is currently VP of finance at paddle.com. Paddle offers SaaS companies a completely different way to sell. Instead of assembling and maintaining a complex stack of payments-related apps and services, Paddle provides an all-in-one solution. Danielle explains how her finance expertise is applied to the design of the product as well as to running the finance team. We discuss in detail the problems that products like Paddle solve for SaaS founders, and some of the mistakes Danielle has seen these companies make.

Links

• Danielle Keeven on LinkedIn
• Kevin Appleby on LinkedIn
• Paddle.com
• GrowCFO Future CFO Programme
• GrowCFO Strategy Programme
• CFO Competency Framework
• Free Course: First 100 Days in your new finance role

Timestamps

01:00 Born in the Netherlands, growing up in the Caribbean

01:42 The accidental accountant

02:59 Hospitality: Hyatt and Marriott

03:45 Move to Europe and the tech side of Hospitality

05:00 Accounts receivable in a SaaS business

06:41 moving from Booking.com to Messagebird

09:23 Why did you join paddle.com?

11:47 What does Paddle do?

13:18 The complexities of online business and global tax rules

16:13 Will you move on from VP Finance to a full CFO role?

17:19 Roald Dahl’s Matilda

19:13 What sort of mistakes do you see fast-growing SaaS companies making?

22:06 Building a strategy for internationalisation

23:15 Giving SaaS businesses the right data insights

25:26 What advice would you give other finance people looking to move to CFO roles

26:41 GrowCFO Competency framework

27:15 The art of delegation

30:33 The finance leader and fraud

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