Avison Young holds bi-annual CFO Forum

December 15, 2017

Ted Simpson, Principal at Avison Young, founded the Los Angeles CFO Forum, a panel discussion among CFOs for an audience of CFOs, over 9 years ago. To best serve its diverse audience, forum panels have included CFOs from local start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, and have addressed everything from accounting rule changes to tips on how to make that CFO to CEO jump.

This recent forum featured an open discussion between some of the most prominent Los Angeles CFOs in the online consumer space, and focused primarily on managing the changing online consumer, and the current VC fundraising environment. The panel included:

Edgar Davtyan - CFO, Ayzenberg Group
Ayzenberg is a frontline advertising agency that jumped into the digital age hard and fast. It manages marketing campaigns for the coolest tech brands and is transforming itself by embracing technology.
Carol Koh Evans - COO/CFO, Tradesy, Inc.
Tradesy is a leading online peer-to-peer marketplace for luxury designer fashion, serving millions of fashion-forward online customers. Tradesy has raised Series A, B, and C VC rounds.
Tridivesh Kidambi - CFO, System1
System1 is the world's largest independent marketplace for keyword pay-per-click advertising. System1 recently announced a $270 million financing round.

The panel was moderated by Avison Young Principal, Ted Simpson.

Question 1 How would you describe the current fundraising environment?

Carol – Joined the company after the Series B round of funding and watched the company grow from 30 to 100 people. Carol is constantly meeting with investors and believes who you select as your investors is extremely crucial. These partners will provide valuable feedback and open doors to potential opportunities and connections. Other avenues of financing may come into play once the company reaches profitability.

Tridivesh – Fundraising ability is at a high along with the rest of the market. The important aspect is to protect the company on the downside as there is volatility with everything you do.

Edgar – Different perspective from the other two speakers coming from a privately held company. “You don’t need to raise capital unless you really need to raise.” The need for financing, using debt or equity, becomes more relevant with emerging technologies while creating new industry trends. Technology and services could be split into two separate companies, but they are hoping to find a way to combine the “oil and water.”

Question 2 Online retail is growing, but how is it changing? What are the best ways to reach a consumer; influence their spending?

Carol – Within the fashion business, social media has creating higher churn for products that are only used once. High ticket items become outdated once posted on social media and has created liquidity within the fashion marketplace.

Tridivesh – Building detailed customer profiles in order to identify what customers are really in the market for.

Question 3 How does an advertiser attempt to clear the “social noise” so prevalent today?

Edgar – They want to hear as much noise as possible and figure out what it all really means. Ayzenberg thrives on understanding social noise and deriving insights and actionable next steps from it.

Carol – Major change in the marketplace; directing customers towards products that interest them rather than the large retailer approach of forcing products on you.

Question 4 Why build a business in Venice with all the traffic, crowding out by SnapChat?

Tridivesh – The biggest bottleneck faced is hiring engineering talent in Southern California. Compensation and perks are not enough on their own to find top talent, successful hiring is also based on communicating the company culture and vision in a cohesive and inspiring way. Venice is also hard to scale from a real estate perspective.

Edgar – “Hearts matter, souls matter, and good intentions matter.” Create a culture that people can get behind. Pasadena, or other locations, don’t matter as much when you have an attractive culture. Tackle issues of geography with a clear company vision to the employees.

Carol – People are willing to commute when they believe in the company and trust the people they are working with. A results oriented culture allows flexibility to employees who cannot pay the high West LA rents.

Question 5 With net neutrality, interest rates, and regulations changing, how do you account for these in upcoming forescasts and proformas.

Edgar – Control what you can and don’t worry about the rest when it comes to forecasting taxes and additional regulations. Focus time on clients.

Question 6 What do you see arising with internet privacy in coming years?

Tridivesh – Speaking on internet privacy, the goal is for platforms and companies to offer consumers a compelling value proposition, that makes it worthwhile for them to trade off some of their privacy.

For more information about the Avison Young CFO Forum, contact Ted Simpson.