Q&A: Strategic Finance / Corp Dev at late-state technology company (series C+ / $2bn+ valuation)

1. I was in the technology M&A group at my old firm. I don't think it's a hard requirement, but it's definitely advantageous as you already have exposure to/an understanding of things you'd need to know in tech (e.g. unit economics, cohort analysis, SaaS metrics, etc.). You should still get interviews if you come from a conventional M&A or coverage group. The only time your group would be more of an uphill battle, from what I've seen, would be when you're coming from a more niche industry focus (e.g. FIG, RX, etc.).
2. My team is good about letting people decide on which projects we want to work on. I probably split my time 70/30 between strategic finance and corp dev, but that's mostly because I told my team that I'm most interested in that area. Combined roles are probably more common at pre-IPO companies, but in general most companies seem to split their corp dev and strategic finance functions.

Perhaps dumb question - what is the distinction between strategic finance and corp dev? I always thought they had a lot of crossovers, with the former doing more FP&A related work and latter focused purely on M&A

1. 1 year is generally the baseline and after that it's mostly about optimizing your resume. I think PE and strategic finance resumes have a fair amount of overlap, but you want to include points about how you collaborate across multiple stakeholders / parties and take on a lot of responsibility versus building LBO models and calculating returns.
2. Being in a tech group is advantageous, but not a requirement. The main advantage comes from learning about the common SaaS metrics and KPIs that companies and investors look at. That being said, coming from a traditional coverage group (e.g. C&R, media, etc.) won't hold you back as long as you show you know the important tech metrics that people typically look at - there's a lot of resources online about this, so it shouldn't be too hard to find.
3. Pay range can vary by company, but tech salaries should be strong enough to where you shouldn't have to take a pay cut after going to your next role, at least for base salary. It's also pretty common for companies to include equity in your comp package so also keep that in mind.
4. I found most of my roles and current role through LinkedIn. I set-up alerts for job titles in geographies that I would be open to working in and checked those daily. These roles have some headhunter coverage (e.g. Amity/Dropbox, Oxbridge/Roblox), but you're right that there probably aren't enough opportunities to be able to solely rely on headhunters for help.

Not a huge amount. Most of the admin work that I do involves sending reports on business updates to the CFO. However, that being said, my team also has to manage the preparation of the quarterly board materials and board KPI updates which tends to be a lot more time consuming/annoying.

I've closed one deal since I joined. We work cross functionally on processes, with my team managing the process, so there's a pretty good division of labor according to each department's functional area (e.g. legal, engineering, etc.). My personal responsibilities would be building the model and any other financial analysis that needs to be done, which is similar to banking, but with less BS work, such as having to create decks for everything, pull logos, etc. My entire team is also ex-IB or PE so that also helps things move more quickly.

It's a pretty big part. The best way for me to describe it would be as an banking analyst you're able to utilize various departments based on what you need (e.g. presentation center, research center, India-based outsourcing services, etc.) and that's kind of the same concept when you work with other departments. Instead of having to find something you have no expertise in, you reach out to other teams for that information, whether it be legal, engineering, etc., to move a project forward.

Not very often. The only instances where I felt like I was constantly on call would be the days leading up to a board meeting, but even that is way better than what I experienced in banking and I never felt like there wasn't a light at the end of the tunnel. 

Everyone on my team is from IB/PE. It's definitely possible to break in from other backgrounds, but it probably requires more networking/joining the finance team then trying to internally transfer (think a lot of companies have flexibility if you have an overlapping skillset).

I don't want to say too much about my location, but I'm in a tier 1 city (SF/LA/NY). I'm not sure about at my current company as the management team is pretty built out and many of them have strong backgrounds even by WSO standards. That being said, I think there is a good path as long as your team has a lot of exposure to departments across the organization and that you personally are able to take on as much responsibility as possible. I think I'd be well positioned further down the line to move up the corporate ladder (probably at other earlier / growth stage companies) because of the broad experience I've had here so far and because I feel like I've been able to take on a ton of responsibility (my team is very lean).

Almost none. We have a separate FP&A team, but a lot of companies do refer to their FP&A teams as "strategic finance" so it's important to diligence that when looking at an opportunity.

You just want to show that you've done things as close to what they have in the job description as much as possible. I've noticed that a lot of tech companies expect people to have worked "cross functionally" which isn't necessarily possible if you're a banking analyst, so it's important to explain how you have experience managing the expectations of multiple parties in your resume. This can be anything, including having to coordinate senior bankers, legal advisors, capital markets team, etc. I personally found that once you do this, interview conversion rate goes up by a lot even without networking.

The work itself is pretty similar to banking with the biggest difference being less unnecessary work. In banking it felt like a deck had to be created and turned for everything, but people here tend to be much more efficient and don't expect new decks/perfectly formatted slides for everything. Aside from that it's a lot of building models to analyze scenarios (e.g. product launches, partnerships, expansions opportunities, M&A, fundraising, etc.) and synthesizing that information whether it be through excel outputs or on slides. It's also a lot less processing work and you actually have to think a bit more.

The main difference is strategic finance tends to be more special projects for the CEO/CFO while FP&A is more along the lines of forecasting and preparing the budget. 

Not personally at my company, but I think it's pretty common across the board.

As mentioned above, I'd imagine it would be harder if you're coming from a less conventional group (FIG/RX) but I think most M&A and coverage groups would probably be fine as long as you have good deal experience and show that you know how to evaluate technology companies. 

I think the nature of the work is the same (e.g. you're still doing analysis in excel and finding ways to present that information, whether it be on slides or excel outputs), but the types of analysis are more based on internal company data instead of trying to find information to show clients what they want to see. Due to that, the work tends to be much more intuitive in my opinion. For me personally, there's a much bigger sense of camaraderie/everyone being on the same team vs. banking where it felt like people would try to push off as much work as possible to whomever they could. That said, I am expected to operate with a bit more autonomy, but on the flip side the turnaround times aren't nearly as unreasonable as those of banking (e.g. I almost never had a project assigned to me late afternoon that had to be sent out the same night).

I think the biggest thing for me would be more autonomy. If someone on my team tells me they need something the next day or by the end of the week, I'm able to budget my time however I want as long as I finish it on time without being micromanaged. I also appreciate how it feels like my company is able to get things done pretty quickly instead of having to jump through a bunch of internal hoops each time we went to do something (basically it feels like things are just as productive as they were in banking but with more reasonable deadlines and better hours). Aside from that catered lunch/dinners, fully stocked kitchens, generous gym stipends, etc. are also really nice. 

Base salary is currently ~$110k, but I should be up for promotion in a couple of months (the move for me was pretty lateral in terms of title) so that should go up. In addition to that, I got ~$50k of equity when I joined (with ~60/40 split between options/RSU) and you generally get more each year, however the options have a vesting schedule.

In terms of cost-benefit, comp wasn't too important to me when I was wondering offers. My main consideration was to at least not take a pay cut on base salary. I mainly prioritized joining a team that had people with strong backgrounds (e.g. IB/PE backgrounds, graduated from top bschools, etc.).

We haven't done any fundraising in a bit, but revenue is up 50%+ and a lot of the public companies we benchmark ourselves against have done pretty well.

There's still a pretty high mark for growth targets, but it's not a "grow at all costs" mentality. 

1. Not too familiar with the types of analysis you do in biotech/pharma so I can't really say for sure. A lot of it depends on how the modeling work differs from those in more "standard" industries. I think there's also an element of showing you'd be interested in making the pivot from healthcare to tech.
2. I don't see a huge advantage of staying past your analyst program as you can learn almost all of what banking has to offer within two years. The main benefits I see would be higher pay, more client exposure, and some managerial experience. If you're fine with the hours/lifestyle, it won't hurt, but it doesn't necessarily set you apart either.
3. Not too much, things are much more unstructured on the corporate side in terms of comp, title, etc., so you can actually increase you salary much more quickly by changing jobs every 2-3 years or so. So while the pay bumps may be less lucrative compared to banking pay bumps, you can still materially increase your salary by changing jobs as frequently as possible (ideally negotiating title bumps as well).
4. The interview process is pretty intense (less so than PE, but it's still pretty competitive and a ton of work). For my current company it was 2-3 rounds of interviews with a super day at the end, and I also had one week to do a case study which involved building a model and presenting it. Interview questions mainly centered around business case-type questions and not a lot of banking-esque technicals.

Strategic finance is more ad hoc projects for the senior leadership team (e.g. evaluating geographic expansion opportunities, new product launches, fundraising, IR, etc.) while Corp Dev is more internal M&A from what I see. That said, the two can have some overlap and the definitions can vary between companies - Corp Dev could be the same as strategic finance, etc.

I would assume so as you would have more years of experience and come in at a higher level. Don't think it would necessarily hurt you as long as you're able to tolerate the hours and lifestyle of those roles.

1. It's a lot of analytical questions to see how you think about business problems and scenarios (e.g. how would you think about new product launch, how would you model a revenue build for x company, what would the P&L look like for x company, what KPIs you would use to evaluate a company, etc.). Unless you're coming from a group / firm that covers the same industry as the company you're interviewing for they probably won't expect you to know industry specific stats. That said, you should have a good answer to why you're interested in that company. 
2. I came from a tech M&A group when I worked in banking so I got a lot of my understanding of SaaS and tech companies from there. But the best resource I've found would be this and this. Another helpful thing would probably be to read S-1s for SaaS companies when they come out as they talk a lot about common KPIs, etc. in there.
3. As of now, probably try to climb the corporate ladder and try to become the Head of Finance or something similar at an earlier stage company. But my main criteria when I was deciding post-banking offers was that I want to go to a group with broad exposure and responsibilities and work with smart people to try to preserve as much optionality as possible.  People who left my team have gone to other corporate jobs and investing roles so I don't necessarily think I'm pigeonholed.

1. My team's pretty small, but a few worked in PE and all of us came from banking. The leadership team more broadly has a lot of MBB and HBS/GSB, which is why I don't really see a clear path up.
2. More so adult in the room. While engineering/product does get the most investment, we do have a fair amount of say in regards to the strategic direction of the company. If I had to categorize it, it would probably be more of a collaborative relationship than us having to follow their lead and vice versa.

I'd say try and go to as large a platform as you can (in other words, top BB or EB or similar). It's too hard to actually know what kind of experience you would get/had at a regional boutique, but if you completed your analyst program at a reputable bank there's a higher likelihood that you at least have the foundational skills that you'd need for the job (from the interviewer's POV).