My First Day at Cloudflare Was the Day After the IPO — Heather Orsi

And fun fact, my first day at Cloudflare was our first working day as a public company. I'm Heather Orsi. I'm based in Lisbon right now, so I'm part of the Apollo program, moved to Lisbon in August. Prior to that, I was in San Francisco. My role is Director of Strategic Finance and Investor Relations. And fun fact, my first day at Cloudflare was our first working day as a public company back in September 2019. So my job is, I kind of like divide it into like, there are like the external facing aspects, which is more of the investor relations side. And then there are more like internal facing aspects, which is more of like the strategic finance side. On the investor relations side, so it's essentially being the quarterback of all things earnings related, investor day related, investor conferences. It's a lot of speaking to investors and analysts. So we have 30 analysts that cover the Cloudflare story. And so that's really fun. And so based on where we are in the quarter, so actually just on Friday last week, we moved into quiet period, which means I'm no longer talking to investors every day and get to spend my time getting a bunch of work done. So working on the investor day slides and getting ready for earnings prep. On the strategic finance side, so that's more long term financial model focused. We do a lot of like competitive and peer analysis. And so kind of tracking when our peer or competitive or like competitor companies are reporting earnings. We put out like a quarterly benchmarking how Cloudflare is competing against and performing against all of the other SaaS and tech companies out there. So it's a group of about 100 companies. You'll see that presented quarterly at the beer event. Can you explain to us a bit of your path to Cloudflare? So before joining Cloudflare? Before I joined, well, I've been at Cloudflare for six and a half years. So it's been a minute. Time flies when you're having fun. But prior to that, out of university, I started my career in traditional finance and investment banking, doing mergers and acquisitions. I then, after a couple of years, moved to the buy side. So more of the investor side, actually. And so I joined a private equity firm focused on consumer products in San Francisco and did that for just shy of three years before moving over to the operational side and getting some startup experience. And so I actually worked for a beauty company, worked in Hollywood, which was an experience, and then moved over to the tech side of things and joined a space company building the Internet in space, which was really, really awesome. And then moved over to the blockchain world for about a year. And then as a finance person in blockchain back in 2018, didn't want to stay there too long. It was like the Wild Wild West. And so I joined Cloudflare in September of 2019. Can you give us a run through on what excites you the most for this area that drives you for the financial sector and investors? And what drives you there specifically? Before Cloudflare, I actually wasn't touching like the market side of things as much. I was more kind of like the head finance person at startup companies. At that point, I'd been doing kind of traditional, what I would call like traditional finance for a while. And to be totally frank, was just starting to feel a little bit of burnout. And so I actually all of the other roles that I was interviewing for were strategy based. And so, you know, strategy at Google, strategy at Palo Alto Networks. And Cloudflare was the only one that still touched finance, but it was investor relations. And it was the only one that was pre IPO at the time. So I actually thought I was joining for that for the pre IPO journey. It was it was a nice surprise on my first day to have seen the day before on Friday, we had gone public. Set a high bar for the Monday mornings, you know, coming and seeing balloons everywhere. And it was it was and just everyone was on a high. It was it was a really fun, exciting time to join. But that market side of things was really interesting to me. I had always kind of since university tried to manage my own like stock portfolio and things like that. And just I was really excited about about one kind of building the function from the ground up at Cloudflare. I really liked the team at Cloudflare and and also this, you know, this aspect of getting to, you know, interface with analysts and investors and and investor relations is really neat because it touches so many different. I mean, it touches every side of the business. And so you feel like you're you're constantly learning. And it's and it's been really fun. I'm also curious because you had experience in many different companies. What did you enjoy the most in some of the companies you worked before Cloudflare in terms of lessons learned? The things that surprise you in some of the areas that were quite disparate and different, right? So in traditional finance, what was kind of interesting and I know this is for Women's Empowerment Month, I was always the only female. And so that was really interesting, like working alongside all, you know, male colleagues and especially being so junior in my career. I noticed it, you know, especially kind of at the beginning of each of those roles. Like, you know, I would sit in these meetings and have ideas and I wasn't really speaking up because I just I felt intimidated, quite frankly. And so, you know, that was a really interesting sort of experience. I think I learned a ton. You know, investment banking is known for being incredibly grueling. I would get in at nine in the morning and I was there till three or four, pretty much Monday through Friday. I worked every single weekend and it was it was it was really rough. And so when I had the opportunity, I actually left about six months early to go take that investor job in San Francisco at the private equity firm. I was I was very eager to do that. And then it was a much smaller team and private equity still learned a lot. And that really gave me the foundation to kind of go anywhere in finance, which I thought was was really awesome. Learned a lot is a very interesting sort of like, I don't know, atmosphere just being like so male dominated. And it's like that, you know, like the investment banking, you know, dudes and everything. And so but, you know, it gave me, I think, the tough skin that you kind of need to be or at least that I think I needed to be successful in finance from there. Yeah. Each of each of the startups was so different. Beauty Hollywood was not cut out for me. It is, you know, it is it is for some people. I think it was a really awesome experience. It was a really small team. We got to do really neat things like launch internationally. And I got really cool placement in Sephora and Ulta. And, you know, getting to work with these really big companies that, you know, I was a buyer and a consumer at for so long was really interesting. But it's very much like a copycat sort of sort of industry. And so after about a year, I was like, I feel like there isn't much else we can do except for copy other products. And and so for me, I wanted to move over to tech. I wanted to move back to the Bay Area and and joining the space company. I essentially was the first the first business person that worked with all rocket scientists, which was like a really interesting experience. And I'm still very close with with a lot of those folks today. Actually, one of the co-founders is working for NASA now and he's doing a Mars project. And so he's actually on Mars right now, but actually in Texas. So kind of building these relationships with with colleagues throughout throughout the journey has has been one of my favorite things. And what do you like the most about your work at Cloudflare? Gosh, what don't I love about my work at Cloudflare? Again, I kind of think of my role internally and externally. I love that I get to work with so many different people internally. I mean, from engineering to sales to marketing and events and legal and everybody in the CFO or it's phenomenal. And so I feel like we kind of sit like right in the middle. And and a big part of my job is answering questions from we have a thousand institutional investors. Literally, we have over a thousand. And so, you know, and a big part of my job is just open Q&A. And so they could ask anything from, you know, dilution to, you know, I want to double click really deep into the workers architecture. And so it's my job to be really well versed on all of that. And so getting to, you know, especially being in Lisbon, I've built some really amazing relationships with the developers here. I feel like my developer and like technical knowledge has grown exponentially just by I actually prefer to sit by the developers. I just I'm a sponge. I just get to hear it all. And it's made me so much more sophisticated and I can speak to these topics so much, so much more intelligently, which I think has been really, really awesome. And so I feel like I'm also growing externally. I really enjoy just getting to craft the narrative for Cloudflare. And, you know, it's like you take these really technical concepts and technical innovations and you break them down, for example, to like explain them to like your mother, your grandmother. Right. Because I mean, these are people who are just they're not technical people. And so you need to help them understand the story and kind of create this narrative in a way where you take really complex things and you break them down and help them understand the value and the strategy behind them to really move the markets. My job is to like spread the Cloudflare gospel. And it's a very awesome gospel to spread. And so, yeah, I've been doing it for actually seven years in September and just having a ball. What achievement at Cloudflare you're most proud of? So when I first joined, I remember Jason Noland at the time he was our head of investor relations and strategic finance. He was like, I know you're like in like your first hour of onboarding, but we need to share forecasts like now. And then also like two days later, like we need you to start building all of the financial statements and everything for earnings. And so I'm like opening up Word and Excel. And if you go back to like you can actually go to the IR site and open up our very first earnings, you know, back from like November 2019. All of those documents I created in Word and Excel and now everything's systematized. We have an entire team that runs all of that. And I was like, I'm not an accountant. Like you give me the numbers, I'll make them pretty, I'll put them in the stuff. But to really like build a function from the ground up was just a really cool thing to do. And even today, there's so many things that we're still building and systematizing and making world class like within our function that it's been a really fun experience. Regarding the Women's Empowerment Month, anything you want to say about this month in particular? I feel like I'm somebody who has gotten to where I am by leaning on others and asking questions and having, you know, just really incredible mentors. And so it's something that, you know, I always look to also do and share. And so, you know, for folks who, you know, have any sort of questions, like please reach out. Like I will always carve time. I still meet with mentors like when I initially was a mentor. What was it like three and a half years ago? Like we still have our quarterly syncs because it's just I enjoy them. They enjoy them. And so especially in finance, you know, folks tend to think in like a zero sum game, but leadership is just not like that. And so, you know, you grow by giving your time and sharing your platform and mentoring. And that just that that builds these little communities that are just so important. And so it's really important to me. One thing about finance that most people don't realize, but they should. Oh, good question. For me, at least, and I'm not sure if this is really the question you're you're asking, but I but I think it's an important thread, which is at the beginning of my career. I kind of like look back and I was like more of a processor. And so I was like, OK, this is the what and the what is really important. It's like the what is in the email and the what is in the deadlines. And it took more time than I'd like to admit to realize that the why was is really the most important thing. And so you need to be a sponge for the why and not the what. And I think that's really important in finance, like in particular. And so I'm kind of reaching to your question. But but understanding the why allows you to think of like more creative solutions, but also like make sure that the why of why a customer has a certain pain point is really important. Not just the what of what they're asking, but the you know, the why. And so you can kind of like apply it to whatever you're doing. It's not really just finance. But for me in finance, I think once I started looking at the why, like, why does this matter? Why is this really important? Like, why could this be really powerful? I started to just operate in a totally different manner. And so I would almost say, like, I think that is really important in finance. And also maybe some of the advice that I would give others. What's the best way you've used AI so far? I used AI to script all of these answers. So a big part of my job is, is having my finger on like the pulse of the markets and understanding macro concerns in the markets, competitive analyses, things like that. Let's see, just the other day, we had another one of our competitors report earnings. And so I dropped 30 analyst reports into the AI model and was like, pull together a very comprehensive, you know, write up on this for our executive team. And I was like, you know, and pull together a summary of all of their financials for the last eight quarters, all of these key metrics. I mean, it's amazing. And then you kind of copy and paste that and then kind of add your own things. You're like, well, you missed this, you know, do this better next time. But it is really fantastic. And then going into earnings, making sure that, you know, I'll almost like treat it like a colleague. These are some areas that, you know, folks could be concerned about. Help me understand, like, where there are holes in this narrative, you know, kind of working like a colleague. But I mean, I use it for everything. I've probably spent three hours in there today with Jim and I. We're BFFs now. Your go-to productivity hack? Moving to Lisbon because I get half a day where the rest of the world sleeps. So, yeah, I think being really vigilant with my calendar and making sure I have focus blocks on there is really important. But I am serious. Moving to Lisbon was pretty incredible because you kind of get this like 9 a.m. to like noon or 2 p.m. window where the United States is sleeping or investors are sleeping and analysts are sleeping. And so while my day has kind of shifted, it has given me this morning window of productivity that's been pretty incredible. Thanks for watching.