A Tech CFO’s Manifest: How to Build a Successful Strategic Finance Function at a Start-up

15 min readJun 22, 2024

By M. Reza Banki, former CFO & CSO and 6+ year veteran of Tubi

Nielsen Gauge and TV viewing trends — May 2024

As of May 2024, #Tubi is the largest long-form pure-play ad-supported streaming platform in the United States. Tubi’s market share also matches that of Disney+ (Nielsen Gauge above).

Tubi reshaped the streaming landscape through a #free ad supported video on-demand (#AVOD) platform appealing to consumers and advertisers of all stripes. This three-way marketplace — content partners + direct consumers + advertisers — was the brainchild of Farhad Massoudi [1] — a true visionary who effectively created the AVOD category and a truly-sector-leading company in Tubi.

Today, Tubi reaches 80M+ users [2].

I most recently served as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Strategy Office at Tubi. Six incredible years at the rocket ship that is Tubi helped shape this write-up, the second in a three-part series. You can find the first under: Reflections from Tubi’s CFO & CSO[3].

Midway through my six years at Tubi, in April 2020, #Fox acquired Tubi for roughly $500M [4].

In addition to that exit and over my tenure, from 2017 to 2023, we grew Tubi by leaps & bounds:

· Revenues grew by roughly 50x to close to $1B
· Engagement & viewing hours grew roughly 150x
· Viewership & user base grew roughly 40x
· Headcount supporting this growth expanded from 50 to 700 employees

We achieved all of this while, at the same time, managing costs and being the most capital-efficient major streaming service (this specific aspect around managing streaming costs has been the Achilles’ heel for even established and dominant streamers including Disney [5], Paramount [6] and WB [7]). Given this keen focus on cost management, Tubi has been at least 10x more efficient in capital use and cost expenditures relative to competitors (compare Fox’s earnings calls [8] and Tubi’s quarterly EBITDA to other streamers, AVOD and SVOD).

In addition to becoming a streaming powerhouse, at its core Tubi is a complex three-sided marketplace across:

1. Content providers: a B2B SaaS-like dynamic relationship with hundreds of production studios
2. Streaming viewers: direct to consumer with 80M+ users and
3. Advertisers: a second B2B SaaS-like ecosystem with thousands of logos and buyers

This write-up attempts to capture my thoughts around what helped us achieve our outsized performance; specifically, within the finance, strategy, growth and performance-marketing which are functions that I led at Tubi. A few people are named in the right context but in practice there are many others on my team and throughout the company who contributed meaningfully to Tubi’s success. For a full list of my team (and I am happy to be a reference for any one of them), refer to the earlier blog post [9].

A Tech CFO’s Manifest: How to Build a Successful Strategic Finance Function at a Start-up by M. Reza Banki

Finance team foundation — How Tubi’s finance function thrived

There is no substitute for hard work and rigor. Passion can develop, then deepen with dedication. In turn, organic reinforcement happens with each measurable, seemingly small and incremental success.

Several aspects of finance management are core to a strong governance structure: high quality financial reporting, rigor in defining key performance indicators, truly understanding drivers of financials in-depth, and transparency to foster a North Star for not just the finance team but also the broader company.

I’ve always leaned on numbers and data. Not only because my analytical mindset is oriented that way and I find it much easier to describe and understand the world — but more so in that I, along with others at Tubi, held a firm belief in leading with data and solving equipped with data. In the depths of data, I could unveil truths about a business and discover which undercurrents underpin its trajectory and strategy. Paramount to this approach is having the right datasets and metrics, then correctly measuring relevant outcomes that align with where you want the business to head. After that, its about incentivize accordingly.

Lots of credit to our founder and CEO at Tubi, Farhad Massoudi, for being extreme in focusing the business on meaningful high-level metrics throughout. We never chased vanity metrics. Even when competitors appeared to be lapping us; we focused on the long term and what truly mattered. For example, for an ad-supported-video-on-demand (AVOD) business the number of app opens, visitors, app downloads or monthly active users are all secondary to the cumulative engagement and viewership hours watched across all viewers and all devices — hours watched is how an AVOD business generates ad inventory.

There are grave differences in business models between subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) (primarily measured by number of subscribers) and the complexities of the AVOD approach. In an SVOD model, the business is selling the proverbial “gym” membership. The best users are those who buy the gym membership and don’t use the facilities, effectively subsidizing the business at a 100% incremental margin (after the initial acquisition cost). In AVOD, getting users into the “gym” is only half the battle. Getting them to actually watch is what truly generates the viewing time and advertising inventory units. I tried to simplify our business as: Nike sells shoes; Tubi sells ad inventory. And the path to generating that inventory is via users that engage and watch content, not just users who simply register or download the app (and may not engage meaningfully).

Marios Assiotis [10], our Chief Technology Officer (CTO), had the keen insight years ago to lay an incredibly detailed foundation for capturing data from each and every user interaction, each and every event, each and every content signal — often going above and beyond what were in the early days the company’s immediate needs. This solid bedrock served us quite well in the long run, so we did not have to reinvent the data framework. Instead, we had ample historical data and could decide on what we wanted to study and have a relatively precise (or at least directional) repository of historical measurements for a data-driven approach rather than be limited by the kind of data that was available to us.

How were each of the four teams across strategy (business operations and strategy), finance (accounting and FP&A) and growth (performance marketing) structured at Tubi?

Business Operations & Strategy: To me strategy constitutes the insights and outcomes from data, analytics and ROI analysis that drive incremental change in the short run and define destiny in the long run. This type of team was near and dear to me because of my own years at McKinsey & Company. At Tubi, we built a robust highly analytical, and data-driven pipeline of reporting, analysis and project-driven focus to define and advance the right metrics in a DuPont analysis [11] fashion. We went far beneath the surface — making it intentionally expansive, inclusive and all-encompassing of all aspects of the business.

Each data set we reviewed, each KPI we defined and measured, each action we recommended and took, each analysis we prepared — all facets were handled with the mindset of supporting the North Star metrics; those metrics that truly mattered to the long-term viability of the business. This dogmatic focus on aligning with these metrics was an important key to our success and advancement. Strategy means so many different things to so many people. You ask five people in strategy departments in various companies what strategy is to them and you get not five but ten different answers.

In recruiting for this team, it was critical for me to meet specific bars in terms of the talent and tool kit each person brought to add to the team’s arsenal of solutions. Each team member needed to be deeply analytical, interested in working on projects that really mattered to the company, have ample aptitude to learn about the business (even areas unfamiliar or uncomfortable for them), and be able to build — and build fast. Identifying candidates with both functional expertise and the strategy mindset was often challenging. As a result, we focused on what was necessary in the strategic and analytical mindset as well as in financial understanding and rigor and we hired candidates who were earlier in their careers yet had the aptitude to advance so we could lean on building functional expertise in-house over time.

There is a part of analysis that is not exciting but nevertheless essential to empowering outcomes — data integrity, data clean up and rigor in defining the right metrics. That was table stakes. Beyond this, each team member here was expected to be able to identify and recognize data or trends that were out of the norm, set up flags and be able to research to understand the whys. We honed in on this skill set time and again. I consider this to be an intrinsic driver of success in any strategy role: curiosity and the ability to focus on solutions. A smart, capable team with the right balance of skills will eventually find their way — no matter how unfamiliar they may be with a technical topic or how far flung and away from the answer.

I structured the strategy and business operations team as generalists at the entry / analyst level. But the path to advancement was via specializing and becoming an expert within a functional vertical that was key to the company. These included: content, sales, business development, growth and performance marketing, brand marketing, product, and data science and analytics systems. The litmus test for me was: If we set up a briefing to share the strategy findings / project output from this team with each department leading those efforts, such as the content team, would the business operations and strategy associate be able to convey in-depth knowledge and know-how to the subject matter experts, in this case the content team? To not just follow the terminology and constraints but also understand the nuances and be able to add what the content team considers value to their workflow? Ultimately, it comes down to a service mindset, modeled after the work we did at McKinsey & Company to become resident experts in a specific industry and functional vertical. Credit to my early leads on this team who set the bar for the kind of output we expected.

FP&A: This is a team I spent quite a bit of time with to ensure rigor in the output as well as detailed transparency in reporting. We limited our use of canned off-the-shelf solutions and instead built custom and detailed forecasts, planning modules, analysis frameworks, and solutions for each cost driver, each revenue driver, and each line item in Tubi’s financials. Our models were detailed, flexible, and rigorous — with the ability to adjust for complexity and nuance as the business grew larger and more complicated. Despite the level of sophistication, my bar for getting it right was to keep the model seamless, well-formatted and easy to follow so any team member could pick up where others left off.

One example of our rigor was around cost containment. In each individual category we were fanatical around managing for costs — whether large or small — not just managing vendor expenses to ensure we stayed ahead of budget, but also managing to optimal economies of scale in each case. Even if a vendor negotiation had only $1000 at stake, we would still push for the best outcome for Tubi. In my view this was about setting the right culture and mindset; messaging prudence and efficiency, and leading by example with my own finance team and for the company. No vendor externally and no team internally embraces cost constrains and limits on its projects with open arms. Which often placed me in a position to hold a hard line to the benefit of the whole company.

In terms of FP&A team structure, for Tubi the model that worked well was to set up two parallel paths. One was an operational arm of the FP&A team, responsible for specific verticals; within that sub team was a resident expert who would lead in FP&A cost tracking, performance and financial reporting for each department or initiative. The benefit of building the functional alignment is that the team member focused on tracking the marketing department was well familiar with the terminology, constraints, had ample opportunity to build a relationship with the marketing team, and was closely familiar with the history of performance and costs for each function. This operational arm of the FP&A team would work closely with accounting to manage end of the period close, variance analysis, reporting, forecast modification, budget tracking, and reporting within Tubi as well as in aggregate to the parent company, Fox, along with other routine workflows.

A second much smaller team was focused on FP&A projects. As the company grew, there was a constant need for upgrading our processes and approach — for example rebuilding the balance sheet, detailing a point of view on capitalizing labor expenses, or deciding on implementing a purchase order process or expanding the income statement to capture international territories, etc. This function within FP&A worked closely with me and was our center for innovation, to pressure test and improve our team and build to the company’s growth and its future. Special thanks to my FP&A leads and the talented team supporting them.

Especially in the startup world — and even in a more mature contexts — plans and budgets often run into externalities beyond management’s control. Over my tenure at Tubi and in leading finance, we did not have a quarter or a year where we missed on our budget. My own inclination to model and build conservatively was the bedrock of this approach. And I appreciated that building buffers into budgets provided more latitude for the CEO and myself to double down or chase after opportunities that presented mid period.

Accounting: A team that at its core was ingrained with virtue of being methodical, comprehensive, and maniacally accurate. I absolutely cherished their attention to detail and devotion to accuracy. Credit to my steadfast leads: controller and assistant controller. Hiring generalists who can manage various verticals early on in the company’s life cycle helped us maintain an unusually small, nimble and effective accounting team. Occasionally we would bring in a contractor specialist to tackle a dire area of need or a specific technical accounting workstream. As the company grew and especially after acquisition, there was increasing needs for public parent company Fox’s reporting, regulatory, audit and compliance standards and requirements. These were more taxing than the startup stage so we scaled this accounting team, adding functional experts who brought in ample depth and coverage. Similar to the team structure for FP&A, there were two arms to the accounting team. One path was around operational accounting encompassing AR, AP, content accounting and international operations. A second smaller vertical was around accounting projects with the goal of adding bandwidth for one-off projects, building new capabilities, and elevating the team and our output to meet future growth needs of Tubi.

Growth & Performance Marketing: This was a particular area of passion for me and one I grew into over my six years at Tubi where we had to rethink and reinvented the tech stack and growth for our consumer app a half dozen times. Our challenges to scale and diversify varied at each stage; spending $200k a month on driving quality user traffic is a different problem than spending $20M per month. And the industry was moving with new channels and innovation on features within each channel. There was no script or protocol to follow. We were the leading pioneers in our category of ad supported streaming and were absolutely fanatical about efficiency, measurement, scale and optimization. Over and over, we iterated to build arguably the most efficient growth engine in our industry at each stage, often pushing our many vendors including behemoths Roku and Amazon beyond their comfort zone to innovate, build and augment the next generation of offerings in their product road maps; working with them as first adopters to help refine and improve the offering. Most recently Azad Jacobs [12] was a champion of this latest phase of growth. Azad has been truly masterful in crafting the vision and methodologies, as well as methodically prioritizing the technical needs which helped me in moving us far above and beyond the constraints of the past and indeed lead our industry category by a wide margin.

What were some other considerations in managing a world-class team?

It is aspirational to have excess team bandwidth beyond the day-to-day operations to be able to tackle new challenges. And I saw defining the right problem to solve as a major gateway to this vertical. In my mind, the exciting and innovative part of our work began where the day-to-day operations ended. That’s where we could stretch, take a blank slate and design the future roadmap in incremental steps. Our forays into content intelligence, audience intelligence, revenue science and a truly robust, ever evolving and progressively granular lens on KPIs were parts of this innovation push.

The next challenge beyond defining the right problems was often in prioritizing which problems to solve first. In this, we took an ROI approach using a variety of frameworks such as the Portfolio of Initiatives [13] from McKinsey & Company to weigh and prioritize each project.

I’ve always been sensitive to how the team spent their time and held myself responsible for making good use of their time, effort and talents. That is the responsibility of a team lead — one I learned early in my own career when disorganized senior leaders would drop a disproportionate amount of work with little or no direction on the team at the last minute, just before the weekend or at the end of the day, effectively orchestrating chaos. I look at this aspect as comprising of two types: systemic chaos that comes from external drivers (such as marketplace and competitive dynamics) versus chaos from not taking the time to map out what could be better planned. For the first one, my goal has been to adapt and be able to address it quickly. For the second, planning as far in advance as possible avoids burning the team. Nevertheless, there are times when a team is hired for the specific role of managing workflow volatility and there is no way around the round the clock intensity. To the extent these can be measured and managed, more sustainable team outcomes arise — few teams and cultures can sustain long multi-year stretches of fire drills.

A process we put at the forefront was painstaking quality control, to ensure any work product that left the team — whether presented to the CEO, broader company or the parent company, Fox — had already had multiple eyes on it. We found it particularly helpful to have a team member who had not worked on the specific final product, to conduct a review of the work for any errors or opportunities for improvement. Early on I realized for this process to succeed, I had to set the example, be rigorous in my own review of work products, and in addition provide ample feedback. It was not lost on me that any team relies on a manager’s feedback; spending time on the team’s work product is recognition of their efforts.

My favorite questions to ask my team collectively and individually, especially in quarterly or semiannual reviews, were: “How have you improved yourself this past period? And how will you go beyond Tubi and your workstream to learn and add to your skill set?” I have always seen tremendous value in pushing the team to go beyond the bubble of their immediate colleagues and team, to seek conferences and professional venues, learning modules, and online or in-person courses to invest in themselves and their future. Fostering an environment of leaning helped set the right mindset for expectations and nurture creativity in identifying opportunities and solutions. One of my favorite responses was a team member who asked me if she could learn how to swim by taking weekly lessons; this was of course completely unrelated to her work at Tubi — but given the spirit of learning and reaching beyond her core skills, we supported her.

Frequency of meetings serves as touch points, but keeping meetings short and efficient helped us advance quickly and stay nimble. I expected not only agendas ahead of each meeting but also the material so I would have a chance to review everything ahead of time. This ensured better use of time spent in the meeting itself, dedicating more room to discussion (rather than using time to review the material).

In my view, it is incumbent on a leader to create a sense of urgency and empower a sense of ownership among their team. Not all personalities are motivated the same way — nor do they have the same strengths and weaknesses. Playing to each team member’s strength is the means to build a foundation.

Where does all this lead?

During my tenure, I lived and breathed Tubi, Tubi runs in my blood and DNA. And it often felt as though I was not only working a job but building the future and the vision. With that mindset, I just could not get tired — even though most of my average work weeks spanned through weekends and I can’t remember a week with less than 85+ hour of work for me (not my team where I vigorously defended their time, effort and work-life balance). I have often reflected on the opportunity at hand. So many around the world (where I grew up, where I’ve been through my life) would do anything to have the chances and opportunities so many of us take for granted. So many people, right here in America, in our own industries work a lifetime to have an opportunity for an outsized impact and a rocket ship of a chance. I have seen and lived those truths and they have kept me motivated throughout my life and specifically at Tubi. I was fortunate to work with a stellar team within Finance, Strategy, and Growth that helped me shine, championed the Tubi vision and mission — and delivered outsized results in a hyper competitive industry where most have failed.

Fondly proud of this team and Tubi.