The pendulum — Mika Kasumov on strategic finance
Why the same work keeps migrating between FP&A, BizOps, RevOps, and Strategic Finance — and what the CFO does about it.
Mika Kasumov started in finance at Sears the year before the iconic American brand visibly began to slip, jumped to M&A at eBay as a junior analyst, and spent the next decade and a half watching the same work migrate across job titles — FP&A, BizOps, RevOps, and now Strategic Finance. He launched his consulting practice Abacus & Pencil in early 2023, fractional-CFO work for Series B and C startups, and arrived at the conversation with a pendulum framing that gives the migration a shape.
The pendulum is the editorial spine of this episode. Each new title — FP&A, BizOps, RevOps, Strategic Finance — emerged because the previous one had drifted from the work that actually drives value, then got diluted into something narrower, then triggered the next rebrand. Mika’s position is that the title cycle is real but secondary; the actual question is whether the people in the seat carry a growth-driver mindset or a cost-center one. Everything else in the conversation pays back to that one frame.
A pendulum, not a progression
The chain, as Mika walks through it: FP&A emerged because accounting wasn’t close to the growth drivers. BizOps emerged because FP&A wasn’t close to operations. RevOps emerged because BizOps wasn’t close to the customer. Strategic Finance is emerging because RevOps isn’t close to financial priorities. Each rebrand attracts the next wave of ex-bankers and ex-consultants and re-routes the talent pipeline — until the title gets diluted again. BizOps started as a high-performing FP&A role and ended as something between a chief of staff and a project manager. RevOps started as the customer-journey owner and ended as glorified Salesforce administration. The pattern matters because it explains why the work keeps moving and the titles keep changing without the value-creation pattern actually shifting.
The work that's driving value has not changed. It's just the job title that has changed.
Finance as competitive advantage, not cost center
Mika’s editorial line on the function is unambiguous: finance can differentiate a company, not just safeguard it. The mechanism is connective — finance is the only seat that bridges investor narrative, operating priorities, and customer outcomes in one frame. No other function sits at all three tables. Compliance and accounting still matter; you can’t do strategic finance well if the books are a mess. But the CFO who treats compliance as the job, instead of the floor, leaves the differentiating work undone. Mika rejects the “be Switzerland” posture some CFOs adopt — neutrality that masquerades as objectivity. If the data says something, say it. If you’re wrong, admit it. The function earns its seat by carrying opinions, not by selling arms to both sides.
The founder’s cognitive dissonance
The most personal beat in the conversation is Mika’s aha moment on founder-CFO friction. Founders are wired to ignore 90% of available data — they have to be, statistically, because most startups fail and conviction is the only way through the first round. That makes them concurrently data-driven and data-resistant, which is the dissonance the CFO walks into. The reflexive CFO move — here’s the data, you’re wrong, end of argument — loses every time. Mika’s switch was to engage with internal consistency and story rather than with the data table alone. Ask what we’d need to believe. Test that. Hold confirmation bias as a real risk on the other side. The argument lands when it travels in the founder’s currency.
To be a founder, you need to be willing to believe in something despite all the data around it, not because of the data around it.
Three moves in the first 100 days
The first-100-days frame Mika gives a hypothetical Series B CFO is mechanical and relationship-shaped. One: remove a visible pain point — simplified invoicing, improved collections, whatever fifteen people have been failing to fix — and own it publicly. Build a reputation for solving rather than gatekeeping. Two: set a small precedent for saying no, so the team learns where the authority sits. The specific decline matters less than the signal. Three: start one long-term strategic conversation with the CEO — the next fundraise, a pricing rework, a hiring plan. The decision that emerges doesn’t matter as much as the fact that the dialogue is open and recurring. Audit-passing is the floor. Partnership is the actual job.
Ultimately, the decision itself that comes out of it doesn't matter as much as the fact that you guys are talking.
What to listen for
The full episode runs longer on Mika’s view that you can’t shrink your way to profitability (revenue is the biggest source of cash; cutting sales and marketing to protect R&D is the wrong half of the balance to cut), the “downturn as a feature, not a bug” framing the best CFOs run as a parallel track, and the pitch-deck discipline for the current market — 10–15 slides, vision/team/metrics/path-to-efficient-growth, no attempt to pre-answer every diligence question. Mika’s three-word descriptor is Curious. Opinionated. Laissez-faire. Listen at /podcast/ep-008-mika-kasumov; for the longer conversation across the catalogue, see /topics/modern-finance-function or /topics/fpa.
Related questions
- What is 'strategic finance' and how is it different from FP&A?
- Strategic finance is finance as business partnering — meeting the rest of the company where it is, owning the operating case and the revenue forecast, and filling the gaps between RevOps, product, and the executive team. Mika Kasumov's framing: a former-banker CFO can build a budget model in their sleep, so the first non-accounting hire shouldn't be another modeller. It should be a partner to the CMO, CRO, and COO. The toolkit is the same as FP&A; the orientation is forward and revenue-side rather than retrospective and cost-side.
- What should a new CFO do in their first 100 days at a Series B?
- Three things, all relationship-shaped. First, remove an obvious pain point — simplified invoicing, faster collections, whatever 17 different people have been trying to solve — and own it. Second, set a precedent for saying no, so the team learns where authority lives. Third, start one long-term strategic conversation with the CEO. Mika Kasumov's point on the third: the decision that comes out of it matters less than the fact that you're talking. Pass an audit later. Build the partnerships first.
- Why do founders ignore data and how should a CFO push back?
- Statistically, 90% of startups fail, so being a founder requires the ability to ignore most data points while staying data-driven on the rest. That cognitive dissonance is the job description, not a bug. Mika Kasumov's lesson from years of failed push-backs: don't counter with 'the data says you're wrong.' Engage with internal consistency and the story the founder is building. Ask what we'd need to believe for the bet to work, then test it. Confirmation bias is the risk on the other side — name it explicitly.
- How should an early-stage company pitch investors in a tight market?
- Lead with a simple deck. Mika Kasumov's structure: vision, team, metrics, path to efficient growth, exit scenarios — 10 to 15 slides, one level deeper than two years ago but not exhaustive. Don't try to pre-answer every question. Each investor has a different diligence sequence and the same data point needs different framing depending on the question being asked. Get the simple story in front of them first; let the second-meeting questions tell you which slide to expand. Efficient growth is the metric the room is actually scoring.
Updates
- Editorial pass under the v2 podcast-summary guideline.