Pete Boyes on Strategy of Finance: Operating Partner, Thoma Bravo Insights

About

About Pete

Proven C-level and finance executive with combination of public and private CFO/GM leadership roles and investment banking experience. Organizational leader and value creation driver across software and technology businesses.

About ThomaBravo

Thoma Bravo is one of the largest software investors in the world, with more than US$127 billion in assets under management as of March 31, 2023. Through its private equity, growth equity and credit strategies, the firm invests in growth-oriented, innovative companies operating in the software and technology sectors. Leveraging Thoma Bravo's deep sector expertise and strategic and operational capabilities, the firm collaborates with its portfolio companies to implement operating best practices... and drive growth initiatives. Over the past 20 years, the firm has acquired or invested in more than 440 companies representing over US$250 billion in enterprise value.1 The firm has offices in Chicago, London, Miami, New York and San Francisco. For more information, visit Thoma Bravo's website at thomabravo.com.

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Show Notes

I'm thrilled to introduce our guest for today's episode. With a rich experience of over two decades in the realm of operational excellence and value creation, Pete Boyes is currently an esteemed Operating Partner at Thoma Bravo, which is amongst the best investment firms globally focused on Software or SaaS companies.

Today, Pete works hand-in-hand with multiple Thoma Bravo portfolio companies and guides their CFOs and finance departments on strategic as well as tactical matters.

In my view, Pete is the perfect example of a successful private company CFO. Being a serial CFO, he has scaled his experience along with his companies with each role. His impressive track record includes influential stints at companies such as Zego, which was notably acquired by Global Payments, SOASTA, taken over by Akamai Technologies, and ID Analytics, which found its new home with Symantec through LifeLock. Before these standout roles, Pete honed his skills as a technology Investment Banker, facilitating a multitude of M&A and Corporate Finance transactions across a vast spectrum of companies.

In his last role as a CFO, at Zego, a company backed by Vista Equity, Pete was a key catalyst in orchestrating both organic and acquisition-driven revenue growth, culminating in a successful exit to Global Payments. Demonstrating his adaptability and leadership, Pete... seamlessly transitioned to the role of GM post-acquisition, spearheading Zego's integration into the Integrated Software division at Global Payments.

An alumnus of the University of Southern California, Pete did his BA in International Relations and then pursued an MBA.

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Quotes

"I think as we talk about CFOs today, half of the time, you could say the CFO was acting as a COO. And there's a lot of operational chops."

"When you do one-on-ones with your CEO, I would always ask that question, what can I take off your plate?"

"The controller of today is a CFO 15 years ago in some ways. They're doing two-thirds of the work that CFOs did 15 years ago. That allowed the CFO to become more modern, where not only are they doing your standard FP&A work and work on the accounting side, but they could have the renewals team underneath them. They've got legal underneath them. They may have HR underneath them, and they may even have certain operations underneath them. The role of the CFO has become much more broad and operationally focused."

“Whether or not HR rolls into that function or not, you tend to spend a lot of time in a positive way working on people issues. I don't mean it as a bad word in issues, but people opportunities, if it's coaching and learning.”

"Ultimately, I got much better at this when I started to inspire, to empower, to communicate, to coach, to guide team members, not just on your own team, but throughout the organization, listening to other folks vent about challenges they're having in their organization, trying to solve people problems."

"The more we created a lot of the infrastructure and built the systems in place that would enable this business to scale and grow and create value, the better opportunity you have for a buyer to pay more for it when it's their turn. That's what I learned."

"In some respects, recurring revenue, SaaS, subscription models, the cloud enabling that have all, really changed the modern CFO to be more operationally focused and definitely metrics focused to enable not just to meet public market expectations, meet their lender expectations and then ultimately valuation expectations."

"The best finance leaders and the best finance employees are well-rounded within the entire organization. They're not siloed and just sitting in their office banging away at models. That's a large part of their job in many ways, but you'll be better at looking at trends, seeing where things don't make sense."

"It's listening to your stakeholders, it's understanding the business from the perspective of the functional leaders, and then it's sort of evaluating your team." - First 100 days plan for CFOs

"We're facing today a lackluster macro environment, drastically increased interest rates, and a tough funding environment. You kind of have almost triple headwinds."

"It's fair to say COVID gave the modern CFO, a taste of what one or two of those headwinds could look... like. No doubt, in a short period of time, you had to react quickly."

"On integration, I think lessons learned here is, do it fast, do it faster, do it fastest. Do it soon, do it sooner."

"The CEO press release strategy, make sure it fits management buy-in at the next level down, and focus on quick integration." - Recipe of successful M&A

"If you're constantly learning and you're constantly wanting to learn, you'll never get bored."

"I think those that are successful at sort of building that trust and building that inspiration within their teams can weather those storms. I think those that are blind to that or lacking the EQ, are going to struggle with that."