As the Federal Reserve seeks to balance its dual mandate of curbing inflation and achieving maximum employment, CFOs similarly need to balance profitability and growth. However, finance executives must ensure they don't fulfill this mandate in a way that "picks up sesame seeds but loses the watermelon," said Seismic CFO Evan Goldstein.

"If you cut R&D to the bone and don't improve products for the sake of profit, you'll lose customers," Goldstein said in an interview. Instead, "the key is understanding customer needs and their concerns," he added.

Prudent cost cutting

Goldstein, who describes himself as a "growth-oriented CFO," noted that while the pendulum between growth and profitability often swings back and forth, "at the end of the day, growth is what matters most," he said. "I think you have to be very clear-headed that if you're cutting costs just for profit, that's not the right approach."

According to his LinkedIn profile, Goldstein joined Seismic, an enablement company headquartered in San Diego, California, as head of finance in August 2022, after spending 11 years at Salesforce. He held various roles at Salesforce, including Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Senior Vice President of Finance and Strategy for Corporate Planning and Operations. His background also includes a 10-year tenure at biotech research company Genentech, and he began his career at Ford Motor Company.

Over the past two to three years, the pendulum between growth and profitability has swung heavily toward profitability, a shift Goldstein largely attributes to economic trends driving monetary policy changes—moving companies away from an unprecedented long period of near-zero interest rates.

"The debate about growth versus profitability is largely market-driven, and possibly also influenced by monetary policy, the Fed," he said. "When money is very, very cheap, you can go spend it."

Now with higher interest rates, "it puts pressure on companies and their valuations, and highlights the importance of profitability. It's no longer 'growth at all costs,'" he said. However, over the past six months or so, Goldstein has observed the market beginning to respond to growth again, partly thanks to the "soft landing" achieved by the Fed and continued investment in artificial intelligence, he said.

The resurgence of profitability pressure can bring benefits, helping companies improve their approach to investments and new technologies, Goldstein said. AI is currently the focus of attention, he said, with its return on investment and full potential still unclear, presenting CFOs with difficult choices.

At Seismic, Goldstein created a steering committee consisting of himself, the Chief Product Officer, and the Chief Commercial Officer. If employees or team members want to purchase, renew, or retire a software tool, "they have to come to this monthly meeting with a one-page document discussing how to engage with procurement and what value they can get," Goldstein said. Taking a similar approach to AI is crucial.

"We're a high-growth company. We're a young company, and AI technology... is evolving so fast," he said. "You want to experiment, but you have to do it in a controlled environment; you can't bet everything on unproven technology."

Building the CFO's "toolbox"

Goldstein's value-driven approach to software and technology also extends to how he fulfills the CFO role, as it continues to broaden and evolve. Today's finance leaders are expected to help drive strategy and create paths for the business to execute that strategy effectively.

For Goldstein, today's CFO role is more about facilitating conversations about trade-offs and investment strategies to "achieve stated goals, rather than simply saying 'yes' or 'no,' you have the opportunity to spend this money," he said.

"When I joined the company, I told team members that we're not the 'police of no,'" Goldstein said of the evolving CFO role. "We're about trade-offs. We're about helping the business achieve its goals."

Goldstein himself decided relatively early on to pursue the goal of becoming a CFO, he said. He first realized the finance leader role was the direction he wanted to go during a graduate econometrics class at Duke University in North Carolina, where he earned a bachelor's degree in economics and computer science, before obtaining an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

"There was a professor who always asked questions like, 'As a business professional, what do you think they should do?'" he said of that class. "It was always a mix of math and business strategy, and that really appealed to me."

When it comes to developing the skills needed for the CFO role throughout his career, Goldstein mentioned advice from an early mentor at Genentech, who emphasized the importance of hands-on experience after college—comparing the first step of one's career to getting an empty toolbox.

"You need to decide which skills you want to put in that toolbox, and I was very methodical about it," Goldstein said of his approach to reaching the CFO position. While learning core financial skills, he also took several courses in other areas like marketing and focused on adding softer management and communication skills to that toolbox, he said.