Episode 98 - From leading Data Science at Facebook to becoming a CEO: Kat Orekhova

Written By Guest User

Show Notes

Kat Orekhova is the Co-Founder & CEO of Vareto, a planning and analytics platform for enterprise teams. In her own words, Kat has an “unusual backstory” leaving the world of math academia to build Facebook’s first-ever data science team within FP&A. At the social media giant, she was Responsible for financial reporting, forecasting, and planning activities for Facebook’s core business. This was followed by stints as Head of Product at IronClad, a $3billion legal tech company, Sequoia Capital Scout, General Partner at Darkmode Ventures, and co-founder & CEO of Vareto.

In this episode, Kat reveals:

  • The challenges of long-range planning as Facebook scaled massively and trying to predict growth across countries from the US to India with more than 100 people contributing to the planning process)

  • Being at the beginning of data Science at Facebook

  • The move  from data science and product into finance

  • When should companies start looking at FP&A

  • Being a Sequoia scout and what it entails and what she looks for in investment opportunities

  • How (now) Meta CFO Susan Li “an absolutely outstanding” mentor insisted on a  finance team with data science skills led by Orekhova

  • The right blend between data science and FP&A who are “Living in Different Tools”

  • Her take on the amount of data science that FP&A teams need to boost their career

  • The impact of AI in finance

YouTube Video

Read the Transcript

The #1 FP&A Community (Slack) Join here - A global community and resource hub for modern FP&A leaders like you.

FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.

Earn CPE credit through Earmark for listening to this episode.

Guest User
Next

Episode 97 - FP&A Bliss from Pepsi to Lindt: Tolga Hocanin