Marketing vs FP&A: adventures in business partnering

In the third in our series on finance business partnering we are joined by David Manela, who has had the role of CRO and CMO at Fiverr, Ideei, and Vivre. As managing partner and co-founder of Violet Growth he is in high-demand at some of the hottest scaling companies, designing a growth operating system that “speaks the CFO’s language from day one”. It is tailored to companies spending more than $10m annually on marketing and sales - with digital as the main growth channel. “Spending a dollar in marketing is no different than spending a dollar in infrastructure, on say a forklift that you might need for your warehouse. You need a return on a specific schedule, and you need a percentage of returns on that schedule. Don't start with a campaign, start with a financial goal.”

In this episode on the highlights and lowlights of the FP&A relationship with marketing, David talks:

• His background from audit to marketing and P&L responsibility at companies
• Marketing as an “investment” not a “cost”
• The power of getting a marketing forecast based on cohort behavior
• Payback period and capital constraints at Fiverr
• Disconnected and expensive mistakes in business partnering
• The power of AI in marketing and finance