Anshuman Yadav is a Chicago-based finance leader who provides fractional CFO services to companies. He has worked in AI, M&A, as a startup founder and for larger organizations: in other words, in the thick of today’s most pressing financial situations.
No matter the organization’s stage of growth, whether he’s obtaining funds or allocating them, Yadav has learned a clear message for finance chiefs: be bold.
What principles guide your capital allocation decisions today, whether at a large tech company or in an early-stage startup?
I treat capital allocation as a reflection of confidence. It is less about spreadsheets and more about clarity of conviction. The real question is not what looks good in a model, but what moves the system forward with the least friction.
In startups, I operate with a personal rule: If I would not give a team more of my time, I should not give them more of my capital. Time is the tighter constraint anyway.
I use a three-lens filter: Is this reversible? Is the decision asymmetric in upside versus downside? Can it create momentum across multiple teams, not just one?
Most capital gets wasted not from bad choices but from delayed corrections. I revisit allocations like product teams revisit roadmaps. Reallocate fast, kill fast, grow fast.
The best allocation decisions are not made in isolation. They are made in context. And the sharper your context, the fewer bets you need to make.
How is the CFO role evolving with AI and automation? What advice would you give to finance leaders navigating that shift?
The modern CFO is not just a decision-maker. They are a design-thinker. With AI, the job shifts from reporting what happened to designing how the business learns and reacts.
I have used AI to build cash flow forecasts that adjust weekly and detect churn patterns long before revenue notices. But the real unlock came when we stopped asking what AI could do, and started asking what we no longer needed to do ourselves.
Automation is not about tools. It is about removing drag. I now treat workflows like product sprints. If it takes six steps, can we get it to three?
To finance leaders: Stop thinking of AI as a tech project. Think of it as a culture shift. Teach your teams to question every manual task. Build curiosity into your ops reviews.
The teams that win are not the ones with the best models. They are the ones with the most elastic minds.
What lessons would you share with younger finance professionals about building a career that can adapt and thrive over time?
Start by solving problems no one owns. That is where growth lives. The job is not to chase titles or frameworks. It is to develop judgment and range.
Early in my career, I built perfect models. But I learned fast that precision without persuasion does not change outcomes. Influence matters. Storytelling matters.
I made the biggest jumps when I took on things no one asked me to. Building a pricing model from scratch. Running M&A evaluations outside my lane. These bets taught me more than any formal promotion.
Also, do not wait to be ready. You build altitude by flying, not by watching others take off.
One habit I recommend to anyone: write. Not for an audience, but for yourself. Writing forces clarity, and clarity compounds in every meeting, memo and model.
The best finance careers do not follow a ladder. They build a map. You want to collect experiences that open doors you do not even know exist yet.
Having worked across SME lending and corporate treasury, how do you think about risk management today? How can finance teams stay disciplined without stifling innovation?
Risk is not something to avoid. It is something to frame. In lending, I learned to quantify downside. In fast-growth settings, I learned to contain it without killing momentum.
My approach now is simple: take bold bets, but install airbags. I use pre-mortems, decision trees and “tripwire metrics” that tell us when to pull back. These add just enough structure to stay honest, without dragging the pace.
Most finance teams overcorrect. They gate decisions with endless approvals. In doing that, they lose the pulse. I try to do the opposite. I ask: How can we make failure affordable, not forbidden?
Risk should be reviewed in motion, not from the sidelines. I embed risk reviews into our planning loops. If we are not talking about what could go wrong at the start, we are usually too late to fix it.
Discipline and innovation are not opposites. They are partners. The tighter your risk frame, the more confidently your team can push the edge.
