Dive Brief:

• ACV Auctions has named Bill Zerella, former CFO of Fitbit, its new CFO, the company has announced. Zerella took on the role in September, ACV said. Zerella succeeds Craig Anderson, ACV's chief development officer who had been serving as interim CFO.

• "I am eager to immerse myself in such an innovative, digitally-driven business," Zerella said in a statement. "ACV is pioneering the rapid digital transformation of the wholesale auction and inspection industry and I'm thrilled to join the team at such a critical period of growth."

• "I've been doing this a long time, and I've learned what you have to do to scale a business," Zerella told CFO Dive. "When a company's in hyper-growth mode, you have to aggressively build out systems and infrastructure so they don't stand in the way of growth."

Dive Insight:

Zerella has served as CFO of eight companies since the late 1990s, including car technology startup Luminar Technologies and wireless tech startup Vocera Communications. Zerella also led Fitbit through an $841 million IPO in 2015, the largest consumer tech IPO at that time. During his tenure, Fitbit was ranked the country's highest-growth tech company.

The common thread among Zerella's former roles, and his core skill, is his ability to help scale a business. Forward thinking has served Zerella well. "You need to look ahead to where you'll be in next few years, instead of just today, when you're growing really rapidly," he said.

Zerella is particularly excited to join ACV as it disrupts a legacy industry with digital transformation, he said. "You see this in spades in Silicon valley; they're doing this in Buffalo."

Zerella's priorities at ACV include bolstering financial operations — forecasting, strategy development and back-office technology, he told The Wall Street Journal, adding he also wants to hire new staff.

"When you're growing really fast with high velocity, you need to ensure you're building out your talent base for not where you are today, but where you want to be over the next several years," he said.

Zerella is relying on "fresh funds and his years of experience" to expand the used-car marketplace startup as more people shop for vehicles online, according to the Journal.

Investment firm Durable Capital Partners LP led last month's funding round that netted ACV $55 million in equity; ACV also took on a $50 million bank line of credit, the Journal said. It had raised nearly $300 million in previous funding rounds. Zerella declined to tell WSJ whether ACV is planning for an IPO.

Buffalo, New York-based ACV was founded in 2014 as a transactions facilitator, allowing dealerships to sell cars through 20-minute online auctions. The company does not provide offerings for individual buyers, the Journal wrote.