For Kapil Agrawal, current CFO of education platform Outschool and former CFO of Poshmark, the road to his CFO seats was greatly shaped by his childhood in India. Growing up and working with his father, an enrepreneur, the now veteran finance chief quickly learned two things — scaling businesses requires an entrepreneurial mindset, and capital is the key driver for the success of any business, he said in an interview. 

At the time in India, all parents wanted their children to be an engineer or a doctor, so Agrawal initially took that route. “I first went to the best engineering school in India, but I quickly realized that it was the business side of things that excited me much more than the core engineering,” he said. From there, Agrawal went on to receive a formal business education and take his expertise into real world experiences.

Now at OutSchool, the finance head tackles his next operation with a mission to give back. “My parents never got an education themselves, but ensured that I got one, and that is one of the reasons why I love this company,” he said. 

In terms of Agrawal’s plans for the online education platform, Agrawal said that, like his past endeavors, he is continuing to have “financial discipline so that we have the right unit economics and path towards profitability,” he said.

Lead like a founder

Most traditional CFOs come from a technical background, like accounting, according to Agrawal, but when you are looking to scale a business, especially at a startup, “a much more strategic CFO is needed, one who is able to be thoughtful about decisions and look to create growth and profitability,” he said. 

The key to this, is to lead within your finance leadership role as if you are a company founder, said Agrawal. “If I can think from that particular perspective, like how a founder or an entrepreneur is thinking about scaling his business, I can provide better impact in that particular role or in that particular company,” he said. 

It wasn’t until Agrawal took his role as global head of pricing and finance leader for emerging products at Uber in 2015 that he knew a finance leadership position was in his future. And at Uber, the ride share giant, Agrawal implemented this same entrepreneurial mindset. 

“Many of the strategic decisions of the company, like increasing paygrade, moving growth, profitability, raising the capital to drive growth, allocating the capital properly so that you can launch new businesses and eventually taking the company public, showed me how impactful the CFO role was in the startup role,” he said. 

It was at Poshmark, the social commerce marketplace company, that Agrawal took his first CFO seat: he was promoted from his role as vice president of finance, corporate development and investor relations.  

The road to an IPO

Taking a company public requires strong decision making skills around the subjects of growth and profitability, as well as the balance between the two, according to Agrawal. 

“I think having been born in an entrepreneurial family, that provides me with that distinction. I am not only focused on the technical aspect of the finance but also thinking about the strategic aspect of the finance,” he said. 

“When I joined Poshmark, there were a few things we needed to do to take the company public, and one was making sure we were both sustainable as well as profitable,” said Agrawal.

A business will succeed by positioning itself as a long-term sustainable growth company, he said. “That is what investors want to see.”