Smarsh CFO David Brolsma is keeping his eyes peeled for strategic opportunities that can help the Portland, Oregan-based communications data intelligence company to continue the strong growth cadence it saw in 2024.

Last February, among other expansions, the company closed two acquisitions — Israel-based mobile messaging firm Telemessage and cloud-native compliance call recording firm, CallCabinet, which operates offices in South Africa, Germany, and the United Kingdom, among other areas — which have helped to supplement its plans for international growth, for example, Brolsma said. Smarsh, which announced Brolsma’s appointment as finance chief last month, is also not ruling out new potential acquisitions should they serve its strategy.

“It's part of our DNA at Smarsh to not just innovate internally, but innovate through acquisition,” Brolsma said in an interview. “So we'll continue to look in the market for the right opportunities.”

Making space for strategic opportunity

Though mergers and acquisitions have dipped in recent years among continued economic headwinds, “if we take a step back and you look at fintech in total, I think there's going to be a resurgence of M&A,” Brolsma said.

While consolidation is a key factor, changing trends in how startups are valued are also presenting companies with more strategic opportunities for investment — in a pendulum swing from previous years, valuations today are based not just on a strong growth profile, but on a happy medium between growth and profitability.  

That mix of attractive products, growth and profitability “is really what is going to drive M&A activity for fintech and the broader market in 2025,” Brolsma said.

Like many businesses today, Smarsh is also focused on “taking the company to that next level of growth and profitability, and that's part of why I'm here,” Brolsma said of his appointment to the company’s CFO seat. In joining Smarsh, Brolsma will “leverage his expertise in IPOs, M&A, international regulatory compliance, revenue efficiency, and operations to help guide the company through its next stage of growth,” according to the press release announcing his appointment.

Prior to Smarsh, Brolsma served as interim CFO for digital security company Zimperium and as the CFO for WP Engine for six years, according to his LinkedIn profile. His previous roles also include various executive positions during a nine-year span at Rackspace. His past at companies that span a wide range of sizes, from millions to billions in revenue, enabled him to “really see a lot of different growth stages” of a business, he said.  

In looking at Smarsh, Brolsma sees several different ways the company could continue to grow. As well as potential future acquisitions, the company is continuing to eye further international expansion. Last year, Smarsh also opened an office in Costa Rica, expanding its presence to Latin America as well as the U.S. and the EMEA and APAC regions, according to an August press release.

The company is also considering expansions in different verticals; while Smarsh is focused on regulated industries at the moment, the business also sees significant opportunity in broadening its offerings to unregulated spaces.

“If you think about an HR leader or sales and marketing leader, this [communications] data could be really, interesting to them and strategic for them as well,” Brolsma said.

Closing the accounting, finance gap  

As Smarsh marshals its future growth strategy, the company is looking at how it can optimize its business operations, employees and customer experience. The business currently has “an incredible operating cadence,” Brolsma said, but  “there’s always room for improvement,” he said.

In executing that strategy, Brolsma is juggling a widening array of responsibilities which effectively straddle both finance and operations — as Smarsh’s CFO, Brolsma took on an “expanded leadership role” which includes managing not only traditional finance and accounting, but internal operations and corporate development, the company said in its press release.

That widening remit puts Brolsma in good company, as many finance chiefs see their role evolving to a meld of the CFO and chief operating officer role. To sum it up “in a couple of words, I'd say the CFO role is about value creation, in today’s world,” he said.

Brolsma’s past experience, most notably running the international business unit for Rackspace, has shed some light on the operational side of the house, he said.

“What that operational experience gave me was an insight into what it takes to be successful in those functional areas, and so it gave me a high appreciation for the difficulties of that job,” Brolsma said. “And so coming back into the financial world, it’s made me a better partner to that sales leader, to that product and engineering leader.”

Fulfilling that growing list of responsibilities means finance needs to work closely with other parts of the business — and, crucially, for different areas of finance to do so as well. Traditionally, the finance and accounting teams have been “very, very separate within a lot of organizations, and that's not how we operate,” Brolsma said. Rather, at Smarsh, the teams “run alongside each other.”

“It’s important for the accounting team to understand the full budget and the specifics of the budget, and also for our finance team to understand the accounting implications of things that could happen in the business,” he said. “If you don't have those teams working together, then you just create gaps.”