Meet the 8 chief financial officers leading 2019's tech unicorn IPO spree

Allen Shim Slack CFO

In the world of tech startups, the race to go public is often kicked off with the hiring of a chief financial officer.

The number-crunching, budget-setting finance exec plays one of the most important roles in the process leading up to and after the ringing of the opening bell.

It's up to the CFO to forge good relationships with investors, analysts and other Wall Street constituencies. A CFO who knows how to "speak to the Street" can mean the difference between a blockbuster debut and a dud.

Just as important is the CFO's fit within a tech company's culture and the rapport with the chief executive. A good partnership can work wonders; a bad match — such as the Snap CFO's 8-month stint on the job — will leave the company reeling.

With a mountain-high line up of extremely expensive private companies preparing for 2019 IPOs, there's no shortage of interesting CFOs who are about to hit a major milestone.

These are 8 CFOs expected to take companies public in 2019:

Ex-Yahoo Allen Shim is at Slack

Allen Shim joined Slack in 2014 as employee number 20. As the startup grew, so did Shim's role.

Once senior vice president of finance and operations, Shim was promoted to CFO in January 2018 in a move which Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield made clear was a big step in the company's next phase of growth.

At the time of his promotion, CEO Stewart Butterfield called Shim "a trusted advisor" and his "right hand from the earliest day."

"Introducing the role of CFO is a natural evolution that levels up our capabilities and positions us for scalable, long term success," Butterfield said at the time. "These changes show in our results and our readiness to take advantage of the opportunity ahead."

Before joining Slack, Shim spent five years running finance at a television advertising metrics company called YuMe. Before that he worked at Yahoo in business operations.

Lyft's Brian Roberts used to be a banker

It's pretty common in the world of startups for CFOs to join in the year or months preceding that first S-1. But Lyft CFO Brian Roberts has run finances at the startup since October 2014.

Roberts is known in the industry thanks to a long track record in finance and corporate development. Before joining Lyft, he led M&A and strategy at Walmart's e-commerce division. He also spent five years as vice president of corporate development at Microsoft.

In between tech jobs, though, Roberts spent time at some of the biggest banks in the land of tech deals. He launched Evercore's West Coast advisory practice starting in 2006. Before that, he was a vice president at the advisory firm Lazard Freres.

Dave Stephenson left Amazon for Airbnb

From 2015 to 2018, Airbnb's CFO was famed Wall Street banker Laurence Tosi, whose vision for the company was reportedly at odds with that of CEO Brian Chesky.

Tosi's replacement, named in November 2018, is Dave Stephenson, who joined Airbnb with 17 years at Amazon behind him. His most recent title was VP and CFO of its worldwide consumer organization.

In between stints at Amazon, Stephenson was also President and CFO of the mobile gaming company Big Fish Games. He also spent nearly 10 years at Procter & Gamble.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider