Renovata & Company Recruits CFO for PE-Backed Pricefx
October 7, 2022 – Global executive search and private equity advisory firm Renovata & Company has placed Gill Sheeran as chief financial officer of Pricefx, a software-as-a-service price-optimization management platform. “Gill is an experienced finance executive for the tech industry and fast-growing, global companies,” said Thomas Jepsen, Renovata & Company partner. “She has a proven track record in successful exits, PE fundraising, M&A, large-scale business ramp-up, business turnaround to profitability, and business transformation.”
As part of this project, Renovata’s search and interim teams combined to identify and meet the short-term as well as the longer-term CFO requirements for Pricefx. This appointment highlights Renovata & Company’s depth as a search firm and advisor to private- and growth equity-backed digital, SaaS, IoT companies, their boards, and investors across North America and Europe.
Prior to joining Pricefx, Ms. Sheeran was co-founder at a tech start-up focused on employee well-being. Before that, she was chief financial officer for Rule Financial, a PE backed fintech. Earlier in her career, she held various finance and strategy/planning management positions at companies including Financial Times and Mazars.
In her new position, Ms. Sheeran will help create and execute a sustainable strategy to drive high performance and fast growth while delivering on Pricefx’s financial goals and objectives.
Pricefx was founded by a team from the price optimization space that had grown increasingly frustrated by the results they were able to deliver to clients while using a legacy approach. They created Pricefx to leverage modern cloud technologies designed into a highly configurable platform to quickly overcome challenges and deliver value to their customers. With more than 130 customers across 37 countries and a 96 percent customer retention rate, Pricefx has more than 400 employees globally and has maintained a compound growth rate over 40 percent.
Pricefx has backing from Apax Partners, Digital+ Partners, Bain & Company, Talis, and Credo Ventures. In 2020, Pricefx acquired Brennus Analytics, an artificial intelligence (AI)-pricing software start-up company based in France.
Private Equity Search & Advisory Firm
Renovata & Company is a global executive search and private equity advisory firm. The firm partners with financial sponsors, their portfolio companies and public corporations to deliver leaders and investment insights. The search firm’s executive recruiting activities are focused on search assignments covering board-level mandates, which include board directors, CEOs, CFOs, and other C-suite executives, as well as investment professionals and operating partners. The firm provides strategic counsel to clients across the technology, digital, business services, industrial, consumer, and retail sectors.
Related: Renovata & Company Recruits CEO for Vivino
Renovata & Company has relationships with over 50 of the top 100 private and growth equity firms globally. Its private equity advisory services include diligence support, backable executive introductions, and deal sourcing delivered by its affiliate, L Capital Advisors. The firm also makes equity co-investments alongside its private equity clients through its investment affiliate, L Capital. The search firm is privately held and operates from five offices across two continents: Boston, Hamburg, London, New York, and San Francisco.
Mr. Jepsen is a co-founder of Renovata & Company. He has over 20 years’ experience in executive search across the SaaS, marketplace and B2C online spectrum. His focus is on working with the boards (founders and investors) of high growth businesses to attract the leadership talent that enable their companies to scale. In over a decade leading Renovata, Mr. Jepsen has worked with many of the leading B2B and B2C businesses across Europe.
Recruiting CFOs for VC/PE Companies
Executive search firm Caldwell recently conducted a survey on the CFO role to fine-tune its understanding of the skills and experiences that define success today for a CFO of a PE-backed portfolio company and, equally importantly, which attributes may sound appealing but are not essential. More than 300 private equity CFOs shared candid responses on their backgrounds and how they landed in their current role. The results provided a clearer picture of who sits in the CFO chair at many PE-backed portfolio companies, and the skills and credentials that are truly impactful in their leadership role.
When asked to describe their previous experience, 10 percent of the participants said, “I was a divisional CFO or No. 2 finance executive in a PE-backed company,” while 20 percent had the same status at a public company. Another 35 percent had been a CFO of a public or private company. And only 34 percent had been CFO of a PE-backed company. So just a third of the CFOs in the Caldwell survey had previously held a PE CFO role.
Among companies with less than $25 million in revenue, only 15 percent of the CFOs had prior experience as CFO of a PE-backed company, while 56 percent of the companies with greater than $500 million revenue hired a CFO with prior experience in a PE CFO role. In the three other revenue categories, the companies hired a CFO with prior PE CFO experience 40 percent of the time, or less. These findings would seem to indicate that hiring a CFO with prior PE CFO experience is a “nice to have,” but not a must-have credential for all companies, said the firm.
Caldwell also asked the CFOs: “What were the key factors in your hiring?” and asked them to check all relevant factors. Among the total population of participants, the No. 1 factor was industry experience, and the second factor was PE experience. Tied for third were a previous successful exit and a prior role as a stand-alone PE CFO.
Related: Renovata & Company Recruits Chief Revenue Officer for Bitmovin
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
