CFO Intelligence Magazine – Winter 2024
Sarah Spoja
Tipalti CFO
SARAH SPOJA HAS BEEN ON BOTH SIDES OF THE FUNDRAISING TABLE.
Advising investors, she spent more than a decade at powerhouses like Bain & Co. and later at the private equity firm KKR, working on projects like buy-side diligence, customer research, and new product potential for buy-side private equity. In 2018, when she was a Director at KKR Capstone, Spoja left to become the first-ever CFO at Tipalti, a fast-growing California-based global payables automation solutions company that counts Duolingo, Amazon Twitch and other companies among its client base. Since joining Tipalti, Spoja and her team have been behind more than $700 million of equity and debt funding for the enterprise, which has a market valuation North of $8 billion. Spoja shared her capital-raise insights with CFO Intelligence.
“The time to begin planning for a fundraising round is long before you actually need the cash,” says Spoja. “At the end of the day, it’s all about relationships. Many times, I have known key investor players for years before approaching them for a fundraising round, having met them through informal introductions, networking or conferences during times when we were not raising [funds], and starting to build relationships and sharing the Tipalti story with them.
FUNDRAISING SHAKEUPS
She’s been with Tipalti since 2018, “and between Covid-19 and interest rate hikes, I’ve seen the fundraising environment go through some shakeups,” Spoja shares. “pre-Covid, you’d lock yourself in a room for days with your funders and their support teams, but for a few years, most of the negotiations took place over Zoom. It’s nice now, in 2023, that some of the fundraising experience is coming back in person, since this gives a chance for investors and companies to get to know each other more.
The meeting model may have changed, but the fundamentals of roadshows haven’t, she adds. “It’s still all about explaining your business and its vision, and then giving potential investors information to back up your claims.”
And of course, interest rate hikes are changing the landscape. “Accessing capital is more difficult now, and when limited partners can park funds in risk-free Treasuries earning 4%-plus, many will need a bit more convincing to invest money in startups or growth companies,” she observes.