Introducing Affinity’s new CFO, Adam Goldman

Today we announced the appointment of our new CFO Adam Goldman, a seasoned financial executive with extensive experience in scaling high-growth companies.

We recently sat down with Adam to learn more about his impressive background, why he joined Affinity, and his goals as CFO.

Let’s start with what drew you to Affinity?

It was the product and the team. I had been aware of Affinity's core CRM product and the reputation it had in VC circles for quite some time but I had never had a chance to use it in my professional life. After getting a chance to look at it in depth during the interview process, I realized why all our customers think so highly of the product and it made me excited to be a part of it. 

When I got to know the executive and finance teams I sensed an ease that everyone had from working together well. Individually everyone was impressive but together they had all the hallmarks of a high-functioning team and one that I wanted to be part of. 

The best places I’ve ever worked had a product that customers loved and a team that was unified and committed to building something great. Affinity is that place. 

You’ve had a pretty impressive career to date. What are some of the highlights and how do you think these experiences will contribute to your success in this new position?

I’ve done a mix of pure financial and operating roles in my career; most notably helping Codecademy scale during Covid and then ultimately selling the company to Skillsoft and helping grow that company as well. 

In both places we created a tight partnership between the finance and operating functions, and I have some experience being deeply involved in and/or owning most aspects of a business. I believe that the practical experience makes me a more effective CFO as I have an understanding of the opportunities and challenges other functions are dealing with. If nothing else, it will make me more empathetic!

That’s such an important point. One of our core values is caring personally for one another. Empathy is core to that. 

You have such an important role to play helping us continue to scale to this next phase of growth. You obviously have a lot of experience doing that. What are your priorities as you get started?

The most important focus is helping take Affinity to $100M ARR and beyond. In the finance function, that really means:

1. Aligning our financial profile is with the strategic goals of the company
2. Building the systems that support a scale-transition to a higher-ARR company
3. Ensuring that the finance function is supporting our sales, product, and marketing motions (among others)

From what I’ve observed, Affinity already has good systems in place and finance is a good partner to the rest of the company so my main focus is (1). That will involve evaluating our medium-term strategy and creating financial goals (topline, profit, financing, capital structure, etc) for the steps along the way. Once that is done, we basically work backwards to make sure everything else fits into that framework and we are looking at the right metrics to evaluate investments correctly.

That’s great. We’re so excited to have you on board! Before I let you go, can you tell us a little about yourself outside of work?

My wife and I have three children (10, 7, and 2). When not busy with the kids, I can be found working on various personal projects around the house, and thinking far, far too much about coffee.

Thanks so much for taking the time to chat today. Anything else you’d like to touch on?

I am incredibly excited to join Affinity—I love the fact that the product is targeted at people like me! I’m already using it for my relationships with investors. I can’t wait to explore everything it offers.