The Future of Finance is Modular
Why Best-of-Breed Partnerships are Winning, and What It Means for Finance Teams
Revenue recognition shouldn’t slow your business down—but too often, it does. As a CFO, I’ve seen how rigid systems, compliance hurdles, and manual workarounds make closing the books a nightmare.
We put together this free report outlining the biggest revenue recognition challenges CFOs and controllers are facing—and what the right solution should look like. If revenue complexity is holding your team back, this will help you understand how to fix it.
Ten years ago (hell, even five) you had two options when building a finance tech stack:
Option A: Buy the “all-in-one” suite that did one thing great… and four other things so poorly your team quietly rebelled.
Option B: Franken-stack it together from niche tools and pray the APIs didn’t spontaneously combust during close.
I’ve lived both. Neither is fun.
In scenario A, someone on your team gets screwed.
“Jane’s need is more important than Bob’s, so Bob, yea… life’s tough, get a helmet—you’re stuck using this terrible interface that hasn’t been updated since the Clinton administration.”
In scenario B, you spend half your job duct taping systems together. One tiny config change and you’re chasing down missing transactions between your GL and expense system, or redoing deferred revenue calcs in a spreadsheet, or looking for $74 dollars in renewal revenue on a contract co term that disappeared into the upside down world.
That’s not what we signed up for as operators. But that’s where we’ve been. Especially (and counter intuitively) if you’re at an enterprise company - one with more than, say, 1,000 people. The problem is exacerbated with size.
YET! Things are changing.
Welcome to the era of “choose your own adventure” finance infrastructure.
Today, you don’t need to buy from one vendor who tries to do everything, but only nails one feature. You can build your stack like a kickass playlist (Hoobastank + Creed + Papa Roach)—pulling in the best-of-breed tool for each job and getting a better experience for the actual people using the software every day.
That’s why partnerships matter now more than ever. Case in point: Brex and Zip. Brex cards now surface directly inside Zip’s procurement flow. Native. Smooth. No janky middleware.
If Bill Simmons were writing this, he’d say something like,
“You know, these two—Brex and Zip—they used to circle each other like dogs at the park. Like Steph and LeBron on that first Team USA trip. A little passive aggressive. Who’s the alpha? Who’s getting the last shot? Lotta side-eye, lotta posturing.
It was like watching Pacino and De Niro in Heat—you’re not even sure who you’re rooting for, you just know someone’s gonna try to steal the scene.
And now? They’re teaming up. Like LeBron throwing lobs to AD in the bubble. Like when Pacino and De Niro finally got a full sit-down in The Irishman and didn’t completely ruin it.
They’re riding into enterprise deals together—not because it’s trendy, but because it actually solves a real pain.
Top six duo move, Russillo. Feels like 2008 Celtics energy. The “we might not like each other, but we hate losing more” vibe. And I respect the hell out of it.”
Same story with Navan and Brex on travel. Brex could’ve tried to build travel for the Enterprise. But global travel is a different business. Different margins. Different GTM. Different buyer. Instead of burning a year building a half-baked product for larger companies, they partnered with someone already doing it exceptionally well.
OK, this is the part of the story where people scream “Vendor sprawl!” But that’s lazy thinking.
This isn’t about having 14 tools that all do the same thing. This is about thoughtful, high-utility tools that don’t overlap—that actually play well together and give each buyer in the company (procurement, travel, accounting) what they need.
And look, finance doesn’t buy like it used to. There’s no CFO in an ivory tower making every decision. Yes, it’s kinda true at a 150 person company with a finance team of four - that CFO is a major driver in every decision. But not at a company like Coinbase with a finance team in the hundreds. Your controller might choose your expense tool. Your travel manager might pick their own booking system. Your procurement lead might own sourcing. And none of them want to hear about your grand unified suite vision if it means compromising on their day-to-day.
Now flip the lens: If you’re building software for this space, you can’t build everything yourself. Even if you had the time and cash, you’d just end up spreading yourself thin. And worse, alienating the very partners who could help you break into enterprise.
You want to build a compound startup? Cool. Just make sure you’ve got the margin structure and GTM motion to support it (note: I think Rippling is one company doing this really well, but they are more the exception than the norm). Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time building stuff people don’t want to buy from you, and neglecting the thing you’re actually great at.
So what gets deals like this actually done? The customers. They’re like a trojan horse for partnerships. If enough customers ask, the company’s eventually put their qualms to the side, grow up, and do a deal for the betterment of teams like us.
Brex and Zip had a ton of overlapping customers: Coinbase, Anthropic, Zapier, Neurolink, and Gong. That overlap wasn’t luck. It was alignment. A shared customer base, a shared pain point, and a decision to solve it together.
So if you’re building for finance teams in 2025, you’ve got a decision to make:
Do you want to be the whole kitchen?
Or be the indispensable knife that everyone grabs first?
Because the stack is no longer a monolith. It’s modular. And all in one is, counteractively, really messy if you can’t pull it off.
And it’s a hell of a lot better when the pieces are built to play nice.
Looking for Leverage
Let’s get one thing straight: there’s no such thing as the plan.
There’s the plan you show your reps.
The one you take to the board.
The one you lock in with your lenders.
The one you parade in front of VCs.
And the one you hand over during diligence when it's time to sell the company.
Each one is tailored for a different stakeholder—because each one serves a different agenda.
If you're an operator in a growth-stage or PE-backed company, understanding these tradeoffs isn’t just helpful. It’s survival. Give the wrong plan to the wrong person and you’ve zapped away enterprise value, which is in many ways a game of managing expectations.
Learn about the “many faces of plan” and when to use each one…
Run the Numbers
The average Disney World parking attendant gets more training than your average sales rep.
I discuss this fact, and art and science of portfolio operations, with Paul Stansik, operating partner at Parker Gale. This was chalk full of insights for those trying to ensure the trains run on time, and you hit your sales goals in the process.
He shares hands-on insights into how his team helps portfolio companies scale by:
Transforming sales data into decisions
Navigating post-acquisition go-to-market challenges
Driving the shift from being merely data-aware to fully data-driven.
Quote I’ve Been Pondering
“Your problem is you took “no” from a person who didn’t have the power to say “yes” in the first place.”
-MFM Podcast
Cut my finance stack into pieces… (I’ll show myself out)