LiveRamp’s CFO Rebuilt Pricing From Scratch | Lauren Dillard

More from Run the Numbers All episodes →

1. 

   12 Oct 2026 · 48 minNew

   Inside the Food52 Bankruptcy | Heidi Robinson

   In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ sits down with Heidi Robinson, former CFO and COO of Food52, for one of the wildest CFO stories the show has featured. Heidi joined expecting to lead a modest turnaround and within weeks realized the company was in far deeper trouble than anyone understood. She walks through being the newest executive in the room and having to deliver that news and the Monday evening a lender swept the company's cash without warning. — SPONSORS: Fidelity Private Shares gives founders the structure and simplicity to focus on what actually matters - building your company.…

2. 

   8 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 7 min

   Robinhood's CFO on Refounding & the Art of Capital Allocation | Shiv Verma

   In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ sits down with Shiv Verma, CFO of Robinhood, to unpack the company's 2022 "refounding". They dig into why Shiv personally signs off on every headcount and marketing dollar at a $100B+ company, and how Robinhood's capital allocation philosophy — no loss leaders, minimal variable costs, and a hard $100 million ARR bar for new products — shapes everything from prediction markets to private-market investing. — SPONSORS: RightRev is a revenue recognition platform built for the AI economy, helping finance support usage-based pricing, credits, hybrid…

3. 

   6 Oct 2026 · 15 min

   Token Series Part 1 | How AI Created a New Budget

   This is Part 1 of our new Token Series with Tabs. CJ calls up Ali Hussain to dig into one of the fastest-growing, least-understood line items on the P&L: AI inference and token spend. They debate whether AI costs ultimately belong to the CTO or the CFO, why the shift from "experimentation budgets" to real operating costs is forcing companies to rethink ownership, what's actually different about AI spend compared to the early cloud transition, and how tools like OpenRouter (acquired by Stripe) and Ramp's new offering are approaching the problem from opposite ends of engineering vs. finance. —…

4. 

   5 Oct 2026 · 54 min

   Why Owning Your Data Is the New Moat | Primary Venture's Emily Man

   In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ sits down with Emily Man of Primary Ventures to map out where value actually accrues in the AI economy. They break down the 5 layers of the AI stack and why Emily believes the next era of AI adoption will be driven by diffusion through apps rather than smarter models alone. — SPONSORS: Abacum puts your actuals, forecasts, models, and business context in one place, so you can update the plan, run scenarios, and answer "why did this change?" without rebuilding the story from six spreadsheets and a Slack thread. Connect your source systems, keep models and…

5. 

   1 Oct 2026 · 48 min

   Zuora’s COFO On Going Private and Pricing AI | Todd McElhatton

   In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ sits down with Todd McElhatton, CFO of Zuora, for a deep cut on pricing, packaging, and value in the age of AI. They dig into how companies are figuring out whether to charge for AI at all, why token-based budgets are starting to sit alongside headcount budgets, and why AI may be increasing — not decreasing — the value of deep expertise. — SPONSORS: Brex is an intelligent finance platform that combines corporate cards, built-in expense management, and AI agents to eliminate manual finance work. By automating expense reviews and reconciliations, Brex…

6. 

   24 Sep 2026 · 34 min

   The NScale IPO | A Neocloud S1 Breakdown

   Nscale just filed its S-1 to go public on the NYSE — and it might be the wildest IPO filing of the year. This UK-based "NeoCloud" is only 2 years old, is gross margin negative, started life as a crypto miner, and has somehow locked up over $100 billion in contracted value from Anthropic and Microsoft. CJ breaks down the entire S-1 line by line: what a NeoCloud actually is, how Nscale's "power to token" strategy works, why Nvidia shows up as its supplier, investor, guarantor, AND customer, and whether this is a durable business or a well-timed arbitrage on the AI compute shortage. — SPONSORS:…

7. 

   21 Sep 2026 · 51 min

   How Media Actually Makes Money | Blake Saunders

   In today’s Run the Numbers, CJ sits down with Blake Saunders, founder and managing director at Core Advisors (an investment bank focused on media) and founder of The Joint, to go deep on how media companies actually make money — and how that's changing fast. If you're anywhere near advertising, media, or content monetization, this one's a masterclass. — SPONSORS: Rillet is an AI-native ERP built for modern finance teams that want to replace NetSuite and close faster. With revenue recognition, close management, multi-entity support, and native Stripe and Salesforce integrations, Rillet helps…

8. 

   17 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 7 min

   How to Sell Your Company: A Multi-Time CFO's Full Playbook | Rick Smith

   CJ sits down with multi-time CFO Rick Smith, founder of Bonfire Advisory and author of Six Months to the Sale , to break down what actually happens when you sell a company. They cover why buyers value some businesses on ARR and others on EBITDA (and why being slightly profitable can hurt you), how to negotiate banker fees, what buyers find when they dig into your balance sheet, and why every cap table Rick inherits is wrong. — SPONSORS: RightRev is a revenue recognition platform built for the AI economy, helping finance support usage-based pricing, credits, hybrid contracts, seats plus…

9. 

   14 Sep 2026 · 46 min

   Masterwork’s CFO Runs 12 AI Agents at Once | Nigel Glenday

   CJ Gustafson sits down with Nigel Glenday, CFO and COO of Masterworks, to talk about how AI is actually changing day-to-day finance work. They cover why context matters more than model choice, how Nigel runs a dozen Claude Code terminal sessions at once, and how his team solved a 300,000 K-1 problem with Python instead of a $300K tool. Plus: a detour into the 2026 art market and what securitizing fine art teaches you about scarcity and pricing power. — SPONSORS: Anrok is the sales tax platform that watches your exposure everywhere, automates compliance, and flags risk before it turns into a…

10. 

    10 Sep 2026 · 34 min

    How Oura Built a $1.4 Billion Business Around a Tiny Ring

    How did Oura turn a tiny piece of wearable hardware into a $1.4 billion business? CJ breaks down the numbers behind Oura’s IPO filing and the surprisingly powerful business model hiding behind the ring. — SPONSORS: Brex is an intelligent finance platform with AI-powered workflows that enforce expense policies at the point of sale, match receipts automatically, and reduce month-end close from weeks to hours. Thousands of companies, including Anthropic, Coinbase, and DoorDash, already run on Brex. Stop asking A-level finance talent to do B-level admin work. Learn more at…