Stewarding the Ship
Tags: Autonomous Vehicles, Autonomous Cars, Mapping, Carmerians, Finance

Digging into the role FinOps plays in guiding a frontier tech company through uncharted waters

In this edition of Meet a CARMERIAN, we sit down — remotely — with VP of Finance and Operations Mia Panzer.

Field of View: Is that a grandfather clock we’re hearing?

Mia Panzer: It is! It chimes every fifteen minutes. 🤦‍♀️ My husband, 5-month-old, and I are quarantining at my family’s place in Massachusetts.

FoV: Excellent. Well, it’ll help us stay on task. Welcome to Meet a CARMERIAN, Mia. Tell us a little bit about your role.

MP: I’m the VP of finance and operations, or FinOps, here at CARMERA. I joined the team just under a year ago to build out the finance function. Recognizing how intertwined finance is with people and operations, we decided to combine the two.

At a high level, FinOps involves the financial and operational stewardship of company resources. This includes financial planning & analysis, accounting, employee compensation, performance management, employee relations, benefits administration, office operations, and recruitment… to name a few. I’m basically involved in anything that has a cost or revenue implication, which also includes pricing contracts with customers, negotiating with suppliers, and general strategy around capital allocation decisions.

FoV: All the buckets that are even more mission-critical in today’s COVID environment.

MP: Exactly. We’ve always taken a very intentional and conservative approach—especially with respect to spend decisions—gauging both financial and non-financial ROI. But these are uncharted waters for any company, especially a frontier technology company — and that means we have to be taking an even closer look at how our capital allocation decisions align with our mission.

FoV: What has FinOps been doing to help navigate these uncertain times?

MP: We do a lot of scenario planning. We talk to our peers at other companies in and out of the industry. We also have an incredibly strong board, which helps. Yes, there are plenty of “how do we tackle xyz today?” conversations but we are disciplined about keeping the long-view. Companies need to think about the longer-term implications of short-term decisions. What does saving a couple bucks now do to your product roadmap? Your culture? Your ability to fundraise in the future? How will it impact your customers?

FoV: What adjustments has CARMERA — and specifically FinOps — implemented in light of the pandemic?

MP: We had a few things that we implemented years ago that have actually made this transition a bit easier. First, we already had WFH Thursdays. As a result, we were able to transition to full-time remote extremely quickly.

Second, we kept our RTB (Rose, Thorn, Bud) Mondays. This is where we all come together each week to communicate wins, challenges, and opportunities, both on the professional front and personal front. Given the importance of communication during this pandemic, keeping up this tradition each Monday—albeit now in a virtual incarnation—has been a great way to kick off the week in alignment and understanding of one another’s situations.

We have also implemented a number of new initiatives aimed at helping maintain culture, transparency, and camaraderie. The list is long but includes virtual happy hours, game nights, town halls, daily COVID updates, flexible arrangement for caretakers, proactive individualized outreach, pulse surveys, 24/7 Zoom rooms, a new company holiday for guilt-free time-off, and so many more. We also re-allocated some office funds to home office set up stipends, and encouraged employees to take office equipment home. Perhaps most importantly, we reiterated that during this time work is to be tertiary: first take care of yourself, then your family, and then work. Because without the first two you can’t be effective at the third.

And the data supports our efforts. We recently did an employee engagement survey and the results far exceeded our expectations, not to mention all industry benchmarks.

FoV: It definitely does. Shifting gears, how did you find your way to CARMERA?

[Grandfather clock chimes.]

MP: Through a series of seemingly unrelated experiences.

I majored in chemistry at Middlebury College, where I managed to take a geographic information system (GIS) course that would, perhaps, be the long-tail spark that would eventually lead me to CARMERA. After graduating, I moved to New York and got a job in finance at Bloomberg. A natural fit for a chem major, right? What I liked, though, was that finance used the same side of the brain as chemistry. Both rely heavily on numbers and analytics, but finance allowed me to work with people instead of chemicals.

Apparently on the strength of my What Do Stocks and Metalloenzymes Have in Common application essay, I earned my MBA at the University of Chicago. From there, I did a summer internship at Goldman Sachs in investment banking, covering consumer & retail companies, doing M&A, IPOs, debt offerings. That sort of stuff.

What really started to interest me, though, was financial modeling for early-stage companies that were building something new and exciting.

I moved in-house, into the pet space of all places. And then I came across the CARMERA opportunity through a friend. What really struck me about it was the incredible team, a strong thesis in the autonomous vehicle category, and the challenge of financial planning for frontier work in which there were infinite possibilities.

So there it is: chemistry, finance, pet food, road intelligence. And that one GIS course.

FoV: Not that we’re going outside much these days, what are you interested in outside of the office?

MP: We have a five-month old. And we’re in quarantine. There are lots of long walks. Yoga right over there. [Rotates laptop cam.] We’ve kicked our Seamless habit and are getting to know cooking and grilling more.

FoV: We’re all making the best.

MP: Absolutely.

FoV: I think the grandfather clock is about to chime again. Any parting words?

MP: I always like to remind our team that FinOps is the enabler for the rest of the organization. We keep the ship afloat and headed in the right direction so everyone we bring on board is best positioned to do what they do best. And in times like these, it’s all about keeping a wide view, taking a step back, and applying a strategic lens to, well…everything.