Newly-appointed Apollo.io CFO Phil Moon thinks of the structure of the finance function like a pyramid, he told CFO Dive. The base of that structure is systems and data, which then support accounting, building up to financial planning and analysis, and then, at the top, strategic finance.

“I think my biggest focus at the moment is making sure that the base of that pyramid is really solid, it's making sure that we have scalable systems, data, and processes,” Moon said of his early days in the CFO role for the San Francisco-based go-to-market platform. Apollo, an “AI-native” platform which offers a business-to-business contact database for sales, revenue and marketing teams, tapped Moon for its top finance seat last month as it seeks to drive further enterprise expansion, according to a May 27 press release.

Building that solid base means “looking around the corner to say, ‘hey, we know that the product roadmap is headed in this direction. Can our systems and processes handle that?’” he said. “’Do we need to reconfigure them in some way to be able to support the business?’’’

Building a solid foundation  

In some ways, Moon thinks about his “marching orders” as Apollo’s new finance chief simply: “It's effectively a capital allocation job,” he said. It’s utilizing the company’s resources —“some combination of people and time and cash that you have on the balance sheet” — and maximizing the return on investment across those resources.

For Apollo, the challenge of that balancing act is not a lack of opportunity, but rather that the business is spoiled for choice. Because the platform is embedded into its customers’ workflows, “there are so many different directions we can take the business,” Moon said, whether that’s potentially moving further into the AI tech stack or possibly building out a content management system.

However, before taking advantage of any number of possible opportunities, having that firm foundation remains crucial. Apollo has rapidly scaled over the past few years — seeing a 400% jump in enterprise accounts over the past 12 months, according to the press release announcing Moon’s hiring.

The company has 4 million global users and has seen its revenue rise five times higher since closing its latest funding round — a $100 million Series D led by Bain Capital in 2023, which gave the company a valuation of $1.6 billion.

Ensuring that the systems and tools in use can keep pace with the business as it scales can be particularly challenging for high-growth companies, Moon said.

Before moving to Apollo, Moon served as CFO for employee management software provider Homebase for two years, helping to shepherd the business through a period of high growth, including the close of a $60 million Series D round in 2024, TechCrunch reported at the time.

He also helped to lead Grove Collaborative, a consumer products maker, through its 2021 public debut, a SPAC merger which valued the entity at $1.5 billion, Reuters reported at the time.

For companies that are slower growing, the urgency around building scalable systems and data is “less acute,” he said. However, if a company is seeing rapid revenue growth, “you’ve got to move really quickly in building those systems, and actually, if you haven't started working on them in advance, you're already behind,” he said.

Moving up the pyramid

It’s still early days in Apollo’s CFO chair for Moon, and he sees a time when his focus will shift away from data readiness. Once the backbone of systems is established, the finance function can work its way “higher up the pyramid” to focus more effectively on strategic finance and driving key business outcomes, Moon said.

Presently, as finance chief, “I think the place where I can be the most valuable is to focus our efforts  into the things that are most important for us to get done near term, and what will set us up best for the long term,” he said.

As well as ensuring scalability and capital efficiency — Apollo, Moon noted, is “somewhat rare” in that it continued to scale, but resisted the temptation to raise more capital than needed when rates were lower — the CFO is also focused on leaving space for the finance team itself to broaden its own horizons.

“I think the guidance that I always give to my teams is, I want you to take kind of a really expansive view of your role in an organization,” he said. “I don't want you to think of yourself as a financial analyst, I want you to think of yourself as a financially minded, analytical, hardworking person.”