VP of Finance

Fathom is a PLG SaaS business at scale. We just hit our first cash-flow-positive month, our AI inference costs are a meaningful and fast-changing line on the P&L, and our pricing, packaging, and unit economics decisions are some of the highest-leverage choices the company makes. There is real, urgent strategic finance work to be done here — and almost none of it looks like traditional controllership.

We need someone who can be the financial brain of the company: own the operating model, build a credible point of view on unit economics in a PLG business, partner with the CEO on pricing and packaging, manage AI/COGS as a first-class line item, and be the trusted second opinion on every meaningful financial decision.

We do not need someone to build a finance team. The interesting work here is high-leverage and AI-enabled. Our existing vendors (Pilot for accounting, Sphere for tax, Rippling for payroll, Pulley for cap table) handle the things they should handle. This is a hire-of-one, possibly hire-of-two if the right second person comes along, and we expect it to stay that way.

The operating model. Own and maintain the company's 3-statement model. Build it for a PLG business — bottoms-up by product surface and self-serve cohort.

GTM finance. Marketing spend ROI by channel, customer profitability analysis by segment, renewals and expansion forecasting in partnership with CS. Sales productivity analysis as the sales motion matures. You’ll partner with our Sales, Marketing, and CS leaders as a collaborator on making our GTM machine more efficient — surfacing the data, framing the tradeoffs, and bringing them into the conversation as co-owners of any changes. Finance owns the numbers; the functional leaders own the decisions.

Unit economics, cohort analysis, and pricing. LTV, CAC, payback, gross margin by cohort, NRR, GRR — all the standard SaaS metrics, but built for a PLG funnel. Own the financial modeling for pricing and packaging changes; be the person product and the CEO go to before pulling pricing levers.

AI / LLM cost management. This is real money, growing fast, and tightly coupled to gross margin. Own the model that forecasts inference cost as a function of usage, model mix, and product decisions. Partner with engineering on optimization opportunities. This line item alone is worth a meaningful percent of the role.

Cloud / COGS management. GCP cost analysis, COGS forecasting, gross margin engineering. Same logic as above.

Strategic finance projects. Whatever the highest-leverage one-off analysis is this quarter — build-vs-buy, market sizing, scenario modeling, international expansion math, comp band design support. The job is to identify and run these without being asked.

KPI definition and reporting standards. Define the financial metrics that matter, standardize how we report them internally and externally, and own the dashboards (you'll spec them; the data team builds them).

CEO financial advisor / "numbers brain." Be the trusted second opinion on every meaningful financial decision. Help draft the financial narrative for the board, investors, and acquirers.

These are real responsibilities you own, but they shouldn't take meaningful time week-over-week if the systems are set up well:

• 13-week cash forecast

• Headcount planning and comp modeling

• Sales productivity analysis

• 409A coordination

• Wefunder / SPV investor communications

• Comp benchmarking, commission plan design and modeling

• Help draft board financial narrative

We've seen too many VPs of Finance want to take everything in-house so we expect you be involved but heavily delegate a lot of the lower leverage responsibilities:

• Monthly close, GAAP financials, AR collections, deferred revenue, stock-based comp, ASC 606 work. Pilot does this. Manage them as a vendor; do not bring it in-house.

• All tax work (federal, state, sales tax, international, R&D credit, contractor reporting). Sphere does this.

• Payroll, equity admin, bonus pool, EOR for international employees. Rippling and People own this.

• Finance tech stack, billing systems, expense management, procurement workflow. Existing systems and existing owners.

• Insurance, liability cap modeling, vendor risk, SOC 2 financial controls. Legal/compliance handles.

That said, we are not dogmatic, if you have a compelling reason why you should be more hands-on in any of these areas we’re open to it.

Required:

• You've done finance in a PLG business — and you have strong opinions about how to model self-serve revenue, expansion, and the funnel. We've talked to many VPs of Finance from sales-led SaaS who struggle with this; we will screen hard.

• You think about leverage, not headcount. You're proud of how much you ship as a one-person function with AI tooling, vendor relationships, and good systems; it’s impact over all else. The idea of running a four-person team to do the same work makes you uncomfortable.

• You're pragmatic, not dogmatic. You don't come in on day one trying to revisit revenue recognition, restructure the chart of accounts, or play financial-engineering games. You focus on real, meaningful impact.

• You can be the CEO's "numbers brain." This is half the job. You're the trusted second opinion, the person who finds the missing assumption in a model, the person who reframes a decision with the right unit economics.

• You're hands-on. You build the model yourself. You write the SQL. You read the GCP bill line by line. You don't manage finance from a slide deck.

• You're fluent with AI tooling and you actively use it to compress your own workload.

• Low-ego and easy-going. Life is too short to work with jerks :) We all lead through our actions, not through edict; we expect you to do the same.

• You know when to add process and when not to. Your instinct on day one is to understand how we actually operate before adding any process. You don’t build overly complex systems out of the gate; you add structure where the lack of it is hurting us, and you leave the rest alone.

• You’re a test-and-learn thinker. Fathom is a testing-forward organization. We speak in ROI and unit economics, but we also know when to bend on the thresholds to learn something. You can hold both ideas at once — the discipline of the numbers and the willingness to run an experiment whose payback isn’t obvious yet.

Bonus:

• Direct experience modeling and managing AI inference costs as a P&L line item

• Background partnering with product on pricing and packaging at a PLG company

• You've publicly shared opinions or written about strategic finance, unit economics, or operating models

• The operating model is the source of truth across the company — used in every leadership conversation, trusted by the board

• Unit economics and AI/COGS are forecastable within a tight band; surprises are rare

• The CEO defaults to "let me check with [you]" before any meaningful financial decision

• The function stays at 1–2 people; existing vendors continue to do the work they do well

• You are not bottlenecked on monthly busywork