Why founders should bet on first-time executives | Praveer Melwani (CFO, Figma)

About this episode

Praveer Melwani discusses his journey from Figma's first business operations hire to CFO, the importance of acting like a public company before an IPO, and the impact of AI on finance roles.

In this latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Praveer Melwani, CFO at Figma. Praveer joined Figma in 2017 as the company's first business operations and finance hire—when the team was around 30 people and not yet charging for the product—and stepped into the CFO seat in 2022, helping to lead the company’s IPO in 2025. In today’s conversation, Praveer breaks down the step functions that took him from IC to CFO, why Figma started acting like a public company three years before IPO, and how AI is rewriting capital allocation and the CFO job itself. In today's episode, we discuss: What separates a world-class finance leader from a traffic-cop CFO How Praveer went from Figma's first biz ops hire to CFO of a public company in nine years Why Figma started acting like a public company three years before its IPO What Praveer has learned working alongside Dylan Field for nine years Why Figma intentionally cut its 90% gross margin to invest in AI References: Adobe: https://www.adobe.com Brendan Mulligan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanmulligan Cloudflare: https://www.cloudflare.com Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com Dylan Field: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanfield/…

People in this episode

Host: Brett

Guest: Praveer Melwani

Topics covered

• finance leadership
• CFO role
• IPO preparation
• AI in finance
• business operations
• company growth

Keywords

• CFO
• Figma
• IPO
• AI
• finance
• business operations
• leadership

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Figma, Adobe, Brendan Mulligan, Cloudflare, Dropbox, Fidelity, GIC, NerdWallet

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