Robert J. Horowitz: Finance and operations are one job.
I'm Robert J. Horowitz, a chief financial officer and operating partner. For more than twenty years I have worked in growth-stage and private-equity-owned companies, in the finance seat and the operating one. I write about how those companies decide where cash goes, what to charge, and what to buy and sell, and about what software is changing in that work.
- Role
- Chief financial officer and operating partner in private equity
- Background
- Former chief operating officer. More than a dozen acquisitions and divestitures.
- Writes on
- Finance and AI, operations, deals, cash and pricing
Writing
Essays on finance, operations, and deals.
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Featured
When the numbers get cheap
Finance teams have been valued for producing information. Software is making that nearly free, and the work that remains looks a lot like operations.
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Read the calendar before the org chart
Which meetings a company holds, what each one is allowed to decide, and where bad news goes tell you more about how it runs than the reporting lines do.
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Integration is decided before the deal closes
The price of an acquisition gets months of attention. How the two companies will run together often gets a slide.
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Where AI is useful in a finance function today
The useful applications are less glamorous than the demos. They are the hours of reading, sorting, and first drafts that fill a finance team's week.
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What a carve-out asks of a finance team
Selling one business line is harder than selling the whole company. Most of the work is deciding where the line runs.
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The first ninety days in a sponsor-owned company
A new CFO under private equity ownership has a short window to set the rhythm. Five things are worth doing first.
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Pricing is the lever most companies leave alone
Costs get reviewed every quarter and prices almost never. The finance team is well placed to change that.
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What an operating partner is for
The role sits between an investment firm and its companies. It works when it adds capacity to a management team and fails when it adds another layer of meetings.
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The thirteen-week cash forecast is a management tool
It usually gets built because someone asked for it. It earns its place by changing the conversations inside the company.
What I write about
Four subjects I keep coming back to.
Finance and AI
Software is making analysis cheap. The value of a finance team moves to judgment, and to the operating decisions it used to watch from a distance.
Operations
How a company runs shows in its calendar: which meetings it holds, who owns each goal, and where bad news goes.
Deals and private equity
A deal is decided in the preparation, and an owner's plan is only as good as the company's ability to run it.
Cash and pricing
Cash and pricing tell you more about a company than its budget does.
What I believe
Seven positions, each argued in an essay.
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Finance and operations are one job.
The decisions worth a finance team's time are operating decisions: what to charge, how fast to hire, and what to stop doing.
Read: When the numbers get cheap -
A company runs on its calendar.
Where decisions get made, how often, and with what information matters more than who reports to whom.
Read: Read the calendar before the org chart -
Cash comes first.
A weekly view of cash tells you more about a company than a monthly report does.
Read: The thirteen-week cash forecast is a management tool -
Price deserves the attention cost gets.
Costs are reviewed every quarter. Prices are set once and left to drift.
Read: Pricing is the lever most companies leave alone -
A deal is mostly preparation.
Who will run the combined business, and who owns each promised saving, should be decided before signing.
Read: Integration is decided before the deal closes -
AI drafts. People decide.
Software is good at reading and sorting at volume. Deciding what to do with the result is still a person's job.
Read: Where AI is useful in a finance function today -
Good help comes with an end date.
Outside help has worked when the company can do something afterward that it could not do before.
Read: What an operating partner is for
About
More than twenty years in finance and operations, most of them inside companies that were growing or changing owners.
I'm chief financial officer of a private-equity-owned enterprise software and AI services company, and I work as an operating partner on value creation across its owner's portfolio. Before that I was a chief operating officer, a chief financial officer, and a finance and strategy lead in financial infrastructure, healthcare technology, consumer products, and insurance, after starting in investment banking and private equity.
Full backgroundSpeaking and advisory
For speaking, advisory, and board conversations, LinkedIn is the fastest way to reach me.
Connect on LinkedInSubjects
- The finance function when analysis is cheap
- Practical uses of AI in a finance team
- Designing an operating rhythm for a growing company
- Integrating an acquisition
- Running the finance side of a carve-out or divestiture
- The first ninety days as CFO under a private equity owner
- Pricing and cash as management disciplines
- What operating partners and management teams should expect of each other