The SaaS CFO | The #1 source for SaaS finance education. Video lessons, content, templates, and communities to accelerate your SaaS and career.

WHAT I DO:  I help SaaS companies via fractional SaaS CFO services, coaching, and courses in SaaS metrics and finance.  I help companies achieve financial improvement and transparency via a SaaS finance framework that links operations to finance.

WHO I HELP:  I help SaaS founders, finance/accounting, and investors.

WHY IT WORKS:  Translating the operational story into consumable numbers is the key to driving corporate performance and understanding the economics of SaaS businesses.

WHAT MAKES ME DIFFERENT: From debits and credits to financial forecasting to M&A, my experience has not just been silo’ed in the accounting or finance track, but both sides of the desk.  My operations background at several airlines has improved my ability to translate operational performance into improved financial understanding and foresight. My on-the-job experience as a SaaS CFO has allowed me to help thousands of SaaS founders and finance teams.

Ben Murray

- Over 2 decades of investment banking, corporate development and consulting 
- Over 30 closed transactions (M&A, equity/debt financing, $3B+ in transactions value) 

Selected Transactions
•Underwriter on $125M IPO for Fortinet (Nasdaq: FTNT), a leading provider the next-generation firewall
•Underwriter on $65M IPO for ArcSight (Nasdaq: ARST), a leading provider of SIEM (acquired by Hewlett-Packard)
•Acquisition of AccelOps, by Fortinet
•Sale of Contractually to Coupa, provides spend management solutions
•Acquisition of Xpenser by Coupa
•Sale of Cenzic, application security testing company, to Trustwave
•Sale of Instill Corporation, a SaaS provider of spend management solutions for the foodservices industry, to Accel-KKR
•Sale of Insightful, a business intelligence software company, to TIBCO ($25M)
•Sale of Document Sciences, a content management software company, to EMC ($85M)
•Sale of SumTotal Systems, a human capital management software company, to Vista Equity ($160M)
•Advisor on $10M equity financing for inContact (Nasdaq: SAAS), a leading provider of on-demand contact center software
•Advisor to SMART Technologies on the acquisition of Nextwindow, a leading provider of touch screen technology systems, for $82M
•Joint book runner on $660M IPO for SMART Technologies (NYSE: SMT), a leading provider of interactive while board systems
•Lead-arranger on $320M debt financing for Sophos, a leading provider of security and data protection solutions
•Underwriter on $134M IPO and $232M follow-on for RealPage (Nasdaq: RP), provides on-demand solutions for real estate management industry
•Agent for $400M credit facility for BMC Software, provides infrastructure software solutions
•Advisor to Siemens/Gores on $23M investment in InContact (Nasdaq: SAAS), provides on-demand contact center software
•Adviser to SMART Technologies, provides interactive white board solutions, for a private placement by Apax Partners 

Specialities: Investment Banking
Software and Systems

Atul Tiwary

Cybersecurity stocks sold off sharply today.

This was not earnings-driven. It was narrative-driven.

The immediate catalyst: Anthropic previewed Claude Code Security, positioning AI as capable of scanning codebases and suggesting vulnerability fixes. The market quickly interpreted this as potential disruption to traditional AppSec, DevSecOps, and vulnerability management vendors.

The reaction was broad — but not uniform.

The hardest hit names were those closest to code security and vulnerability workflows:
	•	JFrog ~ -25%
	•	Qualys ~ -10%
	•	Tenable ~ -9%
	•	Rapid7 ~ -7%

Larger platform players declined as well, though less dramatically:
	•	CrowdStrike ~ -8%
	•	Okta ~ -9%
	•	Zscaler ~ -5%
	•	Palo Alto ~ -1.5%

Cybersecurity ETFs were down ~3–5%, confirming this was a sector-wide move, not isolated stock issues.

What’s notable is how the market reacted:
	1.	Investors assumed margin compression before revenue loss.
	2.	They priced competitive risk before product overlap was fully understood.
	3.	They sold the highest multiple names first.

This is the new reality of AI cycles.

Every time a foundation model company enters an adjacent workflow, markets assume incumbents are impaired — even before customers change behavior.

The more nuanced question is this:

Does AI reduce cybersecurity demand?
Or does it increase the attack surface, accelerate threat velocity, and ultimately expand the need for platforms that operationalize defense?

Short-term: volatility.
Long-term: likely consolidation and platform advantage.

If you operate in cybersecurity, today wasn’t about fundamentals.
It was about perception.

And in markets, perception often moves faster than product reality.

Partner@ El Dorado Capital | Corporate Development & M&A | Helping Founders Scale Capital-Efficiently in Tech, Cybersecurity and AI

I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Managing Partner at El Dorado Capital!

I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Co-Founder at CorpDev.Ai!

Open article: CorpDev.Ai - Agentic AI Analyst for M&A by corpdev.ai

Goldman Sachs partnering with Anthropic to deploy AI agents inside core accounting and banking workflows is a useful signal—not because it’s Goldman, but because of where the AI is being applied.

This isn’t a chatbot or a surface-level productivity tool. It’s AI reasoning through complex, rule-heavy, judgment-driven work that has traditionally required experienced operators. That’s a meaningful shift.

For smaller banks and corporate development teams, the takeaway shouldn’t be “this is out of reach.” If anything, it’s the opposite. Large institutions move slowly and at scale. Smaller teams can experiment earlier, deploy more narrowly, and adapt faster.

From what I’m seeing across corp dev workflows—including some of the work we’re doing at CorpDev.ai—the biggest gains aren’t coming from replacing people. They’re coming from compressing timelines: faster diligence prep, cleaner data synthesis, more consistent analysis, and fewer manual handoffs.

A few practical thoughts for teams leaning in:
	•	Start with contained workflows where outputs are reviewable—reporting, reconciliation, diligence support, data normalization.
	•	Measure success in cycle time, consistency, and decision quality, not abstract “AI adoption.”
	•	Treat AI like a junior analyst: useful with structure, oversight, and clear expectations.
	•	Bring corporate development in early, whether that’s evaluating vendors, partnerships, or acquisition opportunities in AI-native tooling.

AI is no longer just an efficiency layer. It’s becoming part of how finance and strategy teams actually operate. The real divide won’t be between “AI banks” and “non-AI banks,” but between teams that learned early and teams that waited.

Worth engaging now.

#AI #Banking #CorporateDevelopment #Finance #Automation

Robinhood Ventures Fund I (RVI) prices on Thursday.
It holds Databricks, Stripe, Revolut, Ramp, Airwallex, Oura, and Boom. All private. All companies that have absorbed billions in venture capital with no public listing in sight.
This is Robinhood’s corporate venture arm turning itself into a publicly traded product. CVC funds don’t go public — they take companies public. This one flipped the model.
ARK did something similar in 2022 with ARKVX. Destiny Tech100 listed on NYSE in 2024 and immediately traded at a 400% premium to its actual asset value — a good reminder that price and value can disconnect badly in these structures.
RVI has a few things going for it. Robinhood already has 24 million users on the platform. Goldman Sachs is running the book. The portfolio is tighter and more recognizable than anything that’s come before it.
The more interesting question is whether funds like this start functioning as a real-time sentiment gauge for private market valuations — the closest thing retail investors have to a live price signal on companies that report nothing publicly.
Order book closes Wednesday. Trades Thursday under ticker RVI on the NYSE at $25 a share.
→ https://lnkd.in/gGYZbQew
Not investment advice.

Open article: Robinhood Ventures Fund I by robinhood.com

The hardest acquisition decisions are made when the data is least comforting.

In 2020, I was leading Barracuda’s acquisition of Fyde, a zero-trust network access company.

COVID had just hit.
Boards were asking a reasonable question:
Should we pause M&A?

M&A activity stalled across the market.
Uncertainty was everywhere.

Yet, we chose to move forward.

Not because risk disappeared.
Because the thesis strengthened.

Remote work did not weaken zero trust.
It accelerated it.

What was “nice to have” became essential overnight.
Fyde became foundational to Barracuda’s SASE strategy.

That experience shaped how I think about inflection points.

Today, I hear similar hesitation around AI security:
“Valuations are too high.”
“The technology is unproven.”
“Let’s wait for the market to mature.”

I heard the same arguments about cloud security in 2015.

The early acquirers built platforms.
The late acquirers paid materially more, or missed the window.

At RSA 2026, many of the next-gen AI security platforms will not be on stage.
They will be walking the floor, in meetings, building quietly.

If you are evaluating whether to build, buy, or partner in this cycle, I would value a perspective exchange in San Francisco.

#RSAConference #Cybersecurity #AI #MergersAndAcquisitions #M&A

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