CEO at OnPlan.co - a fast and flexible FP&A platform that makes financial reporting easy. Follow me for posts about FP&A, excel humor, startups and life in finance.

I am the Managing Partner of Fractional Buyers Group, where I focus on operations — sourcing deals, structuring acquisitions, and coordinating exits.

Our mission is simple but powerful: to help people who, for one reason or another, don’t have access to the significant equity that is tied up in their homes. Many of these properties are owned by multiple heirs or complicated by title issues that make it impossible for families to sell or access their value. We step in to resolve those barriers, unlock that trapped capital, and create paths to fair exits.

I work closely with our legal team to take each property from acquisition to clear title and eventual sale. For investors, this means access to a repeatable, secured, and real asset–backed strategy in Texas real estate.

If you’re interested in partnering with us or learning more about how we deliver secured returns, reach me directly at David@fractionalbuyersgroup.com.

David Greenbaum

LinkedIn Branding for tech founders and CFOs to grow revenue and authority | Posts to help you build a brand that gets attention & clients...

👋🏼 Hey, I'm Ali.

I'm a brand advisor and writer helping SaaS founders of high-growth B2B startups build powerful brands through un-ignorable content to grow influence and attract customers 10x faster.

I use the latest branding and content marketing strategies to help FP&A & FinOps founders & CFOs grow and get well known. 

The internet is loaded with content. So how will your brand and content stand out in the sea of sameness? That's where I jump in to help you stand out with my high-end branding and content strategies to accelerate your growth, reputation, and revenue.

I've written thousands of pieces of compelling and trustworthy content for tech founders, VCs, and SaaS companies. Hundreds of my written posts have gone viral on LinkedIn.

⚡I have spent the last 3 years helping VCs, founders and tech companies bring value in the digital world through branding strategies, content writing, and social selling to skyrocket their growth.

I have helped:

→ GPs scale their online brand to generate investment opportunities.
→ B2B SaaS companies with brand messaging, positioning, and content writing to attract customers. 
→ Founders generate $30 million in revenue while growing their LinkedIn following with 50 million+ views.

I'm highly skilled at personal branding, ghostwriting, and creating brand & content strategies. I believe learning never stops, so I'm always optimizing. 


📚 I have a master's in marketing & management, and on a personal level, I am someone who:

‣ Motivates people.
‣ Deals with empathy.
‣ Loves to solve problems.
‣ Focuses on bringing value.
‣ Always happy to consult with and navigate people.
‣ Love to lead an intentional life to leave a positive legacy behind.

Ali
alibilawal.com 

📧 hello@alibilawal.com

Ali Bilawal

Ford hired its first female CFO in 122 years. She didn't start her career in accounting. And they paid her $4.5 million as a signing bonus. Why?

Sherry House started her career as a product engineer at GM. 

She built things before she ever read a balance sheet.

Then she spent a decade in investment banking, venture capital, and private equity. Then Waymo, where she ran treasury, investor relations, and corporate finance for self-driving cars. Then Lucid Motors, where she was CFO and took the company public.

Most CFOs climb one ladder. 

She built a career across engineering, banking, and two of the biggest bets in automotive history.

Ford Motor Company didn't hire an accountant. 

They hired someone who understands what a car is before she opens the books. And they needed to.

Ford's EV division is expected to lose over $5 billion this year. 

The legacy auto business is profitable but shrinking. The EV side is burning cash with no clear path to breakeven. Every quarter the board has to decide how much longer they keep funding a bet that hasn't paid off yet.

That's not a spreadsheet problem.

That's a strategy problem.

And that's exactly why they went and found a CFO who started her career on the factory floor. Someone who can walk into a plant, understand what she's looking at, and then go back to the boardroom and explain why it matters financially.

The best CFOs I talk to all say the same thing.

The numbers are the easy part. 

Understanding what's behind them is what separates the ones who advise the CEO from the ones who just report to them.

Sherry House didn't climb the finance ladder.

She built her own.

P.S. AI CFO Office is now the #1 CFO focused newsletter on Substack. Beating out some of the most respected voices in the game, and it’s all thanks to you. Come hang out with us: cfooffice.io

I interview founders and CFOs, then write content that makes people stop scrolling | AI CFO Office (34K+ subscribers)

Disney's new CEO Josh D'Amaro, was a CFO. Then he left finance for operations when most CFOs who want the CEO job stay in finance. Why?

He started in finance at Gillette. Joined Disney in 1998. Worked his way up to CFO of consumer products. He moved into parks operations. Worked his way up through the division for years. Ran Disneyland. Ran Walt Disney World.

Then took over all of Disney Experiences during COVID when the parks were empty and 28,000 people had just been let go.

He rebuilt it into $36 billion a year in revenue. 

60% of Disney's profit comes from his division.

When they told him he was getting the CEO job, he got choked up. He was 10 years old when his family first visited Disneyland.

When Mattel signed a deal with Disney, he drove himself to their headquarters alone. He wanted to meet the people who actually design the toys. 

And that's what got him the job. 

Not the finance background or the board relationships.

He understood the customer because he spent 15 years standing next to them. Disney is spending $60 billion on parks over the next 10 years.

Every company is pivoting to AI. 

Disney is just building more rides. 

And they picked the former CFO turned operations guy to do it.

When Klarna said its AI chatbot can do the work of 700 customer service agents, every CFO said "that's the future." Then they lost $241 million and started rehiring humans. Why?

Revenue grew 38%. 

It looked like the playbook every company must follow. But customer service quality collapsed. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski admitted the savings weren't worth the damage.

The stock dropped 69% from its peak. 

Class action lawsuits followed. And here's what nobody is talking about. The employees who stayed saw their average compensation jump from $126,000 to $203,000. A 60% raise.

Revenue per employee tripled from $344,000 to $1.24 million. 

But so did the cost of keeping those people.

AI didn't reduce the people cost.

It concentrated it.

Fewer people means higher salaries and harder to replace.

The headcount drops. The comp budget doesn't. And if the quality drops with it, the stock pays the price.

Every CFO planning an AI transformation should run Klarna's numbers first.

Updated: clarified that the 700 figure refers to outsourced agents, not full-time employees. Thanks to Clare Nordstrom at Klarna for the correction

In 2013, Nintendo's CEO was failing and losing money. But not a single employee was laid off. Instead, the CEO cut his salary in half. Why?

His name was Satoru Iwata. 

He told his board that employees who fear losing their jobs can't build products that impress the world.

So he kept everyone. The full team stayed. They built the Nintendo Switch together. It sold 139 million units and became one of the most successful consoles ever made.

Iwata didn't live to see it. He passed away in 2015.

But his team delivered.

Now look at 2026.

Jack Dorsey is worth $4 billion. He just fired 4,000 people and called it an AI strategy. Block's stock surged 24% that week

Iwata bet on his people. 

Dorsey bet against theirs.

One built a product that defined a generation.

The other built a severance bill worth half a billion dollars.

TAKEAWAY

The market rewards CEOs who cut headcount. 

But that's not leadership. That's arithmetic.

Leadership is cutting your paycheck before you touch someone else's.

I spoke to an insider at Block who Jack Dorsey just fired. Everyone is calling this an AI story. It's not. The framing is wrong. Here's what nobody is saying:

Block's revenue is flat. Last quarter it actually shrank. Growth is gone and they don't know how to get it back. 

The Afterpay acquisition, $27 billion, has been written down to almost nothing.

So what do you do when you can't grow revenue?

You cut costs and call it a strategy.

35 of 38 analysts upgraded Block to buy. The company finally started optimizing for shareholders instead of users. When Wall Street cheers your layoffs, they're not betting on AI. They're betting on margin expansion. 

The real problem at Block was never AI.

It was how the company was run.

Nobody was accountable. 
Meetings led to more meetings. 
Nobody knew who made decisions. 
They overhired without any structure to hold it together.

No amount of AI fixes that.

Firing 40% of your people because they weren't using AI is like firing your kitchen staff because you bought a new oven.

The oven isn't the problem. The recipe is.

Now look at what the layoffs actually revealed.

Half the marketing team. Gone. 
Massive chunks of operations. Gone. 
Half the product and design teams. Gone.

TAKEAWAY

Jack Dorsey is betting that fear will drive AI adoption. 

That scarcity creates urgency. 

That the survivors will figure it out under pressure. 

Maybe. Over years. Maybe.

But the people who lean hardest into AI aren't the ones who are scared. They're the ones who got excited.

Fear drives compliance. 

Excitement drives innovation.

Atlassian fired 1,600 people and hired a $25 million CFO from LinkedIn in the same week. Its stock is down 84%. And they just spent $174 million on severance. Why would a CFO leave LinkedIn for this?

James Chuong spent 13 years at LinkedIn, helping it scale to $18 billion in revenue and a billion members.

Atlassian isn't hiring a finance manager. 

They want a wartime operator.

$600K base. $22 million in RSUs. $2 million signing bonus.

When a board pays $25 million for a CFO, they're not paying for what he did at his last job. They're paying for what they need him to survive at this one.

That's not a spreadsheet problem. 

That's a $25 million bet on one person's judgment.

P.S. RSUs are company shares given as compensation. They unlock over 3-4 years. If Chuong leaves in year one, he loses most of the $22 million. The golden handcuffs. Atlassian is paying $25 million to make sure he stays through the war.

Every white-collar job will be gone.

Your 2026 focus areas must be:

a) AI and Big Data.
b) Analytical thinking.
c) Creative thinking.

Microsoft's AI chief Mustafa Suleyman said AI can replace most white-collar work in 12 to 18 months.  He didn't say some tasks.  He said most white-collar work.

The World Economic Forum agrees. 

AI and Big Data is the #1 core skills of 2030. 
Followed by analytical thinking and creative thinking.

But here's what nobody is saying:

The jobs will disappear. The work won't. AI processes quarterly data in seconds. Models predict outcomes automatically. Insights flow without manual input.

This isn't about working harder.

It's about mastering the skills that matter:

1. AI and Big Data.
2. Analytical thinking.
3. Creative thinking.

Think about what that means for your role:

AI handles the data. You drive the decisions.

The accountant who only reconciles? Gone.  The marketer who only reports metrics? Gone.  The analyst who only builds spreadsheets? Gone.

But the accountant who thinks creatively about strategy? Irreplaceable.  The marketer who analyzes patterns and acts? Irreplaceable.  The analyst who pairs AI with real insight? Irreplaceable.

The future of white-collar work isn't a person replaced by AI.

It's a strategic thinker powered by AI.

So yes. The white-collar jobs will disappear.

But the white-collar people who adapt won't.

Long live the human doing the real thinking.

CFO Tech Content & LinkedIn growth | Cofounder finstory.ai | Head of Content at AI CFO Office

Julien Bek at Sequoia just published the most important essay in tech. Every CFO I know is ignoring it. The core thesis:

For every $1 spent on software, $6 is spent on services.

The next trillion-dollar company won't sell a tool. 

It will sell the work. 

Think about what that means for finance.

A company spends $10K a year on Quickbooks. It spends $120K on an accountant to close the books. The moment AI can just close the books, QuickBooks becomes irrelevant. So does the accountant.

And this isn't hypothetical.

The US has lost 340,000 accountants in five years. 

75% of CPAs are approaching retirement. The licensing pipeline is shrinking because starting salaries can't compete with tech or banking. So the supply of accountants is collapsing at the exact moment AI can do 80-90% of what they do. 

Sequoia calls this the shift from 'copilots' to 'autopilots.'

A copilot sells a tool to a professional. 

Think Harvey for lawyers.

Rogo for bankers. 

The human uses the tool and takes responsibility for the output. An autopilot sells the outcome directly to the company. No professional in the middle or  tool. Just the work done.

- IT services. 
- Accounting.
- Tax advisory. 
- Claims adjusting.
- Insurance brokerage. 

All of these are being rebuilt right now as autopilots.

TAKEAWAY

Everyone is debating whether AI kills jobs.

That's the wrong question.

AI doesn't kill jobs first. 

It kills the software those jobs depended on. 

The SaaSpocalypse isn't just about stock prices. It's about an entire generation of software companies that sold tools to professionals who are about to be replaced by the work itself.

taplio

The Battle

David Greenbaum

Ali Bilawal

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreAli Bilawal's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

David Greenbaum

Ali Bilawal

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Ali Bilawal's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreAli Bilawal's LinkedIn Performance