Our Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Adam Uttley, was recently interviewed by Headstar Managing Director, James Roach for the Finance Seat Podcast.
You can catch the full interview “From Finance to Frontier Tech: Inside the CFO Role at a VC-Backed Engineering Business with Adam Uttley, CFO at Wayland Additive” on youtube, here, or find it on Spotify, here.
Prior to the interview James was escorted on a tour by our CEO Will Richardson. James mentions how impressed he was with the site during the discussion, as well as how his mind was blown by seeing some of the metal parts produced by the NeuBeam additive manufacturing (AM) process on the Calibur3 system. When you’re so deeply embedded in the AM world, day in and day out, it can become easy to forget the wonder and astonishment that the technology can induce for people that are remote from it.
When they sat down to talk, though, Adam and James fully turn their attention to the purpose of the interview and get into an interesting discussion about the issues around finance for a VC-backed start-up, noting that they go well beyond just speed. They discuss various priorities and pressure points and how they can be fundamentally different in an engineering and production start-up environment.
Adam, with a great deal of experience and a broad perspective was able to testify to the challenges of being a CFO for a deep tech engineering business. From scaling innovation to managing commercial and investor expectations, Adam shares his views about his role, and how, in his view, it stretches far beyond traditional finance.
“Understanding the dynamics of what is going to add value in the short, medium and long term; and [understanding] what the levers to pull are is really important.”
Adam also talks about the high volume of clever people that Wayland employs. Again, daily realities can sometimes make you blind to this, but honestly, you can’t develop and commercialise a technology like NeuBeam without some really, REALLY clever people! That’s just a fact.
So, for Adam, it all comes down to balancing innovation with commercial reality and keeping investors updated and happy, knowing when to push and when to pull back. A big part of his role is working closely with founders and leadership teams, providing support beyond just financial control and helping good people make good decisions.
Watch the full interview now.