Key Takeaways

  • Jon Apter took a 75% pay cut when leaving Evercore's middle-market private equity practice to become CFO of Accordion when it was a 12-person startup.
  • Apter made his first key hire a controller rather than a VP of FP&A, intentionally offsetting his own financial modeling background with core accounting muscle.
  • Stepping into a portfolio business with private equity aggression creates instant cultural friction, which Apter terms corporate "organ rejection."
  • Devin Mathews observes that finance leaders who excel in early tactical firefighting often hit a ceiling because they fail to transition into strategic business partners as scale increases.

The Controller-First Rule for Ex-Investors

When deal professionals cross over to the operating side, they default to their strengths. They build dynamic forecasting models, map out bolt-on acquisition criteria, and analyze unit economics. They assume accounting will sort itself out.

That assumption breaks companies. Apter recognized that his background at Evercore gave him strategic vision and deal discipline, but zero technical accounting depth. Instead of hiring an FP&A team to run scenario models, he hired a controller immediately.

As Apter explains: “That's right. And that's why the first hire I made was not a VP of FPNA. It was get a good controller in the seat. Right. I realized those were not my skills. I needed to bring on someone who matched up with my weaknesses.”

A sponsor-backed finance department cannot execute a high-velocity M&A playbook or prepare for an exit without clean books. When an ex-investor steps into the CFO seat, basic reconciliation errors and delayed month-end closes will destroy their credibility with lenders and boards faster than a flawed growth model.

Avoiding Corporate Organ Rejection

Investment banking and private equity instill intense work ethic and financial hygiene. Yet those same traits often backfire when dropped into an operating environment with non-financial staff.

Deal professionals operate in sprint cycles. They are used to demanding immediate analysis and expecting instant execution. In an operating company, that posture alienates staff. Apter notes: “Anyone who's making the jump from the high-powered private equity industry into a corporate environment really needs to assess what is the kind of corporate environment that they are looking for.” He adds: “You also can't come in guns blazing wanting to change everything out of the gate because there will be organ rejection.”

Winning in the seat requires building trust through early operational quick wins rather than issuing top-down mandates. Finance leaders must shed the mentality of an external auditor or detached analyst. Apter points out: “A lot of CFOs who are effectively glorified controllers or maybe a VP of finance tend to think of their jobs as either bean counters or Excel crunchers that could sit in a corner desk and not interact with the business.”

As portfolio businesses scale toward an exit, the required CFO profile changes. Mathews highlights the structural tension: “As the business scales, the challenge is they're too tactical and not strategic enough as the business gets to the scale that you're in right now.” Operators who cannot balance ground-level operational hygiene with high-level capital allocation eventually get replaced.

Why It Matters

Private equity sponsors are under pressure to professionalize middle-market platforms early to support compressed hold periods and complex M&A integrations. Apter's trajectory shows that placing investment talent into portfolio operations only succeeds when firms pair transaction acumen with accounting mechanics from day one. Sponsors who treat the CFO seat as an analytical perch rather than an operational engine face quiet execution failures across their portfolio.