Latest news with #Rydoo
Finextra
a day ago
- Business
- Finextra
Rydoo buys accounts payable automation specialist Semine
Expense management provider Rydoo has acquired AI-powered accounts payable automation technology provider Semine. Financial terms were not disclosed. 0 Rydoo supports over a million users worldwide in automating expense management, helping finance teams gain real-time control over employees' spend. By adding Semine's fully automated AP workflows, the firm says it is building an end-to-end offering that delivers maximum efficiency, control, and strategic insight to its clients. The deal comes in the wake of Belguim-based Rydoo getting a new majority shareholder in the form of French PE firm Eurazeo and a push to expand its footprint in the US. Sebastien Marchon, CEO, Rydoo, says: 'This is a true convergence of visions, talents, and cultures, bringing us closer to our ambition of building a world-class platform for finance teams.'
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How Rydoo's CFO is navigating the post-startup growth process
This story was originally published on To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily newsletter. CFOs of startup and scale-up companies operate in a uniquely demanding environment where resource constraints, constant change and strategic ambiguity are the norm. Unlike CFOs at mature companies, startup finance leaders are often tasked with building the foundation of finance from the bottom up. For finance leaders operating here, the challenge isn't just doing more with less; it's doing it all while scaling quickly and navigating constantly evolving stakeholder expectations. At travel and expense management platform Rydoo, CFO Aidana Zhakupbekova is putting this balancing act into practice. In addition to leading finance, she oversees multiple parts of the company, highlighting how post-startup CFOs are often responsible for multiple critical functions outside traditional finance. Her job, like other CFOs in the post-startup space, requires not only technical acumen but also adaptability, prioritization and cross-functional leadership. CFO, Rydoo First CFO Position: 2022 Notable previous employers: Board of Innovation HousingAnywhere Rockwell Automation Converse This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. AIDANA ZHAKUPBEKOVA: This is not my first startup to scale-up experience, so I have a good sense of where we are and where we're headed. My first one was in 2018, and that was a true startup in its nature, and I helped build it into a scale-up. That is where we are now as well. We've grown, and we've proven a very good product-market fit. So that startup grind is a little bit different than it once was, but it's still there. I initially joined Rydoo to help the company exit into new investors, but also go through several growth stages that startups go through. Scaling from zero to five, from five to 15, 20, from 20 to 100, you name it. So we are on a journey of growth, and that's what's keeping me around right now. As we grow and I work in different areas of the business, it's more fun for me. FP&A and accounting are fun and great, and they have their perks, but with CFOs of scale-ups and startups, what you'll mostly find is that we rarely just do only finance at any point. And that is what I love about it. For me specifically, this involves a few different roles outside of finance. I also take care of IT with my teams. RevOps is a big part of my team; a third of my team is dedicated to RevOps. I collaborate with legal. So that's a completely different setup to maybe some who are just doing pure finance and accounting. Just before I started, they had plans for a new ERP. I started our transition into NetSuite, and now we are probably at the last leg of the migration. We have a couple of legal entities, and we did it in a bit of a phased approach rather than everything at once because of that. Since then, what happened is we started using new tools for accounts receivable and accounts payable. I've been looking into a new AI tool for FP&A, possibly in the next six to 12 months, but we have nothing major planned there yet. Most of the tooling that changed or was added was on the ramp-up side. We had a [customer relationship management software], and now we're using some additional things to kind of help go-to-market go faster, better and be more efficient. Now and then, especially when we go through busy periods, I do have sanity checks with my team. I need to make sure everybody's OK and doing well. But in theory, there are a couple of things. I'm lucky to have the team that I do. There is work that goes into building that team, and that is in my search for a specific type of person when I am hiring. I am not always looking for traditional accountants or even traditional finance people. I need a certain combination of things. I need people to be agile and strategic, even if they're junior. I need to understand where their priorities are just by talking to them. I need to know that my people are collaborative. Because if every single one of them just does a very narrow thing and just knows their five people in their clique, and doesn't understand how the business operates, it's not going to work. I think it's about priorities and delegation — CFOs cannot do everything. So we need to understand what the business needs are, like where the bigger pain points are and where the more strategic things are. Like, what are we tracking? I need good people so I can take the time to know my targets, know my plans and know my team knows them as well. I try to delegate the majority of almost every single function, just because I find that I cannot micromanage. And honestly, I don't want to. It's not in my nature. I don't believe that is the role of a CFO, and it's not in my nature to be a micromanager. If there was a lack of talent, time or tooling in a particular function before, I'll try to spend more time there just to set it up. But from that point on, I try to pretty much empower and mentor the ones who are leading the decision-making processes in a certain area. I have my one-on-ones with my team weekly, and larger team meetings weekly too. But anything that is day-to-day operations, I try to leave them be. Because we have enough check-ins and I don't want to take up my team's time with meetings. Because of the business needs, sometimes I do need to keep close track of certain things. For example, with RevOps, if there's a new tool that we're going to use that's going to empower sales, I'm going to probably spend more time making sure that it's set up properly, that the funnel analysis is happening, and the insights are translated to the business. So it's not just my team, but kind of the teams that we collaborate with and the main stakeholders. With accounting specifically, since we recently exited to a new investor, there's a whole lot of administrative work that goes with that, which is normal for our type of business. My head of accounting is a brilliant guy and also very diligent and communicative, but of course, I'm going to keep an extra eye on things to make sure things are on track. I will watch to make sure that the audit's going out on time, the covenants are met for the lenders and those types of things. And I think that's kind of normal, especially in a transition period of growth like we are at now.
