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A Humble Take on a Hall-of-Fame Career

Yext CFO Steve Cakebread\u2019s resume is extraordinary given the preeminent companies he\u2019s worked for (HP, Silicon Graphics, Autodesk, Salesforce.com, Pandora and Yext), the new technology categories he\u2019s helped bring to market, and the staggering growth those organizations posted under his corporate-finance leadership. Cakebread joined Salesforce as employee #67 when the $10 billion company was eking out a quaint $20 million annually. Despite these Lebron-esque achievements, Cakebread humbly peppers his discussion with plenty of phrases like \u201cI was fortunate to\u2026\u201d Luckily for us, he also runs through a compelling set of career-building keys, including: taking promotions to difficult roles that had remained unfilled for months \u201cbecause everyone else thought they would fail" at the job; amassing international experience (a decade in China and India); and learning how to explain innovative business models and entirely new product categories to analysts and other stakeholders. He also shares his personally fulfilling approach to team-building at Yext, a B2B geomarketing company that provides a software platform for streamlining all of an organization\u2019s online listings.