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A little more than 13 years ago, when Nathan Feather joined PrimeRevenue\u2013an upstart supplier of supply chain financial services\u2013the 20-member enterprise was just signing up its first direct customers. \u201cWe were a complete finance function spanning a person and a half,\u201d explains Feather, who says that despite its sparse resources, finance was from time to time drawn into addressing legal, HR, and IT-related matters. This was what any C-suite executive might expect inside a start-up enterprise, but Feather is not your typical start-up CFO. Put another way: He\u2019s not a serial CFO\u2013the singular species that frequently arrives in the start-up\u2019s C-suite already eyeing a transaction.

For Feather, PrimeRevenue was an opportunity to perform an act of creation\u2013one in which the company\u2019s business functions, still in their infancy (or yet to be established), would rely in part on his judgment and ability to see into the company\u2019s future. \u201cWe built out the accounting and controllership side of the house first and then built out FP&A,\u201d says Feather, who frequently uses house-building metaphors when describing the evolution of the business.

As PrimeRevenue grew, Feather\u2019s appetite for learning all aspects of firm-building was once more revealed when he moved to Prague, where in addition to his finance leadership role, he took on that of general manager, Europe. \u201cI had had some experience in supporting sales and operations, but I had never led them, so this role really allowed me to see beyond finance,\u201d recalls Feather, who after 13 years of firm-building appears little eager to remove his lens from PrimeRevenue\u2019s future. \u2014Jack Sweeney