Cfo Thought Leader

When Drew Vollero arrived in the CFO office of Snap (formerly Snapchat) in 2015, the executives occupying the tech world’s traditional IPO talent bench no doubt raised a few eyebrows. Having spent the previous 25 years inside the corporate corridors of Mattel, Inc., and PepsiCo, Vollero had a resume chock-full of strategic planning initiatives that any finance leader would covet. Still, he could not be counted among the familiar CFO all-stars known for their routine rotation into IPO-minded tech companies. Of course, whatever buzz Vollero’s hiring may have stirred, Snap left no room for IPO skeptics, having earlier in 2015 hired Imran Khan, head of Internet investment banking at Credit Suisse, where he had recently led the IPO for Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. “Whenever we walked into a room together—on the road show or wherever—there were seven or eight people who knew Imran,” explains Vollero, who characterizes his pairing with Khan as “a one, two punch.” “The founders knew that I had experience in bui