Virpy Richter has had a career spanning four different countries and two different seats in the C-Suite, but it wasn’t until her most recent role as the CFO of Awin Global that things really clicked. “Although I always lived and worked in different countries, all the other companies were more like set up classical headquarters based in Germany,” she says. “This is the first company where we truly think globally and where we also come from a global mindset, which is very enriching.”
But with a global mindset comes a new host of challenges. Richter joins Jack McCullough for the most recent episode of Secrets of Rockstar CFOs to explore the strategic initiatives driving Awin’s global growth, how a scientist’s problem-solving mindset can shape financial leadership and why mindset can be more powerful than skillset.
Listen by clicking below. The Q&A, lightly trimmed and edited for clarity, follows.
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Listen to the podcast here
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I have an exciting guest. I know you’re going to love to hear from her. Virpy Richter is the CFO of Awin Global, and she is our first-ever guest from Germany. Virpy, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much, and thanks for having me.
Glad to do it. I have to admit, I wasn’t previously familiar with Awin. I guess I can be forgiven, but do you want to share the 10,000-foot view of the company?
Overview Of Awin Global
I’m more than happy to do that. As Awin, we are a global affiliate marketing platform. What we do is provide technical support, payment organization and a collaboration between our affiliates, which are on one hand publishers, and then on the other hand with our merchants, which we also call advertisers. We help them grow their business together.
How long have you been with the company?
It’s going to be five years in a couple of days, quite exciting.
Happy anniversary then. I did notice your background. You do have a history of longevity. You were with the company, and we’ll talk about it later, but you were with them for 15 years as I recall.
Yes, that’s true.
We’ll get into that, but first, I want to know a little bit about you. Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Berlin, Germany and I live there now. I moved around a little, but I’m back in Berlin, and I need to say, I love my home city.
You do have a bit of a complex accent, and I know you’ve lived in a bunch of places, including Russia, I believe. When you were growing up in Berlin, what was your first ever job?
I was tutoring, at the time, in Latin. Almost simultaneously, I started to sell ice cream.
A Latin tutor selling ice cream. That’s an interesting combination of jobs. It sounds like it’s two different jobs, not one.
In a way, yes. It also has been in different places, but those are quite interesting.
Is Latin being used very often in Germany? In America, if you have a medical background, you study Latin, but the average American doesn’t have a lot of useful Latin.
I’m a little older now. It has been quite a while since I went to school. A lot of schools still had this as a second language. We all started with English but then as a second language, there was still a lot of Latin around. Also, it’s a good fundamental to learn all the Roman languages, like Spanish, Italian or French. By now, it’s potentially reduced a little, but there are still quite some schools offering it.
I remember going to a Latin mass as a child, there was an English mass and a Latin mass. They’d always make me go to the Latin mass. I couldn’t understand a word that was being said. I said to myself, “What’s the point of this?” A different era for sure, but I noticed you studied applied sciences at the University of Berlin. When you were young, did you envision yourself becoming a scientist?
No, not really, but I felt it’s interesting to have different perspectives and also bring that into a more economic background. I always felt that it was a good way to understand a little more, as well the world of tech, while always having my focus as well. That’s something I learned throughout my studies, that I have more focus on economics than on the more, let’s say, informatic or tech world.
You didn’t necessarily want to be a scientist, but did you envision a career in the world of finance when you picked that as your field of study?
I guess a little later in my studies. When I started, no. I thought it’s more broad. It’s good to have different possibilities and also be open to it, but then in a lot of internships, I felt very quickly that analytics, looking at the business, and understanding it from a numbers perspective was more what was getting more my attention than other topics, and this is why I went more into that direction.
That makes a lot of sense. With hindsight, it’s probably a good choice. I don’t know that you would have envisioned it when you were 19 or 20 years old, but to me, the most important skill that CFOs talk about is their problem-solving ability. Who’s a better problem-solver than a scientist? That’s the essence of science is solving problems. Have you found that you developed some, I don’t know if intuition is the word, but some skills and a natural bend towards problem-solving that’s helped you in your role as a financial leader?
The Importance Of Problem-Solving Skills
Absolutely. I would get this idea of, “How can I solve a problem? How can I approach it? How can I identify what are the problems, the root causes?” That’s crucial. Reflecting back, interesting question, I feel potentially more through these different internships, which I did throughout my studies. I was indeed thrown at different problems.
At that time, you did not really grasp this fully, but in hindsight, I felt grateful for all these people around me who have thrown me on these different questions. I remember one of my first internships, I needed to review how our retail chain was choosing different locations to set up a store, and that was after my first semester of studies.
What did I know? It was like, “My gosh. How do I tackle this? What kind of procedure? How to approach it? How to talk to people?” These things were what shaped your thinking and gave you this idea. Until now, that’s something you could benefit from this idea of, as you mentioned, problem-solving, getting into the unknown and finding your way.
Those are some great observations. It’s just fascinating how the role of the CFO has evolved from a historian to a problem solver. I want to touch a little further on your career path because yours has been one of the most interesting of anyone that I’ve come across. Tell us a little bit, what are some of the key things you’ve learned along the way in your career that have prepared you for your current role? I know you’ve lived in multiple countries, so I’d love to touch about that. How many countries have you lived in?
I lived in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Russia in a way.
That counts. That’s three more than me.
I guess to review your question, it’s potentially a little on the different episodes or periods of my career. When I think back to my first job, that was the one where I also went to the Netherlands. I started as a portfolio manager, a typical career starting point for a CFO. After two years of a little trouble in Europe at the time and always coming out of this consultancy role, I felt very much that it was great at the age of 23 or 24 to I tell other people how to do it. I have no clue about doing it myself.
I needed to jump to the other side and learn my skill set from scratch. This is when I was given the opportunity to move to the Netherlands and lived there for two years as a commercial director. Obviously, that was quite a challenge because I was 27 at that time, I had to lead the team of 20 people, and a lot of them being much more experienced than I was. I guess that was the first lesson for me to question everything and stay pretty curious on things happening.
If I put this as the first step, then moving, as you mentioned earlier, to My Toys where I stayed overall 15 years. It’s a long period of time, but we started as a start-up. When I joined them, we were 20 people, something like 20 million in terms of revenue. When I left after 15 years, it jumped up to 2,000 people and 500 million. I was able to go from scratch. That was also the time when I moved to Russia and built the copycat model of My Choice in Russia and acted as a CEO for five years.
I did not live there permanently, but always jumping back and forth between my CFO in Germany and the CEO in Russia. I guess, as we built up everything from scratch there, it was very much about gathering the right people around you, identifying the right talents and together with them, bringing things forward. What was very important at that time for me was that people had the right mindset to drive things forward.
That’s fantastic and challenging. It’s funny. I chuckle a little bit. You’re delivering toys in Russia because I believe that some people believe that Santa Claus was Russian. Saint Nicholas. You were like Santa Claus in some ways, delivering toys to Russian children.
In a way, we have more time because their toys will only be bought after New Year’s Eve. It’s only coming traditionally on January 6.
I’m always curious, just about everybody I’ve interviewed who’s an executive had an important mentor or even multiple mentors along the way. I’m curious, are there any as you look back on your career path that have stood out and say, “Wow, that person made an impact?”
It would be my first boss at my very first job I had at Herlitz, the one where I just mentioned also moved to the Netherlands. She was the head of the FP&A department, the female leader at that time, which was rare at that time, one needs to say, at least in Germany. I was very inspired by her because coming within the FP&A Department, she was very analytically driven, and a very smart person, but at the same time, being very empathetic and a good role model the way how she was leading the team.
There were a lot of very good topics that I spotted and which I learned over time. Some things like little memories always coming up these days and I feel, “This is the way how she had done it.” It’s a good inspiration to just reflect on yourself. It’s quite nice. I just recently went to her birthday, and it’s nice to still be in touch. This has been now 25 years.
That’s fantastic that you’ve been able to keep in touch all those years. Now, since she made such an obvious impact on your career, do you serve as a mentor to any other young professionals?
Yes, and I enjoy this. I think it’s a great opportunity for an exchange. Also, on one hand, support and share your knowledge but also be challenged, to learn from a different perspective, specifically, from younger people, which I guess it’s an amazing opportunity. Yes, we have set this up as an Awin mentorship but we also do this in the broader Axel Springer group. As you know, Awin is part of Axel Springer. There are also cross-different assets and companies within the whole group, and I’m doing both because I enjoy this a lot.
You mentioned learning from the mentorship, and to me, that’s one of the underrated benefits of being a mentor. I have a reverse mentorship relationship where I’m a Baby Boomer and she’s from Gen Z. She’s taught me every bit as much as I’ve taught her. Probably more. There’s just much to learn and the world changes quickly who better to teach you than the recent college graduates entering the workforce? By the way, they can learn from me too.
That’s the perfect match. If you end up having a win-win situation then, that’s also super helpful.
My first one was my niece. As it turns out, we’re too close to have that type of mentor relationship. I’ve got a great one right now. It’s very productive. I’d love to chat with you a little about Awin. At the risk of the most obvious question, because it’s an exciting company, what is it that attracted you to the role?
First of all, it’s a digital business model. After I had been working in retail, always sitting as a CFO on inventory and all these different questions, it was very interesting to move into a completely digital business model. That was one very interesting part. The other interesting one was and I need to say, although I always lived and worked in different countries, all the other companies were more like set up classical headquarters based in Germany.
You always had this more headquarters thinking and then subsidiaries. This is the first company where we truly think globally and where we also come from a global mindset, which is very enriching because that gives you many more perspectives and a global mindset, which I love. On top of this, Awin as a company is very people-centric. Not that that was new to me. I experienced this in other companies before, but that was all very interesting. Speaking of the global footprint, I would say, specifically, we are very strong in Europe but the U.S. is a very important market to us. That was also very interesting for me because I haven’t been in touch so much with the U.S. market. Seeing as well the growth opportunity and things to move further into the U.S. was also something where I was very thrilled by.
Tell me a little about your team at Awin. How big of a team do you have?
It’s 110 people within the CFO.
That’s a sizable team. I didn’t realize it was quite that big. What’s the company culture like?
It’s an amazing company culture, but that’s not what you want to hear. You want to get a little more grip on it.
You can tell me how amazing it is.
A very good way to translate that is by our values. Our values, very nicely put, is ACT AWIN. Why is it ACT AWIN? It is because these single letters represent A for Accountability, C for Care and T for Trust to bring it to the ACT. Then, you have AWIN for Ambition, a Win-Win-Win mindset, Inclusivity and Nimble, which very vividly, let’s say, describe our current culture. Not our current one, but the one we always have lived in.
For me, the most important one is that on one hand, you feel like the ambition and the win-win piece, which is helping our partners and our customers to evolve their business on one hand, but also with a very relevant component in terms of trusting and caring for our people who are enabling all this success, and searching for new solutions for our partners. That’s a perfect combination for me.
It’s funny. That’s one of the more interesting answers I’ve gotten when I’ve asked about the company culture, but I’m waiting for the day for somebody to say, “God, it’s an awful place to work. I can’t wait to get out of here.”
That would be interesting to understand what you do about it.
It would be a fascinating conversation. I can’t imagine anyone, I don’t think it’s likely that any of my guests have deep down thought that, but even if they did, I think it’s probably the type of thing one keeps to themselves.
I assume you’re right, yes.
I want to ask you a little about your relationship with the CEO, Adam Ross, just because the way the CFO roles evolved is that’s probably the most important partnership across the C-Suite, if not the entire company, to the point some people I’ve been hearing the phrase that CFOs are almost the deputy CEO, and you function in that capacity. I’d love to explore that a little bit. What’s the dynamic between you and Adam? I believe he’s British and lives in England. I’m wondering, not that it’s all that far to you, but how that impacts things.
It’s interesting you say that. I guess sometimes there’s a slight difference between the cultural background between Germany and the UK because sometimes we Germans tend to be a little more direct, and my British colleagues seem to be a little more polite. That’s the interesting part. Different cultures also mingle together in the company, learning from each other and giving different perspectives.
To your question, Adam and I do have a very good relationship, a very trusted relationship, which for me is very important because first of all, you have to have honest conversations. About the company’s performance, about topics you’re spotting and about some challenges you think you need to discuss.
It’s on one hand on the company topics, and I love to be challenged but I also love to challenge. It’s a vice-versa, and because of that trust you can allow this to happen. It allows us to challenge each other. This is our relationship, but I would like to add as you’re saying, yes, there is always something between the CEO and the CFO.
What is important to me, and I feel we’re very living this at Awin, is it’s not only the CEO and CFO. We feel like as a board, there are four of us. Having this trusted relationship and having a very close collaboration we can also do this on an eye-to-eye level with all of us and discuss relevant business decisions or challenging topics, developing the strategy, etc., which I feel is how you want to work as a C-Suite.
That makes a lot of sense. Interestingly, you mentioned that the Germans were direct and the English were polite. I spoke at a conference a few years ago, and what’s interesting, it was right before COVID. A lot of speakers dropped out. I ended up speaking three different times at the conference, even though I was only scheduled to speak once.
I began to realize that the British found my communication is perhaps a little bit on the off-putting side, because if it enters my head, it’s coming out my mouth like a lot of Americans but, yes, they’re polite that they were probably appalled by the way I was acting even though to me, it was just normal behavior.
Yes, that’s the beauty of a global company. That’s the beauty of a different cultural perspective. Also, there is a lot you can learn from this, and review and reflect on your behavior and your way of putting things. As well as the way of thinking, which then hopefully should come to a much more diverse and much more enriched perspective.
That’s great. It sounds like you two have a fantastic partnership. I want to ask a little about Awin. Recently, you’ve achieved some significant growth in the affiliate marketing space. I’m curious, what are some of the strategic initiatives that have helped you achieve that growth, and what can we look forward to in the years ahead?
Indeed, we’re very happy about this success, and we have recently launched our new platform with tons of great new features for our customers to enable and to bring forward this idea of the partnership network. Not only supporting the classical affiliate marketing way as we did. The affiliate, advertisers and publishers together.
We also added new tech partners to help people grow their business and their partnerships. We also recently came up with a lot of, let’s say, the new features, which are promoted on a quality base. You can watch them on LinkedIn. You can also follow them on the seasonal releases where you do see a lot of these things being put forward.
Challenges Of Global Financial Management
I’m curious since you’re the CFO, what are some of the financial challenges and opportunities that you face? It’s interesting people who don’t work in rapidly growing companies, I think, underestimate it’s challenging to run a financial operation for a company that’s growing fast.
Yes, on one end, for many tech companies this is a question about scalability. How can you scale the business in a healthy, profitable way? That’s one of the challenges that we are also facing, where we are looking into different perspectives on one end. With more automation, how can we standardize our processes to make that much easier for our partners and for our customers to interact with streamlined processes and harmonize things, which can be supportive for our partners?
Although, that’s more in the back office, that helps all our partners because the easier the processes are, the easier it is for our partners to interact with them. That’s definitely on one hand. Speaking of a global company on the other hand from financial challenges, you have such a broad development of how different economies are also evolving.
You have one in the U.S., then, we go to the other end to Australia, where the economic outlook and predictions are not the same. Then you have core Europe. We also do have a different starting point where we have been recently pretty strong, as I mentioned earlier, in our European footprint. The U.S. is a very huge, relevant and important market for us. All these different views add another challenge from a global international perspective.
You mentioned technology, and it’s been an interesting evolution because historically, financial teams use technology. It was reduced costs, compliance and those sorts of things. The way you spoke about it, sounds like not only that technology is giving you an advantage with your customers and keeping ahead of the competition, but also that the finance team’s deeply involved in it. Is that fair to say?
Yes, I guess. As always, one could do even more than we could do right now. I would say, yes, we are. It’s an exciting time for all of our CFOs with the time of AI. What can you do? Where can you get the benefit out of this? A lot of this sounds very exciting, but then the next CFO question is, “What about my ROI?” “Does it make sense to go down this route?”
I feel like there is a lot of experimenting with this necessary. We recently spoke with the ChatFin guys. It’s like an idea of ChatGPT, but more specifically on the financial sector where they sit on top of all your financial data. Then, they give you the same easy-to-use functionality as ChatGPT to ask whatever question you feel you want to get out of your financial data.
The question is, do you already come up with the right use cases? It is because just asking random questions, which you might also get out of your ERP system, is not the one that is getting you the value. We need to start thinking differently and defining these use cases, and I think these are super exciting times to define what can help you and what’s worth the investment as well on certain of these initiatives. I need to say that I’m pretty happy to be in that specific role at the very moment because there are a lot of exciting things ahead of us to explore.
I’m curious, you mentioned that the team that you put together has quite a bit of pride. When you’re building a strong financial team, it’s crucial for any organization. What are the qualities you look for when you’re putting that team together? With 100 people, you’re going to have a lot of different skill sets and personalities and whatnot.
The first topic is I feel that I need the right mindset from people joining us. You need a skill set and you need certain education in financial topics depending on if you’re looking more into the FP&A section or more into the accounting, depending, on tax, or whatever. Even more important is to yet have people with the right mindset who want to be we talked about problem-solving earlier.
Someone ready to deep dive into a problem to come up with solutions, proposals, etc. I feel you could always help and support people if they need to learn a little more on certain specific skill sets or topics. Learning a mindset or attitude is much more difficult. If you have the right people around you with the right mindset, that’s so much easier. An ideal combination, you have both. You find someone who has a great skill set and brings all the right education and the right mindset but sometimes, as we all know, there is potentially the decision you need to make what’s more important. That’s one.
On the other hand, I enjoy working with diverse teams. I’m not speaking just about the gender component. It’s very much about different cultural backgrounds. It’s about having different thoughts if you think about specifically in finance. Someone more towards the risk, someone who’s more risk averse. As someone who’s doing my taxes, I would love to be more risk-averse. That makes sense. Someone doing my FP&A, VP, I would love him to be very much disruptive, challenging, everything and being a great business partner.
That brings already, if I look into my remit, very diverse thinking patterns, if that makes sense, from the different colleagues. That sometimes can be super challenging because these people are very demanding when they want to get in one room and you want to get to a conclusion. I feel that always brings us to better decisions and better outcomes. I’m more than happy to take the sometimes potentially little pain of challenging but for the greater good.
It makes sense, a diverse team. You want people, and you’re in a great position. You can get it from all over the world. You want every generation. Gen X can contribute a lot. Gen Z and Baby Boomers, they need to have a voice at the table. It sounds like you’ve got a great philosophy for bringing those voices together.
Yes, so far, it works pretty well.
I want to change the subject up a little bit, and I always like to ask people if they have a fun fact, an interesting hobby, or just something about them that might be surprising to people. Do you have a fun fact, Virpy?
I do. I asked some colleagues and some friends, to be fair, how would you describe me? The picture that I’m often getting is like this Energizer bunny. It originally had been an advertising campaign for the batteries, like the Duracell batteries. I don’t know if this is known in the U.S., but this bunny is funny, drumming all the time. This is why a lot of people in my professional, as well as in my private life, colleagues or friends are giving this feedback. They say, “You have a ton of energy, and this seems to never end.” That’s why they always come up with this Energizer bunny picture. I guess that might be a fun fact.
What’s interesting, Virpy, is that may be spread further than you know because when prepping for this call, I was talking to people on your comms teams. She shared it with me as well. Even the marketing folks know they get the Energizer Bunny. In the last job I had as a CFO, my nickname was Darth Vader. Somebody said I walked like Darth Vader.
It wasn’t that I was this evil force, but I just had a Darth Vader-type walk, and people would play the imperial march in their heads when they saw me walking toward them. That was the only time in my life I’d ever been compared to him, but it wouldn’t go away. You’re the CFO of a busy company. Do you have any secrets or advice for work-life balance?
I always think that it’s a very subjective question. Everyone is different and everyone defines this slightly differently for him or herself. From my perspective, what helps me a lot is that I enjoy listening to music on my way to work and on my way back, which could either be on my bike or in my convertible car, which I love, to get a little the idea of being outside.
It takes me an hour to go to work no matter if I take the car or the bike. It’s the moment per day, if I’m not working in a home office, where I get this. It slows time for me, which helps me to prep for the day when going or relaxing and letting go before you’re coming back into your family life. You know it’s busy. Your kids want your attention, and you need to get a little distance between the two.
I also do a lot of yoga, which I started eight or 10 years ago, which also gives me one hour escaping out of everything else and just focus. That’s something that helps me, but no matter what it is, the advice is very much everyone should find or define for him or herself, what helps me? That can be whatever. That can be sports, reading, running or cooking. This little escape where people have a moment just for themself to relax, I guess that’s very important.
That’s great advice. What music do you listen to?
That’s a huge variety. That can be from very much German rock to just the pop stuff, and it can be French chanson.
I’m a headbanger, and people are surprised to hear about me. It’s why I named this podcast the Secrets of Rockstar CFO.
Okay. I didn’t know that.
Yes, to most people, I’m mellow and they find out I’m into bands like Metallica and AC/DC. Do you know those bands? I don’t know if they’d be known in Germany.
Absolutely. I’m living close to an Olympic Stadium, a huge area where we used to have concerts, 80,000 people fitting in here. I remember my son was six years old, and there was an AC/DC concert. It was 15 years ago. He watched these 50 to 60-year-old people going to the concert. He looked at me and said, “Mom, I thought a concert is something for young people.” I said, “AC/DC is not only for young people. They have a wide range of people liking that music. This is why you see not only young people but also people in their 50s or 60s going to the concert.” That was always where I thought, “Kids’ perspective, they have a different one.”
That’s the definition of all changes the older we get. I’m 60 as of a few weeks ago, and I remember my parents when they were 60. I think of them the way I think of a 150-year-old now. They just seem ancient at the time, but here I am.
The Evolving Role Of The CFO
I’d love to get your perspective since you’ve had such an interesting career to this point, embraced technology, and done some globalization things. How do you see the role of the CFO evolving over the next several years?
Even more and more, it has already evolved a lot. I remember when I started working, we had a CFO at the time who was very much of the old-school type of guy. He was very much number-crunching. We were always a little, I would even say, afraid of him. When he called, “I need these numbers. Okay?” “Yes. Going to go deliver.” Very strict way of how it was handled.
Did we work together? I worked with that guy.
Evolving much more into what it is already in many modern companies, potentially not all, but I would consider every company, which would be interesting to me, where you have this much more, as you mentioned earlier, with the CFO being seen as a business partner for the C-Suite. I think that’s going to evolve even more into really challenging but also always in value-adding ways and not for the sake of just putting a finger in any difficult situation, but also coming with problem-solving.
Saying that, I see this is difficult. What can we do about it? Here are the initiatives and the ideas. I guess this could be even potentially more interesting for CFOs in classical education. Having a little more of these potential sales backgrounds to people to get a different perspective, not losing the strong foot on the numbers and the understanding of the business from a number perspective, but more understanding what are the challenges on the sales side.
Potentially even having a mandatory piece in working within sales to also understand what we usually need to challenge. How can we keep on with the margins? What are we doing on pricing? That could be something I could think of which could further evolve but in general, it’s very much in terms of adding or growing this role of a business partner to add value to whatever company you’re working for.
I think that’s an interesting perspective on it. The CFO is learning to do sales. I wonder if my readers might think the opposite might be true, that salespeople ought to do a rotation in finance to appreciate that as well.
Fair point.
That being said, I always love to get advice for the next generation of CFOs from our guests. What are the things they should be thinking of to land that first CFO job and then excel in it and flourish when they get it? Do you have any advice for the next-gen?
I guess the first thing that pops into my mind is, to stay curious. You are the next generation. You can ask questions, never take anything for granted and try to understand things. All this and stay curious. I know sometimes it might be hard to get this balance. You have someone still in this role or you have at least an environment where you have some legacy where it’s fair not to offboard anything. Find a way how one can combine relevant pieces out of the experience, being disruptive and challenging this from a new perspective.
Bring your ideas and then hopefully, combine this to a win-win where you do a little of a cherry-picking of doing the best out of both worlds and take that forward. I would feel adding to this, being self-reflective is something that is not only for the young generation. This is all for everyone. It always feels very helpful to do some self-reflection on your own and also be open to being challenged because sometimes we might not be as self-reflective on our own, but it’s quite helpful to have other people challenging you and take that seriously. Take feedback as a gift.
That’s the first time someone has mentioned being self-reflective as advice, I think that’s fantastic. Virpy, this has been a lot of fun and some great information for the readers. Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you very much, Jack.
