TL;DR
- Zach Blaine started at Expel as the first finance leader in 2019 and spent six years building deep cross-functional experience before stepping into the CFO role.
- His philosophy: listen first, ground everything in data, and volunteer for the hard stuff.
- He thinks a hot dog is a sandwich, prefers somersaulting out of rooms, and has a 10-week-old daughter who has officially replaced Machu Picchu as his primary adventure.
If you’ve been around Expel for a while, you already know Zach Blaine. He’s been here since late 2019, when he joined as the company’s first finance leader. What you might not know is everything that happened between then and now—because “finance guy” doesn’t quite capture what Zach has actually been doing.
Before Expel, Zach started in public accounting, auditing tech companies in the DC area, then made the jump to Mandiant (pre-FireEye acquisition, for the history buffs). It’s where he first crossed paths with expel’s founders, so when Yanek Korff, Chief Operating Officer (COO), reached out in 2019, Zach was in.
Over the next six years, he didn’t stay in one lane. He moved over to go-to-market and spent two years as Chief of Staff to the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). Now he’s the CFO—and the unconventional path is kind of the point.
“When you grow up on the finance side, you think you know how to run a business,” Zach told us. “But you really have to get over to that business function to understand the truth behind what the numbers suggest.”
The glutton for punishment theory of career development
We asked Zach what actually drives him to keep raising his hand for hard things. His answer was refreshingly self-aware. “I’m a serious glutton for punishment,” he said. “I just gravitate to the bigger challenges or opportunities of a business.”
What makes that work at Expel specifically, he said, is that the company actually lets you do it. When you raise your hand and volunteer for something outside your job description, there’s usually a role for you. That’s not true everywhere—but here it seems to be a feature, not an accident.
The skills that transfer across functions, according to Zach: listen well, stay curious, put your assumptions aside, and then back up what you heard with data. It sounds simple. It’s not. Most people stop at the listening part and start drawing conclusions before they’ve confirmed anything.
First 90 days as CFO
Zach isn’t very far into this role yet, so we weren’t going to ask him for a day-in-the-life breakdown. Instead we asked what he actually prioritized first.
The short version: he went back to first principles. He reviewed the company strategy, stress-tested the operating model, checked how resource allocation maps to the things expel is actually trying to do this year, and built out a few scenarios for how the business performs under different conditions. He also took a close look at cash management and runway.
“Most CFOs will tell you that,” he said—and he’s right. But the part that’s specific to Zach is that he also spent real time building relationships across the ELT with folks he didn’t already know as well. Having been here for six years and coming directly from go-to-market helped, but finance touches every part of the organization. That relationship work isn’t optional.
AI and the finance function
One area where Zach got genuinely animated: what AI is doing to the finance function. Traditionally, a finance team is constrained by headcount when it comes to scenario modeling. You can run a few analyses, pressure-test a couple of strategies, maybe explore one tangential idea if you have time.
AI changes that math.
“Instead of running a couple of scenarios to guide where we allocate money, you can now run dozens,” Zach said. “The cycle time required to explore these things—you can do it very, very quickly.”
He’s not just talking about it. His team is already moving in this direction. His job now, as he sees it, is to continue to encourage and shepherd that momentum.
Fun fact and a very important question (or two)
About 10 years ago, Zach took a sabbatical and backpacked across Southeast Asia and South America. He did the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. No job, no fixed itinerary. He describes it as giving him “a lot of really good perspective.”
Today, that perspective comes courtesy of a son who’s turning three in a few weeks and a 10-week-old daughter. The adventures are different now. “When I meet up with folks and people ask what I’m up to,” he said, “it’s bath time, changing diapers, reading.”
As a long-time Expletive, we asked Zach the quintessential very important question—is a hot dog a sandwich? “The answer is yes. It’s clearly a sandwich. It’s meat wrapped in two pieces of bread.” He’s a sriracha and pickle guy, for the record.
And then for the heck of it, we asked him a second question: Would you rather enter every room backwards or exit every room with a somersault?
Zach chose the somersault, and his logic was airtight. If you enter a room in a strange way, you have to spend the whole time knowing people saw it. If you somersault out, it’s over. You don’t have to see anyone’s reaction. “It’s sort of a flex. It’s a drop-the-mic move. You make your compelling point, and then you somersault out.”
We can’t argue with that.
