In this episode of CFI Member Spotlight on FinPod, we sit down with David Hyland, a finance leader with a background in establishing processes, systems, and controls for management teams of tech startups.

David shares his career journey from traditional accounting to leading finance functions in startups like Air Garage, a company revolutionizing the parking industry with a full-stack software management service.

David highlights his experiences in building finance functions from scratch, emphasizing the importance of being able to adapt and excel in diverse industries. He also shares his continuous learning journey through CFI’s FMVA program and other certifications, underscoring his commitment to professional growth. Tune in to hear a unique personal account of navigating the evolving world of finance in tech.

Transcript

Asim (00:12)
Asim Khan and I’m delighted to be joined today by one of our members, Mr. David Holland. David, yes. Well, it’s an absolute pleasure. Welcome to the podcast. Why don’t you, if you could please introduce yourself, tell us number one, where you are. It’s always interesting. We’re a global company. People like to know where our various members are. And what are you doing at the moment? What exciting thing are you up to?

David Hyland (00:18)
Hey, hey, Asim. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah. Yeah, great. Again, thanks for having me on. I’ve been a member and a fan of what CFI does now for a long time. So it’s a pleasure to be here. I’m based in Ireland. I usually leave the description at that because nobody knows where in Ireland anywhere is. We’re about two hours from Dublin, so pretty much the Midlands. And for the last couple of years, I’ve kind of spent my career working in and, in many cases, leading the finance function of technology startups in that kind of seed to Series B stage.

In most roles, I’ve been the first finance hire and ultimately responsible for building out the formal finance function. So, putting in place processes, systems, controls, and giving guidance to the management team that hadn’t really been there before. I currently work at and I lead the finance function at an amazing company called Air Garage. We’re headquartered in San Francisco, but we have employees all across the US and some internationally as well.

Asim (01:30)
And what does Air Garage do?

David Hyland (01:32)
Yeah, so we currently manage about 54,000 parking spaces for about 250 properties plus across 42 states over the US. Parking can kind of feel like this almost laughably old fashioned industry. Some lots still have an attendant to collect fees and check for valid tickets. But even when the parking lot owner tries to modernize, say they use an app, for example, or a credit card machine to take payment, they still have to deal with a whole array of providers to manage the hardware, the payment processing and marketing.

And it’s all done separately as well. So I suppose that’s where we come in. We work with parking real estate owners by offering a full stack software management service. We handle everything from installing signage to collecting payments, providing the enforcement and giving the owners full like transparent access to their data. So we can work together to fully optimize their assets value. In a nutshell, kind of in a summary, we basically help property owners maximize their revenue and ultimately their bottom line net operating income from their…

parking assets.

Asim (02:33)
And what, that’s an interesting concept, it’s intriguing. So, what stage of its financial life is Air Garage in?

David Hyland (02:41)
Air Garage is a Series A company. We raised a Series A a couple of years back. And I suppose at that stage, we were a much more modern company. We continued to kind of invest in growth in kind of the team and in the product since then. So we’ll probably be coming up on a Series B in the next wee while. And we’ve made some significant progress since the Series A a couple of years.

Asim (03:03)
That’s wonderful. And so that’s where you are now. There’s a story in here somewhere. There’s a journey. So if you could give us the back story there and tell us kind of where, you know, how’d you find us? Where does CFI fit in and how did it figure into the journey?

David Hyland (03:23)
Yeah, like I can, my background was from a real kind of traditional accounting background. I was really well covered across kind of the core responsibilities such as bookkeeping, internal controls, compliance. But a few years back, I realized that my skills and expertise were really lacking when I went to take the numbers and the analysis to the next stage. I’d been searching for something in Ireland for something like kind of a course or a program in the kind of financial analysis, FP&A kind of in the modeling space

but I hadn’t really been able to find anything of interest or value. So that’s when I came across CFI after spending some time researching how others had benefited and learned on the platform through YouTube or Reddit and only seeing positive reviews I signed up. The designation which was most relevant to my interests and needs was the FMVA, the Financial Modelling and Valuation Analyst Program. And yeah, through the FMVA certification, I learned the kind of vital financial analysis skills,

build effective financial models to evaluate decisions, budgeting, forecasting, advanced Excel skills, and overall kind of massively improve my knowledge and skills across accounting and finance. Like one thing that I realized really early on was how reliant on the mouse I was in Excel and getting used to things taking twice as long as they do, moving over now to obviously using keyboard shortcuts and…

Asim (04:38)
Right.

David Hyland (04:47)
focusing kind of on only keyboard use, which is something that CFI really pushes students to learn. Otherwise, the really kind of flexible online format, which was what really drew me to CFI as well. That idea that you could learn at your own pace in the evenings, after work or on the weekends. The learning interface was really easy to use, really appealing. I love the mid-chapter quizzes, the fact that you’re quizzed on what you learned over the last 30 minutes.

Templates, I still use most of those templates in my day-to-day jobs and any tasks that come up. And the ending exams, it’s kind of a really great way of testing you over what you’ve learned over the course. For me, over the last while and over the last couple of years, CFI kind of kicked off a real kind of learning bug. And over the past couple of years, I’ve done a number of accounting and finance certification with other institutions as well.

I try to dedicate two hours or so every day. It doesn’t always happen, but I try to make time for some sort of outside work learning or some way that would benefit myself and my role in the long term. Recently, the new FP &A series, the CFI release, I covered that, which is led by Duncan, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. FP &A is kind of an area I’m glad that CFI has invested more time in

and resources into and the new courses are great.

Asim (06:13)
I was just going to ask you about that. So we rolled out a suite of seven courses and we’re still adding things onto it. How did you find them? Are you able to take it and directly apply it in your job?

David Hyland (06:27)
Yeah, and what was kind of lacking from what I found from Corfines Institute a little bit was those kind of in-depth FP &A courses and kind of really breaking down because a lot of the other models and everything were built in an annual view or even kind of a summation of a couple of years. The FP &A models are a lot different. You have to break them down into quarterly or monthly models in most cases. So that’s what I really enjoyed kind of.

breaking out each step of the process, be that the model design, revenue forecasting, even the visualizations and dashboards at the end. I use them daily and the kind of FP &A side, which is what would interest me mostly. Also, like back to kind of the larger FMVA program, three-statement financial modeling, cash flow forecasting, budgeting, headcount planning, Excel, all of those kind of topics and areas are what.

What would interest me the most?

Asim (07:25)
No, that’s terrific. And I want to maybe ask the question in a slightly different way. Have you always been with tech firms after your, I know you started out in traditional accounting and then you migrated to the tech area and have kind of been there the whole time?

David Hyland (07:40)
Yeah, tech companies for the last couple of years. Yeah. My current role, in summary, like what I do, I kind of oversee all aspects of the company’s financial activities and internal, external reporting. My role at the minute kind of covers pretty much everything top to bottom, accounting and finance, financial management, compliance, month end close, budgeting, ARAP, cash flow planning. But I’m very fortunate that my job is made a lot easier by the colleagues that I work with and all other company functions.

I work a lot with operations, data, sales, engineering, and they make the finance function a lot easier to manage, but also keep really lean as well.

Asim (08:18)
That’s wonderful. So it sounds like you’re in a great spot and I wish you all the best at Air Garage. So before we sign off, I’ve got to ask you for our viewers, can you give us some advice, maybe three pieces of advice, career advice I’m talking about. So what would they be? Must do’s or must not do’s.

David Hyland (08:40)
Yeah, the first one which kind of comes to mind would definitely be mentors. I’ve always, through the past couple of years, kind of always searched for, and really lucky, of two amazing mentors in my life. And we speak monthly once a month and kind of give them a catch-up of what I’m working on or something that might be coming up in the future and get their thoughts. And that’s helped kind of, I suppose, be a sounding board for preventing mistakes before they happen, but also kind of pushing me down the right path. So,

mentors, continuous learning, not just plugging CFI, but CFI is fantastic for that. Like you have a number of different certifications, you have a number of different courses, you could hop in and hop out of something at a particular time when it becomes useful. An example would be like valuation courses, not incredibly useful to me at the moment, but in the future, it’s easy to hop in and you can get up to speed pretty quick. So, that kind of continuous learning.

And third is that kind of networking, just being open to conversations. And it’s lovely and always great to meet other kind of people that work in similar roles to me, be that across the US or even internationally and what’s working for them, what’s not working for them. So the third would be networking as well.

Asim (09:52)
So I take it you’re active in our community.

David Hyland (09:55)
Yes, absolutely. Yeah, the member of the CFI platform and regularly use it, the LinkedIn groups, everything is fantastic. And it’s a great way of getting a quick answer to something. And someone might have done something or have experience that I don’t have. And it’s great to get their feedback.

Asim (10:11)
Excellent. Okay, David, so thank you so much for giving us your time today. It was a pleasure to learn more about you. You know, we are going to do more of these where we have face-to-faces with our members. And I’ve enjoyed this one tremendously. And I wish you all the best at Air Garage, you know. And, you know, when it goes public, I’ll be like, hey, check out David, you know.

David Hyland (10:37)
I had a good time too, Asim. Thanks very much. For anybody who might be interested in CFI or my experience with it or has any questions, I specifically did the FMVA program, but again, feel free to reach out. We can put my LinkedIn link in the show notes and david at airgarage .com, A -I -R -G -A -R -A -G-E .com. All one word is my email. So yeah, feel free to reach out. Again, just before we finish up, Asim, CFI has…

Asim (10:40)
Yeah, thank you.

David Hyland (11:06)
a huge number of members across a number of different industries. If there’s anybody that’s working in real estate or knows of someone who is that feel they would benefit from the services that we offer at Air Garage, again, feel free to reach out. We can link my LinkedIn contact details in the show notes.

Asim (11:21)
And that’s the company is airgarage .com and you are David at airgarage .com. Excellent. Okay. Thank you, David. Have a lovely day. Okay. Bye.

David Hyland (11:26)
Yeah, all in one word. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.