Cosmin Pitigoi started his first CFO job in March, but he doesn’t quite have the air of a rookie, having arrived at the post after 20 years at one of the highest-flying and most innovative growth companies in the technology sector.
Pitigoi, who had been senior vice president of global FP&A, operational finance and pricing for PayPal, took what could be viewed as a leap of faith in joining Flywire, another publicly held payments software company.
Flywire is a 15-year-old startup that likely will reach profitability this year. But it wasn’t an unusual step for Pitigoi, in the sense that many finance executives take their first CFO seat when moving from a larger company to a smaller one. PayPal’s 2023 net revenue was almost $29.8 billion, generating $4.25 billion in net income. Flywire took a $5.3 million loss on $403 million in revenue.
Pitigoi’s new employer derives about 70% of its business from the educational sector, and the rest from three other verticals: travel, heath care, and B2B. A key strength is the company’s functionality for transacting and reconciling large cross-border payments.
Pitigoi’s career with PayPal began in 2004 — hired by its then-subsidiary eBay, two years after PayPal acquired it — but he is no stranger to moving around. Born in Romania, he later attended high school and college in South Africa. Now, after two decades in Silicon Valley, he and his family have moved to Boston.
“Everyone had said I should be a CFO, and I always knew that was a goal of mine,” Pitigoi told CFO.com. “Flywire is very much in line with what I was hoping, especially around the impact you can make if you come from a strategic and operational-minded finance organization like I do.”
Cosmin Pitigoi
CFO, Flywire
First Corporate CFO Position: March 2024
Notable previous roles:
- SVP, Global FP&A, PayPal
- CFO, The Americas, PayPal
- Director of Investor Relations, eBay
- Finance Analyst, Barclay’s Global Investors
The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
DAVID McCANN: You’ve been a CFO for only about 100 days now. How’s it going so far? Did you feel well-prepared coming in?
COSMIN PITIGOI: It’s been great so far. This combination of great business and great team is hard to find. And it touches on a personal passion that connects with international students and international business capabilities. I’ve moved around quite a bit.
What I wanted to do, to be ready for that role, was to touch every part of the business while waiting for the right opportunity. I’ve seen the whole landscape of payments, cross-border [transactions], and the different components of how to grow a global business and scale it internally, from the perspective of each different unit and function.
I have an opportunity to make a huge impact as we look to scale to the next larger size. Building a global payments network is something you can’t do overnight.
Why do cross-border payments to educational institutions require a solution like Flywire?
PITIGOI: Universities deal with foreign exchange and different currencies coming in from international students and banks in different countries. They need to know the cost of receiving these payments and need to reconcile them into their back-end ERP and systems of record. It can be a very manual process, so we’re helping schools automate and reconcile these payments. They can focus on helping their students instead of worrying about how to convert FX.
“The way I see finance is that it’s the glue connecting everyone in the organization. I don’t think people realize that finance can play that role, where you bring everyone together and disseminate information.”
Cosmin Pitigoi
CFO, Flywire
You saw so much change during your time with PayPal, including when it separated from eBay in 2015. What was it like growing up at such a high-profile company at the forefront of important technological advancements?
PITIGOI: It was the best training ground. There were huge milestones. I was there at first to try to integrate eBay and PayPal, and [12 years] later I was there to separate them. I was there when we pivoted to mobile; eBay was one of the first iPhone apps, and I worked closely with the product team. I was there when we did the first [stock] buyback in Silicon Valley.
I spent a lot of time with every function, moving to a new one every 18 months or so. One of the things I care about is leaving a legacy. I tell that to many of my Gen Z folks. You go into a function, you learn it and you start to contribute. But before you leave that function, leave something there that is long-lasting. For example, when I was in the data function, I built a data platform that’s still used by PayPal today.
But the best thing I got out of my time with PayPal was the relationships I built over time — people I can reach out to and who reach out to me. Relationships are harder nowadays in the more virtual working environment, but it’s amazing how fast you get things done when you build relationships over decades.
You’re trying to build scale at Flywire, and growth is strong. But right now, it’s still a much smaller organization than where you came from. How does that play out in terms of your mindset?
PITIGOI: I have an opportunity to know more about the team and build those relationships much faster. It helps that the company has a deep culture of collaboration.
The way I see finance is that it’s the glue connecting everyone in the organization. I don’t think people realize that finance can play that role, where you bring everyone together and disseminate information. So, I think of it as a funnel up and down through the organization.
As a growing technology company, Flywire has quite a bit of younger talent. What is your take on developing young finance professionals?
PITIGOI: Staying 20 years at a company is not something most of those folks think about, but one thing I talk about is the benefit of the relationships you can build by staying in one place but moving around. If you move around to a bunch of different companies, you’re not going to get that same depth of relationships or knowledge of the business, and you’re not going to have the same impact.
“I think the future CFO is much deeper into understanding data and maybe even running data initiatives for the company, than as the strategic partner to the CEO.”
Cosmin Pitigoi
CFO, Flywire
You just started this job, but do you have a view as to the evolving role of the CFO today?
PITIGOI: The basic part of the role is being the true right hand to the CEO. The more complex part for me is the expectation that CFOs should be more data-savvy than perhaps they were in the past. I built a lot of the early machine learning forecasting models at PayPal before AI was cool. I think the future CFO is much deeper into understanding data and maybe even running data initiatives for the company, than as the strategic partner to the CEO.
I tell my [future CFO prospects] that if your business partner can take only one person into a room with them to make a decision, are you that person? That’s the test for me. You’d better be the one who understands the data and is in charge of bringing it all together, especially in an AI context. That’s why you’re in that room.
