852: Thriving in the Deep End | Jonathan Carr, CFO, Armis

When Jonathan Carr first walked through the doors of the Stryker Inc. plant in Arroyo, Puerto Rico, the boyish newbie accountant no doubt turned the heads of a few managers.  

Having finished college only about 18 months earlier, Carr was now the accounting and finance “lead” for a major software implementation under way at the medical device manufacturer’s Puerto Rican plant.

To succeed in his new role, Carr would need to have local managers as well as senior IT executives walk him through the manufacturing plant’s transaction processes so that he could understand how the software’s promise of automation could be leveraged to streamline the plant’s accounting close cycle.

Looking back, Carr can see that it was his inexperience at the time that made the assignment so enriching to his early career.

“You have to find things that you have absolutely no idea how to do because it’s those things that will help you to grow exponentially,” remarks Carr, who credits his boss at the time, a Stryker divisional controller, for instilling a risk-taking career mindset.

Recalls Carr: “One of his biggest pieces of advice to me was to find opportunities that would either get me promoted or get me fired.”

After more than 5 years at Stryker, Carr began to think about finance career opportunities inside high tech, a sector widely populated by growth companies that could help him to move beyond manufacturing’s hyperfocus on cost accounting.

The SaaS software company Survey Monkey soon captured Carr’s attention.  

“At the time, Survey Monkey’s FP&A team wasn’t built out and the company was still at less than $100 million in revenue, so here was this opportunity to start thinking about how to take an organization that was growing organically and add strategic levers to it,” comments Carr, who would serve as head of FP&A not only at Survey Monkey but also at yet one other tech firm before stepping into the CFO office at Armis in 2020.

Asked about the “deep end of the pool”—or the Stryker plant that he had entered with only 18 months of experience—Carr tell us: “These are the types of opportunities that as a leader I think are so important to now provide to my own team.” –Jack Sweeney