How Rachel Glaser, CFO at Etsy, crafted her career path to perfection.

Rachel Glaser’s path to becoming CFO at Etsy is as unique as the products that the public company sells. But when Jeff Epstein, Operating Partner at Bessemer Ventures Partners and host of Path to Becoming a CFO, asked what the pivotal moment in her career was, her answer was one that anyone who’s struggled with work-life balance can relate to.

After her first child was born, Rachel planned to leave her position in FP&A at Disney for a while to stay at home. She says she was lucky to have an understanding boss who offered her a half-time position, telling her he figured he would get the work of a three-quarter time employee for a half-time salary. “I felt that was a really key moment because I otherwise might have left for a while and never been able to return.”

She emphasized that finding the right work-life balance is an individual thing and named several examples of people she knew who made different choices that worked for them. “Work-life balance is tough. It applies to all genders. You should feel good in your own skin no matter what path you take.”

From a psychology degree to FP&A.

Unlike many of our featured CFOs, Rachel didn’t study business or accounting. Instead, she majored in psychology at Berkeley, a decision that was partly the result of her parents, who are both psychotherapists. But she soon found her own niche. “I focused on organizational behavior. I really like the psychology of business.”

Rachel went on to study organizational behavior at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. While completing the degree, she took some finance courses to round out the quantitative side of her background. 

Right after business school, Rachel started as a financial analyst in TV animation at Disney. “I was going more for the company, not the finance side. I liked the brand, and I figured I could get a really good further education by working at a company that had such a wealth of talent to learn from.”

Rachel joined Disney at a pivotal time, about two years after Michael Eisner and Frank Wells were brought in to turn the company around. “I was really a whippersnapper learning at the feet of geniuses,” she joked. 

The breadth of the Disney organization gave her opportunities to move between business units and get exposure to a broad range of industries. She had the opportunity to have different functional roles, including operational and technological roles. 

“I was able to bootstrap myself to other parts of the company. I was able to figure out where I saw a promotional opportunity, and through the relationships I’d built, I was able to raise my hand and say I wanted to move.”

Some of her roles at Disney involved “the financial kicking of the tires” around questions like whether or not to build new attractions at the parks. Those responsible for the finance rigor, like Rachel, provided the checks and balances for those in charge of innovation. She talked about one key metric used in these kinds of decisions at Disney: theoretical hourly ride capacity. This measures how many rides people can get in one day, which correlates to their enjoyment of the park and the likelihood to return. 

After 20 years at Disney, Rachel went to Yahoo! in 2005 and experienced a completely different work culture. Unlike Disney’s relatively conservative hiring at the time, Yahoo! was scaling rapidly. “The reason they brought me in was to bring in some big-company process and experience that I had learned at the academy of Disney.”

Big changes at Etsy. 

When Rachel started as CFO at Etsy, the online global marketplace was experiencing some turbulence and pressure from activist investors — but that suited her just fine. “All my career, I’ve been attracted to creating order out of chaos, and I had done quite a few operational improvement projects in various roles I’d had.”

Rachel immediately focused on improving efficiency. “Why are costs increasing so much faster than top line? Why is top line decelerating? Why are margins contracting? That’s my bread and butter to get in and figure those things out.” To give a sense of the reorganization involved, she explained that when she started, the company had 800 initiatives on the go, which she soon helped narrow down to 40. “We separated the vital few from the worthwhile many and focused on the vital few.” 

The company developed a culture of being “metrics-driven and ROI-focused,” which she said continues today. Finance is also very involved in the company’s emphasis on A/B testing and experimentation. 

Those changes put Etsy in a good position to meet the unexpected challenges and opportunities of the pandemic. At the onset of the lockdowns, the company experienced slowing sales. Rachel recalled getting on the phone with investors and assuring them that the company’s business model — with no need to hold inventory or maintain warehouses — would help it survive. 

But then Etsy experienced a sudden and dramatic surge after the CDC reversed its initial stance on masks and recommended everyone wear one. “Our army of sellers, who know how to sew, rushed in to help.” Etsy helped sellers deal with a dramatic increase in sales, which saw some sellers jump from 200 orders a week to 20,000 orders a week.

Ingredients for a successful CFO. 

Rachel left Disney with a strong FP&A background but had to build on that with regard to investor relations and accounting functions. One secret to her success is her ability to “Stand on the shoulders of a very strong team.” She’s careful to always surround herself with talented people and respect their expertise.

“The most important person, particularly in a public company, is to have a very strong chief accounting officer. It’s super important to have people you can trust, you can lean on, and I’m the proverbial conductor of the orchestra.”

She also says that a lot of success in finance comes down to natural curiosity. 

“Even though I’m not an accountant, and I’m not a math-y person, I like to find out what the numbers tell us. I take data, analyze it, and make decisions from that. I like to keep digging deeper to know the answer.”

Watch the recorded talk.