We just hired Bill Zerella as our CFO. Bill has been part of $10B+ stories, and he thinks Stord is his biggest opportunity yet. He’s here to help build Stord into a scaled, compounding, and generational company in one of the largest markets in the world—commerce. Those close to me know I'm incredibly patient to find the perfect leader for Stord. It often comes from a non-obvious place. Too many founders obsess over industry experience. I find that to be a mistake that limits your candidate pool. Instead, I only hire against our problem set. Before we meet anyone, we get ridiculously focused on the problems this person is going to own. This is what the business looks like. This is what is going well vs wrong. This is what you will have to build. Then we go find people who have faced them, in any industry, using our networks, our investors, and all-out guerrilla warfare. That’s how we found Bill. Over 9 months, we met 40+ candidates. As is typical, we kept meeting people who were either “I am logistics” or “I am software.” At Stord, we believe the atoms and bits are converging, and we've focused on leaders who can navigate that complexity. Bill came from ACV Auctions, a used-car marketplace. At first glance, it looks strange. But when you get into it, he’d handled a marketplace, a fintech arm, a logistics business, inspection operations and acquisitions. Bill has synthesized the digital and physical world to reinvent an industry. And done it in a space where balance sheet and operational complexity mirror that of Stord's. While we were excited, we got more convicted as we dug deeper. Before ACV, he was CFO of Fitbit. He helped grow revenue from $300M to $2B+, and dealt with the inventory planning, retailer, and over-ordering challenges that our customers bring to Stord every day. Once a candidate is in pipe, my job is to validate fit. For a key hire, I pick a problem they’d own at Stord and ask them to walk me through a time they solved something like it. Often, people speak in generalities. So I ask them to go back to the second their CEO said “this is a problem,” and take me through it step by step. Who did they talk to first? Which partners did they pull in? What metrics changed? My biggest red flag is when details are missed. When someone can’t name the vendors they used, or metrics they tracked. I’m looking at whether the little things add up to someone who knows how to solve problems, or an ivory tower exec who has people do it for them. Now the funny part: Bill was the first person I met. Yet we still met 40+ after that. Every meeting pulled me back to him. During the process, Bill wrote me an excellent piece that said: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘤 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦. In that moment I knew he understood Stord. Welcome aboard, Bill.

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