Wendell Laidley
About Wendell Laidley
As a Finance executive with over 25 years of experience, I have scaled renewable energy, enterprise SaaS, and consumer product companies through hyper-growth. By leveraging my background in technology equity research and investment banking, I have an intimate understanding of the operational and strategic finance requirements necessary to grow a business. ➤ My passion for the software industry began during my 10-year stint as a Wall Street equity research analyst. During that period, I gained a reputation as a thought leader in identifying emerging industry trends which resulted in repeatedly being voted to Institutional Investor magazine’s All-America equity research team. I was awarded more than 40 software industry corporate finance mandates and was directly involved in IPO and M&A transactions with a collective value of >$43 BB. ➤ My experience as a founder has provided me with firsthand knowledge of the challenges associated with scaling operations for high-growth businesses. More recently, as a corporate executive, I have partnered with executive teams to enhance financial planning, streamline sales forecasting, initiate operational analytics, implement treasury operations, introduce risk controls, and build out high caliber finance and biz ops teams. ➤ Having been directly involved in raising >$500 MM of growth equity capital and debt, I have an appreciation for the deliverables, expectations, and timeline associated with the process of attracting investments from leading VC, crossover growth and private equity investors. I have implemented the investor relations functions required for a privately-held company, made preparations for a public market listing (in the case of AppDynamics) and successfully executed an IPO (in the case of Life360). ➤ I thrive on addressing the challenges associated with scaling operations at high growth businesses and working with world-class teams to produce successful outcomes.