Rewiring Finance: AI, ERP, and the Rise of the Executional CFO, with Nicolas Kopp (Rillet)
In this episode of The Growth-Minded CFO, hosts Alex Louisy and Lauren Pearl sit down with Nicolas Kopp, CEO and Founder of Rillet—a company with the ambitious goal of rebuilding the general ledger from the ground up with AI at its core. Fresh off a $25 million Series A led by Sequoia, Nicolas explains how finance is shifting from retrospective reporting to real-time business execution. From modular tech stacks to the future of junior talent, this episode sees us unpack what’s next for CFOs.
Disrupting a Risk-Averse Space: The Mindset Shift CFOs Need
Nicolas is candid about the challenges of building software for finance teams, and especially a new kind of ERP. “It’s a really hard task,” he says. “Every person that you meet will tell you you will fail. No chance. You’re gonna have to compete against Oracle.” But he argues that being an outsider to legacy systems is a strength, not a weakness.
So what makes a growth-minded CFO? And what makes a truly tech-enabled finance leader? According to Nicolas, it's someone who does the work and gets into the weeds with their vendors. “Get to know your software vendor extremely well. At a detailed level, do they understand accounting? Do they really understand my workflows?” He adds that the best buyers ask pointed questions—not just to assess the product, but to test the people behind it.
“Sometimes I have the courage by now to just ask, like, 'this is a really interesting question. This hasn't come up in many conversations. Why are you asking?' And then they literally say, 'oh, just kidding. I was just testing you'.”
Eating Their Own Dog Food
Rillet was its own first customer. “We built the first version of Rillet for ourselves,” Nicolas explains. That early dogfooding led to major insights:
“I'm still doing a lot of work in RIllet myself, and arguably people would say, okay, that's not a great use of a CEO's time. But like, hell it is.”
He notes that internal use helps the team iterate quickly. “I would send some sort of emotionally charged message to one of our engineers: 'We just released this feature. This doesn't really work that well.' Or like, 'We forgot this edge case.'”
From Monoliths to Modular: The Future of Finance Tech Stacks
The idea of a "headless ERP" is gaining traction, and Nicolas believes finance will follow a similar path to e-commerce:
“You can imagine a headless ERP that is really like the GL at its core... Instead of owning the whole end-to-end workflow, it empowers the marketplace around that.”
He envisions a future where external agents or tools can integrate seamlessly with a core GL—whether they're built by Rillet, partners, or the customer.
“You'll always need a place where the information flows back to, where you can trace it, where it came from, that you could trust.”
Defining the Executional CFO
To Nicolas, the CFO of the future won’t just oversee numbers—they’ll drive the business.
“The executional CFO... is really a person that has ideally the maze of systems that takes care of today's work and just thinks about how do we build the business. How do we move this forward?”
Instead of waiting to be looped in, the executional finance person is hands-on. “It's almost like they'll also be in charge of some of these initiatives. It's not just the advisor... It's like helping to run and be a core part.”
AI Adoption in the Real World
From coast to coast, Rillet has been hosting CFO dinners to gauge how finance leaders are actually using AI. The takeaway? Momentum is building fast. One VP of Finance, Nicolas recalls, “is building his own agents… to read out the PDF dump he gets every week... and pop it into a CSV to then upload into his GL.”
That kind of grassroots innovation is pushing companies to hire "finance engineers"—technical hires inside finance teams.
“There may be a future world in which... the tinkerer, the dreamer, innovator type of CFO may be weirdly successful.”
Looking Ahead: What Will Set the Best CFOs Apart?
As finance continues to evolve, Nicolas believes the winners will be the ones who understand both systems and people. He puts it simply: “Do the right thing. Care about your customer. Build an awesome product. Improve that product every day.”
For CFOs, the takeaway is clear: The job isn’t just about closing books anymore. It’s about opening doors—to faster insights, better tools, and smarter decisions. The executional CFO doesn’t just watch and report on the business. They help build it.
Full Episode
Rillet's vision for the future of finance is bold but grounded: a world where systems do the heavy lifting, and CFOs drive real-time business impact. From AI-native general ledgers to modular, headless ERPs, the landscape is shifting fast—and the executional CFO is leading the charge.
If you're ready to rethink how your finance team operates—or what your own role could become—don’t miss the full conversation.
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