Promise Phelon

Promise Phelon, Growth Warrior Capital Managing Partner and 17-year Silicon Valley veteran, in conversation with Ken Chow, "wartime CFO" with 25 years of finance and operating chops. He's raised over $700M in private and public financing over his storied career. In this chat, we'll cover:

• How early stage decisions impact later stages
• Key watchouts as your startup scales
• How to think about valuations, including downrounds
• How to build (or fix!) your finance org

Who is Ken Chow? 

Kenton Chow

Kenton Chow joined FLG in 2015 and has nearly 25 years of CFO experience as both a CFO and COO of various private and public technology companies, including software, big data analytics, IoT, e-commerce, security, retail, biometrics, networking, and computer systems.

Kenton (Ken) adds value to companies by leveraging his experience and expertise in corporate and financial strategy, rapid growth and scalability, equity and debt financings, IPO, investor relations, SEC and financial reporting, mergers & acquisitions, operations, IT systems infrastructure, sales ops, restructurings, strategic partnership development, customer support, and international operations.

During his career, Ken has successfully raised over $700M in private and public financings and completed over $2.5B in M&A transactions, including leading the IPO of Cobalt Networks (NASDAQ: COBT), which was 30X oversubscribed, and its subsequent acquisition by Sun Microsystems for $2.0B.

Before joining FLG, Ken was the Chief Operating Officer at RetailNext, the leader in SaaS-based predictive retail analytics, focusing on financial, operational, partnerships aspects of the company.  During his tenure, revenue increased over 4x and Ken raised over $100M in financings, converted the company to a SaaS licensing strategy, while scaling the finance, operations, customer support, deployment and project management organizations.

Prior to RetailNext, Ken was the Chief Financial Officer at Wine.com, the largest e-commerce retailer of wine in the United States.  Ken also provided executive leadership as the Chief Financial Officer at Nominum (security software), Aurora Networks (optical networking, since acquired by Pace, Ltd), Azul Systems (enterprise computer systems), Catena Networks (telecom equipment, since acquired by Ciena), and Cobalt Networks (servers, acquired by Sun).

Ken currently sits on the Board of Directors of Modcam AM (IoT Visual Systems), Union & Webster (Marketing), and the Planet Bee Foundation (Non Profit) and was a member of the Leavey Business School Advisory Board at Santa Clara University (Education: 2000-2009).

Ken earned a B.S. in Commerce in Finance and a MBA, both from Santa Clara University, and is a CPA (Inactive) in California.