What does it take to lead finance when AI is changing how the work gets done? 

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In this episode of The CFO Playbook, David McClelland is joined by Michiel Boere, CFO at Remote. 

Remote helps companies hire, manage and pay people anywhere in the world. Michiel describes what it takes to run finance for a business that operates in almost every country. His team of around 150 people manages hundreds of bank accounts, dozens of audits every quarter and a constant flow of tax filings. He was Remote's first CFO, and he explains what that meant: clearing the backlog that fast growth leaves behind, and building the foundations that helped the company pass $300 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and become cash-flow positive. 

Michiel tells David how AI agents now handle much of the repetitive work in his team. "Bob" is a back-office bot that processes bank statements. "Tim," the Treasury Investment Manager, moves cash around the world efficiently. A supervisor agent checks their work, and humans still make the decisions. He also describes the culture shift that followed, as hesitant team members became enthusiastic adopters. 

Michiel also looks back on seven years at Uber, where he moved from marketing into finance. He became CFO of Uber Eats just before the pandemic and helped take it from burning around $1 billion a year in EBITDA to being EBITDA-positive. He shares what that period taught him about fast decision-making, knowing your unit economics in depth, and not relying too heavily on forecasts. He also explains why he thinks companies are more at risk of under-investing in AI than over-investing. 

In this episode, you'll learn: 

• What a first-time CFO must fix after a period of hyper-growth 
• How AI agents are automating treasury and back-office work, and where humans stay in the loop 
• Why finance has been slower than other functions to adopt AI, and the role auditors and regulators play 
• How to bring a team from AI hesitancy to AI enthusiasm 
• Lessons from turning Uber Eats from heavy losses to EBITDA-positive 
• Why understanding the unit P&L is essential to managing profitability country by country 
• How to make confident decisions with imperfect information, even when AI sounds certain 
• Why future budgets may combine headcount and tokens, and why AI ROI may soon be the wrong question 
• Why CFOs should watch frontier AI labs' pricing models and avoid being locked into one vendor 
• Why the long-term value lies in doubling down on the "hard things" your customers can't do themselves