Main Responsibilities Of A Chief Financial Officer At Biomerica And Forge Optima
Gary's responsibilities as CFO include ensuring compliance with SEC regulations through reports like 10Ks and 10Qs, which inform shareholders and maintain internal controls, but more importantly, leveraging experience from the startup world "to eat what we call our own dog food" by helping navigate the business and commercialize new products. Gary's focus extends beyond traditional finance roles, aiming to "execute on the vision" and commercialize category-creating products.
Financial Reporting, Business Strategy, Commercialization, Compliance, Leadership
Advizer Information
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Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
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Gary Lu
CFO / NPO Founder
Biomerica and Forge Optima
UCLA
Economics
Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical, Nonprofit, Foundations & Grantmaking
Finance
Worked 20+ Hours in School, Greek Life Member
Video Highlights
1. Compliance with SEC regulations and ensuring accurate financial reporting (10-Ks and 10-Qs) for public companies is a key responsibility to maintain transparency and prevent financial misconduct.
2. A significant aspect of the CFO role involves utilizing business intelligence to guide strategic decision-making and navigate the company's overall direction.
3. Experience in startups, particularly in product development and commercialization, is highly valuable and applicable to the CFO role, especially when launching new products.
Transcript
What are the main responsibilities within your role?
It's pretty simple. Within the finance discipline, as a chief financial officer, particularly at a public company, there are many things we need to do. You may have heard of an annual report or a quarterly report; these are called 10Ks and 10Qs.
These reports are related to the SEC, which governs public companies and ensures there are no shenanigans. These are key responsibilities, to make sure we handle everything from, "Hey shareholders, this is what we've done." We ensure compliance and good internal controls.
Obviously, another component is much more important in my opinion: being able to help navigate the business and create business intelligence. This allows us to make really strong business decisions. I was very fortunate to be in the startup world, where we had to "eat our own dog food" – meaning if you make your own food, you have to eat it too.
I was fortunate to be involved at the startup level, working with product. We figured out how to launch and commercialize things. These elements also apply in my current job, as we are again trying to commercialize a new product.
While accounting, finance, HR, IT, investor relations, and SEC compliance are all part of it, more importantly, it's about executing on the vision and mission statement. In this particular case right now, our number one priority is to commercialize our category creator in food.