Startup Social: Burt Podbere, CFO at CrowdStrike

Want to learn about financing — from scrappy startup, to more than a billion in equity and debt financing, to an IPO? The LaunchPad is thrilled to host an expert on navigating the capital continuum on Friday, October 8 at noon. Join us for an informal pizza lunch in the LaunchPad with Burt Podbere, Chief Financial Officer for CrowdStrike. Since joining the company, Podbere has been instrumental in establishing the company’s long-term financial management strategy and developing the company’s global expansion strategy.  Since joining CrowdStrike in 2015, he has helped secure approximately $1 billion in equity financing through several funding rounds, including the company’s 2019 IPO, and approximately $1.5 billion in secured and unsecured debt.

CrowdStrike is a leading cybersecurity company protecting customers from all cyber threats by leveraging its Security Cloud to stop breaches. From its inception in 2011, driven by George Kurtz’s vision, CrowdStrike was created as a different kind of cybersecurity company. Cloud-native, CrowdStrike immediately brought a threat perspective, effectiveness, scalability, and flexibility never seen before in the industry – seamlessly aligning people, technology, and processes. The CrowdStrike Falcon platform has revolutionized enterprise security for the cloud era. Its single lightweight-agent architecture leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and offers real-time protection and visibility across the enterprise, preventing attacks on endpoints and workloads on or off the network.

Before joining CrowdStrike, Podbere has worked in Canada, Europe, and the U.S., garnering extensive knowledge of domestic and international finance, SaaS businesses, and international operations.  He was previously, CFO, OpenDNS, Inc. and CFO, Net Optics, Inc.  He is a graduate of McGill University.

Podbere will also be joining us October 8 as a distinguished judge for ‘Cuse Tank as part of Family Weekend.

This session is a must for any startup who wants to learn the art and science of scaling and financing growth.