Lessons from the journey to IPO: Part 3 (with insight from Figma, Chime, and Once Upon a Farm)

Welcome back! Today we’ll be exploring more of the advice I received from finance leaders at Figma, Chime, and Once Upon a Farm.

To read part one, click here.

To read part two, here. 

5. Treat forecast accuracy as a public-company discipline

Before IPO, forecast accuracy is mainly an internal measure of finance team quality. After IPO, it becomes fundamental to the company’s credibility with the market.

Compare versions over time

Finance teams rely heavily on version-over-version comparisons. What did we believe at this point last quarter, what do we know now, and why did the view change?

Pigment’s versioning capabilities support this kind of analysis. It helps teams run internal retrospectives and gives investor relations a clearer view of forecast uncertainty when speaking with analysts.

Be careful with daily or intra-month forecasting

Some companies explored daily or bi-weekly pacing models to understand how the business was tracking against plan during the month or quarter. The view from experienced teams was that while this can be powerful, the organisation needs to know how to use the signals.

Without a clear framework, more frequent forecasting can create reactive decisions. Teams start over-responding to short-term data points rather than learning from patterns.

Instead, you want to be looking for systematic trends. For example: “We consistently underperform in the first three weeks of the quarter and overperform in the final week.

6. Understand how finance operations change after IPO

The IPO is not the finish line. It’s the start of a new operating rhythm.

Post-IPO, there is less flexibility, more structure, and less room for error. The finance calendar becomes more demanding, with monthly close, quarterly forecasting, earnings preparation, and external reporting all competing for attention.

Chime’s finance team noted that after IPO, the calendar becomes much more constrained. Earnings preparation creates intense sprint periods, which reduces the time available for internal improvement work such as data cleanup, model rebuilds, and system enhancements.

Plan for more FP&A capacity

Going public usually requires more FP&A capacity. Not because the nature of the work changes completely, but because the volume of deliverables increases and the tolerance for error decreases. 

Companies that staffed up before the IPO were better prepared than those that tried to hire during the process.

The profile of a strong post-IPO FP&A hire is also changing. Several teams said they now look for a mix of:

• Public company experience
• Comfort with AI tools
• Strong systems thinking
• Ability to work with data pipelines
• Coding or technical analytics skills

These capabilities used to sit mostly in data engineering or analytics departments. Increasingly, finance teams need at least some of that fluency in-house.

Use AI as an accelerator, not a replacement for judgment

AI came up often in the discussion, especially as finance teams look for ways to handle more work without endlessly adding headcount.

Teams described using Pigment’s AI agents for:

• First-pass variance commentary
• Formula explanations for business partners who are new to Pigment
• Initial analytical summaries that finance experts can then refine

The feedback was practical. AI-generated commentary is useful as a starting point, but it still needs expert review. The system can explain what changed, but it does not always know why it changed. That’s because the real context is often not in a transaction list - it’s in someone’s head, a customer conversation, or a decision made three weeks earlier.

7. A practical IPO readiness timeline

18 to 24 months out

Focus on the foundations.

• Audit source systems and data quality
• Identify gaps in master data governance
• Begin Pigment implementation with IPO-scale architecture in mind
• Identify the IPO quarterback
• Start assembling the cross-functional IPO team

12 to 18 months out

Start aligning the company around the story and the operating model.

• Define KPIs and the business narrative
• Explore metric definitions outside the planning system, then codify them in Pigment once stable
• Build interconnected models across revenue, headcount, opex, and P&L
• Establish versioning and snapshot discipline
• Begin a regular cross-functional working cadence

6 to 12 months out

Move into deeper IPO preparation.

• Engage bankers and begin S-1 narrative work
• Bring Finance into direct contact with bankers to avoid the IR relay problem
• Pressure-test metric definitions with legal
• Build the beat-and-raise model framework
• Implement access controls and begin documenting access reviews

3 to 6 months out

Lock down the numbers and stress-test the process.

• Finalise KPI definitions and historical data
• Validate models against auditor queries
• Run scenario analysis for pricing sensitivities, stock compensation impact, and macro risk
• Document and clean Pigment-to-ERP reconciliation

IPO month

Shift into execution mode.

• Freeze historical data
• Run the earnings preparation process for the first time
• Establish the post-IPO operating cadence across monthly close, quarterly forecast, and earnings prep
• Brief finance team members on public company disclosure requirements

Post-IPO

Keep improving the operating model.

• Implement version-over-version commentary and variance analysis
• Evaluate whether intra-period forecasting would improve decision-making
• Assess AI tooling for routine analytical acceleration
• Revisit headcount needs based on the new operating rhythm

In conclusion: Start earlier than you think

The IPO journey is one of the most demanding periods a finance organisation will face.

The companies that manage it best tend to do three things well. They invest in their data foundation early, they align the business around a clear story and a stable set of metrics, and they build planning systems that can absorb change without breaking.

The most consistent advice from the finance leaders in this discussion was simple: start earlier than you think you need to.

The 12 to 18 months before your IPO window are critical to get right - use them well.

To download the entire Journey to IPO series as an eBook, click here.