120VC’s Solutions for the Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
From Budget Cop to Internal Investment PartnerAs a CFO, your job is not to say no. Your job is to make sure the company is making the right bets.
Yet in most organizations, Finance is positioned too late in the game.
You’re handed half-baked business cases.
Asked to approve funding for initiatives you didn’t help shape.
Expected to protect capital after the damage is already done.
That’s not financial leadership. That’s cleanup duty.
The Real Problem: Finance Is Brought in After the Decision
Most Finance teams are trained to police spend, not lead investment.
You see it every day:
- Initiatives funded on optimism instead of logic
- Initiatives funded on optimism instead of logic
- Assumptions built to pass approval, not deliver return
- Finance reviewing business cases they didn’t help build
- Millions spent before anyone is accountable for results
- Post-mortems instead of disciplined upfront investment decisions
Finance shows up at the end of the process and is judged on how well it catches mistakes.
That’s what happens when Finance is treated like a cost center.
Why “Finance Transformation” Usually Misses the Mark
Most finance transformations focus on visibility, not value.
- Better dashboards.
- Faster closes.
- More sophisticated forecasting models.
All useful. None of them change how investment decisions are made.
They tell you where the money went, not whether it should have gone there at all.
So Finance stays reactive, while capital keeps leaking into low-return work.
The Shift:
Finance as an Internal Investment Firm
High-performing organizations treat Finance like Goldman Sachs inside the company.
Not as an approval gate. As a partner in value creation.
The role of Finance shifts from: Approving spend → Shaping profitable investments
At 120VC, we help CFOs install this shift in how the business actually operates.
Finance partners with leaders before funding decisions are made. Business cases are co-developed, not audited after the fact. Every initiative is treated like an investment expected to return value.
Measured against one standard: Does this measurably improve customer satisfaction, team member satisfaction, and profitability. None at the expense of the others.
If it doesn’t, it doesn’t get funded.
What Changes When Finance Leads
When Finance operates as an internal investment partner:
- Business cases get stronger before capital is deployed
- Low-value initiatives die early, quietly, and rationally
- Capital flows to work that actually drives return
- Execution improves because assumptions are real
- Finance earns trust by enabling growth, not blocking it
- The organization stops confusing spend with investment.
How 120VC Helps CFOs
Enterprise Transformation – Kill the Cost Center™
We help CFOs eliminate the cost center mindset across HR, IT, Finance, and the PMO.
Finance stops being the last stop for approvals and becomes the first partner in shaping profitable work.
This is where the investor mindset becomes operational.
Execution Leadership as a Managed Service - Kill the PMO
We transform the project portfolio into a true investment portfolio.
Every project is rationalized before funding. Every dollar is tied to measurable return. Finance gains real-time visibility into ROI, not just spend.
This is Finance operating like Goldman Sachs, not a compliance function.
Leadership Team Transformation Coaching
Finance cannot enforce discipline alone.
We coach senior leaders to think and act like investors:
- Challenge assumptions early
- Kill low-value work without politics
- Commit only to what can return value
The system enforces capital discipline so Finance doesn’t have to.
This is for CFOs who:
- Are tired of approving work they don’t believe in
- Are frustrated by investment decisions made without rigor
- Want Finance to lead value creation, not just protect margin
- Believe capital discipline is leadership
If you’re accountable for where the money goes, this work is yours.
The Results
CFOs work with 120VC to stop funding failure and start funding growth.
The numbers finally reflect reality.
Start With Clarity
If you’re ready to stop approving spend and start shaping profitable investments: Begin with a confidential executive briefing.
We’ll show you where capital is leaking and how execution leadership fixes it.
Stop funding failure.
Install execution leadership.
Make ROI the expectation.
STOP FUNDING FAILURE
Most companies don’t have a performance problem. They have a cost center mindset.
Stop Funding Failure is a practical guide to identifying where value is leaking inside HR, IT, Finance, and the PMO and how execution leadership turns those functions into growth engines.
Inside the guide, you’ll learn:
- Why cost centers persist even in “high-performing” companies
- How leadership theater disguises execution failure
- The Three-Pillar standard for evaluating every initiative
- What it actually takes to make internal teams earn ROI
No frameworks to memorize. No transformation fluff. Just a clear way to see what’s broken and how to fix it.