The pet food aisle is chaos. Margins are thin, shelves are crowded, and every DTC startup from 2020 is still fighting for air.

But Jinx? They’re quietly becoming one of the fastest-growing brands in the category.

Founded in 2020 by ex- Casper operators,

the company went from pure DTC → Walmart → Target → PetSmart → Amazon, and is now aiming for $500M in retail sales.

Enter Graeme Fleckney, their first-ever CFO, hired to build the machine behind that growth curve.

His playbook looks nothing like the old-school CPG model:

• short-cycle innovation

• trend-first product strategy

• omnichannel expansion at speed

• data-led merchandising with retailers

Jinx is basically running a pet food brand like a tech startup.

Debate: Is this the future for CPG CFOs (operate like a digital-native company) or is Jinx an outlier benefiting from pandemic-era tailwinds?

While everybody watched the Magnificent Seven flex their AI muscles, the quieter enterprise SaaS players (Box, Okta, Salesforce, Snowflake) showed up and beat expectations across the board.

Not because of pricing.

Not because of cost control.

But because they’re finally moving from AI features to AI agents that automate real workflows.

Their Q3 signals:

• AI agents embedded across enterprise software

• stronger retention where AI reduces switching friction

• early revenue attribution to agentic workflows

• more conservative, but steadier growth compared to hyperscalers

And Okta’s outlook?

A neat little micro-indicator of enterprise software health. Security spend stabilizing, seat expansion coming back, churn improving.

Debate: Are we entering the era where mid-tier SaaS becomes the real AI productivity engine for finance teams, or is this just a temporary “AI uplift” before the hype cools?

2025 made the imbalance painfully clear: Attackers are winning.

HackerOne’s CEO says the past year gave the advantage to the offense. Singulr AI’s CSO goes further: “The barriers to entry for being a bad guy have dropped substantially.”

Anything attackers can’t build, they can now rent.

Cheap, fast, pre-packaged AI tools that:

• write exploit code

• scrape and analyze targets

• automate phishing

• spin up fake identities

• launch “flood the zone” attack patterns

Meanwhile defenders are slowed down by governance, testing, procurement cycles, and regulatory friction.

The result: AI lets attackers move at the speed of improvisation.

Defenders are stuck moving at the speed of compliance.

Debate: Do CFOs need to start treating cybersecurity spend like insurance (mandatory and non-negotiable) rather than an IT line item?

Or are we overestimating how much AI actually shifts the battlefield?

JPMorgan’s latest survey shows 44 percent of APAC finance leaders expect a harder economic climate in 2026.

Not a slowdown, a grind.

Between China’s export overhang, uneven demand across the region, and shifting currency dynamics, CFOs are bracing for higher volatility and lower margin visibility.

The interesting part: APAC leaders are usually more optimistic than US or EU peers.

So a call like this carries weight.

Debate: Is APAC simply earlier to price in global weakness… or are US CFOs underestimating the next leg of the cycle?

The SEC is concerned about a new wave of highly leveraged ETFs gaining traction with risk-hungry retail investors.

These products amplify market moves (both directions) and are already popular among traders chasing volatility.

Regulators fear retail buyers don’t fully grasp the exposure, decay, or intraday risk baked into these products.

Should CFOs expect stricter ETF rules that spill over into corporate treasury strategies… or is this just the SEC trying to preempt another meme-stock-style blowup?

Marc Hamburg, Berkshire’s long-time CFO, is stepping down just as Warren Buffett prepares to exit as CEO at year-end.

This is one of the most significant leadership handovers in modern corporate finance.

New CFO, new CEO, new era for a company that has defined conservative capital allocation for decades.

The unanswered question: Does Berkshire stay Buffett-style cautious… or does the next team accelerate, modernize, and take more risk?

Is this a quiet reset of Berkshire’s financial philosophy, or just routine succession planning at the world’s most disciplined shop?

FASB released new interim and quarterly reporting rules, marking its 11th standards update of 2025. For context: full-year 2024 had only four.

This surge signals something deeper:

Policymakers want more transparency, faster updates, and stricter discipline across financial reporting.

More rules → more compliance cost → more risk of missteps.

Are we entering a new era of hyper-regulation for corporate reporting, or is FASB simply catching up after years of backlog?

Inflation didn’t worsen, it didn’t improve. It plateaued.

And oddly, that’s exactly what Fed watchers wanted to see.

Futures markets now give 89% odds of a rate cut on December 10.

Lower borrowing costs unlock delayed projects, soften refinancing risk, and ease capital planning.

But the plateau also means disinflation may be stalling.

Does it risk re-igniting price pressure just as the economy stabilizes?

The US Treasury and OECD are racing to secure a global minimum tax framework before year-end.

If they miss the window, the incoming administration’s opposition could freeze years of international negotiation

(leaving multinational tax strategies in limbo for 2026).

The stakes are enormous:

transfer pricing, cash repatriation, entity structures, tax credits, and cross-border incentives all hang in the balance.

Debate: Is a global minimum tax even workable at scale… or does geopolitical reality make a unified framework impossible?

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EY’s latest guidance to clients is blunt: The old talent model in finance is breaking.

AI adoption is forcing leaders to rethink their teams from the ground up.

Not “tech people in finance”, but finance operators who speak both accounting and AI fluently.

The roles emerging inside big firms:

• AI-enabled FP&A

• automation-first controllers

• tax analysts who can query models as easily as databases

• risk teams that understand both exposure and data architecture

The message: If teams don’t evolve, the workflows will outrun the workers.

And CFOs are feeling the pressure.

hire technologists who don’t know GAAP, or accountants who don’t know automation? Neither is enough anymore.

Debate: Is the future finance team a hybrid by necessity… or are we about to overcorrect and create roles that don’t actually map to real needs?

What started as a few US states requiring salary ranges has snowballed into a global reckoning.

Korn Ferry Academy says 65% of HR leaders expect “significant shifts” in rewards strategy over the next two years.

And the EU is going even further:

employers must publish salary bands and disclose their gender pay gap if they have 150+ employees.

This is not a cosmetic change. It forces CFOs to confront:

• pay inequities they haven’t modeled

• compensation structures that don’t scale

• internal compression problems

• potential employee backlash

• the cost of harmonizing salaries across regions

Transparency doesn’t just expose numbers, it exposes philosophy.

Debate: Some say transparency doesn't actually fix inequity; it creates new morale problems companies aren’t prepared to manage.

And what’s the true financial cost of a fully transparent compensation framework?