Chitra Balasubramanian, CFO of CircleCI, joins Cheddar News to talk about how more companies can encourage and support women in tech. 

Between Bells

Importance of Women Leadership in Tech 

Welcome back everyone. To between Bell's Circle Ci is the leading continuous integration and continuous delivery platform that raised $315.5 million since 2011? The company is known for helping developers take their ideas to the next level? And joining us now to discuss the company's outlook and the importance of having women in leadership roles is Chitra bala Subramanian, chief financial officer at Circle Ci chitchat. Welcome, Thank you so much for joining us today. Last year Circle CI closed a $100 million series F financing, bringing its valuation to $1.7 billion. What are some of the lessons that you've learned from growing the company? Oh, so many, you know, I would say that, you know, one of the things specifically with, with respect to fundraising, as you mentioned that a minute ago is never expect such an easy thing as you know, fund, never expect fundraising to be easy. You know, I think at times we get caught up in hearing about for all the environments, this and the other. But really being able to focus on the key fundamentals of the business remains ever important. So, for example, for company's in earlier stages, really thinking about product market fit as you scale thinking about efficiency and growth becomes ever important. So focusing on those fundamentals has been something that I've really been paying attention to over the years of working at circle CI for companies that are looking to fundraise, do you have any tips for fundraising in a crowded market? I think it's all about focusing on your own business, Thinking about what separates yourself from the competition, What differentiates you as a company? What are the elements of uh you know that are unique to your culture? I think it can be a bit difficult to constantly think about what's going on around you, but focusing internally on how you provide value to customers, how you're able to tap into the large markets around you. I think it becomes ever important Now Circle Ci is announcing its adding an innovative Ai powered testing platform. Tell us a little bit more about that and how it's expected to help software developers. Yeah, so at Circle Ci, as you mentioned before, you know, our focus is really to help software development teams go from idea to production as quickly as humanly possible. We focus on helping the development teams to automate their build, test and deploy processes and ultimately help validate change in code wherever that may come from. And our recent acquisition of pony code does just that, it helps us to uh taken and and look at code from different places beyond where a team may focus on getting their code today helps us automate tests, which again is something so critical to deliver in quality code. And so pony code, you know, brings tremendous level of insight in the sort of Ai space and the team has done great things in helping developers be smarter in their day to day work, teacher, I want to shift gears here and talk about women in tech and women in leadership roles because there has been a concerted effort in conversation on going to get more women in both technology and in executive roles as well. So what tips do you have to actually accomplish this? Several? So I would say, you know, for those seeking roles, you can be in a variety of roles within technology, you know myself, I've always loved technology, but I've come at it from a finance angle, my subject matter expertise is finance, but I can apply that to many different challenges that companies are solving within the text here. So I think that's one thing to keep in mind is that there are roles for all sorts of different domain expertise. And then secondly, really thinking about, you know, what kind of company are you joining? Do you look at the career page and only seamen on the leadership sites or you know, does the company appear to value diversity from the outset? And I think that's an important uh thanks for for candidates to look look into. And then lastly, I always loved this idea of maintaining some level of comfort with that, which is uncomfortable, Be open to taking on positions that might seem stretched, that might seem like something you've not done before, because ultimately, I think we all surprise ourselves when we do take on more than what we're used to in previous roles. And that's certainly something that's helped me along the way, uh be able to grow my my skill set and uh confidence in taking on, you know, complicated tasks. No, I think I heard you mention something about cultivating an environment that seems like or that actually values all of your employees and doesn't seem like it in values men for example, more than women. Uh so you know, how can companies make sure that they are building a positive culture for all employees? Yeah, I think that it's really important to have, you know, mentorship opportunities to have uh forums where individuals at all levels in the organization can come together and you know, honestly speak about issues that they're they're dealing with so that the companies can help actually make progress towards solving some, you know, points of friction within the organization that employees may feel. So I do think it's very important for companies to embrace feedback, to be able to accept feedback and and make positive changes uh in that, in that regard, I want to talk about mentorship because you do a lot in the community to mentor young women, Why is this so important? And how useful is it when we talk about getting more women into tech and into more executive positions? Yeah, I think it's it's really important uh in in different different respects, I think as a woman leader, I think I have a certain level of understanding and awareness of some of the the unique challenges that folks have along this journey. And so I think coming at mentorship from that perspective becomes very, very powerful and very, very helpful to those who are on that similar journey. So I think number one that's that's important and I think too it's also helpful for others who are on that journey to see folks who have sort of, you know, chartered through those paths before it instills a level of confidence and um sort of a yeah, I can do it, I can do it as well and I think that that's really important to kind of join forces um and also be a leader who brings others up who supports folks along the way, who can champion internally for others. We certainly need more leaders like you and more women helping women Teacher, thank you so much for joining us. That's Chitra bala Subramanian, chief Financial Officer at Circle Ci.