CFO sees product management parallels with finance role

Kevin Hettrich started his journey to the CFO seat of battery maker QuantumScape working alongside the engineers as a product manager. He sees parallels between the two functions (more on that later).

For a CFO like Hettrich, who also worked in business operations before stepping into the role of finance chief in 2018, “it’s important to be self-aware,” he told CFO Brew. While Hettrich has had experience on the strategic side with investor interactions and annual operating plans, he’s brought in others to add depth to the accounting function, including a chief accounting officer.

QuantumScape is taking the next big step in its business, Hettrich said, and he’s readying the finance team to grow with it. The company is powering up plans for three industry sectors: electric vehicles, AI data centers, and aerospace and defense—combined, a very large addressable market. The company launched a pilot production line of its solid-state lithium-metal battery in February.

Hettrich discussed his nontraditional path to becoming a CFO, how product management resembles finance, and why QuantumScape is aiming for immediate scalability.

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What were your primary responsibilities in product management, and how did that background prepare you for a finance leadership role?

The job of product manager is, what is the sweet spot of your product that solves all four things at the same time: something your customers want to buy, that you can develop, that our [operations] team can make, that you have the cash to make the whole thing solve. I actually think of finance and product management as being two of the tension-clearing organizations in the company, where you’re always taking in new information from one of those four spots and then trying to tweak the whole in response to that. Intellectually, [it’s] very interesting because you’re almost like a mini CEO.

I think finance is the same thing [as product management because] it’s not putting the product at the center of all the tension—it’s putting your capital at all that tension. It’s like: What is the right amount to spend on which of the priorities? As you ingest new information from all those different angles, how do you move things around?

What did you do, then, to prepare to become the CFO?

I think it’s important to be self-aware where you have depth and where you don’t, and it’s a team sport. When I was building [the finance team] in the private-to-public transition [QuantumScape went public via a SPAC in November 2020], it was like, “Let me add in amazing depth on the accounting side.” Our chief accounting officer comes from a large semiconductor [manufacturer, Cypress Semiconductor], Agnes [Tan]. I think she walks on water. So specifically to complement. So she’s larger company, great accounting background. I’ve grown up with the company, [and] haven’t seen the next stage.

You mentioned your CAO has a background at a larger company. Is that reflective of the growth plan, knowing you would need more sophisticated financial infrastructure?

We set out 15 years ago to give the world significantly better batteries. Everything you probably use in your pocket, in your car, is a lithium ion battery…What we’re trying to do is to shift to the next chemistry. You only get these [opportunities] every many tens of decades; it’s a big deal to move to a lithium metal chemistry.

The application for batteries is in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year just in automotive. You add in data centers, you add in defense, [and] it’s one of the largest addressable markets that exists on the planet…So, we’ve built the company knowing that it was a high risk. Can we commercialize a very ambitious thing? Can we be the [tip] of the spear that commercializes this in a major application? We built it with that DNA the entire time: a top team, scalable systems, long-term customer relationships, strong balance sheet. Our ERP system went right to SAP. We want something that’s scalable, that’s global, that can work across multiple business models.

As you’re preparing for the next stage, what is your role?

I have three focus areas now…One of my tasks is to help educate investors. What’s the product-market fit, what’s the total market opportunity, and what are the next steps in these new markets? If you look internally, the two things I’m focused on [are], our financial systems are clean on SAP, cloud-hosted, integrated, as you’d think. As we’ve brought up the pilot line, the new focus is, can I merge purchasing with operations and finance? Let’s call it integrated business planning. To do that well, and to get the teams increasingly more detailed information that’s insightful and that’s actionable, that’s kind of a focus. And then tied to that, because I have IT [in my remit], is [the question of] where are the right places to use these new AI tools?