Bottom's up!
Scroll past the nitty gritty for an interview with the founders of Parade.
What is the job?
Head of Finance at Parade (NYC)
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Head of Finance
Why this is a great job
Backed by some of the top consumer VCs, Parade’s was one of the buzziest launches in the last few months, and their results have lived up to the hype. If you’re looking to move from the world of finance into an operating role, this is a great chance for you to apply your skills, grow a team, and be there at the beginning of what may turn out to be the next big apparel brand.
The nitty gritty
Company website: www.yourparade.com
Who you’d be working for: Cami Tellez, CEO
Location: NYC
Parade is a self-expression brand that makes Creative Basics––underwear that celebrates who you are today. We believe that women’s underwear is a replenishment category that needs a mass-market challenger brand focused on delivering style and fabric innovation. Our DNA is community-first (with over 600 brand ambassadors) and catalyzed via mobile experiences because we know it’s the best way to find her. In just 16 weeks since our launch, we’ve sold over 70K pairs of underwear and transacted in every state—we’re on our way to building the next big underwear company in the US. We’ve raised $4.5M from some of the best venture capital firms in the world, including Lerer Hippeau, Greycroft, SVAngel and the founders of Casper, Flatiron Health, Warby Parker, and Away.
As Head of Finance, you will play a defining role in Parade’s growth as a company seeking to take market share in the 35% of the women’s underwear market that’s up for grabs. We are looking for a strong financial leader to build out these business initiatives. Reporting directly to the CEO, you will guide the overall financial vision and help set the guardrails that guide brand expansion, unit economics, cash management, financial planning, accounting and budgeting. You'll be leading the larger team with big-picture financial thinking as well as ensuring that Parade’s processes and procedures result in best-in-class finance and accounting operations. We think there is a billion-dollar opportunity to innovate in the space here and we think someone with a growth-mindset, 5+ years of experience in finance and willingness to be a creative problem-solver will be an invaluable part of the founding team. You can understand more about our brand here.
Competitive pay with equity as part of a founding team member.
Your Responsibilities
Build and manage the company’s finance and accounting functions, including cash management, financial modeling & forecasting, budgeting, and reporting—all by defining, monitoring and executing on core financial KPIs aimed towards balancing unit profitability with rapid growth.
Define and manage administrative workflows to support vendor contracting, tax compliance, and other operating procedures.
Analyze financial and economic performance to (a) optimize Parade’s business model, (b) provide strategic recommendations on operational and financial initiatives and (c) make decisions on resource deployment, including capital, liquidity & expense dollars. This will also mean overseeing cash flow planning to ensure that the company maintains sufficient liquidity.
Oversee budgeting cycles, including the development of budgets and subsequent variance analyses to drive accountability throughout the organization. Perform monthly variance analysis of budgeted/forecasted against actual financial performance, clearly interpreting and documenting variances and cost drivers
Help add financial context & guide financial thinking on category expansion, marketing growth, brick & mortar planning, third-party retail, and other core company initiatives.
Craft financial reporting structure for various company initiatives and build out accounting processes for each engine of the business, all while helping keep individual owners accountable to their budgets and to the greater finance KPIs at the company.
Direct month-end reporting and present the statement to the executive team, work directly with the founders to manage fundraising & prepare financial models for new raising cycles.
Eventually hire, manage, and lead the Finance team at Parade as we seek to build the next big underwear company in the US.
It Helps If You
Are an incredibly creative person who gets consumer brands at a fundamental level and understands their latent cultural significance and far-reaching power.
Recognize the opportunity for a new underwear brand to rewrite a cultural script during a pivotal time for woman-oriented brands and more importantly, women everywhere.
Have strong desire to bring creative energy to team building.
Executive-level quantitative/analytical and organizational skills
Excellent communication skills - communicate freely and easily internally and externally verbally and in writing with an extreme attention to detail.
6 - 10 years experience with a focus on previous startup work
Financial designation of CPA/CFA/MBA ideal but not necessary if experience is greater than education.
What We Value
Play To Win - We have an opportunity to make Parade one of the most important companies in the world. We’re a team of people committed to excellence and we expect to win, even against any odds.
Think At Scale - What will it take to double the cultural impact? What will it take to go mass market without losing our soul?
Rewrite The Story - Creatively reimagine the status quo of apparel and e-commerce. Seek new definitions and learn to love risk.
Have More Fun - Embrace the ride alongside Team Parade. Be optimistic, make Parade more fun for others, and lead from care.
Read on for an interview with Parade’s founders…
Photo of Cami and Jack by Kaia Miller
Interview with Jack, co-founder of Parade
What's Parade?
We are a women's underwear brand focused on women ages18-30 and we think this is the most exciting moment possible to build a brand in the space. In your early 20s, you're picking an underwear brand that you're going to have a connection with for the next 5-10 years. With that in mind, we're taking a long bet on rewriting the American underwear story.
On one side you have Victoria's Secret, and on the other side you have some of the new DTC brands, and we're trying to differentiate in two main ways. First, with our brand we're telling a story about self-expression, joy, and celebrating who you are today. We're focusing on underwear because it's the piece of apparel that our customer is shopping for most frequently.
We recently raised a seed pre-launch from Lerer Hippeau, Greycroft, and Cassius, as well as some founders in the NYC ecosystem, including the founders of Away, Warby Parker, and Casper to name a few.
Right now, we're focused on figuring out the Gen Z playbook for DNVBs [digitally native vertical brands]. From a brand-building perspective, we're trying to build something totally new that's focused on telling a new story.
We launched in the last week of October and we're already close to 80,000 pairs of underwear sold. Partnerships and drops play a key role for us - we've run partnerships with Swarovski, Bite Beauty, and others. Our team is growing quickly. Cami [Jack's co-founder] and I split responsibilities - Cami's focused on brand, creative, and product. I'm focused on I'm focused on growth, digital product, and operations.
For this role, our ideal candidate would be someone with a finance background (banking, PE, adjacent) who has spent a few years in-house (ideally in a strategic finance role with experience in FP&A, forecasting, time evaluating new business opportunities). We know what we know and what we don't know, so we want to bring on a true senior leader to do this the right way and build out a finance team as one of our core competencies.
What's the biggest focus for you and your team right now?
Continuing to scale the brand. We've seen some really exciting early traction, but know that we're currently covering a small surface area. Our ambition is to build the next big American underwear company. The challenge is figuring out how to tell our story on a broader scale. One of the most interesting things we've seen is that within four weeks of launch we had sold in all 50 states. 60% of our sales come from outside of New York and California. People outside those areas are really well-served by Parade, so we're thinking about how to evolve our brand and messaging to reach people in every town across America.
What's the most unexpected learning that you've had so far?
Our biggest learning is how ready for a new underwear brand people have been. 1 out 5 customers post tagged photos in their Parade. It's crazy and feels like the beginning of a movement. People want this and are ready for something new.
Who do you look up to as a mentor or role model?
We've been really fortunate to have the mentorship of some of the founders who have backed us. We've been well-served by having more senior people around the table and they've helped us inform our own strategy-building process. Neil from Warby has been super helpful in helping us think about what we're standing for and having all decisions be aligned with our mission. It's the biggest thing that we try to check ourselves on - are we operating from the foundational things we believe about women and what we stand for.
What do you value most in people you work with?
Every role and candidate is different, but the one thing across the team that we really value is trust and accountability. As a growing company, we're only as strong as the people we have around the company. We've been lucky so far in bringing on people who see Parade as the sum of everyone's work - everyone has a unique contribution to make. We're all really bought in and share the same ambition to rewrite the American underwear story. We think this is an important moment in the category and in our business.
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