Sitting at the financial helm, one never knows what lies around the corner, or quarter, but for Mike Scarpelli, it was the uncovering of massive fraud at his own company that led him to three successful initial public offerings and his CFO seat at Snowflake today. 

Back in his small home town of Sarnia, Ontario, Canada — just beyond the border of Michigan — Scarpelli had no idea what he wanted to do at 18. Like most, he applied to college simply for the thrill of getting out of the house, he said in a recent Airbase webinar. 

Little did the now-CFO of the Bozeman, Mont.- based cloud computing data company know that his road to the CFO seat would be one of legal battles, as well as three successful initial public offerings, including one during the pandemic. 

From pre-med to finance

“The only reason I went to college was because I wanted to get the hell out of the house,” said Scarpelli. 

At first, the now-finance veteran went the medicine route, completing all of the pre-requisite courses his freshman year and doing quite well in them. But ultimately, he decided the medical profession was not what he wanted to do with his life. 

Scarpelli always had a strong work ethic. “Even in the summers I worked a lot, and I would go home on the weekends and work for a company that owned two stores and sold produce. I drove all the transports to the Detroit Food Terminal,” he said. 

Eventually, the company offered him a full time position, but after some consideration, he decided this route was not for him, either.

Ultimately, it was the glitz and glamour of potential for international travel in an accounting career that caught his eye. 

“I never really traveled growing up,” as it wasn’t an option for him, he said. “Accounting firms would come on campus and recruit and pitch the idea of an international working experience.”

But that dream of international travel soon dimmed when Scarpelli’s Italian adventure was one of seven-day work weeks and not an immersion in the native tongue. He then soon after went back to Canada and quickly went on to be a partner at PwC, before leaving for HCL Technologies — when his career took an unexpected turn. 

Uncovering fraud and the secret to IPOs

HCL Technologies at the time was a small yield optimization software company for the semiconductor industry, and Scarpelli went into that CFO role with the intention to close a number of mergers and acquisitions. 

“I was six months into the role and closed three transactions and then, I uncovered a massive fraud as the auditors were calling me and saying they noticed that something did not seem right, so I started digging into it,” said Scarpelli. 

The CEO of that company ended up fleeing the country, the FBI got involved, and the entire executive team, besides Scarpelli, and the board were terminated.

“At the time, I thought I had made a huge mistake leaving PwC, but in hindsight it was the best experience I have ever had in terms of a legal perspective. I went through a massive rift in the company, and had to make quick decisions in order to preserve capital,” said Scarpelli. 

The finance chief dealt with D&O carriers rescinding politics, securities litigation in federal court, the Securities and Exchange Commission and going through a D listing with NASDAQ, all with a newborn at home. 

His experience with HCL Technologies set him up for his next role at Lexar Technologies, where his first meeting was with the former CFO of the company, who did not know he was being replaced — also a challenge, said Scarpelli. 

“The auditors at Lexar Technologies had come to me to see if I could change things around for the company and clean things up,” he said. 

After that role had worn out, Scarpelli was approached by two public companies wanting him to come in and clean up their messes as well. “At this point, I was sick of cleaning up other people’s messes, I wanted to build something,” he said. 

“I was attracted to Data Domain because the CEO wanted to take the company public, without the infrastructure to do so, and I was to be that infrastructure,” he said. 

Data Doman was a start up, specializing in target-based data deduplication products for disk-based backup.

“Within six months, we were on file with the SEC,” said Scarpelli. “And after selling to EMC, I stuck around for two more years.” 

At his next CFO venture, Scarpelli also took ServiceNow public in six months again, before then taking Snowflake public during the pandemic, “I joined in August of 2019, and the company went public in September 2020, we were off of that six month timeline because of issues with COVID,” Scarpelli said. 

One unique thing about all of these IPOs is that, “they had nothing to do with me, but more so because we had a great product,” he said. “In order to have a successful company, you need a great product in a market where you have a competitive advantage.” 

The finance veteran believes that taking a company public, “is actually easy,” he said. “What’s hard is the project management part and holding everyone accountable. You need to be a driver of the schedule and not let anything slip,” said Scarpelli.