How Julianna Hayes Embraces The 'CFO+' Role At Philo

Forbes

06-05-2025

Julianna Hayes is the CFO of Philo, a leading streaming platform that reaches over 3.4 million monthly active users. Under her financial stewardship, Philo has successfully expanded beyond its original subscription model to create a comprehensive streaming ecosystem. The company now operates both a rapidly growing free ad-supported television service launched in 2024 and its flagship Philo Core subscription offering, an affordable streaming cable replacement. With more than 1.3 million paying subscribers, Philo Core delivers outstanding value while providing access to 70+ premium networks including AMC, Discovery, Comedy Central, Food Network, Hallmark, HGTV, and MTV, alongside unlimited DVR storage and AMC+ .
Julianna and I recently had a great conversation about a CFO's role as a strategic advisor, how Google and Twitter shaped her career, what it takes to build successful teams, and more.
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Growing up steeped in the nature of Eugene, Ore., Julianna Hayes' first jobs included babysitting, Pier 1 Imports, and Restoration Hardware. After graduating from Claremont McKenna College with a bachelor's in economics and French, her first full-time opportunities included consulting and being a regulatory analyst before moving on to the likes of Google and Twitter (now X).
Hayes worked at Google after its IPO, when there were about 10,000 employees.
Julianna Hayes, CFO of Philo, brings a strategic mindset shaped by roles at Google and Twitter—and ... More now leads both finance and people operations at one of streaming's most efficient challengers.
Similarly, she worked at Twitter in its early stages pre-IPO, when the company employed approximately 1,000 people. She had the unique timing to experience incredible growth at both companies. What those environments also had in common was invaluable: the immense potential to learn.
'[Google] was one of those places where there was rapid growth in an incredibly successful business,' she said. 'Still to this day, I am where I am because of that experience and what I learned there.'
At Google, her role was to support the emerging markets in Latin America and APAC regions, with a focus on setting up new corporate entities to ensure recognition and compliance of Google policies in those international regions. At Twitter, she held various corporate finance roles over the span of 10 years, and served as the financial professional behind the revenue, coming up with models, forecasts, setting quotas for the salespeople, and getting into the weeds of the business.
The people surrounding her in the early years of her career, particularly at Twitter, created what is still a robust network of colleagues; she describes them as people she leans on heavily. Twitter taught her the value of relationships, camaraderie, and mentorship.
'What I learned at Twitter was this concept of a personal board,' Hayes explains. 'It went beyond just having a mentor–it was really a collection of people. That has served me very well, because I really feel like there are eight or 10 go-to people from my time at both of those companies who I can go to and get advice and ask questions.'
The drive to create meaningful relationships at work was one of the factors that drew her to Philo. In addition to the characteristics of the job, Hayes is not only CFO but also oversees the HR function, and she was also interested in working on consumer-facing products – she was intrigued by the opportunity to work with Andrew McCollum, Philo's CEO.
'He and I had the same values around a lot of things–business in particular,' Hayes explained. 'I liked how he talked about business and leadership. It was a key element that made it really interesting.'
To Hayes, getting the CEO/CFO relationship right is critical. She and McCollum build that dynamic by being in contact on a daily basis, having in-person meetings, discussing things early and often, and sending quick messages to ensure they are aligned. That communication and collaboration helped her achieve the role of what she calls 'CFO+,' where instead of focusing solely on closing the books, she serves as one of the CEO's main strategic partners.
'As the finance team has all the data for the company, you are the one place where you can see what is happening from a business perspective end-to-end,' she said. 'My job is to poke around everywhere, and I do. For a lot of CEOs, that would take some getting used to, but I think it's a really important part of the job. It's something that I cherish that I can go to him early and often with things that I want to talk to him about.'
Support and open communication are high priorities on her own team as well. Hayes, who coaches her son's fifth-grade basketball team in her spare time, can easily draw the parallels between both worlds to identify the building blocks that ensure people function well together. From both perspectives, she considers herself a proponent of making each person better individually as a means to work well collectively. Without that, it's not possible to produce the best results.
'The team is the most important thing,' she says. 'Once you have that, it's pretty easy to keep it. If someone comes in and doesn't fit into that working relationship with everybody else, they usually sort themselves out pretty quickly or adapt and realize that the best way to get ahead is to work closely together.'
Finding good, detail-oriented people who care about getting things right is another standard quality she looks for. Hayes has always given herself, whether personally or on a broader level, team goals around accuracy and timeliness. Hayes and Philo also believe that varied perspectives drive innovation and better business outcomes. Beyond being a cornerstone of their talent acquisition strategy, she understands that a heterogeneous team authentically reflects Philo's multicultural and geographically diverse user base of over a million subscribers
Since its inception, Philo has been laser-focused on reinventing the TV experience for modern viewers. . Inspired by the inventor of the TV, Philo Farnsworth,the service has consistently challenged industry norms to create 'a better way to TV'. According to Hayes, Philo stands out in the crowded streaming landscape through its extensive content offering, streamlined user experience, and cost-effective pricing model. Her role in keeping Philo affordable while still driving sustainable growth gives her a fun financial challenge.
'We really try to make it as affordable as possible for the broad offering we have of live TV,' she explained. 'From a finance perspective, I have the very fun job of making that math work. We are a lean company of approximately 160 employees, and I think we punch well above our weight on the revenue side. We have a really efficient ads business that we run almost purely programmatically. And so we aim to do a good job of making the business make sense while offering an affordable product to our customers.'
Strong analytics are necessary to make those kinds of decisions. Her finance analytics team enables her to lead with data when problem-solving. It's an additional way she engages the team to provide value, ask the right questions, and ensure the business continues to thrive.
Looking toward the future, Hayes believes that the next generation of CFOs will continue to play a larger role at their companies.
'Finance is really a partner at the table and can be business-focused and not just the takers of information,' she said. 'Close the books and move on, but actually come back and push the business with ideas, analyses, thoughts, and be seen as a true partner to the business. There's huge value in that, and I think it will continue to move in that direction.'
Outside of her role at Philo, Hayes has three boys–two in middle school and one second grader. She makes time to exercise in the early morning with her husband to ensure they have time together. Family life keeps her busy with her sons' soccer and basketball commitments.
She recognizes that amid a jam-packed schedule, trying to achieve balance is a work in progress.
'If it's important to you to have any kind of balance, you have to really prioritize that,' she says. 'I've tried to be a lot more conscious about how I end my day, how I prepare for the next day, and try to really end that at a certain time so that when I'm home, I'm mentally focused on my kids and am present.'
She also spends time in a CFO peer group. She credits advice she's heard there, has proved incredibly beneficial when it comes to her perspective on achieving balance in her work and personal life.
'Someone in my group said that you're always juggling different balls in the air, but some are made of glass and some are plastic, and you need to just know which ones are glass,' she said. 'Don't break those. That has been incredibly helpful for me. I know that's simple advice, but try to do a better job of prioritizing which ones are super important and then let the rest go.'
Similarly, Hayes encourages the next generation of CFOs to know where they will be most valuable in the organization. She believes it's not in one specific financial lane.
'Don't stay in your lane if you're going to your CEO to say the books are closed, the month end is here, and here's how we did,' she said. 'Free up your mind to think about the business, be really curious about your business to try to figure out what else is happening and bring those insights. That is what will set you apart, and that is going to be what is, quite frankly, fun and interesting. It's what will make you really good at your job. Poke around, don't stay in your lane, do all of that interesting work and thinking, and you'll always get a good result.'