Ready FP&A One: From Assassin’s Creed to Battling Big Budget Bosses – David Fortin

As a lifelong gamer, David Fortin successfully landed  his dream job managing FP&A at Ubisoft – the $2.79 billion gaming company responsible for Assassin’s Creed, Driver, and Far Cry, For Honor. The former PwC auditor then decided to take on an even more daunting leap. He ran FP&A at  Saas Startup Polka “building the plane while we were flying” – cue  his boss leaving, learning how to fundraise, facing disinterested investors, budgets rejected by the board,  the CTO crying, before managing an eventual successful exit (in 2023 the company was acquired by Swedish enterprise software giant IFS). Now he is a full-time YouTuber teaching Excel and Microsoft Copilot – still using finance and analytics to build his business.

In this episode David talks:

• PwC CPA audit coming up that way to FP&A
• Quebec, loving video games and landing a role at Ubisoft
• Moving from a big company to a startup and a steep finance learning curve
• Building the plane while flying in FP&A
• Learning the sales pitch of funding round facing questions and disinterterested investors
• CTOs crying when the budget is rejected by the board
• Due diligence and exit – lessons
• Becoming a YouTuber making Excel fun again and grasping Microsoft Copilot 
• How CoPilot and AI will transform FP&A
• Scenario analysis in Copilot 
• 20,000 hours of gaming and my favorite Excel function

Follow David on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-fortin-cpa-816b20b5/

Follow David’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@piggybankaccountant