Centage CEO Paul Lynch Launches The CFO Review, a Podcast for Finance Leaders Ready to Earn Their Seat at the Table

New interview series features candid conversations with finance executives who’ve made the leap from mid-level manager to C-suite starting with former Rackspace CFO Karl Pichler

Centage, the company behind Modern AI Driven Financial Planning software (FP&A) used by hundreds of growing businesses, announced the launch of “The CFO Review”, a new podcast hosted by Centage CEO Paul Lynch. The show features long-form conversations with CFOs and senior finance leaders who’ve already made the jump to the C-suite — and are willing to talk honestly about what it actually took to get there.

The debut episode is now available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, featuring Karl Pichler, former CFO of Rackspace, the leader who guided the company from $80M to $2.1B in revenue, took it public in 2008, and navigated a $4.5B leveraged buyout from Apollo Capital. It’s the kind of career story most finance professionals only read about in press releases. On The CFO Review, you hear it in his own words.

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Built for the Finance Professional Who’s Almost There

The CFO Review is designed for mid-level finance professionals, VPs of Finance, Controllers, FP&A Directors — who are talented, ambitious, and trying to figure out how to make the leap that separates good finance managers from great CFOs. It’s a question that doesn’t have a clean answer, which is exactly why the show exists.

“There’s a lot of content out there for people who’ve already made it,” said Paul Lynch, CEO of Centage and host of The CFO Review. “We wanted to build something for the people in the middle of the journey, who are asking the right questions and just need to hear from someone who’s been there. The conversations we’re having are candid in a way that I think is genuinely rare.”

Each episode goes beyond the resume. Guests talk about the decisions that looked wrong at the time. The roles they almost didn’t take. The skills they didn’t know they were missing. The moments that defined them as leaders and the moments they’d rather forget.

Episode 1: Karl Pichler Turned Down Lehman Brothers. Then Rackspace Called.

In the debut episode, Karl Pichler walks through a career that defies the standard CFO playbook. He didn’t set out to become CFO. He nearly didn’t get hired at all — a Gallup leadership assessment came back with a clear recommendation: do not hire. He got the job anyway, and what followed was over a decade of building one of the most interesting finance functions in tech services history.

He talks about going to work for someone who used to work for him — and why he considers it one of the best decisions of his career. About being named interim CFO with the explicit message that he was a placeholder. About how he’d targeted being appointed CFO before his 40th birthday and how he got the call four days before.

He also shares a pointed view on where the finance function is headed: most companies are still running finance like it’s 2005. Too much in-house. Too much reinventing of the same processes. The CFOs who thrive in the next decade won’t be department heads — they’ll be builders of financial infrastructure, thinking in tech stacks instead of headcount.

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