Overview New York Tech CFO Group is a free, vetted community of senior finance leaders at high-growth New York tech companies. This is its series of evening panels and happy hours in Midtown Manhattan. Benjamin Friedman, a former startup CFO who runs the advisory firm Build Scale Grow, organizes and moderates it. Each panel puts one hard question to a mix of CFOs, investors and advisers. How much should a company pay when profit is under pressure? What should it fix years before an exit? Guests register for free. The host approves each one. On site Evenings run from 6 to 8. They open with twenty minutes of networking. The panel then takes prepared questions for forty minutes before opening to the room, and the last hour goes back to conversation over refreshments and light food. A partner lends its Midtown office for the night, and only approved guests get the address. Law firm Ice Miller and real estate firm JLL have both hosted. Between panels the group holds CFO happy hours where pitching is off limits. Audience Most of the room are CFOs, VPs of finance, controllers and fractional CFOs from venture-backed companies. Some sessions admit finance leaders only. Investors and deal lawyers fill the other seats. Between events, members use the group's email list to swap vendor picks, job openings and benchmarks. Finance software firms sponsor to reach that list. Talent and Influencers Friedman moderates most panels. He was CFO of Parse.ly through its sale to Automattic's WordPress VIP, and he has written two books for founders, including Silent Strength. Sruthi Lanka, CFO of Public.com, and Dan Rochkind, CFO of Lerer Hippeau, return to the stage often. Recent panels have also featured Andrew Ritter, a mergers partner at Wiggin and Dana, Jenny Fielding of Everywhere Ventures, Rachael Methal, CFO of Synergy Pet Group, and Kurt Chessman of Primary Venture Partners. Track record It began as an email forum with the odd breakfast and grew into a steady calendar of panels each spring and fall. Past sessions have covered CFOs and the board, AI risk and governance, and building a fractional practice. One frank evening was called My Worst Day as a CFO. The panel on automation and AI in the finance stack comes back every year, and the chief executives of Cube and Graphite spoke at the first one. Brand presence Each session carries two or three sponsors. Every sponsor gets its logo, a link and its own short description on the registration page, which guests read before the host approves them. Friedman's weekly newsletter names each event's sponsors, and he promotes the events on LinkedIn. A host partner opens its office for the night and is credited as host. Sponsor staff stay for the networking hour. Sponsor executives have sat on panels too. Recent backers include Ramp, Cube, Wells Fargo, Withum and Turnstile.