Meet Andrew Palmer, Our New Chief Financial Officer

This year, we expanded our Hughes Private Capital leadership team to help us bring the company to the next level. We have some major goals for our company, and the three of us co-founders — Steve Sixberry, Kyle Krch, and myself — knew that we needed more brilliant people to round out our team.

That’s why we brought on Andrew Palmer as our Chief Financial Officer. Andrew has an extensive career so far working in finance for software, healthcare, and technology startups. He received his MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and specializes in helping companies scale. We knew he was the perfect guy to help us refine our company-wide processes.

I asked Andrew a few questions so you could get to know him.

Greg: You’ve had a prolific career working in finance for companies in very different industries. Which role do you feel taught you the most so far?

Andrew: Being the CFO at Riskalyze, as it was one of my earlier CFO roles where I was able to use my broad experiences to help the company quickly scale operations. During my two years, we tripled the revenue of the company. In that role, I owned several functions across the company besides accounting. I was accountable for HR operations, talent acquisition, billing, tax accounting, applications engineering, contracts, and I created a financial planning and analysis function. I often felt like a consultant as I leveraged best-of-breed business processes learned while at the Dow 30 companies earlier in my career to help them grow in a scalable fashion.

Greg: What’s one major change you’ve helped implement so far at Hughes Private Capital?

Andrew: We have implemented cost centers across the company. This best practice enables us to monitor the profitability of our product lines. While P&Ls are typically considered a lagging performance indicator, they are also a leading indicator when you consider trends. By doing so, you can identify early risks to the business including market economics, financial, operational, or business model related. Cost centers provide a secondary benefit by holding our functional team leaders accountable for their spending, which also impacts bottom line asset performance.

Greg: What is one of your biggest goals for Hughes Capital in 2023?

Andrew: We are looking to grow the portfolio quickly while expanding into homes at the next higher level of the market. To do so requires capital, and specifically working capital used to acquire, rehab, and lease property for our funds. So, one of my biggest goals is to consider the institutional market for this funding. The objective is to test the markets to see if we could obtain a lower cost of operating capital that will allow us to grow more quickly than our current capital structure permits.

Greg: What’s a fun fact about you that few people know?

Andrew: I was driving for four years before I could officially get my license! I grew up in a rural community and began working as a farmhand the summer after sixth grade. Come to think of it, I have been working since I was 12 and haven’t taken a break since!

Greg: If you could recommend a book everyone should read, what would it be (bonus: and why)?

Andrew: Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993) was an American economist and journalist who wrote for The Wall Street Journal, National Review, Newsweek, and The New York Times, among others. He wrote this poignant book in 1946 to expose the popular fallacies of its day (Keynesian economics). He did not know that those fallacies would be government policy for the duration of the century. He predicted worldwide inflation in the decades to follow.