Viasat Summary
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Yaniv was one of very few privileged with a skill set to be able to work almost every major deal, investment, acquisition, and financing that created a virtual a learning cycle of success. He was privileged to be a key party of an incredible growth story - starting at a company of 300 people, 100 customers, 2 offices, and $100M to a $5B dollar, 5000 employee, global powerhouse with millions of customers in a variety of mission-driven industries from government defense programs to bringing consumer connectivity and internet to millions of unconnected houses/businesses across the United States, and soon globally. The growth and increased value of the business would have been more than gift enough to the ambitious Yaniv but it was further compounded by the value of a product/mission that will bring connectivity to those desperate for the valuable economic and cultural commodity some of us take for granted. Yaniv also attributed much of his serendipitous success so far in business to his extremely gracious mentors, and a founder/CEO who created a culture and strategy which supported this virtuous cycle of professional development.
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Below is a brief, very abridged outline of specific deals and experience while at Viasat. Beginning with financial modeling, scenario analysis, market/competitive analysis, cross functional leadership, sharp purposeful contract negotiation, value derivation and game theory, cultivating scaling of teams and deal flow, internal and external partnerships and relationships, as we’ll as internal mentorship combined with business and financial leadership.
Viasat - Detail of Industry Deals, Milestones, Expertise
Investment Analysis and execution- Viasat-1, Wildblue Aquistion
The kickstart into corporate finance was a company-betting billion-dollar investment in a new highly-specialized satellite to deliver high-throughput connectivity. This combined with the complimentary, and brilliantly-timed synergistic $500M acquisition of liberty global’s wildblue internet, bolstered a “rocket launch” into the commercial and service growth market. It was the appropriate start of a rapid serious of complex finance learning and career growth.
Large RFP Financial analysis, Contract Negotiation, and Relationship Management .
NBN and government contracts - worked on, cultivated over 3 years, and won, the single biggest contract win, RFP, and program for viasat to the National Broadband Network in Austrailia - strategically aligning Viasat with the 40 billion dollar broadband effort in geographically-complex austialia. Also worked on many, large government proposals - some as pathfinder, some won, some and not won - but honed skill for negotiating, game theory, pricing, and large exhaustive proposals.
Strategy, FP&A, Investor Relations
Aided in the company-wide business financial modeling, stock price analysis, communication to investors, and development and testing of strategic scenarios. The complex models valued six analyze business value creation, strategy, and risk. Adding an order of magnitude more complexity was the addition of several hundreds of millions of dollar investments, partnerships and the follow-on launch of Viasat-2, and the groundbreaking productivity and financial complexity of the Viasat-3 constellation. The brand new technology required extremely creative and thoughtful thinking around the creation of complex multi-demential, geospatial, financial models - that could validate investment returns and corporate strategy while maintaining structural ease-of-use and simple KPIs/result constructs for communicating investment theses quickly and confidently.
Executive Organizational Leadership and Development
Tapped to rear and manage the financials and financial teams in several new global entities, laying the foundation of separate and new financial systems for these new and separate businesses. In a ode / coup de grat to the experience obtained during hypergrowth stage, Yaniv used his knowlegr to manage manage all financial reporting, analysis, communication, strategy, and forecasting of the $100M Texas enterprise group who’s independence mimicked closely a CFO role. Treating it as such, all financial targets were met or exceeded. Further, financial processes were modernized and integrated, new business was developed using financial templates, KPIs and metrics. Financial analysis and reporting, forecasting were combined with analytics and data warehouses share between businesses. Finance played a leading role for the first time in market entry, analysis, negotiation strategy, and decision making. Organizationally cultivated and led a team of staff accountants, junior and senior financial analysts and managers to refine existing processes, modernize analysis and forecasting, as well as learn the new and complex workings of the large-investments in shared space assets and infrastructure. This leadership was prudent, and had combine with the ongoing and concise communication sad co-decision making with executives in the business. The challenging and arduous organizational task was overcome by the increasing value created by strong CFO / financial leadership to the employees and colleagues of the growing business.