This veteran CFO moved from hot $3.9 billion startup Snowflake to hot $4 billion startup TripActions, and it taught him the importance of having the CEO set a corporate culture

• TripActions just named Thomas Tuchscherer as its first CFO, in a major move for the hot $4 billion travel services platform startup.
• Tuchscherer was also the first CFO of another buzzy startup, Snowflake, valued at $3.9 billion. He left after a management shakeup that led to the sudden exit of CEO Bob Muglia who was replaced by Frank Slootman.
• Tuchscherer said he was "super disappointed" that he had to leave. But he said he was drawn to TripActions' culture, adding that the change helped him appreciate the importance of company culture.
• "The Snowflake that I joined under Bob's leadership was more similar to TripActions today from a cultural perspective," he told Business Insider. "I should have spent more time on that at prior companies, on the importance of company culture."
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Thomas Tuchscherer jumped from one hot tech startup to another this year, taking on the critical CFO role at two prominent unicorns.

Tuchscherer was Snowflake's first chief financial officer, and he just took on the same position at TripActions, becoming the corporate travel platform startup's first CFO.

It's a significant move for the 4-year-old cloud startup, which helps businesses manage their travel needs, competing with the likes of SAP and American Express. TripActions has raised $480 million from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, and is valued at $4 billion.

Tuchscherer said he actually came to know TripActions as a customer. "When I was at Snowflake, TripActions was one of the solutions we deployed and I chose," he told Business Insider. "So I knew the product super-well... I loved the team and decided to join the company."

The opportunity to join TripActions came in the wake of the big changes at his former company. Tuchscherer changed jobs when Snowflake, another hypergrowth startup also valued at around $4 billion, changed CEOs in May. It was a sudden, even jolting, transition that led to his exit, but one that highlighted for Tuchscherer the importance of culture in startups - particularly those that are growing really fast.

Tuchscherer had been CFO at cloud data-warehousing company Snowflake, last valued at $3.9 billion, under CEO Bob Muglia - who was replaced suddenly in May by current CEO Frank Slootman, the former chief executive of ServiceNow. Slootman subsequently brought in Michael Scarpelli, who had been CFO at ServiceNow, to be his CFO. They had worked together at ServiceNow and DataDomain, where Slootman had also served as CEO.

"They had been working together for 20 years, and he naturally wanted to bring in his CFO," Tuchscherer said.

Tuchscherer said he was offered another position at Snowflake, but felt "it didn't make sense for me stay," though he was "super disappointed" to leave. Slootman has strongly indicated that a Snowflake IPO isn't on the table for at least a few years yet - a turnaround from Muglia's reported plans to take the company public on a short timeframe. For Tuchscherer, the shift meant his job responsibilities changed in a big way.

"A lot of friends were telling me that you know, financially, probably would have been able to made more sense for me to stay at Snowflake in a different role," he said. But "I was recruited at Snowflake as the CFO and to potentially take the company public and and if that was no longer an option then I was not interested in that role."

'Amazing things'

He did stay at Snowflake for a few months to help in the transition. Tuchscherer described Slootman as a strong-willed, focused business leader.

"Frank has done amazing things," he said. "Frank is not afraid of taking decisions, He takes bold decisions, takes bold positions. He knows what he's doing. He's been enterprise software companies for a very long time. And, and he knows where to push knows where there's optimization that's possible."

But Slootman is also known for his strong opinions. Tuchscherer actually referred to some of the recent Business Insider coverage in which the Snowflake CEO frowned upon employee activism at some tech companies related to social and political issues. For example, he criticized Google employees who "complain that Google does business with the government and all that nonsense," saying "you go somewhere else if you want that conversation."

Tuchscherer would not comment on Slootman's views except to say: "Frank's views are Frank's views." But Slootman, he stressed, is "very focused on execution. He's extremely focused on performance. And, and I think that's the that's the thing that has been successful for him, that focus on performance."

'The CEO embodies the company's culture'

But as he reflected on the change he just went through, Tuchscherer also added, "The CEO embodies the company's culture as well as its founders."

So obviously, whenever you have a CEO change, you're going to have a change in the culture of the organization because every CEO is different. They place importance on different things. The CEO to me is the embodiment of that culture and trickles down from his position to his management team and then just trickles down to the rest of the employees," he said.

Muglia and Slootman are "very different people, so therefore it's not surprising at the culture at Snowflake evolved."

Tuchscherer declined to say how the Snowflake culture changed under Slootman, but did say this: "The Snowflake that I joined under Bob's leadership was more similar to TripActions today from a cultural perspective."

And as he starts his new job, he said one insight stands out for him: culture is important, especially in a hyper-growth startup.

That's what attracted him to TripActions, Tuchscherer said: "Everyone's fully aligned on the company's culture in terms of what matters, of who we are. And that's really what attracted to me with that with the people with people and their attachment to the company culture."

"Perhaps I should have spent more time on that at prior companies, on the importance of company culture," he said.

Got a tip about TripActions or Snowflake or another tech company? Contact this reporter via email at bpimentel@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @benpimentel or send him a secure message through Signal at (510) 731-8429. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.