On April 27, 2019, Smartsheet celebrated its first year as apublic company. It was an exciting year: We experienced 60 percentyear-on-year revenue growth, launched new capabilities, openedadditional offices, and completed an acquisition. All these changeshappened while we also navigated an update to our selling motion,significant growth in our global headcount, and support for anincreasing number of customers—and we began reporting our quarterlyresults to Wall Street for the first time.

Being in the public arena can be daunting. It exposes the CFO toincreased visibility and probing questions from investors andothers. I learned in business school that markets are efficient,but my real, on-the-ground experience has taught me that people areemotional and react to information in sometimes unexpected ways.When a company's news or results don't match Wall Streetexpectations, that disparity can lead to volatility and unintendedconsequences.