Our Story

In 2013, Kiran Lingam and Greg Raiten each landed their first senior executive role. They didn’t know each other yet, but they were both going through similar challenges navigating the weight of this newfound responsibility. While most people expect leading a core function at a rapidly scaling company to be hard, no one understands just how hard until they do it themselves. Kiran and Greg quickly found themselves in the hot seat, with colleagues — up, down, left and right — looking to them for answers on an increasingly complex set of mission-critical questions they had never faced before. It wasn’t just difficult, it was isolating.

After nearly two years of feeling imposter syndrome with no great resource to turn to, Kiran and Greg met on a business deal between their two companies. They were both in similar roles and struggling with similar problems. They swapped war stories and advice, and they quickly realized they weren’t alone.

Looking for further guidance and community, they reached out to several other peer executives they had met throughout the years. They set up their first event — a casual lunch at a WeWork in Bryant Park, NYC — and the response was overwhelming. Every person in attendance was facing the same obstacles and feeling the same pressures.

A tight-knit, organic community was born nearly overnight, and monthly in-person gatherings in NYC quickly expanded to San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and beyond. By keeping membership exclusive to the C-level and tightly focused on the high-growth ecosystem, everyone was eager to exchange ideas and gather for in-depth discussions on their most challenging professional issues. It was a safe space, one where you could bring your vulnerabilities and leave with actionable insights.

That first community, formed in 2015, was for Chief Legal Officers. But as the CLO members gushed to their CFO colleagues about the value they had unlocked, CFOs started pushing Kiran and Greg for a community of their own. It became clear that they weren’t just solving a CLO problem, they were solving a C-suite problem, and CFOs in particular could benefit from a similarly curated community of their closest peers. Hence in 2021, The F Suite was born, and the rest is history.