Vapi is proud to welcome Jayson Noland as its Chief Financial Officer. Jayson is no stranger to building things that scale: he spent over a decade in tech finance, moving from a Wall Street analyst with a keen eye for promising up-and-comers to the executive who helped take Cloudflare public and helped steer it past $1 billion in revenue.
Now he brings that experience to Vapi, building the financial engine to power the company's next chapter, from scalable systems to smart capital allocation. But Jayson didn't join just to crunch numbers. He came because he believes voice is poised to become the next major interface between people and machines. Vapi sat down with him to talk about career, conviction, and why he sees such a big opportunity ahead.
Tell us a bit about yourself and your career path leading up to Vapi.
I spent over a decade on Wall Street as a research analyst covering infrastructure and cybersecurity companies, writing research for institutional investors across the US and Europe. What I loved most was analyzing business models, new entrants, and markets. While I covered the big names, I always gravitated toward the up-and-comers, the young companies going through the IPO process. Introducing them to the buy side was the part I really enjoyed.
I worked on the Zscaler IPO in 2018 and left shortly after to join Cloudflare, essentially moving to the other side of the table. Instead of being the analyst helping a company go public, I went in-house and helped take Cloudflare through the IPO.
I then joined HackerOne, which at the time was a major partner to Cloudflare, and I'd always thought it was one of the coolest companies in cyber, with a superb team, a great business model, and a real moat. I also got to meet a lot of talented young hackers along the way, which was exciting.
What made Vapi stand out when you were deciding on your next move?
AI is probably the biggest technological advancement I've seen in my entire career, and with my time in the industry, I think I can say that with some perspective. I moved out to the Bay Area and lived through the dot-com boom and bust, the internet, cloud, and mobile. AI will likely be bigger than any of them ultimately, so being at a company at the forefront of AI was a major draw.
What really stood out, though, was the business case. I'm part of a CFO network, and there are some complaints and trepidation around AI: it's expensive, and you don't always know what you're getting in return. I saw Vapi as an exception. Customer success and customer service agents aren't simply about eliminating headcount; they are also helping brands drive better outcomes. That's the highest-ROI use case I've seen, and that mattered a lot to me.
What excites you most about joining the company at this stage?
There's a lot of excitement and potential that comes with a Series B, compared to a later-stage company. For most of my career, I've gotten to know companies around Series D and E, where there's already a lot built that needs to be extended or rebuilt. Coming in this early and building from scratch, with such a small finance team, is genuinely exciting to me and gives me a real opportunity to scale out the function.
When I was evaluating opportunities, my most important criteria were team, TAM, moat, and geography. The team, the market's potential, and the business's defensibility matter. A San Francisco-based company that values culture and talent was really important to me, and Vapi checked all of those boxes.
Voice is a specific slice of a very large category. Why does that focus matter?
I've spent much of my career working with back-office tech, so voice is really an exciting and interesting evolution in technology. It has engagement right out of the gate. More than that, it's a method of communication that technology hasn't fully realized yet and is growing rapidly.
Think about the progression: we went from push-button devices to clamshells to screens, from static websites to dynamic apps. Voice agents are probably the next major way we'll communicate with machines. That's why this focus matters: it's not a niche, it's the next human interface.
What do you hope to bring to Vapi?
It is already clear to me that Vapi has an incredibly dedicated and talented team and a transformational product. What I do bring is my experience and the opportunity to have seen and contributed to companies that have scaled. Cloudflare grew to over a billion in ARR during my time there.
So what I hope to bring is structure and cadence, putting the right systems in place, driving ownership and accountability, and bringing a level of maturity to how the business runs. And from a CFO's perspective, the big one is capital allocation: getting capital to the right places to grow the business: that's a big deal to me and an opportunity I am very excited for.
What do you do outside of work that keeps you grounded?
I actually took some time to reflect and spend time with the people who matter most to me before I joined Vapi. After moving quickly for most of my career, having that space to slow down and just be present was something I really valued. Family is a big deal to me. I spend as much time as I can with my sons and my parents, and as everyone grows and life changes, those moments together feel more fulfilling.
I also try to stay active and outdoors, hiking, going for bike rides, and getting out into nature whenever I can. That balance between family, the outdoors, and meaningful work is really what keeps me grounded.
