How did He Grow to $6.4B | Tom Shea, Co-Founder & CEO of Onestream

In this episode of The Jess Larsen Show on Innovation & Leadership, Jess sits down with Tom Shea, co-founder and CEO of OneStream, for a deep conversation on building a multibillion-dollar software company, going from private to public and back to private, and what it really takes to create lasting enterprise value.

Tom shares the journey behind OneStream, from his early days building software for the office of the CFO to creating a unified platform for consolidation, planning, reporting, and financial data. He explains how his first company, UpStream, led to an acquisition by Oracle, and how that experience gave him the confidence to think bigger, build a platform, and create a company that could serve some of the largest and most demanding organizations in the world.

Jess and Tom dive into the principles that shaped OneStream’s growth, including the company’s simple but powerful mission: every customer must be a reference. Tom explains why customer success, product-market fit, transparency, passion, authenticity, and long-term relationships became the foundation of the business, especially when selling mission-critical software to CFOs whose numbers ultimately go to Wall Street.

They also discuss the realities of entrepreneurship, from surviving early implementations and coding through hard problems to leading with confidence when things get difficult. Tom shares why founders must know their strengths, surround themselves with the right partners, stay close to customers, and build a culture where the team is willing to do whatever it takes to deliver.

This is a practical and thoughtful conversation about scaling a software company, building trust with enterprise customers, navigating public and private markets, and creating a business where customer success is not a slogan, but the operating system.

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