Success is not just hard work and long hours. 10X Investments CFO Jade Longano, says it's also about being at the right place at the right time.
Not many executives would admit this, but 10X Investments CFO Jade Longano believes sometimes a career move comes down to luck.
“You can work as hard as you want, but if you don’t get the right opportunities at the right time, your hard work often doesn’t produce the results,” says Jade.
After qualifying as a chartered accountant (CA), Jade spent close to a decade moving through asset management, equity research and fintech, and joined 10X Investments as financial director before being appointed CFO in January 2025.
Hard work is not in question – she just doesn’t think it is always enough to get ahead.
Jade speaks from experience. In 2019, she joined Jumo, a fintech company working to open up credit to people the formal financial system had written off, and the role suited her. Then Covid hi, and she had a baby. What looked like the worst possible timing turned out to be anything but.
All about timing
“It meant that I could work from home for basically four years with a young baby. I worked really hard, but that was pure luck – and timing,” says Jade.
She knew what could have been. Her earlier years at a leading investment bank, where she’d completed her CA training before moving into equity research and credit analysis, had shown the importance of visibility in large organisations.
In that world, the flexibility to work hard and look after a young child wasn’t available at the time due to the constraints of having to be in the office, physically present for meetings and the lack of tools which now enable remote working.
“I landed in a spot where I could balance personal life with working hard and being seen to work hard,” Jade explains.
Joining 10X at the right moment is another example of being in the right place at the right time. She started as financial director in May 2023, was appointed CFO 18 months later, and found herself in the thick of an acquisition by Old Mutual shortly after. “I think it’s part of my personality to attribute a lot to luck and being in the right place at the right time.”
A strategic co-pilot
As CFO, that right place is changing fast with the evolution of artificial intelligence, which she admits can be quite terrifying. At 10X, the response has been to move towards the technology rather than away, so the company is embracing AI to improve efficiency.
For Jade, it frees up time. In a perfect world, a CFO is the CEO’s strategic co-pilot; in reality, they are often too busy running the business to help build it.
“You rarely get time to think about strategic issues in a strategic role like CFO,” she says. “If AI absorbs the transactional load, the job becomes what it was always supposed to be: actually thinking. We should move to a mindset of getting things done rather than measuring how long it takes.”
Jade studied business science at UCT on a commerce faculty scholarship before qualifying as a CA. When she left the corporate world for Jumo, her parents were horrified. “I was proud to tell people where I worked because everyone knew the brand. When I left, they were horrified.”
For younger chartered accountants, she advises to look at non-traditional career paths, saying there are so many different opportunities, especially with the rise of tech-enabled and AI-enabled businesses.
“As a CA, you have really good business skills. You can do anything. It doesn’t have to be working as an accountant.”
Getting it done
Work-life balance is important, she says, but it needs the right conditions and honest trade-offs. She commutes to the 10X office three times a week and protects her work-from-home days for school drop-offs. Holidays are planned a year in advance, often to the Garden Route.
She’s up before five most mornings, already several kilometres into a run before the day starts. “Lately, it seems like half the world is out there doing the same thing,” she says, “so it doesn’t feel all that unusual anymore.”
Luck and timing opened the doors. The five o'clock starts help keep her head in the game.
