
Resident Advisor (RA), the online platform dedicated to electronic music, club culture and events, was facing a crisis in 2020. The global shutdown of clubs, festivals and live-music events, following the outbreak of Covid-19, led to a 95% drop in revenue for RA, which relies almost entirely on event listings and ticket sales.
The company was forced to lay off half of its staff. It survived thanks in part to a £750,000 grant from Art Council England’s cultural recovery fund, which was formed to support cultural organisations impacted by the Covid pandemic.
Amid the upheaval, RA’s then-CFO, David Selby, was asked to step up to the CEO position. His grasp of key business metrics and cash flows, and his ability to allocate resources and scale back effectively, was key to getting RA back on its feet during this period. Its workforce grew from 56 people in 2020 to 120 in 2024.
“For the first 18 months I felt like I was really wearing my CFO hat,” Selby says. But, in the years that followed, he discovered that his ability to connect people, not numbers, is what helped RA get back to high performance.
Former CFO turned CEO
The CFO is often considered a natural successor to the chief executive. Roughly a third of FTSE 100 bosses previously served as finance chiefs. For Selby, however, becoming a CEO was never the goal. “I was very happy sitting quietly in the finance department,” he says. “I’ve always been far more interested in working toward something that I am passionate about than progressing up the corporate ladder.”
Nonetheless, he acknowledges that finance experts are often perfectly suited for the executive seat. “It’s not possible, in this economic climate, to be a CEO without having a really good grasp of the numbers,” he explains. “It gives you a strong framework to approach problems and a good sense of how to get the right processes in the right places.”
I was very happy sitting quietly in the finance department
But running a successful business requires far more than financial acumen. The sudden shift from managing numbers to leading a company – in the middle of a crisis, no less – left Selby battling imposter syndrome.
“When you’re a CFO, you’re allowed to be the annoying person in the room who picks holes in other people’s ideas. You can’t get away with that as a CEO because you’re the one making the final decision.”
This level of accountability requires not only a shift in perspective, but a significant confidence boost, too. “Sometimes the best thing you can do is fake it till you make it,” says Selby.
Stepping into the CEO role
In the music industry, knowing the right people is key to growing the business. “Attending events and being on the dance floor is the currency of this industry,” he explains.
Although he rejects the idea that CFOs are not social creatures, Selby acknowledges that finance chiefs are typically less concerned with networking, building their profile and advocating for the business than their C-suite peers. “These are areas I felt very unprepared for. In my first two years as the CEO, I focused almost all of my energy on building and strengthening my relationships across the industry. I had to prove to people that I was more than just the bean-counter.”
Selby has also recalibrated his relationship with the finance department. He describes having to “unlearn” certain CFO behaviours, which had been drilled into him. For instance, CFOs are laser-focused on operations and obsessed with the fine details, whereas CEOs must adopt a broader and more strategic vision for the wider business. “I have found it very hard to step back [from the finances] and put my trust in someone else,” Selby admits.
He emphasises the importance of a strong CFO-CEO dynamic in any successful business. “Ideally you want someone to bounce ideas off; someone who can shoulder the risk and has the capacity to find solutions. That relationship can be tricky to get right, I don’t think I’ve worked it out yet.”
Following your passion
A lot has changed for Selby since becoming CEO, but his love of dance music and the sense of community it inspires remains. It’s what drove him to pursue a job at RA in the first place. “I wanted to join RA because I grew up with it as a teenager,” he recalls.
The company has also gone through significant changes since Selby’s teenage years. When RA was founded in 2001 by Nick Sabine and Paul Clement, it was little more than a hobby project for the two founders. Today, RA is a global brand and a major outlet for electronic-music fans, artists and labels.
It’s not possible to be a good CEO without having a really good grasp of the numbers
A priority for Selby is maintaining RA’s culture and “sense of personal connection” as the business grows. “Every single one of our employees, whether they’re a developer or a salesperson, has a passion for electronic music,” he says. “This allows us to maintain an authentic connection with the community we serve, whether it’s building a feature for the website or selling a partnership to promote it.”
This ethos, Selby explains, is central to all of RA’s transformation projects. For example, he points to RA’s new fan-to-fan ticket-exchange system, which aims to eliminate ticket touting, where tickets are purchased from licensed sellers and resold at much higher prices.
For Selby, initiatives such as these make the job fulfilling. “We’re an independent business – we don’t have investors,” he says. “This gives the leadership team a bit more freedom to be more purpose-driven and keep doing what we love.”


Resident Advisor (RA), the online platform dedicated to electronic music, club culture and events, was facing a crisis in 2020. The global shutdown of clubs, festivals and live-music events, following the outbreak of Covid-19, led to a 95% drop in revenue for RA, which relies almost entirely on event listings and ticket sales.
The company was forced to lay off half of its staff. It survived thanks in part to a £750,000 grant from Art Council England's cultural recovery fund, which was formed to support cultural organisations impacted by the Covid pandemic.
Amid the upheaval, RA’s then-CFO, David Selby, was asked to step up to the CEO position. His grasp of key business metrics and cash flows, and his ability to allocate resources and scale back effectively, was key to getting RA back on its feet during this period. Its workforce grew from 56 people in 2020 to 120 in 2024.