Every Analyst Is a Finance Analyst
The best analysts today don’t just report metrics. They drive decisions. Across every team. That’s what makes them great operators.
(This is a rewrite of my very first post I ever did for Equals, back 4 years ago. It still holds true today.)
In most startups, every team owns their own numbers.
Marketing has their metrics.
Product ships dashboards.
Sales builds forecasts
.But no one agrees on the truth.
Insight has become siloed. And with that, accountability has too.
That’s why the best analysts today aren’t just “marketing” or “product” or “sales” analysts. They’re business analysts. Because great analysis doesn’t stop at reporting function-specific data—it reaches across the org and connects the dots. And whether they realize it or not, the best analysts are always doing finance.
Because finance is just a fancy word for asking:
Are we using our resources well?
Everyone’s Measuring. Few Are Interpreting.
Modern startups are swimming in metrics. Product analytics, marketing dashboards, RevOps reports, sales ops tools. Everyone is measuring something. But very few are telling you what it means—or why it matters.
And that’s the shift happening right now.
The job of the analyst isn’t to stay in their lane and report on what happened. It’s to step back, interpret what’s happening across the business, and help guide decisions. That’s why product analysts are getting pulled into CAC discussions. Marketing analysts are looking at churn. Sales analysts are expected to comment on NRR. Finance analysts are mapping headcount to quota and infrastructure costs.
Everyone’s stepping into each other’s lanes. And that’s exactly how it should be.
The Analyst Job Has Changed
The analyst role has evolved. It’s no longer about managing a dashboard and answering ad hoc questions. The new bar is higher: proactively spotting what’s working, connecting metrics to outcomes, and influencing decisions that drive ROI.
If you’re not thinking in terms of tradeoffs, you’re not really analyzing—you’re just building prettier charts.
At its core, finance is the discipline of resource allocation. Time, money, people, attention. What’s the ROI? What’s the opportunity cost? That’s the question behind every good analysis. Which is why I say: every analyst is a finance analyst.
This Is the First Operator
And this is exactly the kind of person who makes a great first operator.
Someone who isn’t confined by function.
Someone who sees across the org and makes the business legible.
Someone who builds analysis that drives strategy—not just reporting.
If you’re hiring your first finance, ops, or data person, this is the mindset to look for.
How to Operate Like a Finance Analyst
1. Understand the Business Model
You don’t need to memorize GAAP, but you do need to know how your company makes money and what drives margin. For SaaS, that means knowing ARR, retention, payback, CAC, LTV, headcount efficiency, and sales capacity. If you don’t know the levers, you can’t influence the outcome.
2. Learn SQL (and Use It Everywhere)
It’s not just about pulling data. It’s about connecting the dots across marketing attribution, product engagement, CRM activity, and support tickets. SQL is the starting point. If you won’t touch it, you’re working blind.
3. Build Frameworks, Not Dashboards
Dashboards don’t drive decisions. Frameworks do. What are the tradeoffs? Where is the growth coming from? What’s changing in your unit economics? What’s working in your sales motion? Frameworks turn data into insight. Dashboards just sit there.
The Analyst of the Future Is Positionless
Today, the line between analyst and operator is disappearing. Titles like BizOps, RevOps, FP&A, and product analytics are all starting to blur. The best analysts move fluidly between teams. They’re judged on impact, not territory. They can talk to engineers and execs. Model in spreadsheets and query in SQL. They can translate a broken funnel into a clear GTM strategy. And they’re often the first to say, “This is working”—before anyone else sees it.
Bottom Line
The future belongs to analysts who stop waiting for questions…
…and start telling the story behind the data.
Not just “what happened.”
But why it matters.
And what real world tradeoff that implies.
And that’s finance.