Principles for First Finance & Ops Hires

Lessons from the trenches on shaping your role and company from day one

When you step into the first finance or ops role at a startup, there’s no playbook.

If you’re like me, you’re usually asked to touch anything with a number… from fundraising models, to board meetings, to pedantic (but important!) ARR definitions, to funnels, cash, headcount, and product metrics. It’s equal parts analyst, operator, and owner.

I was recently on a podcast with some friends and former Intercomrades building a cool company called Format (we’re happy customers at Equals) and we chatted through many of these. I thought it would be fun to codify them in writing.

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One. Act like an owner, not a scorekeeper.
It’s easy to get stuck just reporting numbers. Close the books, share dashboards, show people the numbers! After all, that’s your job, right? The real value comes when you treat the data as an input, and YOU act as if you owned the company. E.g. if I were CEO, what would I do with this information? What decision does this analysis unlock? What would I recommend we do next. You’re not just putting the numbers together and presenting them, you’re thinking through how to impact the business. Your stakeholders will deeply appreciate that.

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Two. Momentum is fuel. Build it with a daily pulse.
Startups live off energy. And one of the fastest ways to create energy is to look at the numbers every single day. Not once a month. Every day. Push a few simple metrics to the team right where they work… Slack, email, whatever. Don’t make people hunt in a dashboard. When the numbers show up daily, they spark conversations and action. If you don’t think you have something that you can look at every day (e.g. you’re mega enterprise) then find something higher up the funnel that you can (e.g. sales activity, traffic, etc.). That all builds momentum. And once you have momentum, everything feels easier.

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Three. Keep it obvious.
Complex metrics look smart but don’t travel. People nod along to Net Revenue Retention, but especially as you start to discuss with a broad set of folks across the organization, they often times don’t really understand what it means or how it comes together. It’s a composite metric (e.g. it’s made up of a bunch of different metrics) and therefore can be quite complex to pull apart or interpret. My preference, when really trying to deal with scaled metrics is to focus on obvious numbers: customer counts, simple rates. If someone can explain it in a sentence, they can act on it. Make it really easy for people to understand what they’re being measured against and how they can influence it.

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Four. Pick your “use case.”
When you’re the first finance or ops hire, you’ll get pulled in a million directions. It’s kind of like building your own startup within a startup. You have to pick the things that you’re going to be great at, and who they serve. Because everyone wants your help and if you try to do that, well you know what happens. SO, I think a lot about what can you do to focus. For me, I found that the more I focused on the question of “how does revenue come to be” the more that led me down analysis and work that was of tremendous service to the company - and therefore built me a lot of credibility. Find the thing you’re hired to help with (I’d surmise it’s the same as my question “how does revenue come to be” … or alternatively it’s “how do we not run out of money” but be careful with that one"). Follow that and people will trust you with more.

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Five. Sweat the details.
In this role, trust is everything. If your numbers don’t tie out or your model doesn’t line up with actuals, credibility disappears instantly. This is why AI really hasn’t yet solved for the job of the CFO, it gets us 95% of the way there but the great CFOs are made or broken in that last 5%. I remember back in my IBM days, one of the most important things that I learned was to triple check that every single number in any deck, email, or sheet I shared tied back to our source of truth. That was the best habit that I could’ve built. When your work is clean, crisp, and precise, people notice. Over time, that precision compounds into trust. And trust is what gives you influence across the company.

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Six. Don’t get stuck in analysis.
It’s tempting to keep digging. More cuts, more models, more data. But analysis only matters if it leads to action. The fastest way to learn is to make a change and see what happens. Create tight loops: act, measure, adjust. Your job isn’t to make things more complicated—it’s to make decisions easier. I say this with the appropriate caveat that it is ALSO your job to turn over every stone in an analysis. Make sure you’re looking at the things that you need to - but not all of that needs to be shared with your stakeholders. Move quickly. Look at all that you can, reasonably. Share what matters.

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Seven. Remember there are no rules.
Every founder and board will expect something different from their first finance or ops hire. Some want a great planner, others want someone who’s an expert fundraiser, others need a great partner to an enterprise sales team, others need someone who can scale analytics, or billing, etc. There’s no ONE way to do it. The role is what you make it. Focus on what creates clarity and momentum for the business—and design the rest around that.

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Ok that’s all. Hope you enjoyed. ⚡️