The hardest thing to unlearn moving from banking to startups wasn’t technical.
In banking, you model the past to justify the future. You build a valuation, stress-test assumptions and present a number that holds up in a data room. Founders do the opposite. They’re building a future with almost no past. Every assumption is a guess with a hypothesis attached.
The models look the same. The thinking is completely different. I had to unlearn precision. A clean model built on wrong assumptions is worse than a rough one built on reality. Now I don’t ask founders for a perfect forecast. I ask what they actually believe, and why.
Telling the story forward
I used to be great at explaining the past: why revenue grew, what drove costs. Then I watched a CEO take the same numbers I’d have used to explain the past and use them to show a board what was possible. The best stories with numbers don’t just explain what happened. They show what’s next.
Someone gave me runway
At 25, when I was still technically an analyst, a boss handed me a multimillion-dollar partnership and let me lead board and investor meetings. It changed my trajectory, and how I think about developing people.
The range was the point
Most CFOs come up one way. I worked across investment banking, private equity, asset management and startups. For a long time I thought I was supposed to pick one lane. Now, when I sit with a founder, I’m drawing on every room I’ve been in: the deal table, the board meeting, the 2am model rebuild.
Scorecard