为何财务模型在公司早期阶段也至关重要——劳伦·珀尔

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这里是数据轨道出品的《FPNA今日谈》。

From data rails, this is FPNA today.

欢迎收听《FPNA今日谈》，我是主持人格伦·霍珀。今天的嘉宾是劳伦·珀尔。劳伦是首席财务官顾问兼商业策略师，致力于帮助初创团队建立数据驱动的规范化企业。作为三次创业的资深人士，她的职业背景涵盖德勤咨询、科技领导力及软件工程领域。

Welcome to FPNA today. I'm your host, Glenn Hopper. Joining me today is Lauren Pearl. Lauren is a CFO advisor and business strategist who works with startup teams to build disciplined data informed companies. She's a three time founder with a background that spans Deloitte Consulting, tech leadership, and software engineering.

通过她的公司LPC，她已为300多家成长型企业提供财务战略、建模及运营规划咨询。劳伦还在纽约大学伯克利中心任教，主讲创始人财务建模课程。她联合主持播客《成长型CFO》，并作为兼职CFO领域权威专家入选赞达CFO薪酬报告。劳伦，欢迎来到节目。

Through her firm LPC, she's advised more than 300 growing companies on finance strategy, modeling, and operational planning. Lauren also teaches at NYU's Berkeley Center where she leads a course on financial modeling for founders. She co hosts the Growth Minded CFO podcast and was recently featured in Zanda's CFO Compensation Report as a leading expert on the rise of fractional CFOs. Lauren, welcome to the show.

非常感谢邀请，格伦。能与你同台让我非常兴奋。

Thanks so much for having me, Glenn. I'm really excited to be here with you.

是啊，节目开始前我们聊过，我觉得你我有很多共同点——都同时兼顾多项事业。听众们早听腻了我的故事，毕竟我总爱谈论自己。不如从你的经历开始？能否分享你如何成为初创企业和小型公司的战略CFO？这个CFO定位很特别，恰好也是我的专业领域。

Yeah. I think, you know, we were talking before the show, and I feel like you and I have so much in common with all the different irons in the fire that we have. And my listeners have heard my story a million times because, you know, I just wanna keep talking about myself. But let's start with your story. And maybe tell me tell us a bit about your background and the path that led you to become a a strategic CFO for startups and small businesses because, similarly, that's the space I've been in, and it's a unique spot for a CFO.

确实。每位财务负责人的职业路径都很独特。我的经历可能不太传统——不过和我交流过的很多财务领袖都这么说。

Yeah. Yeah. I know. We all kinda have our weird paths into this role. Mine, I would say, is maybe a bit nontraditional, though, I think I hear that from a lot of finance leaders that I speak with.

我其实是在家族鞋业零售公司长大的，企业总部位于缅因州弗里波特。从小我就参与经营这家不断扩张的小企业。大学毕业后叛逆地转行编程，曾在微软合作伙伴公司担任开发员。但我很快意识到，虽然喜欢计算机相关的问题解决，但更热爱与人打交道的工作，于是又回归商界。

So I grew up actually in a family business, a shoe retail company headquartered in Free Port, Maine. So I kinda grew up running a small business alongside that business as it grew. After college, I rebelled and went into, programming. I was a developer for a Microsoft partner for a while, but I quickly realized I liked the problem solving of the computer side of things, but I really, really loved working with people. And so I kinda quickly pivoted back into business.

我先后为几位初创公司CEO担任过类似'参谋长'的多面手角色。后来家族企业需要接班人——我是五个孩子中唯一有兴趣的。但在准备接管时，我发现自己缺乏领导公司的能力储备，企业运营也开始显现乱象。

I worked as sort of a, like, a chief of staff kind of mixed jack of all trades role for a couple of different startup CEOs. And then finally, I got tapped to actually run my family's business. I was the last of five siblings. I was the only one that was interested in all. But as I prepared to take the business over, I realized I didn't really have the tools to be a leader of the company, and things seemed like they were getting a little messy, weren't going really perfectly.

我的本科专业是哲学和心理学，辅修音乐，完全没准备好接管整个公司。因此我申请了商学院——正是在那里转型进入财务领域。记得是在某门课程学会阅读财务报表的，这让我成为家族中首个掌握财务技能的人。

I had had a philosophy and psychology major with a music minor, so I did not feel prepared to take over a whole company. So that's why I applied to business school. And actually, in business school is where I kind of made that transition to the finance field, and it was because of this, because I learned how to read a financial statement in business school. I still remember, like, the course that I learned how to do it. I was the first in my family to really learn those finance skills.

在我之前，我的家族成员大多凭直觉经营业务。当我查看家族企业的财务报表时，我猛然意识到——天啊，这家公司必须关停。它已连续多年亏损。

Before me, most of my family had just run things based on gut instinct. And in the course where I was looking at the financial statement of my family's business, I looked at the statement and realized, oh my gosh. This business has to close. Right? It had been use losing money for years.

债务不断累积，这令人痛心。企业在我读商学院期间破产了。但这段悲伤经历真正让我领悟到财务的价值：仅用几分钟分析报表，我就看到了在这家公司工作25年都未能察觉的危机。那是我第一次顿悟：财务数据才是企业信息的核心。

It was growing debt, and that was really sad. And the business actually went bankrupt while I was in business school. But out of the sadness of the story, really sparked my understanding of the value of finance in that in looking at this financial statement for just a couple of minutes, I was able to see something about this company's future that I couldn't see from working at the company for twenty five years. And so it was sort of that first unlock moment of, wow. Finance is where the information is.

财务数据就像企业的语言，能告诉你运营问题、优势所在和下一步行动。商学院毕业后，我坚定转向财务领域。先在德勤做了几年战略咨询，随后在网络安全公司担任首任CFO，帮助这家原本只接少量政府项目的小公司成长为商业网络安全领域的行业领军企业，年收入达数百万美元。之后我转型成为兼职CFO——离开初创公司后，虽然收到多个全职CFO邀约...

Like, this financial data is really the language of the business and how it tells you what's going wrong and what's going right and what you should do next. And so after business school, I really started to head more in that finance direction. I went and did strategy consulting at Deloitte for a couple of years, and I took my first CFO role working in a cybersecurity company. And I helped them grow from a very small company just working on a couple of federal projects into a multimillion dollar, real industry leader in the cybersecurity space in the commercial industry as well. And it was after that that I transitioned to working on my own as a fractional CFO when after leaving that startup, you know, I got a couple of different job offers to be a CFO at other organizations.

正如你暗示的，我是那种会不断接新挑战的人，容易感到厌倦。所以当同时收到三份邀约时，我突发奇想：如果坦诚告知各方并同时接受会怎样？结果很顺利，因为初创企业早期并不需要全职财务官，我找到了同时高效服务多家企业的方法。

And as you alluded to, I'm one of those people that just takes on stuff thing after thing after thing. I kinda get bored easily. And so I just kinda have this curiosity of like, well, if I have three offers, what happens if I say yes to all of them transparently while letting them know I was doing so? But actually, it worked out well because early on in a startup's journey, the true finance function in the business isn't necessarily a full time role. And so I found a way to do it really effectively from multiple companies at once.

这种工作模式让我乐在其中，至今已持续五年。业务逐渐扩展出更多收入渠道，服务各类公司，但帮助企业的热情始终是我最大的动力。

And that was really just a lifestyle I enjoyed. So I've been doing that for about five years. The business has grown and changed into more revenue streams, working with a lot of different types of companies, but it's still really where I where I'm most passionate about helping companies.

这很有趣——我接触的初创企业或创始人主导的公司（非爆发式增长型）往往如此：他们可能考虑出售、引入投资或融资，却从未真正思考过财务问题。

It's so interesting when you come into a startup or a lot of my clients in in the years since I was in the startup space were businesses where they were founder led. I mean, they weren't the hockey stick startup. They were maybe thinking, hey, I've grown this business. I wanna look to sell this now and and and get out. Or they were looking to bring on investors or or raise debt or or whatever they were they were doing, but they'd never really thought about the finances.

多数创始人并非MBA出身，他们可能是优秀工程师，专注产品研发。但正如你所说，若无人解读财务语言——无论是初创期还是普通中小企业——分不清损益表、现金流，看不懂资产负债表，就难以把握企业真实状况。这是普遍痛点，而且正如你所言，初创阶段财务通常不是全职岗位。

And most founders don't come out of an MBA program, and they're really good engineers, so they have a really good idea. And that's where their focus needs to be. But to your point, without that someone speaking the language of finance, the business, whether you're in that early stage startup or just a a regular small business, if you're not if you don't know the difference between your p and l and your cash flow and the balance sheet means nothing to you. It's really hard to understand where you are with the business. So I guess that's a very common issue and I think that a lot of times so in the startup, like you said, it's not a a full time job out of the gates.

那他们何时会意识到需要财务专家？或许拥有顶尖产品，却在与投资人沟通时出现语言障碍？是什么触发这个认知？我可能跳闸了，这问题本打算稍后问——企业如何判断现在需要引入财务人才？

But when do they realize, oh, we need someone that speaks the finance language here because they might have the best product in the world but then when they go to talk to investors, they're not speaking they're speaking different languages. So what is what is it that makes them realize? And I think I'm jumping ahead. I think I was planning on asking this question later. But what is it that makes them realize, hey, it's time to talk to someone now and and bring someone in that it that speaks the language of finance?

不同企业有不同触发点。常见情形之一是融资阶段：要走风投路线的初创公司需要财务模型和商业经济分析。若团队缺乏相关经验，这时通常会首次考虑聘请财务建模人员。

I think that it happens in a different moment for different companies. So but there's a couple of like common themes of when that moment happens. One moment as you've kinda started speaking to is the fundraising conversation. So for startups that are gonna go the venture backed route where they're going to be funded by investors, they'll need a financial model and some understanding of kind of the economics of the business before having that conversation. So if they don't have any modeling experience or finance experience beforehand, it might be the first moment when they think about, oh, I gotta hire someone to build my model.

从这个节点开始，我会引导他们——财务顾问未必亲自建模，但至少开启了对话。其他企业的触发点则完全不同，很大程度上取决于创始人特质。当同行问我何时该推荐财务顾问时，我常说这更像一种直觉——除非是明确的融资需求，否则创始人会感受到那种'需要专业财务支持'的迫切感。

And from that moment, I I take them in in a certain direction where that finance person might not be the one that's building their model, but at least it's kind of the start of that conversation. For other businesses, it happens at a totally different time. This also can depend a lot on the founder. So when I'm trying to talk with peers about, like, when to refer me, like, when can you tell a startup needs me? Often, what I'll say is it's more of an emotion that they'll feel, like, unless they're doing the fundraising conversation where it's a very specific need.

有时这种情绪就是感觉业务看似在推进，但我却感到迷失方向。我不知道如何回答自己提出的问题，那些不断涌现的问题。我感觉自己像在空转，徒劳无功。我认为这些情绪都源于缺乏基准——就像财务部门所说的指标那样能为你指明业务重点的北极星。对吧？

Then sometimes the emotion is this feeling of things are kind of moving with the business, but I just feel disoriented. I feel like I don't know how to answer the questions I'm coming up that that are coming up. I feel like I'm lost, like I'm spinning my wheels. These are all emotions, I think, that comes with not having those bearings, like the foundation, what we in the finance function know as metrics, to kind of help give you, like, a north star of, like, what activities you should be focusing on in the business. Right?

如果你有明确的财务目标，比如要实现多少营收、降低多少客户流失率或节省多少成本，你的使命就会突然变得清晰，对工作方向也会有踏实感。但若缺乏财务背景，这些目标可能就不那么明确。那种如同在森林中迷路的茫然感，正是人们常来找我求助的时刻。尤其当企业在增长中仍感到迷失时，我确实能帮上忙。

If you have these financial goals, like, I wanna hit this much in revenue, or I'm looking to get churned down by this much, or I want this many dollars in cost savings. Suddenly, like, your mission becomes really clear, and you kinda have this groundedness orientation on what you're doing. But if you don't have a financial background, those goals might not be as clear. And so that sort of feeling of just being, like, lost in the woods not knowing where to go is another moment where where folks will reach out to me. And especially, I can really help companies that are having that feeling despite the fact that they're growing.

对吧？因为这表明他们实际上有资金可调配，有机会战略性地规划下一步决策。这不仅是节省成本的问题，但他们仍需要财务严谨性来明确追求目标和优化方向。

Right? Because that's a sign they actually do have money to allocate. They have the opportunity to be strategic about what decisions they're gonna make next. It's not just cost savings. But still, they need that financial rigor to have this orientation about, like, what they're going after and what we're actually trying to optimize for.

关于这种财务严谨性——我们在节目前提过，很多初创企业的财务模型更多是靠直觉。但我在了解你背景时，首先注意到你坚持认为财务模型在创业初期就必不可少。能否展开讲讲这个观点背后的逻辑？为什么你认为这么多创始人抗拒建立模型？

And thinking about that that financial rigor and coming in, and we talked a little bit before the show about this about whatever modeling they're doing is more gut feel kind of modeling. But when I was doing background on you, one of the first things that came up was your stance that financial models are essential even at the earliest stages of a startup. And I'm wondering if you can expand on that. Tell us a little bit about what's behind that conviction and why you think so many founders resist building one.

当然。要理解这个立场，需要先了解初创企业圈的普遍认知。我认为财务模型至关重要的观点其实存在争议，因为这个领域分成了两派。另一派认为财务模型纯粹是浪费时间。

Yeah. Absolutely. Actually, I think for this stance, it's important to have some context for if you're not familiar with, like, the startup world and the popular beliefs in this field. So this belief that that financial model is really important is controversial because there's kind of two camps to thinking at the startup world on financial models. And the opposite camp is financial models are a waste of time.

持反对意见的人认为，尤其在种子轮或前种子轮阶段，企业尚未成型，根本没有数据支撑。你要建模就需要输入驱动因素或自下而上的数据作为假设基础。

And the reason behind that for the people who believe this is, well, early on, especially at seed stage, pre seed stage, there's no data to go off of. The business doesn't exist yet. So if you think about building a model, you need inputs that would be kind of your drivers or the bottoms up data that you're gonna base your assumptions on.

建立在希望与梦想之上。

Built on built on hopes and dreams.

没错。就像'垃圾进垃圾出'——基于梦想建模。有些风投也持此观点，他们认为不仅创始人做模型是浪费时间，他们看模型也是浪费时间，因为根本无法从中判断初创企业的未来。

Right. Exactly. Like that, oh, this is just garbage in, garbage out. You're modeling based on dreams. This isn't there are some VCs, investors, that hold this belief where they'll say, not only is it a waste of the founder's time to build this because it's BS, it's a waste of my time to look at it because I can't actually tell anything about this startup's future by looking at it.

所以干脆跳过。我的观点是模型必不可少，而反对者没抓住重点。他们忽视了两点：一是模型的真正用途——早期初创的模型根本不是预测工具，它本质上是可行性研究。

So let's just skip it. My belief is that they are essential and that the folks that say that they are a waste of time are missing the point. The two points of the model I think they're missing is one, the purpose of this model and what it's doing as an instrument. So a financial model is useless as a forecast because it's not a forecast. It's not intended to predict what's gonna happen in the future.

更像是情景规划或假设分析，大部分前提都是假想情况。关键在于收集现有最佳数据下的合理假设，尽可能做出可推测的单元假设。如果这些假设大部分成立，就意味着我的单位经济效益会是这样。

A model for an early stage startup is actually a feasibility study. Right? It's closer to, like, a scenario planning model or, like, a what if analysis where most of the assumptions are the hypotheticals. But the point is to say, I'm gonna collect some reasonable assumptions based on the best data I have available, based on units in my assumptions that feel as guessable as I can get them. And if those things are true or if most of them are true, then it will mean my unit economics will be this.

我的增长潜力会是这样的。我的招聘预算会是这样的。对吧？这不是预测，而是用来判断这个想法是否愚蠢的筛选器。

My growth potential will be this. My budget for hiring will be this. Right? It's meant it's not meant as a forecast. It's meant as a is this a stupid idea filter.

因此，基于几个合理假设来把握业务发展情况确实对此目的很有帮助。这是第一个原因。第二个原因尤其对没有财务教育背景或对业务财务还不熟悉创始人很重要。这呼应了我们之前的观点——它能提供方向感。当创始人负责或深度参与建模时，他们实际上是在试驾业务。

And so it really is helpful for that purpose to get your hands around what will be going on with this business, giving a couple of reasonable assumptions. And that's kind of reason number one. Reason number two is especially important for founders who don't have a financial education or don't yet feel really comfortable on the financials of the business. And it speaks to the point we had earlier, which is that it gives them that sense of orientation. So when a founder is in charge or heavily involved in building a model, they are actually getting to test drive the business.

他们正在形成关于资金如何在未来业务中流动的观点。这让他们有机会在脑海中建立结构，将日常实际行动（获取客户、与供应商合作、招聘人员）与财务表现联系起来。当建立这种联系后，就能避免类似我家企业曾出现的问题——问题长期存在，但创始人不懂财务报表价值所以从未察觉。这是建立基础、让创始人从第一天就成为更好CEO的绝佳机会。所以我认为建模绝对必要，绝非无稽之谈。

They are forming an opinion on how they think and they view money moving through their future business. And it gives them this opportunity to build a structure in their own head to connect the inputs of what they're actually gonna do on a day to day basis, going out and getting customers, partnering with vendors, hiring people, connecting those activities to the bottom line, to the financial statements. And when they form that connection, it prevents the issue that happened, for example, in my family's own business, where things are going wrong for ages, but the founder doesn't understand the value of the financial statement, so they never see it. So it's this wonderful opportunity to build that foundation and make that founder a better CEO from day one. So these are the reasons I think that building that model is truly essential and not BS at all.

作为初创圈过来人，我从未这样想过——可行性研究真是让我醍醐灌顶。当初融资时我们只想展示指数增长曲线来获得合理估值，用芝加哥方法之类手段推高现金流提升估值。但本质上这是基础建模：固定成本是多少，需要多少计算资源，基于用户量的S3需求，开发成本与营销预算如何关联安装量等等。

Having been in the startup space, I I don't know if I ever thought of it before, but that's a pretty big unlock for me to hear that. So the feasibility study, because it when we were raising money in the startup world, we just wanted to show that hockey stick so we could get evaluation that made sense or we were trying to do the first Chicago method or what whatever and it was just what we need to get the cash flow up so that we can bump up our value. But truly, it's basic modeling where, okay, these are our fixed costs and this is how much compute we need. This is how much s three we need based on how many users we get or whatever. And this is the development cost and this is the marketing budget and we try to tie marketing to new installs or or whatever it is.

但人们总急于推高营收来证明起飞速度。其实即便缓慢获客或维持特定水平，理解成本结构才是关键——在追求超高速增长前，先要验证商业模式是否成立。

But you're so quick to just try to drive that top line up so that you can show that you do have that takeoff velocity in the startup place. But it really having an understanding even if you slowly added customers or stayed at a certain level, understanding your cost structure is a is a big part of it to see if your business even makes sense before you start trying to add hyperscaling to it.

太对了。这也说明什么才是投资者眼中的好模型。首次创业者或初涉风投建模的财务人员常认为：'我只需画出指数曲线，强行推高营收，不惜任何输入参数'。但成熟投资者看到夸张营收时，第一反应就是质疑——这不会打动他们，更不会成为估值依据。

That's so right. And I think it also speaks to what makes a strong model for a good investor. And we do sometimes, I think, first time founders or when you are even a finance person modeling for venture for the first time, your thinking is like, well, I just have to make that hockey stick, and I have to make that top line grow, and I'm just gonna put in whatever inputs I need to make that happen. But what is true is that most educated investors, when they see that top line, they do believe that's BS initially. Like, that doesn't impress, and they're certainly not gonna base their valuation on it.

他们的估值基于基金内部经济分析，与你无关。你的模型几乎改变不了这个数字。但他们真正关注的是：你是否清晰透明地展示了驱动结果的核心假设。

Right? Their valuation are gonna be based on external economics that they're doing internal to their own fund, separate from you. Right? There's not a ton in your model you're gonna do to change that number. But what they will look at in your financial model is if you, in your model, expose very transparently and cleanly the underlying assumptions that drove that output.

如果能明确展示：'这是基于预计流失率、每转化一单所需客户沟通量、精干技术团队控制成本'等假设，投资者就能与你讨论这些预判依据。最好的模型本就是为对话而建。

If you can cleanly show, well, this is based on thinking that my churn is gonna be this. Thinking that it's going to take this many customer conversations to convert one. Thinking that, you know, these are the cost drivers and I can actually do this with a pretty tight engineering team that's not gonna cost too much money. If you can be really transparent about those assumptions, that is this wonderful opportunity for the investor to sit down with you and judge how you made those guesses and actually give you some advice. Like, the best models, I think, are built to be conversation pieces.

要把所有假设清晰呈现，与投资者肩并肩打开模型时，先展示结果再解释推导过程。他们会说：'根据我投资组合经验，当前B2C流失率比往年高，建议上调1-2个百分点'。这样你就能调整模型获得更准确的未来图景——这也正是他们想要的对话，通过压力测试判断商业模式是否依然可行、盈利。

So where you put all of your assumptions, like, in a really clear place such that you sit down with an investor shoulder by shoulder, you open up the model, You show them the outputs, but then you walk through how you got there, and you give them the opportunity to say, well, I have an entire portfolio of startups, and I can actually tell you that churn these days is a bit higher than it used to be for b to c businesses. I'd recommend bumping that up a percentage point or two because then you get to absorb that into your model, and you get a more accurate picture of what's gonna happen in the future. And that's also the conversation they wanna have because they get to pressure test your assumptions and see, is this business still good? Is it still worth it? Is it still profitable?

所以能从容应对这种讨论而不致模型崩溃，才是打造优秀融资模型的关键。

So if you build the model that you can be ready to have that conversation confidently and calmly without exploding the model and making it not work anymore, that's how you make a good impressive model for fundraising.

这很可悲。我想我在节目开始前聊天时跟你讲过这个故事，我当时在一家初创公司。那位首席营收官有他自己的一套模型，是他从某个地方下载的，是来自Y Combinator的Andrew Chen和Andreessen Horowitz等人的理论，就是所谓的陈氏模型。我们和几位投资人及董事会成员开会时，这家伙一直在用这个模型，还自己调整了假设参数，结果得出了荒谬的指数级增长曲线——根本没人预料到这种情况。他不停念叨着‘拐点拐点’和‘陈氏模型’。

It's sad. I think I told you the story when we were talking before the show, but I was at this one startup. And the CRO had his own model, which is something he downloaded from somewhere and it was Andrew Chen from Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz, all that. It was the Chen model. And we were meeting with a couple of our investors and our board and this guy had been running this Chen model and it was just he'd modified it so it was he would tweak the assumptions and you just have this ridiculous exponential growth that no one expected and we had he kept saying inflection point inflection point and chin model.

最后有位董事会成员忍无可忍说：‘你要是再提一次陈氏模型，我就把你从窗户扔出去。’而作为CFO的我——不管在这家小公司挂的是财务总监还是什么头衔——其实有自己的模型。但他坚持要在所有会议中使用他的模型，结果就是那样：那根本就是个脱离实际的收入预测模型。我认为保持专业严谨性很重要，而那种层层叠加‘拐点’的可行性研究，对当时坐在会议室里的财务人员来说简直令人抓狂。

And finally one of the one of the board members said if you say chin model one more time, I'm gonna throw you out of the window because and it just it was and I'm I'm the CFO and I've got whatever my head of, you know, head of finance title or whatever I had at this small startup. And I had a model, but he insisted he wanted to bring his own model to the all these meetings and it was it was exactly that. It it didn't even it was just a revenue forecast and it wasn't based on anything and so I think having that rigor and being able to and I love the idea of it's a feasibility study and that inflection point on top of inflection point and all that was was a bit maddening as the finance guy sitting in the room.

早期阶段模型中，有个关键危险信号能帮你识别不靠谱预测：任何关于收入增长的直接假设。我称之为‘无投入增长’——比如假设营收每月自然增长30%，或者初期只有10个客户但每年自动翻三倍。这种模型完全忽略了业务扩张需要消耗的时间和资金成本。

I think one of the key sort of red flags on one of those early stage models that you can look out for to sniff that there might be some BS going on is any assumptions about revenue growth directly. So I sometimes will call this growth without work, where you assume, well, top line is just gonna grow 30%, you know, month over month. Or we're assuming that, you know, initially, we'll have 10 customers in the door, but that this is just going to grow by three x every year. There's no work in that. Like, there's no assumption in your model that growing the business will consume time or money.

任何经营过企业的人都知道，获取收入——特别是初创企业——需要巨额时间和资金投入：开发客户、促成转化，这些会占据企业大量精力。因此模型中必须体现对应的成本约束，无论是销售团队开支还是营销资源采购，必须有用资金换增长的逻辑链路。

And the reality for anyone who's operated business is it does. Like, a huge amount of time and money, especially for startups, goes into creating that revenue, discovering new customers, getting them to convert. This is how you spend, like, a huge chunk of your time in the business. So in the model, there needs to be some cost there. There needs to be some way in which you express a constraint on that growth based on an activity that you do that you pay money for, whether that's salespeople or buying marketing assets or whatever.

如果模型缺乏这种约束，就等于暴露了根本缺陷。增长应该是模型的输出变量而非输入假设，因为你无法预判增长结果——增长本质上是经营成败的体现。这类细节能帮你判断所谓的可行性研究是否可靠：把增长当作既定前提的模型，从一开始就错了。

And if you don't have that constraint, it's like a sure sign that, you know, growth should really be an output of of the model, not an input because you can't there's no fair assumption to make about growth. Growth is defining that you have won or lost, and you can't know that yet. So this is there's there's little aspects like this where you can sniff out, like, this isn't a great feasibility study as we've described it because it makes an assumption about the wrong thing, and that's that's that's a huge one.

你刚才还提到另一个关键区分：模型与预测的区别。对持续经营的企业而言，这类似于预算与预测的差异——预算基于当下认知制定，而预测需要像迈克·泰森说的‘每个人挨拳头前都有完美计划’那样动态调整。但这与可行性研究语境下的模型和预测又有不同。

And you mentioned something else when when you were talking about that. The distinction between a model and a forecast. And for a going concern business, it's the distinction between a budget and a forecast where the budget is just that's what's what you know at the time and then the forecast you update based on it it's that Mike Tyson, everybody has a plan till they get punched in the mouth kind of thing. But that's different than and and it goes back to your feasibility study. It's different than a model and a forecast.

虽然你已有所涉及，但我希望能更深入探讨这个区别。

And and I and I know you touched on it, but I I'd love for you to unpack that a little bit more.

当然。在初创企业领域，模型通常是战略规划的第一阶段财务工具。我认为模型的本质是：它主要存在于业务实际运行之前。有时建模过程中业务已启动，这时模型会吸收部分实际数据，但本质上它仍是基于驱动因素和自下而上估算的假设性工具。而预测，顾名思义是对未来的预估。

Definitely. So the model in typically, my world, in startup land, model kinda comes first. It's sort of like the stage zero financial tool that your company has for strategic planning, and it is meant to be created the way that I think about a model is it's a tool that exists for the most part before the business is actually up and running. Now sometimes it's the case that the the business in the course of building the model, you actually are also are already starting to run the business, so you might start to incorporate some of that business activity in the model. But generally, it's meant to be pretty hypothetical and based on drivers and kind of estimates of your bottoms ups inputs versus the forecast, you're predicting the future.

通常我们先用模型（此时公司尚未真正运作），这个基于假设的可行性研究包含各类驱动参数。随着业务推进，部分预测开始成为现实——比如前三个月的营收从预测值变为实际值（无论有无收入）。此时模型就开始向预测转化。

Most times at these companies, we start with the model, and the model is not a forecast, but you can transform it into one over time. So the company doesn't exist yet. It's a feasibility study that has drivers based on assumptions. But then as the business operates, some of these things that you're predicting actually start to happen. You go from predicting your month one through three revenues to you've had months one through three, and you have some revenue or no revenue for those months.

通过将实际历史数据输入模型，可以逐步调整驱动参数：如果原先通过客户获取量和潜在客户数推导收入，现在就能根据前几个月的实际转化率和获客量修正假设，并考虑业务变化对趋势的影响。当模型开始吸收真实数据而非纯假设时，它就具备了预测的属性。

And you can start to transform that model into a forecast by starting to input some of that actual and historical data into the model. And for the drivers that are continuing to drive the predictive numbers in the model, you can start to fine tune those drivers based on what actually happened in previous months. So if, for example, you're driving your revenues based on the numbers of customers you've acquired and then you had a certain number of leads that you generated each month, you could update your conversion assumptions and your lead acquisition assumptions based on what actually happened in the former months and maybe, you know, tempered by how you think that will change over the course of the business as other stuff changes. So as you start to put some actual data, historical data into that model, it can start transforming into a forecast that's more informed by real data, not just assumptions.

我思考模型时觉得它们非常有趣。你可以像操作滑块一样，逐步调整假设条件，观察其影响，看到变化。比如转到假设选项卡修改参数，再回到页面查看效果，这种过程令人兴奋。多年前有位教授告诉我（我需要查证原话出处），我有个坏习惯——把地图误当作实际地形。在初创阶段作为财务人员，看着模型时很容易激动，因为看似微小调整就能带来巨大变化。但地图只是规划阶段的简化呈现，真正开始执行后，现实地形可能更好也可能更糟。

I think about models and those are so fun. You could because it's like you have a slider and you can just go through and you change the assumptions a little bit and you watch the impact and you can see the and, you know, you go to the assumptions tab and you change that and you go over to the page and you see what the impact that is and you get excited. And I think years ago and I need to look up who originally said this quote, but I had a professor tell me that I had a bad habit of confusing the map for the terrain. And I think sometimes when you're when you're in that early stage and you're you are the the finance person that when you look at that model, it's easy to get really excited because it just seems like a minor tweak and now look at we're taken off and it did but it's the map is easy when you're in the planning phase and if you're trying to raise and get things started And then the terrain is when you get out there and things are different. Maybe they're better, maybe they're worse.

但必须记住，当我们过去十二个月烧掉几百万美金后，那个精致的模型就不再适用了。我十分认同这种区分的必要性。创始人往往都是永恒乐观主义者，他们憧憬着打造下一个世界级应用的美好未来。

But remembering that that the chin model doesn't work anymore when we've burned through, you know, a couple million bucks in the last twelve months or whatever the the case is. So I really like that that distinction a lot. And thinking about that, when founders are there, they are their eternal optimist. They're looking for this big future. Building the next world dominating app and all that.

我认为当你加入这类公司时，他们大多没有深入考虑过日常财务实操（而不仅是财务战略）。虽然可能有大致规划，但不会细想到具体会计系统等问题。作为首位财务人员，你甚至不知道之前是谁在做账，谁在负责QuickBooks对账。但当你以顾问或全职身份成为初创企业首位财务负责人时，我很好奇你会看到什么景象。

And I think if you come into a place like that they have not thought mostly they have not really thought about the true day to day finances and not just the the finance strategy. They may have an idea of what they wanna do with that but they're not thinking about the accounting and it's I don't know what system they'd be on or whatever when you come in. But when you are that first finance hire, I don't know who's doing the books before you get there. Who's even going through and doing reconciliations in QuickBooks or whatever it is. But if you come in and you're that startup's first finance hire, whether it's as a consultant or or full time, I'm wondering what you see.

你会接手怎样的局面？从初来乍到到整理好所有事务（或准备移交并雇佣全职CFO）期间，前后状况有何不同？

What do you inherit? And what's the before and after of what you got when you first came there and by the time that you have everything clean or that you're ready to move on in there and hiring a full time CFO?

确实情况各异。我很幸运能为不同阶段的初创企业服务——从最早期的初创公司（特别是课程教学和主题辅导中接触的），到已经完成C轮融资的成熟企业都有合作。

Yeah. So it can really vary. For my clients, I'm lucky enough that I work with startups at a lot of different stages. You know, I work with the earliest of early startups, especially in my courses and in coaching based on course topics. And then on the other end of things, I work with startups all the way past series c.

因此，对于每一种情况，我与他们接触时的状态都会有所不同。所以我倾向于采用一种适用于大多数人的方法，即先进行初步诊断，了解现状。在这个过程中，我真正想要明确的是他们的目标——比如在未来三个月、一年或五年内，他们需要完成什么、希望完成什么？思考对他们而言重要的事情，确实能帮助我作为财务专业人士优化下一步的聚焦点，因为我工作的另一个特点是，这并非我的全职工作。

And so, you know, for each of those, the status where I meet them is gonna be different. So I like to take an approach that works for nearly all of these folks, which is sort of an initial diagnostic of what's going on. And what I'm seeking in that process is really getting clear on their goals. Like, what are the things that they need to accomplish, want to accomplish in the next three months, in the next year, in the next five years? Thinking about what's important to them really helps me optimize as a finance professional on where to focus next because the other aspect of the way I work is it's not my full time gig.

所以我们必须保持专注，可能无法做到假如我是全职接手时那样面面俱到。我们很可能需要有针对性地开展工作。因此，无论他们处于哪个阶段，首要的是真正倾听他们想要达到的目标，这样我才能以专业人士的身份评估，在我的专业范围内可以做些什么来帮助他们实现目标。但我想说的是，特别是在公司早期阶段，作为首个财务招聘进来的人，认识到这一点非常重要。因为我认为这种独特经历在于，你是他们首次接触到的、从财务职能角度提供领导支持的人。

So we have to be focused, and we might not get to absolutely everything that I would do if I were taking on the role full time soup to nuts. We're probably gonna need to be targeted. So that's sort of number one regardless of what stage they're at, really listening to where they're trying to get to so I can assess as a professional what I can do within my realm of expertise to help them get there. But I would say that, you know, especially at the earlier stage of the company, it's really important to recognize as you're kind of the first finance hire. Because I think that's the unique experience really coming in and having, like, the the you're their first exposure to someone who's coming in and helping lead from the financial function.

我认为首先要明白，你并不需要在第一天就建立一个完美的财务职能体系，那也不是你的职责。作为财务专业人士，在组织内创建完美的财务、会计、资金管理等体系——除非你所在的是一家金融公司或需要接受严格审计的企业，否则这很可能不是你的工作重点。对吧？你不是这家公司的明星。如果这家公司明天就倒闭了，没人会感叹‘虽然他们没赚到钱，但天哪，他们的财务职能太完美了’。

I think first, understanding that you're not necessarily building a perfect finance function on day one, and that's not your job. Like, you as a finance professional creating perfect finance, accounting, treasury, all of that in the organization, that's probably unless you're in a financial company or one that's going to be audited heavily, that's likely not your job. Right? Like, you're not the star of this company. And if this company, you know, winds down tomorrow, no one's gonna be impressed that, like, well, they made no money, but, man, they had a perfect finance function.

这根本不重要。所以我认为作为首个财务招聘，首要的是带着你的技能，但某种程度上要放下你在上一份职位中追求优化的东西，真正放低自我，认识到业务的明星是业务本身，而我只是来提供支持的。因此，倾听多方利益相关者的需求，理解他们当前状态与理想目标之间的差距，并思考财务职能如何填补这些空缺。当你采取这种高度聚焦的方式时，所能产生的影响可以非常巨大，因为你真正能在人们最希望取得进展的领域给予帮助，集中精力于此，他们会深感感激并切实体会到你的贡献。

Like, it's not gonna matter. So I think number one coming is that first finance hire. It's important to kind of you have your skills, but you sort of have to leave behind what you were optimizing for in your last position, and really kind of go lower ego and think about, like, the star of the business is the business itself, and I am just there to support. So listening to multiple stakeholders asking what everyone needs, understanding the gaps between where they want to be and where they are today, and thinking through how the finance function is going to fill them. And the impact can be really, really huge when you take this really targeted focus because you can really meet people at where they wanna make the most progress, and then you focus your time there, and they will really be thankful and feel the impact and see everything you're doing.

对吧？如果他们不看账本，就不会注意到账目是否完美，但如果因为你提供了比如需要达成的销售目标，他们实现了目标并知道业务进展顺利，就会感受到更明确的方向感。这就是作为首次招聘加入时的大致图景，以及如何以不同方式对待它。但关于预期事项的一些例子——有时我被邀请去做非常具体的工作，比如筹备融资时，这可能带来非常明确的投资回报。

Right? They're not gonna notice the perfect books if they don't look at the books, but they will notice that they feel more oriented because you gave them, for example, a sales target to hit, and then they hit it and they know their business is doing well. And so that's sort of a bit of kind of the the overarching picture of of coming in as a first time hire and how to treat it differently. But some examples of the kinds of things to expect before and after, like, you know, sometimes I'm brought in to do something very targeted. If we're, like, going for fundraising, that can be a very, very clear ROI.

对吧？他们最初开始与投资者交谈。投资者并不感兴趣。我们帮他们梳理出清晰的推介要点，协助制作推介资料。

Right? They initially start talking to investors. The investors aren't interested. We put together, like, what is their clear pitch? We help with the the pitch deck.

我们建立了出色的财务模型，突然间他们就能获得大量资金，接着我们可以着手规划如何配置这些资本，让他们有望成为下一个独角兽企业。这逻辑很清晰吧？但过程中也会有些小成就。比如有家初创公司已是行业龙头，但创始人毫无财务背景，一直苦于盈利问题。

We put together a great model, and suddenly, they can unlock all of this funding, and then we can move on to figuring out how to allocate all that capital so they could be the next unicorn. Right? Super clear. But there's also just smaller accomplishments that will happen. I have one startup where they're a dominant industry player, but had no finance background, and they were struggling with profitability.

经过约一年的合作，现在他们从盈利角度看已大有改善。那位创始人甚至自主创建并运行着分项目盈利报表——这非常了不起。如果你曾手动做过成本分摊就知道这成就多大。她现在能给两名核心员工加薪，同时公司利润还远超从前。这对初创企业是巨大胜利，虽然初期目标较模糊，但经过持续努力，她现在对财务数据充满信心，真正实现了业务重塑。

Now after working with them for about a year, their business is doing much better from a profitability perspective. They actually, the founder has built and runs her own profitability by project report, which is very cool. If you've ever done cost allocation without any kind of automation, that's very big accomplishment. And she was just able to give two of her top employees a raise and still be much more profitable than she was before. So, you know, that's just like a wonderful win for a startup, but kinda a little felt a little more nebulous to start and took a while to get to the point where she really feels confident in information form and is really able to change her business from the ground up.

特别是项目成本分摊这类数据，能让你洞见业务本质。初创企业通常没有这种能力——就像你说的，他们可能用Zero或QuickBooks记账，系统本身没这功能。得手动把数据塞进Excel做分摊。但若没人指导，他们根本想不到这点。所以这确实是关键突破。

It gives you that that magic look inside the business when you can especially if you're talking about cost allocation by project too. That's startups normally aren't gonna have that because like you said, with it, they're probably in zero or QuickBooks or whatever and they're not they don't have that built in. And so that you've got to go and jam stuff into Excel and do your allocations manually and all that. So but I bet they wouldn't have thought about that if they didn't have someone come in and kinda mentor them and and walk them through that. So that is a big unlock.

没错。想想原本连Excel都不熟的创始人能做到这点。我认识的专业财务人士都未必能完成。但这正体现了创始人的潜力——要创立企业必须才华横溢。从零起步实在太难了。我们财务人有时太固守专业壁垒，觉得只有我们能做报表、能完成这些事。

Yeah. Like a founder doing that themselves that formerly had no comfort in Excel. I know finance professionals that can't do that themselves, but this is kind of the power of I mean, founders have to be in order to found a business, you have to be incredibly talented. It is so hard to get something off the ground. I think as finance pros, sometimes we lock in our own expertise a little bit in thinking we're the only people that can accomplish these things, that can build this report, that can do this.

但若少些信息垄断，多些知识共享，你就能彻底改变CEO的决策方式。坦白说，这样合作起来也更愉快——他们真正理解了财务价值，会主动深挖数据推动业务增长。这种工作带来的成就感是无价的。

But I think if you guard that information a little less and are willing to share it more, it's amazing how much you can change the way that a CEO operates. And honestly, then as a finance professional, it is so much more satisfying to work with them because they get it. They see the value, and they are excited to continue to dig into the financial data and engage and make things even better, as they scale. So it has huge rewards to do that.

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FP and A today is brought to you by DataRails, the world's number one FP and A solution. DataRails is the artificial intelligence powered financial planning and analysis platform built for Excel users. That's right. You can stay in Excel. But instead of facing hell for every budget, month end close, or forecast, you can enjoy a paradise of data consolidation, advanced visualization, reporting, and AI capabilities, plus game changing insights giving you instant answers and your story created in seconds.

上千家财务团队正用DataRails揭示企业真相。无需抛弃Excel，而是升华Excel。访问datarails.com了解更多。说到共同点，我也在孵化器做过公益咨询，服务过几家早期客户。那些创始人还处在天马行空的初创阶段，

Find out why more than a thousand finance teams use data rails to uncover their company's real story. Don't replace Excel, embrace Excel. Learn more at datarails.com. Another area where you and I have commonality and I've done it pro bono kind of an incubator situation and then a couple of small consulting clients as well. But working with those founders at when they're so early, they're still in the blue sky and whiteboard phase of the business.

正在筹集种子轮或A轮融资。有趣的是，他们产品推介很精彩，市场策略讲得头头是道，但财务页面的Excel数据根本不像报表，直接截图贴进PPT就用来路演。当你帮他们建立财务框架后，他们与投资人沟通的方式立刻发生质变。

They're they're raising their seed and series a rounds. And it's so funny that they can give you a great elevator pitch. They can have a great presentation on their product, on their go to market and all that. And then you get to the financials page and it's just they've done something in Excel that looks nothing like a financial statement and they just copy and paste it as an image in the PowerPoint and are using that to present with and it's but when you can give them that insight and give them a little bit of structure around it. It feels like an unlock for them and you can you can see, you can help change their language when they're when they're talking to potential investors.

这些早期公司擅长产品故事，但你如何指导他们讲好财务故事？早期投资者到底想看什么？你怎样帮创始人把一团乱麻的现状包装成可融资的故事？

And I don't know, they know storytelling around product but when you're working with companies that early, what kind of financial storytelling are you coaching them through? And what are the investor investors expecting at those early stages? And kinda how do you help those founders translate the very messy reality of what they're dealing with then into something that's fundable?

是的。所以我认为初创企业的叙事确实始于融资演讲稿。作为一个财务专业人士，我本希望整个故事能用Excel表格讲清楚，但不得不承认，投资者真正关注的往往是市场机遇、团队阵容，以及他们是否在解决一个让客户惊呼'天啊，快拿走我的钱，帮我解决这个问题'的痛点。

Yeah. So I would say to start that the storytelling of the startup in general really does start at the pitch deck. Like, I hate to disappoint as a finance professional who wishes the entire story could be told on Excel, but I will say that a lot of the things that that investors really gonna glam onto are things like the market opportunity, the team that they've gotten on board, the fact that they're start solving a really painful problem that feels like a problem that their customers will say, oh my god. Please just take my money. Solve this thing for me.

这些才是真正能吸引投资者兴趣的关键。财务模型在投资者眼中的作用其实是：现在请让这个故事变得合理。它需要支撑创始人已经讲述的故事，并且与之逻辑自洽。我们会花大量精力——就像之前讨论的——构建一个将假设分解为可推测、可估算要素的模型，以便与投资者展开讨论，展示我们的推理过程。

That's the stuff that really matters kind of for that initial hook to get the investor interested. The role of the financial model in the investor's eyes is really, okay. Now make it make sense. It's the part that supports the story that the founder has already told, and it needs to be compatible with that story. And so we'll do a lot of working with kind of as as we talked about before, like building a model where we're trying to break it down into assumptions that feel guessable and estimatable so that we can have conversations about those with investors and expose our reasoning, our logic.

我强烈建议在财务模型中不仅要包含数字假设，还要专门说明这些假设的推导过程。比如这个推测的依据是什么？你使用的基准数据来自哪里？咨询过哪些人认为这个假设合理？因为这能展示逻辑链条——这些数字并非凭空捏造。

I'm a huge huge fan of in that financial model to not just have the numeric assumptions, but to actually have a section that talks through how those assumptions were made. Like, what is the source of this guess? What is the benchmark you were using? Who did you talk to that said that this was reasonable? Because it just shows that logic of, like, this doesn't come from nowhere.

这不是空中楼阁。虽然无法精确预知，但我们已尽力逼近真实。同时也为讨论留出空间：投资者完全可以提出改进意见，如果认为某些设定需要调整，我们可以立即修改模型观察变化。模型也是创始人理清思路的工具——在早期构思阶段，创始人常陷入理想化状态，有时难以聚焦具体执行细节。

This isn't pie in the sky. This is based on we don't know exactly, but we tried to get as close as we possibly could, and also opens up the discussion to like, and you investor, feel free to make it better. Feel free to tell us you think it's gonna be different, and let's put that in the model and see what happens. The model is also that place where they get the story straight themselves. At that early stage, at that idea stage, especially, founders are in this really dreamy state where sometimes it can be almost hard for them to focus on, like, well, what are you really gonna do?

比如首日具体要做什么？第三年要实现哪些突破？真的要销售所有SKU还是先推出五个？模型迫使他们在实际运营前就做出艰难决策。关于拆解和构建故事的部分，我常在课程中将其分解为模块化组件，逐个击破。

Like, what are you gonna do day one? And then what are you gonna unlock in year three? And are you really gonna sell all of those SKUs, or are you gonna start with five? So the model is a great chance to get really specific on the plan and make those hard decisions before they're already operating the business. And, you know, in terms of breaking it down and helping them build that story, that part I think is really about, and I do this a lot in my courses, breaking down the aspects of the model into building blocks and focusing on one block at a time.

我的课程会带创始人完成'绘制商业蓝图与数学映射'练习。通过回答系列问题揭示商业公式中的变量，再用纸笔写出收入、变动成本、固定成本及最终盈利的运算逻辑。完成这个基础框架后，我们才开始用Excel构建各个模块。

So in my courses, I walk founders through this exercise of drawing your business and mapping your math. And the way that we do that, the drawing of the business, we answer a series of questions that help reveal kind of the variables of what exists in almost the formula that represents how money moves through your business. And then the mapping your math is actually with a pen and paper, writing the equations of how they think about each of the aspects of the business, the revenue, the variable cost, the fixed cost, and ultimately the profitability. How you actually get there using those variables and math. And once they've kind of mapped that out, we start going into the model and building each of those blocks giving using modules.

方程树练习让他们自然理解业务的不同阶段。当进入Excel建模时，他们会直觉意识到：营销指标需要单独工作表，在讨论收入前必须厘清这些要素。这样整个建模过程会变得非常顺畅。这就是我们帮助创始人建立财务模型魔法的幕后花絮。

They've already kind of started to think because of the equation trees, how these are little kind of like different sections, sort of like different phases of like what's going on in the business. And so once we get to the Excel model, it becomes really intuitive of like, well, this is probably its own sheet. This is probably its own section. Well, I need to figure out these aspects of the marketing metrics before I move on to talking about revenue, and those conversations get a lot easier. So that's a little a little sneak preview on how the magic of how we get founders building models.

说得太棒了。我的职业轨迹是从早期接触初创企业，到后来参与更多扭亏为盈项目。这些接受过私募投资的创始人企业运营了五六年，却陷入增长停滞。当我走进这些公司时——虽然像你说的，创始人的开创精神令人敬佩——但有时这些停滞不前的企业既缺乏增长，又不懂用财务语言描述业务。

I love that. And I so I went from earlier in my career working with startups to later going into more turnaround type roles. And they were founder led companies that had taken PE money and they were maybe five six seven years in and and not really having the growth and they were just kind of duds and trying to figure out what to do with them. And I'm you'd go into these founder led companies at this point and I I think in a lot of ways and I don't, like you said, what founders do is amazing. So I don't wanna do anything to knock them.

我总会联想到WeWork前CEO亚当·诺伊曼赤脚长发构想愿景的画面——这成了我对所有创始人的刻板印象（向收听节目的创始人致歉）。当面对焦躁的投资人和需要挽救的公司时，我总觉得自己是来'扮演成年人'的角色。不过你用更委婉的方式表达了相同观点。

But sometimes in these sort of stagnant companies that were just rolling along and they didn't have the growth and they didn't have the financial expertise to really even know how to talk about their business. I would picture was it Adam Neumann, the original WeWork CEO that barefoot and long hair and dreaming up all the stuff he was doing with WeWork. And I would see that's kind of how I would picture all founders and that just sounds terrible and I apologize to any founders who are listening here, but it was someone has to be the adult in the room. And I always felt like coming in and speaking that financial language, especially when you've got some frustrated investors and and you're trying to do something with with the company. But you said it much nicer.

可能你比我这个愤世嫉俗的人更年轻乐观。你提到优秀初创企业CFO应该是出色的教育者，以导师身份介入。我想知道，特别是以顾问身份介入时，你如何帮助非财务背景的创始团队建立数据驱动决策能力？如何指导他们与投资者沟通？如何让他们掌握商业语言？

And I think maybe you're you're younger and less jaded than my curmudgeonly ways. But you said that being a good CFO in a startup means being a great educator and that really you coming in in that mentor role. And I'm wondering when you have especially if you come in as a consultant, that's the expectation. But what are some ways that you when you come in, you help those non finance founders and teams engage with data, data driven decisions, communicate with investors, and everything that they need to do to speak the language of the business?

是的。我从三个不同角度思考这个问题。首先，我其实要对你说的观点做个反转。作为教育者，我本应帮助他们掌握商业语言。但作为他们首位财务招聘对象，我经常需要先学习他们的语言。

Yeah. So I think about this in three different ways. And one, I think actually, I'm gonna take what you said and and kind of reverse it. Because as an educator, I'm trying to help them learn the language of business. But as a their first finance hire, often, I actually have to focus on learning their language.

明白吗？因为这是他们的事业。就财务职能而言，我的视角带有强烈偏见——这源于我三次创业经历。我最初是运营者出身，担任过参谋长和战略主管。

Right? Because it's their business. I think there's a lot of in my perspective on the finance function, I have my own biases, and I think they come from I've been a founder three times. Right? And I grew up as an operator, as a chief of staff, as a head of strategy.

因此在财务领域，我常觉得自己像披着羊皮的狼，因为我对创始人的处境感同身受。他们承担着巨量工作，需要频繁切换语境，初创企业的成败完全压在他们肩上。所以如果要选择沟通语言——尤其在公司内部——我们必须使用他们的语言。

And so often, I feel a little bit like a wolf in sheep's clothing on the on the finance side because I have so much empathy for the founder's perspective. They are doing so so much. They are switching context so often. The success of the startup really sits squarely on their shoulders. And so if we're gonna pick a language we're gonna speak in, especially in house, we're gonna speak theirs.

我们要优先考虑如何减轻他们的负担。这才是提供最佳服务的根本方式，特别是在早期阶段。所以我认为，在这个领域成为优秀教育者的首要条件是：先倾听理解，而非直接灌输商业术语——他们使用什么语言？是工程师的编程思维？还是创意人的设计话语体系？

We're gonna make whatever makes their life easier happen. Like, that's the way to really truly be provide the best service, especially early on. So So I would say, like, number one for being a good educator in this space is to start out really listening and trying to understand before teaching them your business language, what language do they speak? Are they an engineer who speaks, like, kind of along the lines of programming stuff? Are they a creative who speaks a lot about, like, design kind of thinking language?

或许来自其他领域？你需要先构建他们的词汇库，从共同语言出发建立信任基础。这样做还有个好处：当你引入商业术语时，他们会更信服。这不是对立关系，而是展现同理心——你愿意用他们的思维模式工作，帮助将商业语言转化为他们能理解的内容。这就是我认为的第一要义。

Are they coming from a different so trying to build that vocab so that you can start from there and build trust there and communicate there, I think is like number one. It also gives you a lot more credibility when you start veering into business language is you're that's not a conflict. You can start from, you know, this idea of that you have started with empathy. You are willing to work in their mode with their way of thinking, and you're gonna help them translate business language into what they already understand. So think that's number one.

第二点，我认为对于许多不熟悉财务领域的创始人来说，财务往往会引发很多负面情绪。比如挫败感、恐惧、恼怒、困惑，甚至无聊——财务常让人感到枯燥。因此，从创始人已有的兴趣点切入能扫清很多障碍。可以通过倾听或直接询问创始人：‘你最喜欢你业务的哪部分？’

Number two, I would say is you can really finance in general for a lot of founders who are not familiar with the area can have a lot of negative emotions associated with it. Like, whether that emotion is frustration or fear, annoyance, confusion, that or boredom. There's often boredom associated with it. And so you can clear a lot of hurdles by starting from a place that the founder's already interested in. So either listening or asking directly to the founder, like, what do you love most about your business?

或者‘你最担忧业务的哪些方面？’‘日常工作中你最想了解业务的哪些信息？’然后思考：这些内容在损益表的哪里体现？在资产负债表上如何呈现？

Or what stuff do you worry most about in your business? What on a day to day basis are you, like, wanting to know about your business? And thinking about, okay. Where can I find that on a p and l? Where can I find that on a balance sheet?

在每月必须提交的报告中哪里能找到这些数据？因为从他们真正关心的内容出发，其他财务概念会更容易理解——我们是从他们舒适和感兴趣的领域开始的。第三种让创始人接受财务工作的方法是让它产生实际意义。这需要作为财务人员的你在组织中进行一些实验和测试。通过理解业务日常运作，让财务职能对组织真正重要起来。

Where can I find that on this report that I have to put out every month? Because if we start from what they care about already, everything else is gonna make a lot more sense because we're starting in their area of comfort and interest. The kind of third way to think about getting the founder to buy into this whole finance thing is making it matter. So this can take some experimentation and testing on your part as a finance person in an organization. But thinking about, like, how the business works on a day to day basis, you are making it so that the finance function matters to the organization.

比如设定目标后向团队展示进度追踪。这很重要，因为关乎绩效表现。人们在意自己是否做好工作。如果你告诉他们‘我给你设定目标，之后会和你复盘完成情况’，大家通常会感兴趣。他们想知道自己做得究竟是好是坏。

So maybe that's a matter of, like, setting targets and then showing folks how they're tracking against them. That matters because that's performance. People care that they're doing a good job. So if you tell them, I'm giving you a target, and then I'm gonna reflect with you on if you're hitting it, People tend to be interested. They wanna know if it's, like, really clear that they're doing a a good job or a bad job.

关键在于：如果我们准备公开财务报告，选择可公开共享的指标会更有效，这样能引发讨论。当人们开始谈论这些数据，在日常工作中看到它们时，你就在构建一种不仅创始人懂，组织内其他人也逐渐熟悉并沉浸其中的共同语言。因此，让财务产生实际意义并在组织中找到相关性，正是这第三个层面的核心。

It's thinking about things like if we're gonna put finance, out there and reports out there, it might be more effective to think about if you're gonna pick metrics, picking ones that you could share publicly because then you can start a discussion. Then people are talking about it. Then people see it in their everyday basis. You're building a language that not only the founder speaks, but everyone else in the organization is starting to speak and get kind of immersed in. So making it matter and finding relevance in the organization is kind of that third aspect.

但我认为，作为首位财务负责人，这确实是你的职责所在。你的任务是让它变得有趣、实用且引人入胜，从而使整个组织开始将其视为业务的另一种语言。

But it really is, I think, as that first finance hire, it's your responsibility. It's your job to make it interesting, to make it useful, to make it engaging so that the organization starts to inherit it as another language of the business.

说得好。听完这些，我想我们的听众中真正在初创公司工作的人应该很少。因为如果你在初创公司，哪有时间听播客？赶紧回去工作吧。

Love it. Listening to all this, I think very few of our listeners are actually in startups. Because if you're in a startup, how do you have time to listen to podcasts? Get back to work.

初创公司确实有很多工作要做。

There are a lot of work to do in start ups.

不过我认为，我们大多数听众至少在中型企业工作，其中不少人在万人以上的大公司。但听到初创公司领域的这种激情，我觉得拥有大公司经验固然很好。但对于那些现在身处大公司、角色明确、流程规范的听众来说，如果突然进入初创公司环境，可能会感到系统冲击。如果有人正考虑跳槽去初创公司，他们需要做哪些最大的思维转变，才能从大公司的固定角色和思维模式，切换到那种高度灵活的初创公司思维？

So but I think, you know, some most most of our listeners are at at least mid sized companies, but a lot of them are 10,000 employees or more. But listening to this, the excitement that goes on in a startup space, I think it's great to have that that big company experience. But for any of our listeners who were at that big company now where roles are defined, processes are buttoned up, and then if they came in from something like that, it would be a shock to the system. So if somebody were thinking about, let me jump ship and go join a startup. What are the biggest kind of mindset shifts that they need to make to to get out of that with a role and mindset they were in at a large company and shift to that very fluid startup mindset.

是的。我可以详细谈谈在前30天里会考虑的几件事。但首先，我要大力支持这种转型——虽然我们刚才的讨论可能让它听起来很可怕、令人生畏甚至难以实现。实际上这确实很难，是个巨大转变，但在职业生涯中尝试初创公司有太多好处了。

Yeah. I can totally talk about a couple of the things that I would think about kinda like in that first thirty days. But first, I just wanna give like a huge plug for making the transition because we a way we've talked about it has made it sound very scary and maybe, like, daunting and not doable. And the reality is that, like, it is very hard. It is a huge transition, but there are so many advantages to going and trying your hand at startups during your career.

我与Uplo（Growth Meded的CFO）共同主持的播客中，我们采访过许多财务负责人和快速成长企业的CFO。发现一个共同趋势：很多CFO都有初创公司经历，他们认为这是职业生涯中最重要的学习机会，正是这段经历教会他们如何成为CFO。所以如果你感到畏惧，觉得永远做不到——这就是你的行动号召，因为这对职业发展极其有益且富有教育意义。既然说到这，如果你决定行动，具体该怎么做？我认为第一点我们已略有提及：倾听。

The the podcast that I cohost, with Uplo, the Growth Meded CFO, we have the opportunity to speak with, a lot of finance leaders, CFOs of public companies, and fast growing organizations. And one of the common trends we've noticed is a lot of CFOs have spent a stint in a startup, and they attribute it to being one of the biggest learning opportunities of their career that taught them how to be a CFO. And so if you are feeling daunted and like you're never gonna do it, here is your call to actually maybe take the plunge because it is very, very helpful and educational in the course of a career. So that said, if you decide to do it, how are you gonna do it? So I think number one, we already kind of touched on, which is listening.

在初期，你过去的工作方式与新角色会有巨大差异。从第一天起就要带着这样的思考框架：通过倾听来明确现在的优化目标，因为这与你之前的角色截然不同。大企业通常追求效率、节省时间或成本，制作完美报表，确保绝对合规——这些都是大企业财务团队的典型目标。而在初创公司，一切都会完全不同。

So in your early days, there's going to be a ton of stuff that's changing about how you operate in your former role and how you're gonna operate in this role. And I think the frame to be thoughtful of from day one is you are listening to figure out what you're optimizing for, because it's gonna be different from your last role. In big businesses, you know, we're often optimizing for things like efficiency or time savings or cost savings, you know, making perfect reports and making sure that we're super compliant. All of these kinds of things that are typical of a large organization in the finance team. In a startup, it's gonna be completely different.

而且不同阶段的初创公司关注点也各异。所以第一个思维框架应该是：带着好奇心开放倾听，快速理解当前组织的重点。我认为初期行动项包括：1）倾听——与所有利益相关者对话，尽可能多地与团队领导者交流，了解目标与差距；2）但别忘了这是初创公司。

And it's not consistent from startup to startup. Depending on their stage, they could be focused on a myriad of things. So I think the first kind of frame is to approach with curiosity and open ears on what's important now for this organization, figuring that out as quickly as possible. I think that the action items kind of for those early days are, one, listen, having stakeholder conversations, talking with everybody on the team, getting as much time as you can with the leaders of the team to kind of expose what are the goals and what are the gaps. But then also, it's a startup.

没时间让你坐着干听。他们期待行动。所以在倾听同时，还要识别哪些是可以快速见效的机会。想想你能创造哪些让同事惊叹'Glenn加入后公司明显变好了'的体验。

So there's not a ton of time to sit around twiddling your thumbs listening. They're gonna expect action. So at the same time as you're listening, you're also identifying where are maybe some quick wins. What are some things where I can create an experience for the other people at this company where they're gonna say, wow. Glenn joined this company, and it feels like things are just getting better.

对吧？这就是你想营造的感觉。寻找那些小改进机会——不是大项目，而是微小调整，通过可见的渐进改善来建立信任，在缺乏完整背景时就能推动团队向目标迈进。至于大型项目和变革，则需要尽可能保持耐心，因为你需要完整背景。要知道第一天时，你的直觉很可能是错的。

Right? That's kind of the emotion you wanna create. So you're looking for these little things you can do, not huge projects, little teensy projects, where you can start to create little bits of visible improvement to start to earn trust and to be helpful, to be helping the team moving towards the goals before you have full context. I think for big scale projects and big changes, those are the kinds of things that you want to be as patient as you can on because you want all that context. You gotta know that day one, your instincts are gonna be kind of wrong.

对吧？有这么多模式可以切换，你知道，这也是我开始考虑围绕这个主题组织课程的原因之一。比如说，在小公司选择软件的方式就必须不同。大公司追求的是规模、严谨性、一致性和自动化，而小公司则不然，你们追求的是灵活性，以及如果初创公司下个月转型时，能够快速替换现有系统而不影响业务的能力。

Right? There's all of these modes to switch and, you know, this is part of why I'm I'm starting to put through some thinking about organizing a course around this. It's like there are some themes to it, like, for example, even how you pick software has to be different in a small organization. At a large organization, you're optimizing for scale and rigor and consistency and automation. At a smaller organization, you are not optimizing for those things because you're optimizing for flexibility and the ability to, if the startup pivots next month, quickly ripping out what you've built and putting in something new without disrupting the business.

所以总有些细微差异。虽然没有详尽清单，但最好的做法是建立一个大型潜在项目待办列表，评估你听到的那些可以完成的事情，哪些能产生最大最佳影响，哪些又切实可行。对吧？这两个标准将成为你衡量下一步工作的新指标，尤其要偏向可行性——因为尽管某些事可能影响巨大，但你现在资源有限，这必须成为所有规划的新约束条件。后续我会提供更完整的思考清单，但早期阶段最需要牢记的就是这些要点。

So there's always, like, little things that will be different. But without, like, kind of a exhaustive list, the best thing you can do is kind of be building that big possible project backlog somewhere, like, kind of the list of, like and you're kind of assessing for of the things I'm hearing of the stuff that I could accomplish or I could do, what feels like it would be the highest, best impact, and what feels doable. Right? And those are kind of your new two metrics of how you're gauging the enough the next stuff that you're gonna tackle with a bias towards doability because the impact, it might be great, but you have limited resources now, and that's gotta become kind of a new constraint to all of your planning. So stay tuned for a more exhaustive list of all the things you're thinking about, but those are kind of the top things to keep in mind, I'd say, the early days.

我太喜欢这段了，整个播客就像是为初创公司打造的金融大师课。我知道通过与这么多早期公司合作，你总结了许多常见陷阱。你肯定见过创始人做财务模型时反复出现的问题，正是这些重复出现的模式让你萌生了开课教学的念头吧？你刚才简单提到了，能再详细说说你在学术领域的工作吗？

I love this because this whole podcast has felt like kind of a master class on finance for startup. And I know in working with all these early stage companies, you've learned a lot about common pitfalls. You I'm sure you've seen things that start to repeat themselves and how founders approach financial modeling. And I'm guessing seeing those play out again and again is what led you to say, hey, I could teach some courses around this. And I you talked about it a little bit, but tell me a little bit more about your work in academia.

我打赌听众们会很想了解你新推出的免费财务建模课程。

And I'd bet our listeners would love to hear about your new free financial modeling course.

没错。我一直特别热爱传统课堂的教学形式，所以总在寻找更多教学机会。很幸运能与NYU Stern的伯克利中心合作，他们有个超棒的初创企业加速器项目。

Yeah. So I have always really loved teaching in more of like a classroom setting. So I've always looked for opportunities to do that more. I was lucky enough to partner with the Berkeley Center at NYU Stern. They have this amazing startup accelerator.

他们实际上有一系列初创企业加速器项目。当我还是纽约大学的新近校友时，我参加了一个夏季加速器项目，带着我在可持续建筑行业创立的初创公司。那是一次非常棒的经历，最初我只是想回馈些什么，因为我在那个项目中没有得到太多财务指导。所以我联系了项目协调人，问他们：‘这个会有帮助吗？’

They actually have a series of startup accelerator programs. And when I was, a recent alum at NYU, I actually went through one of the programs, their summer accelerator with a startup that I started in the sustainable construction industry. And it was a really great experience and kinda initially was just kinda hoping to give back because I didn't get a lot of financial instruction in that in that program. And so I reached back out to the facilitators and said, hey. Would this be helpful?

后来我成为了伯克利中心的常驻财务专家。实际上，我的第一个面向初创企业的财务建模101课程就是与该中心合作开发的。他们给我提出了一个有趣的挑战：他们有一批处于种子轮前到A轮融资阶段的初创公司，但大多数创始人没有财务背景。由于项目周期紧凑，他们需要快速建立财务模型，目标是让每家初创公司在项目结束时能进行投资人洽谈。

And so I have since become the resident finance expert for the Berkeley Center. And actually, my first financial modeling one zero one course for startups, built in partnership with that group. They had this really interesting challenge for me, which is that they had a bunch of startups that were various stages between pre seed to, like, going for series a, but most of them did not have a financial background. They needed to build a financial model rather quickly because they had a fast program, and their goal was at the end of the program to have some investor conversations for each of the startups. So they needed to build this model fast.

但说实话，我没有设计多节课程。他们最多只能给我两个半小时，来教会那些可能连Excel都没打开过的人建立财务模型。这就是我的财务建模课程的起源。多年来，我不断优化这个课程，将其发展成循序渐进的研讨会，帮助创业者从创意阶段发展到拥有可用于融资的完整模型。后来我还将这个课程适配到其他场景。

But by the way, I didn't have multiple courses. I just had, like, the most time they could get me was two and a half hours to teach someone who's never maybe even opened Excel before how to build a financial model. And so this was the origin of my financial modeling course. And over the years, I worked with the program to refine this course into a workshop that brings sort of through a stepwise process so that they are ready to go from just idea stage to having, like, a full blown model that they can use for fundraising. Since then, I've adapted the course for other venues.

我还在波士顿大学初创加速器讲授过这门课，也独立开课。每年在线举办几次，效果很好。但最近我想扩大课程覆盖面——由于每年只开几次课且不做大量宣传，每期只有约30人参与。上次为纽约大学在线授课时，有100多人参加，这让我意识到可以同时面向更多人授课。

I've also taught it at Boston University Startup Accelerator, and I've taught it independently. I offer it online a couple of times a year, which is great, but I recently have been wanting to find a way to get this course kind of in front of more people. Because I only offer it a couple times a year and I don't do a ton of marketing around it, we only have about, like, 30 people that go through the course. I'm thinking the last time I did it for NYU, actually, we did it online for NYU, and more than a 100 people showed up, and it was great. And it kinda unlocked, like, oh, I could do this for many more people at once.

这门课程不会因为参与者过多而效果打折。现在我正在尝试新方法：先免费提供试听内容展示课程亮点。即使有人最终不参加完整课程，我也希望他们能获取核心价值——这对行业将产生深远影响。课程的核心突破在于：作为创始人，你会收到大量来自会计师事务所、兼职CFO和财务软件公司的建模模板，但大多数创始人使用这些模板时会陷入困惑。

This this course doesn't break down when there's too many participants. So I'm trying this new thing where I'm doing a bit of a teaser to start just for free to show people what to expect in the course, thinking that even for those who don't end up taking the full course, I want them to get kind of the key unlock of the course because I think it'll be very impactful in the industry. And the big unlock I wanna give them in this course is really about how the financial models as your founder, you're gonna get inundated by financial modeling templates, mostly coming from accounting firms, other fractional CFOs, financial software companies that are trying to sell you their modeling products. They'll provide you with all these templates that you can use as a foundation for your model. But for the most part, founders will take these templates and they start to use them, and they get very lost.

他们会感到困惑。这些模型实际上没什么帮助，可能只是被用来筹款。它们并不能真正强化他们的推介。一旦筹款结束，这些模型就会被丢弃，因为它们毫无用处。但这种情况发生的原因是，财务人员构建模型的方式与创始人截然不同，因为他们的数学思维方式完全不同。

They get confused. They're not really helpful, and maybe they use it for fundraising. It's not really strengthening their pitch. And the second the fundraising is done, they throw it away because it's not useful. But the reason that this happens is because finance people build models totally differently from how founders build their own models because they think about the math completely differently.

如果你从未上过会计课程，你绝不会想到用会计的方式来思考你的业务。因为想想业务驱动因素和会计，它们之间是如此脱节。那种会计思维、损益表思维、资产负债表思维，我们这些会计人员认为这些工具是思维中固有的，但实际上它们相当复杂，如果你从未接触过这些，它们不会成为你思考业务运作的基础。所以帮助创始人理解这一点很重要——你并没有疯。你看到的那些模板并不实用，如果你开始自己动手，你会取得更大进展——这就是我想揭示的关键，因为我认为这能让更多创始人更容易地利用财务数据和模型进行筹款。

If you'd never taken an accounting course, you would never dream up accounting as being the way that you think about your business. Because think about like business drivers and accounting, they're so disconnected. That accounting mindset, that p and l mindset, that balance sheet mindset, all of those tools that we as accounting folks find so kind of inherent in our thinking are pretty convoluted, and they're not the baseline of what you would think about of how a business runs if you were just, like, never exposed to those things. So helping founders understand that, like, you're not crazy. The templates you're seeing aren't useful, and you'll make a lot more progress if you start to do this on your own is kind of the unlock I wanna make because I think that it makes fundraising using financial data, using a model much more accessible to many more founders.

这就是我在这个新实验中构想的内容——开设这个小型的试听课程。你应该去看看。对于财务专业人士来说，如果你想与初创公司合作并理解他们的思维方式以及什么对他们最有效，这是一个很好的预览。它能让你初步了解如何开始转换思维模式。

So that's really what I'm kind of dreaming up in this new experiment of doing this little teaser course. So you should check it out. And for finance professionals, I think it's a good little preview into if you are thinking about working with startups and trying to understand the differences of how they think and what serves them best. It's a really good taste of how to start switching modes.

非常酷。我们一定会在节目笔记中放上链接。这次对话很棒。不过我得用我们常问的几个问题来收尾了，时间正好到了。

Very cool. And we'll be sure and put a link to that in the show notes too. So so this has been great. I've got to I've got to wind down with the questions we ask everyone though. So we are right at we're right at time here.

我想尽量快一点，如果有听众正坐在车里等着进办公室，他们想在进去之前知道这些问题的答案。所以

So I wanna try to if there are if there are listeners who are sitting in their cars waiting to go into the office, they they wanna know the answers to these next questions before they can go in. So

我们不能让他们等，格伦。他们上班要迟到了。

We must not make them wait, Glenn. They're gonna be late for work.

现在还有人去上班吗？我想确实更多人回去了。

Does anyone still go to work? I guess more people are.

是啊。

Yeah.

这些都是我们的常规问题，但总是很有趣。有什么是听众可能不知道的关于你的事？也许是你的网站或LinkedIn资料上没有列出的。

So these are our boilerplate questions, but always fun. What is something our listeners wouldn't know about you? Maybe something that's not listed on your website or your LinkedIn profile.

我得说，我的第一份工作是我很少提及的。在进入商界和软件行业之前，我是一名音乐人。我的第一份工作是为一个名叫Brutal Poca的以色列朋克乐队当巡演助理。我负责管理他们的设备和周边商品摊位，并确保整个乐队在欧洲巡演的那个夏天每晚都能回到车上。所以

So I have to say, one of my first jobs is something I don't talk about very often because before going into business and before going into software, I was a musician. And one of my first jobs was as a roadie for an Israeli punk band named Brutal Poca. I managed their equipment and their merch table and ensured that the whole band got in the van at the end of the night throughout Europe for a summer. So

好的。那我能在SoundCloud或其他地方找到Brutal Polka乐队的音乐吗？因为我现在必须听听这个残酷波尔卡朋克乐队。

Okay. So can I find Brutal Polka on, like, SoundCloud or or can I find their music anywhere? Because now now I've gotta hear brutal polka punk band.

应该可以。我想如果你在互联网上搜索得够久，总会找到些残留的痕迹。那些痕迹可能是德文或捷克语的，但它们很可能还存在。

Think maybe. I think if you search the Internet for long enough, there will still be remnants existing somewhere. Those remnants may be in German or in Czech, but but they're probably around.

太酷了。好了，来个大家都爱的问题：你最喜欢的Excel函数是什么？为什么？

Very cool. Alright. Everyone's favorite question. What is your favorite Excel function and why?

我会给你个令人沮丧的答案——作为常与创业者用Excel共事的人，我始终坚持大家应该使用自己真正理解、能追溯且感到清晰舒适的函数。所以我要说，Excel里我最爱的其实是它的基础功能：在单元格里你可以输入数字、公式或文字。这恐怕就是整个行业始终无法抛弃Excel的关键原因——它能让你随时决定这个单元格需要计算、需要静态变量，还是需要定义你在做什么。

So I'm gonna give you a frustrating answer to this question because as someone who works with founders in Excel and really really emphasizes that folks simply use the functions that they understand and can trace and feel really clear and comfortable with, I'm gonna say my favorite function in Excel is actually a functionality of Excel, which is the fact that in a cell, you can put a number, you can put a formula, or you can put words. I think this is probably the key reason that the Internet the industry just hasn't been able to drop Excel. It's this ability to decide in that cell, is it important to calculate something? Is it important to put a static variable? Or is it important to define the thing that you are doing?

这种文字功能，这种能标注'这是实际数据'、'这是数据背景'、'为什么选A不选B'的能力，就像我编程背景中的随处注释功能，明白吗？

And that, like, the words function, the ability to say, here is actually the data that is here. Here is the context around the data. Here is why it says this and not that. From, like, my programming background, like, the ability to comment anywhere. Right?

在不影响模型功能的前提下注入人类语境的能力实在太强大了——尤其当你刚入门，觉得还没能力设计出直观模型时，直接写下来就行。突然整个模型就变得合理易懂，谁都能用了。这种随处书写的能力常被低估，却强大得不可思议。

To inject something that's not going to affect the functionality of the model, but is merely human context is so, so, so powerful, especially when you're just getting started and you feel like you're not yet skilled up enough to design the model in a way that feels really intuitive, just write it down. You can just write it down and suddenly the entire model is a lot more reasonable. It makes sense. Anyone can use it. So that ability to write in wherever you want, I think, is insanely powerful and sometimes undervalued.

精辟。这答案其实很棒，我还以为你会说合并居中呢。

Love it. That actually is a great answer. I thought you were gonna say merge and center.

天啊，怎么可能，我又不疯。

My god. No. I'm not crazy.

好的最后，我们的领导者该如何联系你，了解更多关于咨询、课程和见解的信息？

Alright. Finally, how can our leaders connect with you to learn more about your consulting, your courses, and insights?

最佳联系方式是LinkedIn，我在那里经常发帖，也喜欢结识新朋友。更多工作详情可见我的网站laurenpearlconsulting.com。如果想跟进我的动态，我有个叫《每日CFO》的通讯，分享很多针对创业者及财务人员的经营技巧、成长策略和财务思维。

Yeah. So the best place to connect would probably be LinkedIn. I do a lot of kinda posting there, and I love meeting new folks on that platform. You can also check out more about my work on my website, laurenpearlconsulting.com. And if you wanna follow along with the stuff that I'm doing, I write a newsletter called The Daily CFO, which has a lot of kinda tips and tricks both for founders and for the finance folks who work with founders on how to run a business at a small scale and how to grow and think about financial strategy.

所以这些地方可能是最佳选择。对了，你该听听我的播客《成长型CFO》，由Upflow赞助，我们与财务领袖们探讨CFO角色及财务职能整体变化的对话。这个播客非常棒，邀请了许多令人惊叹的嘉宾。如果你想了解上市公司CFO的日常、如何达到那个位置，或他们最关注什么，一定要去听听看。

So those would probably be the best places. Oh, and you should check out my podcast, The Growth Minded CFO, which is sponsored by Upflow, where we speak with finance leaders about the changing role of the CFO role of the of the CFO function and the finance function in general. It's a really cool podcast with a lot of amazing guests that we've gotten to speak with. So if you wanna know what it's like to be a CFO of a public company or how to get there or what matters most to them, you should definitely check it out.

太棒了。节目开始前我们聊过，我们都在外面拼命打拼。给我的听众们说一声，我也有新简报《劳伦的财经快讯》，快去订阅吧。

Love it. And we were talking before the show. We're both out there hustling and grinding. For my listeners, I have a new newsletter also. Subscribe to Lauren's.

我的是《深度财经速递》，订阅我的。这两份简报加上其他内容，保证你一周都有东西可读。

I'm deep finance dispatch. Subscribe to mine. We'll you'll have reading material all week from those two and and with the.

我们会给你塞满所有你能处理的财经阅读材料。

We'll set you up with all of the finance reading you can handle.

没错。播客叫《成长型CFO》，创业课程在线可学。这位是劳伦·珀尔，本期《今日FP&A》就到这里。劳伦，再次感谢你参加节目。

That's right. The podcast is Growth Minded CFO. The startup course is available online. She is Lauren Pearl, and this was FP and A today. Lauren, thank you again for coming on the show.

非常感谢你，格伦。这次太棒了，非常愉快。

Thank you so much, Glenn. This was awesome. This was so fun.