Finance & Business Operations Topics
Financial management, budgeting, ROI analysis, and business operations. Covers financial forecasting, valuation, and operational metrics.
Lyft Business Metrics Calculation and Understanding
Finance and operations-focused interview topic about calculating and interpreting core business metrics and KPIs for a platform-based business (e.g., ride-hailing). Covers definitions and formulas for metrics such as CAC, LTV, gross margin, contribution margin, revenue per user, driver utilization, and cost per ride; data sources (ride data, marketing spend, driver and rider activity); dashboard design; segmentation and cohort analysis; and using metrics to drive pricing, incentives, growth, and operational decisions.
Business Case Development and Financial Analysis
Skills and practices for building persuasive business cases and performing financial analysis to justify investments and prioritization. Topics include enumerating and estimating cost categories such as implementation, licensing, development, infrastructure, deployment and ongoing support; quantifying tangible benefits such as cost savings, revenue uplift, productivity improvements and efficiency gains; and accounting for intangible benefits such as risk reduction, flexibility and employee satisfaction. Financial techniques include total cost of ownership, simple return on investment, payback period, net present value using discounted cash flows, internal rate of return, lifecycle cost analysis and build versus buy comparisons. Candidates should be able to construct cash flow timelines, separate capital and operating expenses, perform sensitivity and scenario analysis, estimate ranges and confidence, model procurement and vendor tradeoffs, and state assumptions clearly. Practical communication skills include tailoring the financial narrative and level of detail for finance leaders, procurement partners, technical stakeholders and executive sponsors, showing break even and sensitivity charts, defining success metrics and timelines, and describing how to track and report realized outcomes after implementation.
Scenario and Sensitivity Analysis
Techniques for designing executing and interpreting scenario and sensitivity analyses to understand how changes in assumptions affect financial outcomes. Coverage includes designing base case upside and downside scenarios one way and multi way sensitivity testing stress testing key drivers running variance analysis against budgets or forecasts and projecting how operational metric changes cascade through income statement balance sheet and cash flow. Candidates should be able to model business changes such as price increases volume shifts cost reductions or inventory adjustments state and justify assumptions perform contribution margin reasoning interpret variances and communicate limitations implications and recommended actions.