Finance & Business Operations Topics
Financial management, budgeting, ROI analysis, and business operations. Covers financial forecasting, valuation, and operational metrics.
Financial Analysis and Insights
Evaluation and interpretation of financial data to influence business strategy and decision making. Includes moving beyond descriptive reporting to deliver actionable insights through variance analysis, forecasting, budgeting, profitability and margin analysis, unit economics, cohort and customer lifetime value analysis, and scenario modeling. Emphasizes building financial models, defining and tracking key performance indicators, translating quantitative findings into clear recommendations for stakeholders, prioritizing trade offs, measuring the impact of decisions, and partnering cross functionally with product, marketing, and operations to align financial perspective with business goals.
Financial Responsibility and Budget Management
VPs manage significant budgets and are accountable for spend efficiency. Discuss your approach to budgeting: How do you allocate budget across engineering, marketing, product operations? How do you evaluate ROI on different investments? Provide an example: 'Our annual product budget was $2M across team salaries, tools, and external services. I allocated 60% to headcount (to build the team), 30% to marketing tools and campaigns, and 10% to product development tools. I regularly reviewed spend vs. forecast and adjusted allocations based on ROI.' Show that you're financially disciplined, that you track spend, and that you make resource allocation decisions based on expected return.
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 Metrics and Unit Economics
Evaluate a candidates ability to analyze the financial drivers and per customer economics that determine business sustainability and growth. Core concepts include revenue streams and pricing, gross margin, contribution margin, operating margin, customer acquisition cost, lifetime value per customer, lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratio, payback period, average revenue per user, churn and retention rates, and metrics for subscription or recurring revenue models such as annual recurring revenue, monthly recurring revenue, expansion revenue, and contraction effects. Candidates should be able to perform back of the envelope calculations and sensitivity analysis, interpret trade offs between growth and profitability, link marketing product and channel activities to financial outcomes, explain how metrics vary by customer segment or acquisition channel, and make strategic recommendations such as pricing adjustments, segmentation strategies, acquisition channel shifts, or investment versus efficiency decisions. Interviewers may request simple calculations, scenario analysis, and prioritized actions grounded in metric changes.