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 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.
Financial Impact Quantification and Business Modeling
Ability to translate business decisions and strategies into quantitative financial outcomes and business cases. Involves estimating total addressable opportunity and expansion revenue, breaking down assumptions about reach conversion rates retention and adoption, calculating revenue lift and customer acquisition, and modeling costs implementation resource needs and payback periods. Includes building simple to moderate financial models that show effects on revenue costs profitability cash flow and balance sheet metrics, performing sensitivity analysis to identify which assumptions matter most, using benchmarks to justify assumptions, acknowledging uncertainty and risk, and describing commercial considerations such as sales cycles contract terms pricing structures and customer budget timing. At senior levels this also includes structuring deals, modeling multi year or consumption based pricing, and projecting customer lifetime value and payback.
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.