In this episode, Paul Barnhurst is joined by Derek Baker, who is drawn to really hard problems. Derek discovered early in his career that he loves startups and building companies.

He began his career working for SaaS startups, building out their core FP&A processes. For many of the companies he worked with, he was building their very first financial model to help them operate the business and make capital allocation decisions. He found that every business - regardless of stage - can improve performance with excellent FP&A.

Today, he works at Neighbor.com, a Series B startup, building the “Airbnb” of personal storage. Building the FP&A function for a marketplace has been the biggest challenge of his career, and he is loving every minute of it.

Listen to this episode as Derek shares:

How he got into financial modeling for SaaS companies
His advice for building robust SaaS Models.
The importance of understanding a business to build better Models.
Everything about SaaS and SaaS Companies.
His position on controversial modeling issues, including circular references, dynamic arrays, modeling standards, AI in modeling, and more.

Quotes:

“ The only way you're really going to learn how to build a model is by building it. You can do all the study you want, but at the end of the day, it's like anything, without practice, it's just theory. ”

Mastering SaaS Models: Derek Baker's insights on building robust SaaS models

Financial Modeler's Corner