Why good finance gets ignored

I still remember the slide.

It kept showing up in our leadership meetings at Sandbox VR, week after week. It had a red number for burn, a line trending down, and the same warning every time: we were going too fast.

And we were — by design.

This was 2019. I was CPO, and everything felt like it was finally starting to work. Our stores were packed, and the experience felt magical. And with Series B on the horizon, the pressure was on to move faster: hire across functions, open more stores, repeat. We thought if we moved fast enough, we could own the entire category.

We were so close to winning.

But every week, our CFO brought the same forecast, and said the same thing: “Slow down.”

And every week, we didn’t know what to do with it. It didn’t feel like something we could engage with. There was no fork in the road, no choice to make. Just: “Stop.”

It didn’t make sense.

We didn’t arrive at this impasse overnight, where neither of us felt understood.

Long before we hired a CFO, I’d built the model myself. It wasn’t standardized or anything, but it worked like a simulation. And it mapped to how I thought about the business. I knew exactly how to delay a store opening by 2 months, and instantly see the impact on cash. Or drop revenue by 15%, and understand what that meant for survival. The model told me what would happen and helped me reason through what to do. It helped me build intuition.

When our CFO joined, he immediately rebuilt my model the “right” way. Suddenly, it was GAAP-compliant, three-statement, with store-level detail. Something we could take to the board. But it wasn’t mine anymore.

And as a model, it was better in every way, except one: I couldn’t use it to think.

It was clean and readable. But I couldn’t trace assumptions, tweak inputs, or simulate alternatives. The knobs I used to rely on were gone. I couldn’t use it to explore edge cases or stress-test ideas. And when I needed to make a real decision, I couldn’t just pull it up to find the answer.

It told the truth more accurately than ever, but it stopped helping me make decisions.

Every week, our CFO would bring the updated forecast. Burn was still high, and revenue hadn’t caught up. Nothing was broken, but nothing had changed either.

Eventually, he pulled me aside and said it plainly: “If we keep going like this, we may not make it to the next raise.”

His numbers checked out, but I didn’t know how to engage with that conclusion.

I couldn’t test alternatives. I couldn’t ask “What if we delay that store?” or “What if we slow hiring?” — because I didn’t know where to even look anymore. The model no longer invited collaboration. It only delivered a verdict.

Plus, his conclusion didn’t match my mental model. From where I stood, it felt like we were winning. We had traction. We had momentum. Things looked great. So when he said we might not make it, I couldn’t feel what he felt. The warning didn’t land.

The delivery didn’t help either. The tone had shifted, the energy was heavier, but the message was still the same: “We need to slow down.” It was a red light with no alternate route.

So I kept going.

I understood the risk, but I knew we were at the inflection point where momentum matters more than runway. I saw where we were, and I knew what had to be done at that inflection point. We had to go fast, because if we slowed down too soon, we’d miss our milestones and risk stalling anyway. So I kept pushing forward.

That Friday, we approved two hires. On Monday, we signed another lease. And by the end of the quarter, we had two more stores underway.

Meanwhile, the warnings grew more urgent.

To our CFO, it must’ve looked like I wasn’t listening.

To me, it felt like he was withholding the map.

He saw how fast we were going, how the numbers were trending, and tried to slow us down. He was worried, and rightly so.

I saw the chance to win. I saw the milestones within reach, and knew what it would take to raise: speed. I was actually trying to help us break through.

Neither of us felt understood.

We were both doing our jobs, but we were speaking different languages.

And once it stopped being a conversation, I stopped engaging.

Looking back, I don’t think he was wrong.

He saw something scary in the numbers, but we didn’t get to feel that fear with him. We couldn’t see what he saw. He had a story in his head, but all we got was the conclusion.

What I needed wasn’t a warning, but a way to reason together:

• What happens if we keep hiring?

• What happens if we don’t?

• How much runway do we buy either way?

Even if none of the options were great, I still needed to see the shape of the problem. To feel like we still had agency, we could reason through tradeoffs together.

That moment stayed with me.

Because look how it looked: his model was right, he was doing his job, I trusted him, but we still didn’t know how to work with his warning. There was no shared sense of reality we could reason through together.

And now that I work with finance teams every day, I see versions of this story all the time: the model’s right, the risk’s real, and still the warning doesn’t land.

Not because people are irrational.

But because they can’t see it. They can’t feel it. And if they don’t feel it, they don’t act.

Here’s what I’ve learned since:

If you’re worried, say it out loud.

Say: “I’m getting nervous about cash,” or “This trend is starting to scare me.”

Don’t just act it out in meetings. Don’t hope people read between the lines. Because once emotion enters the room unspoken, people stop listening to what you’re saying and start reacting to how you’re saying it.

That’s what happened to us. We tuned out the anxiety, and missed the actual message.

Telling someone something’s urgent doesn’t create urgency.

If you want them to feel it, you have to show them what’s at stake. Create the conditions where they draw the conclusion for themselves.

• Don’t say: “This will end badly.”

• Say: “If we open both stores, we’re out of cash by September. But if we delay one, we extend runway to January.”

Now they feel the weight of the choice.

That’s what good storytelling does. It doesn’t declare; it reveals.

“Slow down” isn’t a decision. It’s an endpoint.

And if your model only leads to that one answer, it’s not helping people think. It’s just telling them what to do.

What actually works is framing:

• Here’s the situation.

• Here are your options.

• Here’s what each one buys, and what it costs.

Now it’s a conversation. They feel ownership and agency. And because they see what you see, they usually arrive at the exact same conclusion you would have.

Only now it’s theirs.

A good model lets you play with the business.

The original model I built for Sandbox let me tweak assumptions, and see the consequences of every single decision. I could test edge cases. I could explore. I could reason.

That’s how you build intuition — by interacting with the underlying logic of how your business operates in the real world.

Taking that away was a mistake.

The new model was technically better and more accurate, but it was also a black box. I couldn’t touch it, couldn’t use it to test ideas, couldn’t explore tradeoffs. All I could do was accept its verdict.

But if you can’t see how your choices affect the outcome, why would you trust the verdict? I didn’t. And I stopped using the model altogether.

This is the part I missed for a long, long time.

You can’t get buy-in by convincing people you’re right. It doesn’t work that way.

What actually works is helping them build the model in their own head. Help them understand the dynamics, and feel the tradeoffs… before they show up in a slide.

Once they see the decision clearly and understand why it must be made, they’ll make it.

And now it’s not just your insight.

Now it’s their judgment.

• You can be right, and still get ignored.

• You can build the perfect model, and still lose the room.

• You can surface the risk, and still watch people walk straight into it.

That’s what happens when a model fails to create shared understanding.

And that’s what good finance is, at its core: a shared language.

A model that everyone can reason through together (not just read, but actually use) becomes more than a spreadsheet. It becomes a map. It lets people explore the problem space together, shows the tradeoffs, and reveals the levers. It helps you understand the consequences before the number turns red.

That’s also when finance becomes truly strategic, and a partner in figuring out what to do next.

Because now the story isn’t just yours. It belongs to everyone.

And the decisions that follow actually stick.