Incoming Statements Ep. #5 – Creating Legibility in Complex Finance Systems with Colin Anderson

Join our newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter, The Ledger Line, for new content, templates, and accounting news & trends.

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Listen to Episode 5 of Incoming Statements here, either on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

In this episode of Incoming Statements, Anthony Alvernaz, Numeric's Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, talks with Colin Anderson, co-founding partner of Friends & Family Capital and former Palantir Technologies CFO, about building exceptional finance teams during periods of hypergrowth.

Colin shares his journey at Palantir, where he helped scale the company from 100 to over 2,000 employees and $20 billion in valuation. He explains his philosophy on hiring mission-driven people with high "CPU" rather than specific experience, and the importance of creating data systems with "hygiene and legibility" that can answer any business question.

The episode explores how finance functions serve as a support role to create a quantitative lens for the business, helping transform blind spots into clear insights. Colin emphasizes the value of purpose-driven work and how stories backed by data create the most compelling business narratives.

Author

Zig, Don’t Zag — The Unconventional Principles Driving Elite Finance Teams

The best finance teams of the next decade won't look like the accounting departments of the past. They'll be smaller, more technical, more strategic, and more integrated with the core business. The CFOs building these teams today are writing the playbook for tomorrow.