When speaking about the historical trajectory of significant movements, Ghandi once said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” For startup founders, these words aptly illustrate the road — and obstacles — that lie ahead. Startups that succeed are destined, at some point, to face off against the most powerful incumbents in the world. Still, there has never been a better time to be a startup than right now.

For members of the military, financial planning is a difficult and ever-changing process. Few businesses understand this better than First Command Financial Services, which focuses on serving the nation’s military families with flexible solutions to home mortgages, car loans, and wealth management.

Financing in America can be a confusing and complex process. The myriad offerings, rates, and forms are daunting for even the savviest consumer. Credit Karma simplifies the lending process by anonymizing individual borrower data and procuring multiple financing offers depending on what the consumer is looking to finance. Whether it be a sofa, a car, or a house, customers no longer need to fill out multiple forms; Credit Karma is their one-stop credit application.

This blog is part of our ongoing "meet the analyst of the future" series, which profiles analysts who are transforming their organizations and supercharging their careers by embracing the future of analytics today.

Who are my top sellers? What kinds of deals have the highest close rate? How have our sales opportunities changed over time? As a sales leader, these are just some of the questions you ask yourself every day to keep your team on track. And the answers are in your data. Every form fill, cold call, and MQL is another data point you can use to assess the health of your sales organization.

In a recent webinar by TDWI, 45% of analysts reported that “every day seems to be a different fire drill.” No surprise to anyone in the industry. As much as analysts need to be focused on more strategic tasks, their skills are frequently deployed to answer basic questions. Greater self-service capabilities for end-users would no doubt alleviate these fire drills, but this is not yet a reality for the majority of companies.

Sometimes I walk through the grocery store and marvel at the way customers float through the aisles, blissfully unaware of the logistical nightmare it probably took to stock the shelves. They have no idea how many people, systems, and modes of transportation it takes to make everything magically appear on their grocery shelves. But I do. As the Senior Director of Software Engineering at KlearNow, I spend my days preserving the bliss of those grocery shoppers.

Since the start of the pandemic, business demands on your IT team have skyrocketed. You need granular, actionable insights to keep up with the speed and volume of digital transformation projects and IT incidents occurring across your organization. Canned reports from SaaS-based systems like ServiceNow aren’t fundamentally built for analytics.

Growth. It’s the mountain every startup founder must learn to climb in order to run a successful business. And as with any great mountain, the journey to the top never feels more daunting than at the base. How your startup earns its first 10 customers will set the tone for the rest of the trek and determine how fast your team reaches the summit — if at all.