Y Combinator Strategic Finance Lead
About Us
Our vision is to become the marketplace for everything expensive, specialized, and difficult to move. We’re building the infrastructure that powers the procurement and disposition of assets across America’s essential industries, automating everything from discovery and payments to freight, warranty, and financing. Today, Garage operates in cities and towns across all 50 states and has surpassed $100M+ in annualized transaction volume on the platform.
Our mission is to save local governments and essential services businesses time and money. We started with fire departments two years ago and have since expanded into EMS and heavy-duty, launching new verticals while growing revenue >10x last year.
If you move fast, hold a high bar, and want meaningful ownership in building a category-defining company, Garage is the place to do it.
About the role
As Strategic Finance Lead, you will build the financial operating system that helps Garage scale a transaction-heavy marketplace with speed, discipline, and clarity. Reporting directly to the CEO, you’ll partner with the founders and functional leaders on the company’s most important decisions: where to invest, how to grow efficiently, how to measure marketplace health, and how to allocate capital as the business expands.
This is a hands-on finance role for someone who wants to sit close to the business. You will own forecasting, planning, metrics, cash visibility, and investor-ready reporting, while partnering closely with the Senior Accountant to make sure clean actuals flow into the right operating decisions. The goal is not to add bureaucracy. The goal is to give Garage a sharper financial model, better decision-making cadence, and a clearer view of what drives durable growth.
In this role, you will:
Build and own Garage’s operating model, including revenue, GMV, take rate, gross margin, burn, runway, headcount, and cash-flow forecasting.
Define and maintain the financial metrics that matter most for a marketplace business, turning transaction data into clear insights for founders, team leads, and investors.
Lead planning cycles across budgets, hiring plans, spend, and growth initiatives, helping the company understand the tradeoffs behind every major investment.
Monitor cash, runway, liquidity needs, and working capital dynamics across corporate operations and marketplace activity.
Build monthly and quarterly reporting packages that explain what is happening in the business, why it matters, and what decisions should follow.
Prepare investor materials, board updates, diligence support, and financing analyses as Garage grows.
Partner with the Accounting Lead on close outputs, transaction flows, funds movement, and reconciled actuals so planning and reporting stay grounded in reliable data.
Identify opportunities to improve margin, capital efficiency, vendor spend, and operating leverage without slowing the team down.
Build scalable finance systems, dashboards, metric definitions, and planning processes that can support Garage at its next stage and beyond.
What we’re looking for
Thinks like an owner and wants to be in the room for the company’s most important financial and strategic decisions.
Enjoys building models that become operating tools, not static spreadsheets that only finance understands.
Gets energized by the complexity of a marketplace business, including transaction volume, money movement, financing, freight, margin, and customer behavior.
Can move quickly with imperfect information, make thoughtful assumptions, and clearly explain what would change the recommendation.
Brings a high bar for analytical rigor, but knows when a fast, useful answer is better than a perfect answer that arrives too late.
Communicates clearly with founders and functional leaders, translating messy data into practical decisions.
Wants to build the foundation for a finance function that can scale.
Required
5+ years experience in strategic finance, FP&A, finance and strategy, corporate finance, investment banking, private equity, consulting, business operations, or a finance role at a high-growth company.
Strong financial modeling skills, including the ability to build forecasts, scenario analyses, unit economics models, and cash-flow projections from scratch.
Strong understanding of startup operating metrics such as revenue growth, GMV, take rate, gross margin, contribution margin, burn, runway, CAC, payback, and operating leverage.
Experience partnering with senior leaders on budgets, headcount planning, resource allocation, performance reporting, or strategic initiatives.
Strong analytical judgment and comfort working with imperfect data across spreadsheets, dashboards, and operational systems.
Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to turn financial analysis into clear recommendations.
Comfort operating in ambiguity and taking ownership in a fast-moving, early-stage environment.
Nice to have
Experience in marketplaces, fintech, payments, lending, logistics, government technology, or another transaction-heavy business.
Experience at a venture-backed startup, especially from Seed through Series B.
Experience supporting fundraising, board reporting, investor updates, data rooms, or strategic financing workstreams.
Experience with marketplace or usage-based economics, including GMV, take rate, liquidity, cohort performance, transaction margin, and working capital needs.
Experience using or implementing tools such as Ramp, Carta, or similar finance and analytics platforms.
Our Values
Take Big Swings. We are here to transform an overlooked industry—not make small improvements around the edges. We set ambitious goals, take calculated risks, and push through setbacks. We never trade lasting impact for short-term comfort.
Customers Come First. Our customers operate in an industry burdened by slow, expensive, and outdated processes. We attack the problems that cost them the most and measure our success by the time and money we give back to them.
Play For the Front of the Jersey. We put the mission ahead of ourselves. We challenge each other directly, support each other relentlessly, and step up whenever the team needs us. We win together, and we have fun doing it.
All Gas, No Ego. Building something that matters takes relentless effort. We move fast, take ownership, and see hard problems through. When we fall short, we own it, learn quickly, and come back stronger.
Why Join Garage?
Do work that matters. Our platform helps people buy the assets that local communities rely on to keep their communities safe, clean, and operating every day.
Help shape the company. Join as one of our first 40 employees and work directly alongside the founders.
Make an outsized impact. You’ll join a talent-dense, high-performance team where every person moves the company forward.
Build from a strong foundation. We’ve raised $18M, including a $13.5M Series A, from Y Combinator, Initialized Capital, Infinity Ventures, FJ Labs, and other leading investors.
What we offer
Competitive salary and stock options
100% medical, dental and vision insurance coverage
Unlimited PTO (in addition to company observed holidays)
Daily lunch & dinner (for employees based in NYC)
$100/month wellness stipend
401(k) w/ employer match
Pre-tax commuter benefits
Annual team offsite
Relocation assistance
We realize applying for jobs can feel daunting at times. We don’t expect you to check all the qualification boxes and encourage you to apply if you have experience in some of the areas.
Equal Opportunity
As an equal-opportunity employer, we are committed to building an inclusive environment where you can be you. We work hard to evaluate all employees and job applicants consistently, without regard to race, color, religion, gender, natural origin, age, disability, pregnancy, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected class.