Beacon Academy is written by Niko Laine.
I’ve spent twenty years working inside financial systems that needed to hold together under pressure — first in institutional finance, and later inside high-growth B2B SaaS companies.
Early in my career, I worked in finance leadership roles where accuracy, structure and trust were assumed. Over time, I moved into B2B SaaS, where growth is faster, systems are more interconnected, and confidence is harder to maintain even when execution is strong.
For the last ten years, I’ve worked as a startup CFO in B2B SaaS — navigating forecasting, growth, retention and capital decisions as revenue became a system rather than a number.
That shift changed everything.
In theory, SaaS is measurable. In practice, it is far harder to see clearly. Growth depends on sales behavior, customer dynamics, product usage, pricing, expansion, churn, margin and cash timing — all moving at once, often in different directions. Forecasts are expected to be precise, even as the system itself becomes more dynamic and interconnected.
What surprised me most was not the lack of data.
It was the lack of shared clarity.
Teams executed well. Dashboards improved. Reviews multiplied. And yet, confidence eroded quietly. Leadership often sensed issues before they could be proven. Decisions arrived late. Alignment frayed without anyone being “wrong.”
Beacon Academy exists because I kept encountering the same pattern:
revenue problems were rarely execution failures.
They were visibility failures.
Why I write Beacon Academy
Most revenue content focuses on tactics: what to optimize, what to measure, what to do next.
Beacon Academy focuses on something more fundamental: how leaders see.
The articles here explore:
- why confidence erodes before numbers miss
- why more data often creates less clarity
- why alignment fails even when teams agree
- why forecasting becomes political instead of directional
- and how revenue behaves when it becomes a system rather than a funnel
This is not theory.
It reflects patterns I’ve seen repeatedly as a CFO working across finance, sales, marketing and customer success — especially as companies scale beyond early simplicity.
I write Beacon Academy to make these dynamics visible earlier than they usually become obvious. Writing is also how I think. It forces me to slow down, to structure complex revenue systems in my head, and to simplify them into models that make direction, causality and timing easier to reason about.
What this is (and isn’t)
Beacon Academy is not:
- product documentation
- tool comparisons
- growth hacks
- or a sales funnel
It is a public curriculum on revenue intelligence — written from the perspective of someone who has had to explain numbers to boards, make calls with incomplete information, and live with the consequences of uncertainty.
Some readers use these articles to:
- sharpen leadership discussions
- align teams around shared mental models
- diagnose why forecasting feels fragile
- prepare for more advanced intelligence or AI work
All of that is intentional.
How to read it
There is no required order.
Each article stands on its own. Together, they form a system.
Read what resonates. Skip what doesn’t.
Return when the problem feels familiar.
Follow Beacon Academy
New long-form articles are published 1–2 times per week.
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