FP&A as a Shared Operating Surface
Siqi Chen, CEO of Runway, on building browser-based collaborative FP&A
This is the core reason browser native FP&A can become a company wide system of record while spreadsheets stay trapped as finance files. In Excel or Google Sheets, every formula lives in the same client side workbook, so sharing the model usually means exposing the logic and the sensitive rows together. Runway’s pitch is to separate what each person can view or edit from the underlying model, so a sales leader can update pipeline assumptions without ever seeing salary data.
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Incumbent planning tools solve this by turning collaboration into forms and workflow approvals, not by making the model itself broadly understandable. Teams still build the real revenue logic in side spreadsheets, then paste outputs back into Anaplan or Adaptive Planning.
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Modern FP&A startups are all attacking the same pain from different angles. Pry focused on in app page sharing so department heads could change inputs without breaking formulas. Causal rebuilt spreadsheet primitives for complex modeling. Runway pushes further toward live browser collaboration plus granular access to the model itself.
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The split in the market is clear. Vena wins customers that want to stay inside Excel and add permissions, integrations, and version control around it, while Runway, Causal, and Equals are trying to replace the spreadsheet as the place where planning actually happens.
The next step in FP&A is not better budgeting paperwork, it is turning forecasting into a shared operating surface for every department. The products that win will be the ones that let each team work in the same live model, with context and permissions built in, so finance can stop collecting spreadsheets and start running the business from one place.