Alumnus pivots from accounting to analytics at streaming platform CrunchyRoll
Alumnus Slav Sinitsyn describes his career trajectory as “completely different” than what he envisioned. Sinitsyn studied accounting at the KU School of Business, earning his bachelor’s in December 2012 and his master’s in 2013.
“I saw a lot of really good opportunities in accounting right out of college, which was an important thing for me,” he said. “I wanted to start my career off on a really strong foot. All of the recruiting services that Business Career Services has were really great.”
Although he now works as a senior monetization analyst for CrunchyRoll, a streaming platform that specializes in Japanese animation, the alumnus started his career as a public accountant.
Sinitsyn never intended to stay in public accounting forever. His plan was to learn and gain experience, and after several years in different accounting roles, Sinitsyn started looking to transition from accounting to business analytics. A friend he met while studying abroad through the CIMBA Italy Program connected him with an opportunity at CrunchyRoll, where Sinitsyn started as the senior accountant of revenue before pivoting to his current position.
The alumnus is now based in Oakland, California, and handles analytics for the ad-supported piece of the streaming service. That includes looking at how many ads people are hitting, assessing whether ads are too repetitive or being skipped, and ensuring CrunchyRoll is charging the appropriate amount.
Having a background in accounting has been a big benefit in the position, Sinitsyn said.
“Accounting does a really good job of teaching people logical structures,” he explained. “The entire field is about taking a business and all the activity that happens in it and condensing it down to a set of numbers that someone else can easily verify, trust, and that allows them to look at a business at a high level and appraise it — is it overvalued, undervalued, what is happening here?”
For the past two years, Sinitsyn has shared his career trajectory and how he’s benefited from his accounting education during KU Accounting Week, an annual series of events highlighting different opportunities studying accounting can provide.
One of his main messages to students is to pay attention to the information technology side of business.
“The way that business is moving, what I’m finding is that accountants need to be more and more technical,” he said. “Because I was able to get into that and add that to my resume, it’s opened up a lot of opportunities to me.”
Sinitsyn also suggests students think not just about what job they want, but what industry they want to work in. Although he was always a fan of gaming and media, he never thought about it as a viable career path until starting at CrunchyRoll, assuming it would only be open to creatives and engineers.
“I would just recommend students be really open-minded and broad about that,” he said. “New industries are popping up all the time, and if they’re really passionate about something, there definitely, without a doubt, absolutely is a way to make that into their career.”
