SaaS can usually wait until Series B for a CFO

A single-product SaaS business in Australia usually does not need a full-time CFO until around Series B. Only 24% (20 of 82) of the Australian software startups we tracked started with a CFO, the lowest share of any sector.

Single-product SaaS can wait until Series B for the CFO title

For a single-product SaaS business the answer is usually not yet. As I said on Celia’s Corner this year:

“If it’s a SaaS business that’s one jurisdiction, one location, one product, then it probably doesn’t need a proper CFO until series B.”^[1]

The reason is structural. One product, one pricing model and recurring billing produce numbers that mostly explain themselves. A strong controller or head of finance can run the close, the board pack and the forecast, and a fractional CFO covers the capital questions a few days a month. Add a second product, a second country, hardware, or a lending book, and the reporting stops explaining itself. That is when the CFO conversation comes forward.

If the answer is a few days a month for now, I set out how the fractional model works and when you have outgrown it.

76% of Australian software startups hired below CFO first

We dated the finance hires at 194 venture-backed Australian companies against their publicly announced funding rounds. 83 of them are software or internet businesses, and 82 of those have a dated finance hire, and the two charts below set them against every company in the study.

Founders in software are not waiting on finance. They are waiting on the CFO title. Only 24% (20 of 82) started with a CFO, the lowest share of any sector. The rest started with a head of finance or finance director at 23% (19), a financial controller at 22% (18), an accountant or FP&A analyst at 18% (15) or a finance manager at 12% (10).

Software companies take the longest of the three sectors to make a first finance hire from founding, a median 4.0 years across 76 companies, so a software founder at Series A with nobody in finance yet is on schedule for the sector. Software is also the least likely of the three sectors to have a finance person before its first round, 45% against 55% in fintech and 63% in deep tech, which means the round itself is usually what brings the hire forward: across all 82 the median first finance hire lands about a month after the first round, and among software companies with nobody in finance when their Series A was announced, 55% (11 of 20) hired within 12 months of it. The year after the A is when most of your peers moved.

Some software businesses run for a long time on an external fractional or virtual CFO. Five of the 24 software companies we tracked that reached Series B or later had no internal finance hire on record when that round was announced, and four of the five hired within seven months of it.

For the full study across all 194 companies, by round, read when Australian startups make their first finance hire.

For the software companies on their own, read when tech startups hire finance, before or after the raise.

How AutoGrab and Mindset Health sequenced their finance hires

Two recent Australian software companies, told from public profile titles, announced rounds and the study sequence: an accountant first, and a fractional CFO first.

1

AutoGrab

An accountant first, then the CFO with the Series A

Business

Automotive data and pricing software (founded 2020)

Rounds

Series A, Oct 2023 (US$4.5M); Series B, Jan 2026 (A$80M)

First finance hire

Senior financial accountant, Jan 2023

Against the first roundVs first round

9 months before

Next finance hire

CFO, Jan 2024, 3 months after the Series A

Now

CFO still in role; six finance hires in all (Sep 2026)

AutoGrab supplies vehicle data and pricing intelligence to the automotive trade. Its first finance person was a senior financial accountant in January 2023, nine months before the Series A was announced: someone to get the records, the month end and the numbers into shape ahead of investors.

The CFO came in January 2024, three months after the round, and is still in the seat; the accountant stayed alongside them until August 2025. Beneath the CFO, AutoGrab added financial accountants in 2024 and 2025 and a group finance manager in February 2026, the month after an A$80 million Series B to fund expansion into the UK and Europe.

The takeaway for a founder

Starting with a hands-on accountant is a sound first step if you already know the CFO is coming. Tell your first hire at offer stage where the senior seat will sit.

2

Mindset Health

Two seeds, a Series A, then a fractional CFO

Business

Digital therapeutics apps (founded 2018)

Rounds

Seed, May 2020 (US$1.1M); seed, Jun 2021 (US$6.7M); Series A, Mar 2023 (US$12M)

First finance hire

Fractional CFO, Apr 2023

Against the first roundVs first round

35 months after; 1 month after the Series A

Next finance hire

Head of finance, Sep 2024

Now

Operating; head of finance still in role (Sep 2026)

Mindset Health builds evidence-based hypnotherapy apps, and its funding came in steps: two seed rounds in 2020 and 2021, then a US$12 million Series A in March 2023. Through both seeds, no finance title appears in public records at all. On paper that is a company that went nearly three years past its first round with no finance; in practice the first title that does appear is a fractional CFO, the month after the Series A. Outside help is normally invisible in employment records. Here it happens to be listed.

A permanent head of finance started in September 2024, 18 months after the Series A, and the fractional arrangement ended a few months later. That handover, from a part-time senior adviser to an in-house lead below CFO, is the sequence I see most in single-product software.

What Tom says

The second half of what I said on Celia’s Corner is this company: a single-product business “can just facilitate with the finance controller internally and they have an external fractional CFO to support the other stuff.” Mindset Health ran the fractional half first, then hired the inside seat.

The takeaway for a founder

Going years past your first round without an internal finance hire is normal in software. Plan the handover from outside help to an in-house lead before the arrangement is outgrown.

Two different first seats: an accountant and a fractional CFO. AutoGrab added a CFO three months after its Series A. Mindset Health ran on a fractional CFO for about a year and a half before a permanent head of finance joined. Each is a version of the sequence I describe above: someone inside running the numbers, and the senior judgement brought in when the business needs it.

Hire a controller or head of finance first, and do not hire too junior

The mistake I see more often than hiring too senior is hiring too junior: pricing the role against the complexity you have today rather than the complexity you will have in a year, and then running the search again. If a CFO can wait, the first hire cannot be an afterthought. A financial controller owns controls, compliance and reporting; a head of finance leans further into forecasting, budgeting and FP&A. Either can carry a single-product software business a long way with a fractional CFO alongside.

Whoever it is has to be fluent in the recurring revenue model. ARR and MRR, customer churn, CAC, LTV, gross margin and net revenue retention are the vocabulary, and the definitions are the easy part. The job is explaining how they interact: why net revenue retention moved while gross margin held, or why a monthly churn number that looks small becomes a retention problem within a year.

The candidates often come from other startups. In our study, 30% (25 of 82) of the software companies hired their first finance person straight from another private startup or scale-up, the most common source by a distance. It is not the only route: someone who has run finance in a more complex business can learn a clean SaaS model quickly, and insisting on identical-sector experience narrows the field for less benefit than founders expect.

If you are being told to hire now

“Our investors want a CFO.” Ask what they want the CFO for. Usually it is the raise, the data room and the compliance that arrives with a board, and investors would ideally have that covered before the Series A. What I see more often is a founder bringing in a fractional CFO to run the raise as a project, with a mandate to hire finance inside once the money lands. The CFO seat proper is about “capital raising and governance and working with external bodies for the investors or any M&A work”, as I put it on Celia’s Corner, and a fractional CFO over a strong controller covers that until the business gets complicated.

“We are raising a B within 18 months.” Then the CFO is the Series B hire, and the search starts well before the round. From my First CFO Hire playbook: the best CFOs want to start nine to twelve months before a capital raise, because it takes three to six months for them to land, build trust and earn the right to lead the process. Eighteen months out, that means opening the search within six months, with the controller and the fractional CFO in place while it runs. It does not mean a CFO today at head of finance money and a new title later: the person who builds the foundations before Series A is often not the person institutional investors expect at Series B.

“Our fractional CFO is stretched.” That is the signal. As I said on Honest Wealth Builders, “the fractional relationship with a provider might only be 18 to 24 months. And then at the back end of it, when a business outgrows them, then they refer to me.” Straining is what outgrowing looks like from the inside. Start the permanent search now, and set the level against the complexity of the next year or two. The signs you have outgrown a fractional CFO are in the fractional guide.

When it is time for the CFO, I set out how a first-CFO search runs in Australia.

What the wait saves you

The pay bands do not change because the business is SaaS. What changes is how long you can stay in the cheaper tier: a clean model lets a controller or head of finance, supported by a fractional CFO, cover ground that a more complex business would need a full-time CFO for. Here is the gap, from our CFO and finance leadership salary bands:

The Series B CFO band starts $85k above the top of the head of finance band, and the whole band sits at roughly double a controller’s, before equity. Every year the cheaper seat carries the business on a clean model is a year of that gap kept in runway, less what the fractional days cost. Use the time, and start the permanent search before the fractional arrangement starts straining rather than after.

If you are deep tech, the answer flips

If you are building hardware, materials, biotech or energy technology, the finance seat usually comes before the first round. Of the 52 Australian deep tech companies we tracked with a dated finance hire, 63% (33) had a finance person before their first announced round and 38% (20) started with a CFO, against 24% in software. The reasons, the data and three deep tech sequences are in when deep tech startups hire finance, before or after the raise.

Where these numbers come from

The figures come from Story Recruitment’s own study, built in September 2026: 194 Australian companies with a venture round that two independent searches both found, 191 of them with at least one dated finance hire, and 966 finance hires dated from public professional profiles and matched to public funding announcements. Sector is tagged from what each company’s product does. Rounds are dated to their announcement, which usually trails the close by weeks. The company list was built from finance people, so it describes companies that went on to hire internal finance; it cannot say what share of Australian startups have no finance lead at all. Outsourced and fractional providers do not appear in public employment records. The two company sequences above are read from public professional profiles and announced rounds, titles and dates only. They show the order things happened in, and none of them shows that a different order would have worked better or worse. Nothing here shows that hiring early or late causes any outcome. The full method and its limits are on the study page.

Common questions

These guides set out how we see it, drawn from the searches we run and the finance leaders we work with. They are general information about the market, not financial, accounting or legal advice, and they are no substitute for advice on your own circumstances.