A CFO owns financial strategy, the capital plan, governance and the investor relationship, reporting to the CEO. In an Australian startup the first finance hire does a version of that job, and spends much of year one cleaning up the numbers before building the forecast the business runs on.
The job past the reporting line
The CFO role transcends financial reporting. It takes in strategic advice, challenging decisions and business input, and if the CEO does not instinctively trust or enjoy working with the CFO, technical ability becomes largely irrelevant, a case Rob Shore, CFO of Retail Food Group put to me directly on the CFO Track podcast I host. That last part surprises founders, but it is the part that decides whether the hire works. The governance half of the mandate has a statutory floor: Australian directors carry duties under the Corporations Act to keep proper records and avoid insolvent trading, and a CFO is usually the person making that practicable.
There are really two camps in finance now. The old school is the scorekeeper and back-office approach. The new breed is tech-enabled, takes a driver's seat role next to the CEO or founder, makes good commercial decisions, and creates processes for scale rather than acting as a handbrake. When founders ask what a CFO does, the useful answer is the second camp's job description, because that is the one worth paying for.
Tom Hunter's view: The best brief I've ever taken for a CFO role had one line that mattered more than the rest: the founder wanted someone who would challenge her, not report to her. A scorekeeper tells you what already happened. But a commercial CFO pushes back on your pricing, questions whether you should do the raise and tells you the difficult stuff before the board does. So when you're hiring, watch for the person who challenges you in the interview itself. (LinkedIn, August 2026) Or as I put it on Builders & Doers, when someone coming into the role knows what they're doing, “they start giving you visibility and start giving you clarity around things that you aren't aware of.” (Builders & Doers, September 2026; video at 20:50)
In a startup the boundaries are looser than any job description suggests. The reality of startup finance roles is that the work is not neatly defined: people go from ordering stationery to financial modelling and board meetings, shifting between strategic and operational work constantly. Hiring someone who expects a clean mandate is a mismatch you will feel in month three.
The remit itself is testable. I use eight areas: capital strategy, investor relations, board management, M&A, finance org build, strategic partnering, risk and governance, and the narrative and equity story. If a candidate cannot credibly speak to six of the eight, they are a Head of Finance, not a CFO, whatever the title says.[1]
The behavioural difference between a reporting hire and a strategic one is the same thing that separates the salary bands.
What your first finance hire builds in year one
Before the CFO conversation, most startups make a first finance hire, and it is usually not a CFO. In Story Recruitment's study of 194 funded Australian startups, 71% (135 of the 191 with a dated finance hire) made that first hire below CFO. Whatever the title, the person in that seat does a version of the CFO job, and the framing matters. In the calls I have with founders, the way I put it is that they are the number two next to the founder, helping make the decisions, rather than back office or a ticket taker.
The starting condition is worse than most founders admit. In our Q3 2026 State of the Market poll, 70.7% of first finance hires said the first thing they walk into is messy accounts and reporting, and another 21.2% said they inherit no forecast or model at all.[2] Together that is about nine in ten first hires walking into a function that is either behind or blind, which is why the first quarter should be resourced for cleanup rather than judged on visible output.
Here is what I see that year look like when the hire is working.1 In a tech business the scope usually runs across automation, FP&A, the month-end close, billing operations and the R&D tax claim.
| What the first finance hire is doing | What the founder notices | |
|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | Cleaning up: reconciling accounts, fixing the reporting, finding out what the founder has been carrying in their head. | Not much visible output yet. Most first hires start by untangling books that were kept alive rather than kept clean. |
| Month 3 | A reliable month-end close, a first forecast, the finance questions routed to them instead of the founder. | Fewer finance questions landing on the founder, and better decisions, without anything dramatic having happened. |
| Month 6 | A forecast detailed enough for the board, cash visibility, and, if a raise has closed, tracking that the money is doing what it was raised to do. | Board prep is less chaotic and cash conversations are more accurate. The months after a raise are where a finance person earns their keep. |
| Month 12 | Reporting frameworks, automation of the transactional work, and the case for the next finance hire. | Hiring plans get tested before they become commitments. The founder has a number two on decisions, not a back-office function. |
Source: my first finance hire placements at Story Recruitment.
That infrastructure is what a later CFO inherits, and in the study that later CFO is common: 48% (65 of 135) of the companies whose first finance hire was below CFO added a CFO above them, a median 26 months later. Get the year-one build right and the CFO arrives to a function they can lead. Get it wrong and their first year is a rebuild, which is expensive at CFO rates. Our first finance hire guide sets out which version of the role fits each funding stage.
I set out how the finance function splits as headcount grows, and which role to add in what order.
Why the requirements change as you scale
The same person is not right forever. A finance professional who is excellent pre-revenue and at building foundations will usually lead the function well through to Series A, but the requirements become very different after that. That is the normal shape of the role rather than a criticism of the person.
What the role grows into is breadth. As a business expands across multiple jurisdictions or entities, the CFO becomes less of a specialist and more of a conductor across business units, giving advice on many elements and impacting outcomes rather than doing the specialist work themselves. The remit widens with it. I am regularly recruiting CFO roles that oversee legal, risk and governance, and the people function alongside finance.
Sector context changes the brief too. For a deep tech CFO the transferable skills are managing capital-intensive environments, long lead times, demanding technical stakeholders, and building reporting under uncertainty. Those transfer from manufacturing, defence or mining more readily than a matching industry label would suggest.
The part AI has not taken
CFO and first-finance-hire roles are comparatively AI-resistant, because they require investor communication, building financial infrastructure across the business, and operating with judgement under ambiguity, unlike more junior finance work. The tooling has absorbed a lot of production work. It has not absorbed the decisions.
Where AI has moved the line is lower down. What was a virtual CFO workload three years ago is increasingly something a financially capable founder can do with AI in the loop. But AI tools remain poor at challenging the assumptions behind them, and that challenge, not the spreadsheet itself, is what a senior finance person is paid for.
My working rule: AI can handle 80 to 90% of the basic finance tasks, the checking, the reconciliation, a first-pass analysis, forecast or model. The last 10% needs a qualified human who understands the actual challenge and knows what a good outcome looks like. And that human has to understand the space, because a reviewer who cannot sense-check the output is not a human in the loop, they are just trusting it.
I went deeper on the strategic planning half of the CFO role, including what AI now does and does not do.
For how the CFO role sits against the CEO, see CFO vs CEO.
If you are the finance professional: what the CFO seat asks of you
A lot of the people reading this are controllers and heads of finance working out whether the CFO seat is their next move. The answer turns less on technical skill than on the exposure you can already point to. Early on, the job is not even just finance: talking with Kevin O’Sullivan about building the finance function at CyberCX on The CFO Track, I put it to him that in a company’s early days it is not just finance at all. You are building the function at the same time as running it, not inheriting a finished org chart.
A pure CFO title on your last role is not the test. In the searches I run, a candidate’s experience regularly matches what a CFO role needs even when they have never carried that exact title, because the exposure came from running a significant function under a different one. What a panel checks is whether you have been in the room for a capital raise, presented your own section of a board pack, and hired and managed a team.
| What people assume decides readiness | What actually does | |
|---|---|---|
| The title | “I have not held a pure CFO title yet.” | Experience matching the remit counts even under a different title. Panels read what you carried, not what your business card said. |
| Technical depth | “I need to be the strongest technical accountant in the room.” | Judgement under ambiguity is what gets tested. A CA or CPA is assumed; it is rarely what decides the shortlist. |
| Years in the profession | “I need another five years before I am senior enough.” | What is in those years matters more than the count. A capital raise led and a board earned outweigh time served. |
| Industry match | “I have not worked in this exact sector.” | Stage matters more than sector below Series C. What transfers is building a function from scratch under pressure, not the label on the industry. |
Landing the seat is the start of a different test. A first CFO walking into a business that is not entirely ready for them still has to read the stage correctly, building trust with the people already there before pushing through the changes a textbook CFO playbook would call for on day one.[3] That patience is as much a signal of readiness as the technical background. If you are writing or reading the brief itself, I keep a CFO job description built for a startup separately.
I mapped the experience gaps that stop capable controllers becoming CFOs and how to close each one.
Common questions
What is a CFO in simple terms?
A CFO (chief financial officer) is the most senior finance executive in a business, reporting to the CEO, who owns financial strategy, capital planning, risk and governance, and the investor relationship. A financial controller reports on what already happened; a CFO decides what the business does with that information next.
What does a CFO actually do?
A CFO is the most senior finance person in a business, reporting to the CEO, and owns financial strategy, capital planning, governance and the investor relationship. The role transcends financial reporting: it takes in strategic advice, challenging decisions and business input. In a startup the boundaries are looser than any job description suggests, with people moving between operational and strategic work constantly.
What is the difference between a CFO and a financial controller?
A controller owns the integrity of the numbers: the close, compliance and reporting you can rely on. Everything downstream of that splits across two more senior seats, with a head of finance taking the model and the reporting frameworks, while financial strategy, the capital plan and the investor relationship land with the CFO, who carries the function rather than merely running it. In practice the first two seats need to be working before a CFO role has enough real work in it.
What does a startup's first finance hire do in the first year?
Mostly clean-up first, then build. In Story Recruitment's Q3 2026 State of the Market poll, 70.7% of first finance hires said the first thing they walk into is messy accounts and reporting, and 21.2% said they inherit no forecast or model. In Tom Hunter's experience the first quarter goes on a reliable close and a first forecast, and by month 12 the hire is running reporting frameworks, automating transactional work and testing hiring plans before they become commitments.
Is the first finance hire just a bookkeeper?
No, and the distinction matters. The first finance person builds the foundational infrastructure your business grows on: reporting frameworks, compliance structures, and the systems that support fundraising, acquisition and scaling. Transactional bookkeeping is usually outsourced underneath them. Get that infrastructure right and a later CFO inherits a function they can lead rather than a rebuild.
Will AI replace the CFO role?
Unlikely at that level. CFO and first-finance-hire roles are comparatively AI-resistant because they require investor communication, building financial infrastructure across the business, and operating with judgement under ambiguity. AI has moved the line lower down: what was a virtual CFO workload three years ago is often something a financially capable founder can now do with AI in the loop. But AI is still poor at challenging the assumptions behind its own output.
Do I need to have held a CFO title to get a first CFO role?
No. In the searches Tom Hunter runs, a candidate's experience regularly matches what a CFO seat needs without that exact title, because the real test is exposure: being in the room for a capital raise, presenting at board level, and hiring and managing a finance team.
Does a CFO need experience in my industry?
Less than founders assume. Requirements change with stage more than with sector: someone excellent pre-revenue and at building foundations usually leads well through to Series A, after which the requirements shift. For deep tech, the transferable skills are managing capital-intensive environments, long lead times, demanding technical stakeholders and reporting under uncertainty, which transfer from manufacturing, defence or mining.
Notes
- The year-one table is my read from the first finance hires I have placed: a pattern, not study data or a measured figure.
References
- The eight remit areas and the six-of-eight test are from my First CFO playbook.
- Our Q3 2026 State of the Market report, which polled the Story network of founders, CFOs and senior finance professionals across Australia. The figures here are read from the chart for this question (“what's the most common problem you walk into?”), one of four questions that drew over 260 votes in total.
- From my placement work: a first CFO joining a business that is not entirely ready for them still has to read the stage correctly and build trust with the people already there before pushing through the changes a standard CFO playbook would call for on day one.
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.