Funded Australian startups that hired finance after their first round took a median 18 months to make that hire (n=91). A quarter hired within 6 months and a quarter took more than 36.
Start with which group you are in
This question only applies to about half of funded startups. Of the 191 companies in Story Recruitment’s study with a dated finance hire, 100 already had a finance person before their first announced round. The other 91 did not. This page is about those 91: how long after the money they made their first internal finance hire. The other half, and the before-or-after split itself, is covered in when Australian startups make their first finance hire, the study this benchmark is drawn from.
The whole spread, not just the median
| First finance hire started | Companies | Running total |
|---|---|---|
| In the round’s month or up to 3 months after | 16 | 16 of 91 (18%) |
| 4 to 6 months after | 8 | 24 of 91 (26%) |
| 7 to 12 months after | 10 | 34 of 91 (37%) |
| 13 to 24 months after | 25 | 59 of 91 (65%) |
| 25 to 36 months after | 9 | 68 of 91 (75%) |
| 37 months or more after | 23 | 91 of 91 |
The median is 18 months and the quartiles are 6, 18 and 36. Put plainly: a quarter of these companies had someone in within half a year of their first round, half within a year and a half, and a quarter took more than three years. The single biggest band is the second year after the round, 25 of 91 companies. Fewer than 4 in 10 hired inside the first year.
So if you raised 12 months ago and have nobody in finance, you are in the majority of this group, not behind it. If you raised three years ago and still have nobody, a quarter of this group were in exactly that position before they hired. What the data cannot show is whether they had outside help in the meantime, and in my experience most of them did.[1]
Long waits are normal because the journey is long. As I said on Behind The Story, everyone sees the capital raised and the big exit online, “but there’s five years before that, which is just intense in the trenches grind. And it’s relentless.” Most of that stretch is run on lean finance.
One caution about what this table can and cannot see. Every company in the study has made at least one finance hire, so every wait above ended in a hire and none is still running. The company that raised and has still not hired anyone is not in this frame at all, which makes these figures a description of companies that did hire, not a rate for all funded startups.
Why the spread is so wide: what the first round was
The biggest single driver of the spread is the size of the first step. Of the 91, 41 first raised a seed round and 26 first raised a Series A; the rest raised a pre-seed, a Series B or an unlabelled round first.
| First announced round | Companies | Median months | Middle half |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | 41 | 21 | 8 to 43 |
| Series A | 26 | 15 | 4 to 26 |
A company that opens with a Series A is already carrying a board, a reporting cadence and enough capital that the finance load arrives quickly. A company that opens with a small seed round can run on a bookkeeper and an adviser for years, and many do.
The clock after any seed, Series A or Series B
The first round is not the only one that matters. This table takes every company that had nobody in finance when a round at each stage was announced, whether or not it was the company’s first, and measures the months to the first finance hire. A company only counts in the 6 or 12 month columns once that much time has passed since its round.
| Round | Median months | Middle half | Within 6 months | Within 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | 21 (n=42) | 7 to 43 | 10 of 42 (24%) | 12 of 42 (29%) |
| Series A | 14 (n=48) | 3 to 29 | 17 of 47 (36%) | 21 of 46 (46%) |
| Series B | 5 (n=13) | 2 to 9 | 7 of 12 (58%) | 9 of 12 (75%) |
The stage sets the clock: 21 months after a seed, 14 after a Series A, 5 after a Series B. The middle half narrows just as sharply, from three years wide at seed to a few months at Series B. By Series B, the board, the audit and the size of the cheque leave very little room to keep finance on the founder’s laptop.
That Series B row matches what happens at the top of the market. Of the 64 companies we tracked that reached Series B or later, 14 had not made an internal finance hire when that round was announced, and 11 of those 14 hired within 9 months of it. Two hired in the same month the round was announced. That does not mean 14 Series B companies were running with nobody doing finance: an outsourced or fractional CFO does not show up in public employment records, and in my experience a company at that stage almost always has someone doing the job, even if that person is outsourced.
If the round you have just closed has the board asking about a CFO, I set out when to hire a CFO, and when a head of finance is the better first move.
What gets hired after the money
| First finance hire | After a seed (42) | After a Series A (48) | After a Series B (13) |
|---|---|---|---|
| CFO | 8 | 11 | 2 |
| Head of finance or finance director | 12 | 15 | 2 |
| Financial controller | 8 | 12 | 3 |
| Finance manager | 10 | 8 | 1 |
| Accountant or FP&A analyst | 4 | 2 | 5 |
After a seed or a Series A, the most common first hire is a head of finance, and the CFO is a minority choice at every stage: 8 of 42 after a seed and 11 of 48 after a Series A. The Series B column looks odd, with an accountant the most common hire, and the likely reason is the one above: a company that reaches Series B without an internal finance hire has usually been running on an outside CFO, and the first employee it adds is the person who does the day-to-day work underneath that arrangement.
Three companies, and what the round bought
Three recent Australian startups and the finance hires each made in the months after a round was announced. Titles and dates are from public profiles and the study sequence; rounds from public announcements.
Block Earner
A head of finance one month after the seed
- Founded
- 2021
- First finance hire
- Financial accountant, Aug 2021, 4 months before the seed
- After the seed
- Head of finance, Jan 2022 (+1 month)
- After the Series A
- Finance manager, Apr 2026 (+8 months)
Block Earner raised a A$6.4 million seed in December 2021. Four months earlier it had already brought in a financial accountant, the kind of hands-on hire that gets records and reporting straight before investors look at them.
One month after the seed was announced, a head of finance started: the seat that owns the forecast, the board reporting and the plan the money was raised against. The next senior step came much later. The head of finance seat changed hands in 2023 and 2024, and a finance manager joined in April 2026, eight months after an A$8 million Series A.
The shape is typical of the post-round hire: the round did not create the finance function, it changed its level.
What I see before a raise, again and again: someone comes in to support the raise and get the house in order before the founder goes to market. What the round then pays for is the person who runs the function once the money has to be deployed.
The takeaway for a founderA pre-round accountant and a post-round head of finance are two different jobs. Most companies need both, in that order.
Zepto
A CFO ten months after the Series A
- Founded
- 2018
- Rounds
- Series A, Mar 2022 (A$25M)
- First finance hire
- Director of finance (part-time), Apr 2020, 23 months before the round
- After the Series A
- Senior finance manager, Apr 2022 (+1); FP&A analyst, Oct 2022 (+7); CFO, Jan 2023 (+10)
- Finance hires in all
- 9
Zepto had finance help long before it raised: its first finance title is a part-time director of finance in April 2020, and a head of finance and an FP&A analyst followed in 2021, all ahead of the A$25 million Series A announced in March 2022.
What the round bought was depth and then seniority. A senior finance manager started the month after the announcement, an FP&A analyst seven months after it, and a CFO ten months after it, in January 2023. That is a common post-round rhythm: the team to run and model the business first, then the executive who owns capital and investors.
I often tell founders the best finance people are most valuable in the six months after a raise, not the six months before it, because that is when the capital has to start delivering what it was raised for.
The takeaway for a founderAfter a Series A, the hires often come in a sequence inside a year: someone to run the month, someone to model, then the senior seat. Plan the order, not just the first name on the list.
Sicona Battery Technologies
From a part-time CFO to a full-time one after the Series A
- Founded
- 2019
- First finance hire
- CFO (part-time), Jul 2020, 13 months before the first round
- After the Series A
- CFO, Aug 2023 (+2 months); finance manager, Sep 2023 (+3)
- Now
- Full-time CFO still in role (Sep 2026)
Sicona had a part-time CFO from July 2020, more than a year before its A$3.7 million pre-Series A round, and that arrangement carried the company through to its A$22 million Series A in June 2023.
Two months after the Series A, a full-time CFO started, and a finance manager followed a month later. The part-time CFO left in August 2023, the same month, after 37 months. The round changed the finance function from part-time senior cover to a full-time CFO with someone underneath, inside a single quarter.
Part-time cover buys hours, not a function. As I said on a podcast about it, with a fractional person “they’re not working very many hours a week. It might only be like five to 10 hours a week or sometimes even a month.” A Series A usually needs more than that.
The takeaway for a founderA part-time CFO before the round and a full-time one after it is a clean handover. The round is the natural moment to make it.
How I read your position
Most founders do not realise how much the finance function matters until they are in the middle of a raise.[2] That is when the gaps show, and that is why so many bring in outside help for the raise itself: a founder raises a handful of times in a career, and a good fractional finance lead does it constantly.[3] After the round is where I think an in-house hire earns the most, because the money now has to deliver against a plan the board signed up to.
The trigger is rarely a date. There is a specific moment when founder-led finance stops working, and it tends to sneak up: a board question you could not answer confidently, cash visibility you no longer trust, or a hire made before the data supported it. When that happens, the stage of your last round matters much less than the fact that you have reached it.
The mistake on the other side is letting the size of the round pick the level.[4] The data above says most companies hire below CFO after a seed or a Series A, and I agree with them more often than not. The questions I would ask in the months after your raise are: what does the board now expect every month, who owns the plan the money was raised against, and how many hours a week is the founder still spending on finance? Those answer the timing better than a median does. The same discipline applies to the hire itself: the questions I see skipped most often in early-stage hiring are what problem the person is actually solving, what the hire does to runway, what happens if revenue comes in late, and whether you are hiring for today’s bottleneck or the structure you want in 18 months.
If you do not come from finance, you do not have to judge the candidates alone. As I explained on Celia’s Corner, a founder without a finance network can bring in an outsourced fractional or virtual CFO to advise on the brief and technically qualify candidates in the interview process. And set expectations for the first months: in the first 90 days of a first finance hire, the first weeks are orientation rather than delivery, by day 60 reports arrive without chasing and the cash position is easy to explain, and by day 90 the founder is making better decisions with fewer finance questions landing on their desk.
By industry
This page covers all funded Australian startups together. Each industry has its own benchmark on this question, with its own figures and case companies:
- How long after a raise tech startups hire finance
- How long after a raise fintechs hire finance
- How long after a raise deep tech companies hire finance
For the CFO decision in software and fintech, see when a software startup needs a CFO and when a fintech needs a CFO.
The other benchmarks for all startups:
- Before or after the raise: when Australian startups make their first finance hire
- What Australian startups hire first in finance
- The second finance hire and beyond
And for running the search once you have decided, see how to hire a CFO.
What this data cannot tell you
- It does not show that hiring finance earlier or later causes a better outcome. It records the order things happened in. The only outcome test so far was run on the first 102 companies in the study, before it grew to 194. There, the share that raised again within 24 months of the first finance hire ran 55% when the hire came before any round (27 of 49), 47% at Series A (7 of 15) and 33% at Series B or later (2 of 6), and none of those differences could be told apart from chance (Fisher exact test, p=0.77 and p=0.41). Outcomes have not been collected for the full 194, and companies that hire early and companies that raise again are often the same well-organised companies, so no timing figure in this series is an argument for a timing.
- It is a survivor set. Every company announced a round and has at least one finance employee we could find, so the study describes companies that did build an internal finance function. In the 93 of the first 102 companies with a usable status there was not one insolvency, administration or wind-up. It cannot say what share of Australian startups have no finance lead at all.
- Outsourced and fractional finance is invisible. A virtual or fractional CFO supplied by a firm does not list the startup as an employer, so it never appears in public employment records. 16 of the 191 first hires we tracked (8%) were visibly fractional, part-time or interim, and that is a floor. Every “had no finance hire” figure means no internal hire we could find, among the companies we tracked.
- There is no headcount at the time of the hire. Only today’s headcount is public, so nothing here says “they hired a CFO at 40 staff”. The companies run from roughly 2 to 500 staff today.
- Titles are counted once. Each person is recorded at the earliest finance title they held at the company, so a controller promoted to CFO in the same business reads as a controller. Every “later added a CFO” figure is a floor.
- Rounds are dated by announcement. An announcement usually trails the close by weeks, rounds that were never announced are invisible, and grants and research funding are not in the round series. Round amounts are the least reliable field and no figure in this series rests on one. For 12 companies with names too common to search cleanly, past-staff coverage is a floor.
- It is not the market report. Story’s earlier market report on the first finance hire measured something different, the share of recently funded companies with a finance leader at each stage, so its figures and these do not compare directly.
The full method, including how rounds were double-checked and how same-named companies overseas were excluded, is in the study’s methodology section.
Common questions
How long after raising do Australian startups make their first finance hire?
Among the 91 funded Australian startups we tracked that had no finance hire when their first round was announced, the median wait to the first finance hire was 18 months. The middle half took between 6 and 36 months. 34 of the 91 (37%) hired within a year of the round and 23 (25%) took more than three years.
How long after a Series A do startups hire finance?
Among 48 companies we tracked that had nobody in finance when their Series A was announced, the median was 14 months, with the middle half between 3 and 29 months. 17 of 47 (36%) hired within 6 months and 21 of 46 (46%) within 12, counting only companies whose round is at least that old.
How long after a seed round do startups hire finance?
A median 21 months among 42 companies we tracked with no finance hire when their seed round was announced, with the middle half between 7 and 43 months. 12 of 42 (29%) hired within a year.
Is it normal to reach Series B without a finance hire?
It happens. Of 64 companies we tracked that reached Series B or later, 14 had not made an internal finance hire when that round was announced, and 11 of those 14 hired within 9 months of it. Some will have had an outsourced or fractional CFO, which public employment records do not show.
Should I hire finance straight after closing a round?
The data only shows what companies did, not what worked. Fewer than 4 in 10 hired within a year of their first round. The better question is what the new board and the plan now require, and whether that needs someone in-house, at what level.
References
- Before a raise, founders often bring someone in to support the raise and get the house in order before they go to market, and that is very often an outsourced or fractional provider rather than an employee, which never appears in public employment records.
- Something founders tell me often: they do not realise how important the finance function is until they start trying to raise capital. The raise is when the gap shows.
- Why outside help makes sense around a raise: a founder might raise only a handful of times across the whole journey. The people who run fractional finance practices do it constantly.
- The opposite trap, which I see in calls with founders: a business closes a large round and hires a CFO because it was advised that is the done thing, before the business is ready for one.
These guides set out how we see it, drawn from the searches we run and the finance leaders we place. They are general information about the market, not financial, accounting or legal advice, and they are no substitute for advice on your own circumstances.