Australian tech startups that hired finance after their first round took a median 18 months to do it (n=45), and the middle half took between 7 and 42 months. After a Series A the median was 12 months (n=20).
First, which group are you in?
This question only applies to about half of tech founders. Of the 82 funded Australian software and internet startups in our study with a dated finance hire, 37 already had a finance person before their first announced round. The other 45 did not, and this page is about them: how long after the money they made their first internal finance hire. If you hired before you raised, the question you are facing is the next hire, which is covered in the second finance hire in tech.
18 months, and a spread of more than three years
| First finance hire started | Tech companies | Running total |
|---|---|---|
| In the round’s month or up to 3 months after | 8 | 8 of 45 |
| 4 to 6 months after | 3 | 11 of 45 |
| 7 to 12 months after | 6 | 17 of 45 |
| 13 to 24 months after | 11 | 28 of 45 |
| 25 to 36 months after | 2 | 30 of 45 |
| 37 months or more after | 15 | 45 of 45 |
The median is 18 months, and it is the least useful number on this page. The quartiles are 7, 18 and 42 months: a quarter of these tech companies hired within about half a year, and a quarter waited more than three and a half years. Fewer than 4 in 10 (17 of 45) had someone in within a year of the round. A third (15 of 45) went past three years.
That long tail is the most distinctive thing about tech. Across all 91 funded startups that hired after their first round, 23 (25%) waited more than three years; in tech it was 15 of 45. A software business with one product in one market can close its books with an accounting firm, put a virtual CFO in front of the board once a quarter, and not need anyone in-house for a long time. The data cannot see that outside help. It can only see the day someone joins the payroll with a finance title.
The first-round stage explains a lot of the spread. Of the 45, 23 first raised a seed round, and they took a median 21 months (quartiles 8, 21 and 46). The 8 whose first announced round was a Series A took a median 12. The biggest waits belong to companies that raised small and early.
Expect that tail to get longer, not shorter. Reading the latest quarterly venture figures, the number that stood out most to me was that the median age of a company at Series B is now 9.7 years, against 5.2 in 2021: companies are raising earlier than ever at pre-seed, but taking nearly twice as long to reach the scale-up zone. A software company that raises a small seed and then takes years to reach Series A has a long stretch in which outside finance help is the rational choice.
The clock after a seed, a Series A and a Series B
The table below does not only use the first round. For each stage, it takes every tech company that had nobody in finance when a round at that stage was announced, and measures the months to its first finance hire. A company only counts in the 6 or 12 month column once that much time has passed since its round.
| Round | Tech: median months | Tech: hired within 6 months | Tech: hired within 12 months | All startups: median months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | 21 (n=24) | 6 of 24 | 8 of 24 (33%) | 21 (n=42) |
| Series A | 12 (n=20) | 7 of 20 | 11 of 20 (55%) | 14 (n=48) |
| Series B | 2 (n=5) | 2 of 4 | 3 of 4 | 5 (n=13) |
Stage sets the clock far more than sector does. After a seed round, tech moves at exactly the market pace: 21 months, and only a third hired inside a year. After a Series A the clock shortens to 12 months and just over half hire within the year, which is slightly quicker than the 14 months across all startups. Series B in tech is too thin to call a benchmark, five companies, but it points the same way: by then the gap is measured in months, not years.
The seat they hired changes with the round, too. After a seed round, the first tech hire was spread across every level, with a head of finance the most common (8 of 24). After a Series A, it was a head of finance (7 of 20) or a financial controller (6 of 20) far more often than a CFO (4 of 20).
If the round you just closed has you weighing a CFO, read when a software startup needs a CFO first. In single-product SaaS the answer is usually later than the board suggests.
Two tech companies that hired after the money
Two recent Australian software companies that had no finance hire when their round was announced, and what they did next. Told from public profile titles, public round announcements and the study sequence.
EQL
A head of finance one month after a A$25M seed
- Business
- Launch and raffle platform for high-demand product releases (founded 2019)
- Rounds
- Seed, Apr 2022 (A$25M)
- First finance hire
- Head of finance, May 2022
- Against the round
- 1 month after
- Next finance hire
- Financial accountant, Aug 2025 (39 months later)
- Now
- Head of finance still in role (Sep 2026)
EQL runs the technology behind high-demand product launches: the ballots and raffles retailers use when a limited sneaker or collectible drops. Its first announced round was a A$25 million seed in April 2022, far larger than a typical Australian seed.
One month later, a head of finance started, and more than four years on that person is still in the seat. EQL did not hire a CFO, and it did not build a team around the first hire either: the next finance hire we can see is a financial accountant in August 2025, 39 months later.
That is the other face of the tech data. The companies that hire quickly after a round are usually the ones whose round was big enough to bring board reporting with it. And a single capable head of finance, supported from outside, can run a software company’s finance for years, which is why 18 of the 82 tech companies in the study still have exactly one finance hire.
The right finance hire starts buying back the founder’s attention: taking ambiguity and making it clear, and absorbing the recurring finance decisions so they stop landing on the founder’s desk. After a large round, that attention is worth more than ever.
The takeaway for a founderA large first round compresses the clock. If the money is big enough to bring a real board, the first finance hire can follow within weeks, and it does not have to be a CFO.
Zitcha
A CFO eight months after the seed, reset after the Series A
- Business
- Retail media software for retailers (founded 2022)
- First finance hire
- CFO, Jul 2023
- Against the first round
- 8 months after
- Next finance hires
- Finance manager, Jun 2024; FP&A analyst, Dec 2024; head of finance, Feb 2025
- Now
- Finance manager still in role (Sep 2026)
Zitcha sells software that lets retailers run their own advertising networks, and it raised a A$4.7 million seed in November 2022. Eight months later, in July 2023, its first finance hire was a CFO, a senior seat for a company of that size.
The function then built underneath. A finance manager joined in June 2024, three months before a A$15 million Series A announced in September 2024 to fund expansion into the US, and an FP&A analyst followed in December. In February 2025 the CFO moved on and a head of finance started the same month, so the senior seat was reset one level down after the round.
Read as a sequence, Zitcha went CFO first, then built the team below, then settled on a head of finance to lead it. It is a reminder that the seat a company fills after its seed is not always the seat it keeps after its Series A.
The line I draw for founders: a head of finance owns reporting, FP&A, the board pack and the day-to-day, while a CFO owns capital, investors and the relationships that move the company forward. A great Series A business can run with a head of finance; a Series B business usually needs the CFO.
The takeaway for a founderThe first finance seat after a seed round is not permanent. Decide the level against the next 18 months of work, and expect to revisit it once the Series A closes.
What I see in tech after a raise
The month after the cash lands is when the gaps show: the forecast is not detailed enough for the board you now report to, the reporting rhythm is still set for a business half the size, and the hiring plan is ambitious without being properly costed. Before a raise, a founder needs the house in order, and that is often a fractional provider running it as a project with a plan to hire once it closes.[1] After it, the board is new, the money has to be deployed against a plan, and somebody has to own that plan every day.
In software, the moment usually announces itself. Founder-led finance stops working at a specific moment: a board question you cannot answer confidently, or cash visibility you are no longer sure of. Until then a SaaS founder can often hold the whole picture in their head, which is exactly why so many tech companies wait.
The trap on the other side is hiring the wrong level because the round was big.[2] A software company that closes a large Series A does not automatically need a CFO. More often it needs a head of finance or a strong controller who can run the month, build the forecast and sit next to an outside CFO for the board work.
If you raised a seed round 18 months ago and a fractional CFO has been carrying you, you are not late by the standard of Australian tech. As I wrote after one such introduction, a founder who needs a fractional CFO today may be building something that needs a full-time hire in 18 months. If you have just closed a Series A, the tech benchmark is that just over half hire within a year, and the ones who hire well have decided the level before they open the search.
How tech compares
| Cut | Hired after the first round | Median months | Middle half (quartiles) |
|---|---|---|---|
| All startups | 91 of 191 | 18 | 6 to 36 |
| Tech (this page) | 45 of 82 | 18 | 7 to 42 |
| Fintech | 18 of 40 | 21 | 12 to 28 |
| Deep tech | 19 of 52 | 21 | 5 to 38 |
Tech has the widest spread of the three, not the longest median. The other tech benchmarks:
- Before or after the raise: when tech startups hire finance
- What tech startups hire first in finance
- The second finance hire in tech
For the decision itself, see when to hire a CFO and 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 tech startups make their first finance hire?
Among the 45 funded Australian software and internet 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 7 and 42 months, so the spread matters more than the median.
How soon after a Series A do tech startups hire finance?
Among the 20 tech companies we tracked that had nobody in finance when their Series A was announced, the median was 12 months to the first finance hire. 7 of 20 hired within 6 months and 11 of 20 within 12.
How soon after a seed round do tech startups hire finance?
Much later than after a Series A. Among the 24 tech companies we tracked with no finance hire when their seed round was announced, the median was 21 months, and 8 of 24 hired within 12 months.
Am I late if I raised two years ago and still have no finance hire?
Not by the standard of Australian tech. 15 of the 45 tech companies we tracked that hired after their first round waited more than three years. Many of them will have been running on an outsourced bookkeeper or a virtual CFO in the meantime, which public records do not show.
References
- What investors tell founders and what founders do are often different. Investors would ideally like the finance hire in before Series A. More often, a founder brings in a fractional person to run the raise as a project, with a mandate to hire finance internally once the money lands.
- A pattern I see in the calls I have with founders: a business closes a large round and hires a CFO because it was advised that this is what you do next, before the business is ready for one. That hire tends not to last.
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.