156 of 191 funded Australian startups we tracked made a second finance hire, a median 16 months after the first. 77 of those second hires (49%) were more junior than the first; 47 (30%) were more senior, 30 of them a CFO.
Which way the second hire goes
The second finance hire is the first time a founder decides the shape of the function rather than just filling a seat. Across the study it went three ways: underneath the first person, alongside them, or over them. Seniority is compared on five seats: CFO, head of finance or finance director, financial controller, finance manager, and accountant or FP&A analyst.
| Second hire against the first | Companies (n=156) | Share |
|---|---|---|
| More junior | 77 | 49% |
| Same level | 32 | 21% |
| More senior | 47 | 30% |
| More senior, and a CFO | 30 | 19% |
Half the time the second hire is someone underneath the first. That is the default shape of a startup finance team: one lead, then support. But nearly a third of second hires went the other way, above the first person, and 30 of those 47 were a CFO. One in five companies that made a second finance hire used it to put a CFO over the first.
The most common first-to-second pairs
| First hire | Second hire | Companies |
|---|---|---|
| CFO | Accountant or FP&A analyst | 16 |
| Head of finance or finance director | Accountant or FP&A analyst | 14 |
| CFO | CFO | 13 |
| Financial controller | CFO | 11 |
| Accountant or FP&A analyst | Accountant or FP&A analyst | 9 |
| CFO | Financial controller | 9 |
No single pair covers more than about one company in ten. Three stories sit inside the list. A senior first hire, CFO or head of finance, builds underneath with an accountant or analyst. A CFO is followed by another CFO, which is more often a replacement than an expansion: in 8 of those 13, the first CFO had left before the second started. And a financial controller is followed by a CFO above them: 11 of the 36 controller-first companies went straight to a CFO with their second hire.
That last pair is the one I see most in briefs. Many first heads of finance and controllers are not ready for the CFO seat when the business needs one, so the CFO is hired over them. How that lands depends on how the first person got there. When I talked to the CFO of Beforepay on episode 8 of The CFO Track, the point I made was that a first CFO seat reached by internal promotion is a very different thing from being hired in from outside over someone. A good first hire often shapes the second one too: six months in, they are introducing the founder to someone they have worked with before.
The CFO over the top
135 of the 191 startups started below CFO, and 65 of those have since hired a CFO, a median 26 months after the first hire. The question is what happened to the person already in the seat.
| At the CFO’s start | Companies (n=65) |
|---|---|
| First hire still in the role | 35 (54%) |
| First hire had already left | 27 (42%) |
| Could not tell | 3 |
In a majority of cases, 35 of 65, the CFO arrived while the first finance hire was still in the seat. That is the most delicate brief in startup finance. The incumbent knows where everything is, has often built the function the CFO is walking into, and may have expected the title. Handled well, they are told early and the new CFO is chosen partly for how they will work with that person. Handled badly, the founder loses the one person who knows the numbers in the same quarter they hire that person’s boss. As I wrote on LinkedIn, businesses scale exponentially, people don’t.
The pattern repeats one level up. Of the 56 startups whose first finance hire was a CFO, 28 have since hired another CFO, and the CFO-to-CFO pair is the third most common second hire in the study.
If the next search is a CFO over a sitting finance lead, I set out how to run a CFO search in Australia.
Stopping at one is rare once time has passed
| Base | Companies |
|---|---|
| Only one finance hire, all companies today | 35 of 191 (18%) |
| Only one, first hire 2+ years ago | 21 of 173 (12%) |
| Only one, first hire 3+ years ago | 18 of 158 (11%) |
| Second hire within 24 months (first hire 2+ years ago) | 100 of 173 (58%) |
The raw figure, nearly one in five on a single finance hire, mostly reflects companies that hired recently. Give them time and it falls to about one in nine. For most startups the question is not whether there will be a second finance hire, but when and at what level. A little under 6 in 10 had made it within two years of the first.
Team size by stage, and the step at Series B
| Latest round announced | Companies | Median finance hires | Five or more |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-seed or seed | 49 | 2 | 16 (33%) |
| Series A | 78 | 3.5 | 23 (29%) |
| Series B or later | 64 | 6 | 44 (69%) |
The step is at Series B, where the median company has made six finance hires and more than two in three have made five or more. Before that, finance stays small. That matches how I describe startup finance to founders: always lean, one or two people at 50 staff, two or three closer to 100. The consecutive gaps between hires shorten as the team grows, 16 months to the second, then 11, 8 and 7, which the full study sets out in how fast the next finance hires follow.
Three second hires, three directions
Three recent Australian companies whose second finance hire went up, down and sideways. Sequences are read from public profile titles and announced rounds; people are not named.
AutoGrab
Automotive valuation and inventory data platform, founded 2020
- Rounds
- Series A Oct 2023; Series B Jan 2026
- First finance hire
- Senior financial accountant, January 2023
- Against the first round
- 9 months before the Series A
- Second finance hire
- CFO, January 2024: up, over the sitting first hire
- Status now
- Raised its Series B in January 2026; CFO still in the seat
AutoGrab sells vehicle valuation and inventory data to the automotive trade. Its first finance hire was a senior financial accountant in January 2023, nine months before the Series A. The second was a CFO, in January 2024, three months after that round and a full year after the first hire.
This is the CFO over the top in its cleanest form, and it did not cost the company its first hire: the accountant stayed alongside the CFO until August 2025. The team then filled in underneath, with three more accountants by October 2025. In January 2026 the company announced an A$80 million raise to expand into the UK and Europe, and a group finance manager for strategy and analytics started the month after.
A CFO over a junior first hire works when both roles are clear from the start. AutoGrab kept its first finance hire for another 19 months after the CFO arrived.
Jet Zero Australia
Sustainable aviation fuel production, founded 2021
- Rounds
- Early venture round Mar 2024; Series C Sep 2026
- First finance hire
- CFO, February 2024
- Against the first round
- 1 month before it
- Second finance hire
- Accountant, May 2024: down, underneath the CFO
- Status now
- Closed a Series C in September 2026; both still in role
Jet Zero is building a plant to make sustainable aviation fuel, which means large, long-dated capital and industrial partners from the start. It hired a CFO in February 2024, a month before announcing a raise supported by Idemitsu, Qantas and Airbus. The second finance hire was an accountant three months later.
CFO then accountant is the single most common first-to-second pair in the study, and Jet Zero shows why. The senior seat was bought for the capital conversation; the second hire was bought so the CFO was not also doing the books. Two and a half years later the same two people are in place, and the company closed a Series C in September 2026 without adding a third finance hire that we could find.
The support seat under a senior first hire is the one AI is changing fastest. On AccountDads I recalled one finance leader, deep into AI, telling me he did not think he would ever hire a financial accountant again.
The takeaway for a founderA senior first hire needs support underneath quickly, but not much of it. Two finance people have carried this business from its first round to its Series C.
Sicona Battery Technologies
Silicon-carbon battery anode materials, founded 2019
- Rounds
- Pre-Series A Aug 2021; Series A Jun 2023
- First finance hire
- CFO (part-time), July 2020
- Against the first round
- 13 months before it
- Second finance hire
- CFO (full-time), August 2023: the same seat, made permanent
- Next finance hires
- Finance manager (contract) Sep 2023; finance manager Jul 2025
Sicona makes silicon-carbon anode materials for batteries. Its first finance hire was a part-time CFO in July 2020, 13 months before its pre-Series A.
The second finance hire was a full-time CFO in August 2023, two months after the Series A, in the same month the part-time CFO left after 37 months. A finance manager on contract joined a month later. On the seniority scale this is a sideways move, CFO to CFO, but in practice it is the moment the company moved from renting senior judgement to owning it.
A second hire can be the same seat at a bigger commitment. Plan the switch from part-time to full-time around the round that pays for it, and put support underneath straight away.
How I would approach the second hire
Decide report, peer or boss before you write anything. The three directions in the first table are three different briefs. If the answer is a boss, the first hire should hear it from you before the search starts.
Hire the second person for judgement, not processing. The most common second hire is an accountant or analyst, and that is exactly the work AI is reshaping. As I said on a podcast:
“You can easily get some basic level things done with AI running the checking part of it or the reconciliation or producing basic level analysis or a forecast or a model, whereas towards the end of the process of it, you do need a qualified human in the loop that understands the challenge that you’re working through and what good looks like for the outcome.”
Plan for the next step now. The gap to the second hire in this data is 16 months. If your first hire is 12 months in, the second brief is closer than it feels.
All startups, the other three questions: Before or after the first raise, How long after a raise, What to hire first. All of them sit in the finance hiring benchmarks series.
By industry
Tech: before or after the first raise, how long after a raise, what to hire first, the second finance hire.
Fintech: before or after the first raise, how long after a raise, what to hire first, the second finance hire.
Deep tech: before or after the first raise, how long after a raise, what to hire first, the second finance hire.
Common questions
Should a startup's second finance hire be more senior or more junior than the first?
More often more junior. Of the 156 funded Australian startups in Story Recruitment's study that made a second finance hire, 77 (49%) hired below the first person, 32 (21%) at the same level and 47 (30%) above them. 30 of those 47 more senior second hires were a CFO.
How long after the first finance hire do startups make the second?
A median 16 months (n=156), with the middle half between 7 and 30 months. Of the 173 startups we tracked whose first finance hire started at least two years ago, 100 (58%) had made a second within 24 months.
What happens to the first finance hire when a CFO is hired above them?
Often they are still there. Of the 65 startups we tracked that added a CFO over a below-CFO first hire, the first hire was still in the role when the CFO started in 35 cases, had already left in 27, and could not be told in 3. The data shows the overlap, not how it went.
How many startups stop at one finance hire?
Few, once they have had time. 35 of 191 startups (18%) have made only one finance hire so far, but among the 158 whose first hire started at least three years ago, 18 (11%) are still on one.
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.
How these figures were built
The companies. 194 Australian venture-backed companies whose funding round was found independently by two searches of public funding announcements. 191 have at least one dated finance hire.
The hires. Every finance role at each company, current and past, from public professional profiles, dated from the earliest finance role each person held there. 966 finance hires, 907 dated to the month. Titles are grouped into five seats: CFO; head of finance or finance director; financial controller; finance manager; accountant or FP&A analyst. People are not named on any page in this series; case companies are described by title and month only.
On this page. 191 companies and their 966 dated finance hires. Seniority is compared on five seats; two hires in the same seat count as the same level. A CFO counts as arriving over a sitting first hire when the first hire’s role had not ended by the CFO’s start month. Each person is recorded once, at their earliest finance title, so internal promotions are invisible and every “added a CFO” figure is a floor.
The full method, sources and dating rules are set out in the study methodology. Data read 24 September 2026.
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.