Australian deep tech companies we tracked made their second finance hire a median 17 months after the first (n=47). After a CFO start, 16 of 19 second hires were more junior; after a below-CFO start, 12 of 28 were a CFO.
The short answer: about 17 months, and the direction depends on the first seat
Most deep tech companies do not stop at one finance hire. Only 5 of the 52 we tracked (10%) have made exactly one, against 35 of 191 (18%) across all sectors. Among the 47 that made a second hire, the median gap was 17 months, and each later hire came sooner than the one before it.
| Gap | Deep tech, median months | Deep tech companies (n) | All startups, median months (n) |
|---|---|---|---|
| First to second hire | 17 | 47 | 16 (156) |
| Second to third | 13 | 33 | 11 (120) |
| Third to fourth | 8 | 27 | 8 (107) |
| Fourth to fifth | 7 | 19 | 7 (83) |
The first gap is wide: the middle half of deep tech companies made their second hire between 10 and 35 months after the first. Allowing for time, of the 50 deep tech companies whose first finance hire is at least two years old, 27 had made a second within two years. The pace is close to the market as a whole. What sets deep tech apart is which way the second hire goes.
Up or down: it depends on what you hired first
Across all 47 deep tech second hires, 23 were more junior than the first, 7 at the same level and 17 more senior. That average hides two completely different patterns.
| First finance hire | Second hire more senior | Same level | More junior | Median months to the second hire |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A CFO (n=19) | 0 | 3 | 16 | 27 |
| Below CFO (n=28) | 17 | 4 | 7 | 16 |
After a CFO start, the second hire is support. Of the 19 deep tech companies that started with a CFO and made a second hire, 10 hired an accountant or FP&A analyst, 4 a finance manager and 2 a financial controller. The other 3 hired another CFO, a replacement rather than an addition. And it took longer: a median 27 months, which fits a CFO carrying a small pre-revenue finance function alone for a long stretch.
After a below-CFO start, the second hire is usually a step up. 17 of 28 went more senior, and 12 of the 28 second hires were a CFO. It also came sooner, a median 16 months after the first. After a below-CFO start, the second hire is often where the CFO question gets decided. When the second hire goes underneath instead, it often comes through the first hire’s own network: I regularly see a finance hire, six months in, introduce the founder to someone strong from their last business.[1]
When the second search is a CFO over the top
Counting every later hire, not just the second, 21 of the 32 deep tech companies that started below CFO have since added a CFO, a median 18 months after the first finance hire. In 13 of those 21 the CFO arrived while the first finance hire was still in the role. In 7 the first hire had already left, and 1 is unclear.
The person who is right for pre-revenue foundations will often take a company to Series A, but a Series B with institutional investors asks for something different.[2] How the incumbent is handled, at their own offer stage and again when the CFO search opens, shapes whether the new structure works.
In deep tech, the CFO arriving over the top needs a specific set of skills. As I wrote about deep tech CFO searches, the transferable ones are managing capital-intensive environments, long lead times and demanding technical stakeholders, and building reporting under pressure for a board.[3] Two practical points for a deep tech founder at this step. Tell the first hire at offer stage if a CFO is likely within two years. And when the CFO search opens, decide before briefing whether the incumbent is being kept, reshaped or replaced, because the best candidates will ask.
For how I run a CFO search from brief to offer, see how to hire a CFO in Australia.
How big the deep tech finance team gets, by stage
Deep tech finance stays lean until Series B. Across all 52 companies the median is 4 finance hires so far (mean 4.4), and 19 have made five or more. By furthest announced round:
| Furthest announced round | Companies | Median finance hires | Five or more finance hires |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | 5 | 2 | 0 |
| Series A | 23 | 3 | 3 of 23 |
| Series B or later | 18 | 6 | 12 of 18 |
| Other rounds only (listed-company raises, grants, strategic) | 6 | 6 | 4 |
Series B is the step change. A deep tech company at Series A has usually made about three finance hires; one that has reached Series B or later has usually made six. Hires accumulate with time as well as stage, and the companies that have reached Series B are also the older ones, so read this as what a Series B deep tech finance function tends to look like, not as a trigger.
It matches how lean finance runs in startups generally. As I said on Celia’s Corner:
“Finance is always really lean. In a 50-person business, you’re probably not going to have more than one or two finance people.”
The second hire in deep tech is most often an accountant or FP&A analyst (18 of 47), then a CFO (15), a head of finance (6), a finance manager (5) and a financial controller (3). Where the first hire is a controller, the structure I see work is a controller with an outsourced bookkeeper underneath, rather than the controller doing everything or several full-time people too early.[4] And finance teams are getting leaner as AI takes on reporting,[5] which is part of why a small deep tech team can stay small for so long. The hires that remain are the ones that need judgement.
Three deep tech companies, and what their second hire was
Each case is built from public profile titles and publicly announced rounds, in order, with the round announcements linked. In each one the second finance hire is the interesting decision.
Gilmour Space Technologies
Deep tech: orbital launch vehicles and satellite platforms
- Founded
- 2013
- Confirmed rounds
- Series C Jun 2021; Series D Feb 2024; Series E Jan 2026
- First finance hire
- Financial controller, Sep 2018
- Second finance hire
- CFO, Oct 2021, 37 months later and 4 months after the Series C
- Then
- Management accountant Mar 2022; financial controller Jun 2023; a second CFO Jan 2024
- Now
- The second CFO in the seat
Gilmour’s second finance hire was a CFO, hired over the top of a financial controller who had run finance for three years. The timing lines up with the round: a A$61 million Series C in June 2021 was announced, and the CFO started four months later. The controller stayed on for five months under the new CFO and left in March 2022.
What followed is the rebuild a new CFO usually leads: a management accountant, then a new financial controller in June 2023. The first CFO left in February 2024; a second CFO had started a month earlier, just before the Series D, and led finance into the Series E in January 2026. Five finance hires, two of them CFOs, and both CFOs timed within months of a round.
As I explained on Celia’s Corner, a CFO is much more strategic: capital raising, governance, investors and M&A, where a head of finance or financial controller is more focused on the here and now.
The takeaway for a founderWhen the second hire is a CFO over a controller, the CFO’s first year is usually spent rebuilding the team underneath. Plan for the controller seat to turn over too.
Quantum Brilliance
Deep tech: diamond-based quantum accelerators that run at room temperature
- Founded
- 2019
- Confirmed rounds
- Seed Aug 2021; further funding Feb 2023; Series A Jan 2025
- First finance hire
- Assistant accountant, Jun 2021
- Second finance hire
- Head of finance, Mar 2022, 9 months later
- Then
- CFO May 2022, two months after the head of finance; financial controller Jan 2023
- Now
- All four had moved on by Sep 2024; no later internal finance hire on record
Quantum Brilliance started small: an assistant accountant in June 2021, two months before a US$9.7 million seed round. The second hire was a big step up, a head of finance in March 2022, and only two months later a CFO arrived above them. In deep tech data, that is the below-CFO start going up twice in quick succession.
A financial controller followed in January 2023, a month before a further US$18 million in funding. By September 2024 all four finance hires on record had moved on, ahead of a US$20 million Series A in January 2025. We have no later internal finance hire for the company, which may simply mean outside cover this data cannot see.
On Celia’s Corner I said the problems you have with finance now might not be the same problems in 12 to 18 months, so be clear where you want the role to be then, rather than hiring just for now.
The takeaway for a founderIf a CFO is likely within months, say so when you hire the head of finance. Two senior hires eight weeks apart is a structure decision, and it is better made once.
All G
Deep tech: animal-free dairy proteins made by precision fermentation
- Founded
- 2020
- Confirmed rounds
- Seed Sep 2021; Series A Aug 2022; further round Dec 2025
- First finance hire
- CFO, Jul 2021
- Also in 2021
- Financial accountant (month not recorded)
- Then
- Head of finance and strategy Aug 2023; finance manager May 2024
- Latest on record
- Finance manager, May 2024 to Aug 2025
All G put a CFO in two months before its A$16 million seed round and added a financial accountant the same year, the textbook CFO-start pattern: the second hire goes underneath. That pair carried the company through its A$25 million Series A in August 2022.
The CFO left in July 2023 after two years. All G did not hire another CFO. It brought in a head of finance and strategy the following month, a role that lasted three months, and then a finance manager in May 2024. In December 2025 it closed a A$10 million round alongside a joint venture. The sequence shows how the finance seat after a CFO start can change shape as the business does.
When the seat is decided again, what I look for is not the size of someone’s last company but how they think when there is no playbook in front of them.
The takeaway for a founderAfter a CFO start, the second hire is support underneath. When the CFO leaves, decide the seat again from scratch rather than refilling the old title by default.
Morse Micro, where a CFO arrived above a first hire who stayed, is on how long after a raise deep tech hires finance.
What I tell deep tech founders about the second hire
The honest version is that I have less first-hand to say about the order of the second and third hires than about the first, and I would rather let the data carry this page than dress up a rule. What the data shows most clearly is the direction of the step, more than its pace. I often put it like this:
“Every 18 months the business is going to step to a new level ideally if they’re growing and therefore your skills need to keep evolving and matching the pace of growth.”
The 17-month median gap to a second deep tech finance hire sits almost exactly on that step. If your first hire was a CFO, the second search is usually support and can wait. If your first hire was below CFO, the second search is where you decide whether they grow into the top seat or a CFO arrives above them, and it is worth making that call deliberately rather than letting the next round make it for you.
Compare: deep tech against fintech, software and all startups
| Figure | Deep tech | Fintech | Software | All startups |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Median months, first to second hire | 17 (n=47) | 15 (n=33) | 15 (n=64) | 16 (n=156) |
| Median months, second to third | 13 (n=33) | 9 (n=30) | 11 (n=46) | 11 (n=120) |
| Exactly one finance hire so far | 5 of 52 (10%) | 7 of 40 (18%) | 18 of 82 (22%) | 35 of 191 (18%) |
| Five or more finance hires | 19 of 52 | 26 of 40 | 29 of 82 | 83 of 191 |
| Second hire more senior than the first | 17 of 47 | 7 of 33 | 20 of 64 | 47 of 156 |
| CFO added above a below-CFO first hire | 21 of 32 | 15 of 30 | 24 of 62 | 65 of 135 |
| Of those, while the first hire was still in the role | 13 of 21 | 9 of 15 | 11 of 24 | 35 of 65 |
The same question for the other sectors: the second finance hire in Australian fintech, the second finance hire in Australian software startups and the second finance hire across Australian startups. The rest of the deep tech series:
- Before or after the first raise: deep tech
- How long after a raise deep tech hires finance
- What deep tech hires first in finance
- Every finance hiring benchmark, by subject and sector
For who sits where once there are three or four of them, see how to structure a finance team as you scale, and for the CFO seat itself, when to hire a CFO.
How these figures were built
All figures come from Story Recruitment’s study of 194 funded Australian startups, 53 of them deep tech, 52 with a dated finance hire. Every finance role we could find at each company was dated from public professional profiles, current and past, using the earliest finance role each person held there. Seniority runs, from lowest to highest: accountant or FP&A analyst, finance manager, financial controller, head of finance or finance director, CFO. “Five or more” and team-size figures count every finance hire made so far, including people who have since left, so they describe hiring activity rather than the size of the team today.
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.
- Deep tech is 53 companies, and the direction and team-size tables split them into groups of 5 to 28. Read the direction of travel, not the decimals. A first hire promoted into a bigger title inside the same company is recorded at their first title, so internal promotions are invisible here.
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
When do deep tech startups make their second finance hire?
A median 17 months after the first, among the 47 Australian deep tech companies we tracked that have made a second finance hire (middle half 10 to 35 months). The third came a median 13 months after the second (n=33), and the fourth 8 months after that (n=27). Across all 156 companies in the study with a second hire, the first gap was 16 months.
Is a deep tech company's second finance hire usually more senior or more junior?
It depends on the first. Where the first finance hire was a CFO, 16 of 19 second hires were more junior and none were more senior. Where the first hire was below CFO, 17 of 28 second hires were more senior, and 12 of those 28 were a CFO.
How big does a deep tech finance team get?
Small until Series B. Deep tech companies we tracked whose furthest announced round was a Series A had made a median 3 finance hires (n=23); those that had reached Series B or later a median 6 (n=18), and 12 of those 18 had made five or more. Only 5 of 52 deep tech companies have made exactly one finance hire.
Should the CFO be hired over the top of the existing finance lead?
It happens more often than not in deep tech. Of the 21 deep tech companies we tracked that added a CFO above a below-CFO first hire, 13 did so while that first hire was still in the role and 7 after they had left. The data does not say which works better; it says the conversation with the incumbent is a normal part of the second search, not an edge case.
References
- From a LinkedIn post on what good finance hires bring with them: a finance hire joins, and within six months is introducing the founder to someone capable from their last business, who gets hired, performs well and lifts the first hire’s credibility further.
- From a LinkedIn post on the most expensive finance hire a startup makes: someone who is right for pre-revenue and building the foundations will likely lead the function to Series A, but a Series B with institutional investors has very different requirements, and the Series B CFO may not be the one who scales to exit.
- From a LinkedIn post on the classic deep tech CFO challenge: the transferable skills are managing capital-intensive environments, long lead times, demanding technical stakeholders, building reporting under pressure, board relationships and high-stakes decisions on incomplete information.
- From a LinkedIn post on the classic startup finance structure: a financial controller doing the higher-end work with an outsourced bookkeeper on accounts payable, reconciliations and payroll, rather than the controller doing everything or multiple full-time people too early.
- From a LinkedIn post on where finance teams are heading: finance teams will get leaner while expectations grow; if AI can generate reports, flag variances and draft commentary, leaders will choose smaller teams with more commercial influence.
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.