32 of 52 Australian deep tech companies we tracked (62%) made their first finance hire below CFO. But 20 of 52 (38%) hired a CFO first, more than in software (24%) or fintech (25%).
The short answer: usually not a CFO, but often enough to plan for
Across the study, most first finance hires sit below the CFO seat, and that holds in deep tech too, where 32 of 52 companies started below CFO. What is different is the size of the exception. The CFO is the single most common first title in deep tech, 20 of 52, and no other sector comes close to that share.
| First finance hire | Companies | Still in the seat | A CFO was later added |
|---|---|---|---|
| CFO | 20 (38%) | 8 | 9 (a second CFO) |
| Head of finance or finance director | 10 (19%) | 3 | 7 |
| Financial controller | 10 (19%) | 2 | 7 |
| Finance manager | 6 (12%) | 3 | 2 |
| Accountant or FP&A analyst | 6 (12%) | 1 | 5 |
| Started below CFO | 32 (62%) | 9 | 21 of 32 |
Read the right-hand column as the real answer to “what should we hire first”. In deep tech, 41 of the 52 companies have had a CFO at some point: 20 hired one first and 21 added one above a below-CFO start. The question for most deep tech founders is not whether there will be a CFO, but whether it comes first or second.
Why deep tech buys the CFO seat first
The CFO-first companies are concentrated before the round. 14 of the 20 deep tech CFO first hires started before the company’s first announced round, often well before it. That fits what the job is in a pre-revenue science company: the capital plan, the investors, the grant program and the R&D claim are the work, long before there is a sales ledger to close. When I was asked on Celia’s Corner how business model moves the timing of a proper CFO, deep tech was the first example I reached for:
“If it’s a Deep Tech business, then it might be series A.”
Series A, where a single-product software business might not need a CFO until Series B or later. The deep tech CFO is being hired for capital and complexity rather than for the size of the finance team.
Two cautions. First, a CFO first hire in deep tech is not a settled seat. Of the 20, 8 are still in the role and 9 companies have since hired a second, different CFO. Second, 4 of those 20 CFO first hires were listed as part-time, fractional or interim. Part of what reads as “CFO first” is a part-time CFO first, which is a very different commitment.
What happens after a below-CFO start
Of the 32 deep tech companies that started below CFO, 21 (66%) have since added a CFO, a median 18 months after the first hire (middle half 11 to 45 months). Across all 191 companies in the study, 65 of 135 below-CFO starts added a CFO, a median 26 months later. Deep tech makes the step more often and sooner. Allowing for time, of the 26 deep tech companies whose below-CFO first hire started at least three years ago, 12 added a CFO within those three years.
It is why I say the most expensive finance hire a startup makes is usually not the first one but the one that follows it.[1] In deep tech, 13 of the 21 CFOs arrived while the first finance hire was still in place, 7 after that person had left, and 1 is unclear. That makes the conversation you have with a below-CFO first hire at offer stage important. If the business is likely to need a CFO within two years, say so, and be honest about whether the seat is open to them. How that second hire tends to land is on the second finance hire in Australian deep tech.
In deep tech the year after the first hire often brings a larger round, a pilot plant or a clinical milestone, and a first hire who fits a grant-funded lab can be the wrong person by then. As I often put it: businesses scale exponentially, people don’t.
How long deep tech first hires stay
Of the 52 deep tech first finance hires, 17 are still in the role. The 33 who have left stayed a median 33 months, the longest of any sector in the study (25 months across all 191 companies, 24 in software, 23 in fintech). Deep tech CFO first hires who left stayed a median 29 months (n=12). The other tiers each have fewer than 10 leavers, so we do not print a figure for them. Of the first hires made at least three years ago, 11 of 44 are still in the seat.
One likely reason, which this data cannot test, is the sector’s clock. Development cycles and funding milestones run in years, and a finance lead who knows the grant history and the R&D claim is expensive to replace halfway through a program.
Where deep tech first hires came from
| Previous employer | Deep tech first hires |
|---|---|
| Private business outside tech | 15 |
| Large corporate outside tech | 8 |
| Accounting, advisory or CFO services firm | 7 |
| Non-profit or government | 5 |
| VC, private equity or investment firm | 4 |
| Bank or financial institution | 3 |
| Big 4 | 3 |
| Another startup or scale-up | 3 |
| Self-employed, or not stated | 4 |
Only 3 of 52 deep tech first hires came straight from another startup, against 25 of 82 in software. Part of the reason is who writes the brief. Deep tech founders are focused on the science behind what they are building, so the first finance brief is often guesswork.[2] The other part is where the talent is. As I wrote about deep tech CFO searches, the best candidates often come from heavy or food manufacturing, defence or mining, and what the seat needs most is urgency, adaptability and a willingness to get into the detail, not a CV in the same sub-sector.[3] A big-brand CV is not a shortcut either: what I look for is someone who has built a function from zero.[4] It also shows in the CFO seat itself. Only 4 of the 20 deep tech CFO first hires held a CFO title in their immediately previous role; the rest came from roles such as finance director, controller, investment director, strategy, general management and company director. A first-time CFO is the norm here, not a risk to screen out.
The skills that matter are shifting too. As AI takes on more of the manual and technical work, what separates great finance people from good ones has little to do with the spreadsheet.[5] For a deep tech first hire, that pushes the brief towards judgement: reading a grant agreement, pricing a milestone, holding a view in front of a board.
Three deep tech companies, three different first seats
Each case is built from public profile titles and publicly announced rounds, in order, with the round announcements linked. Each started with a different kind of first hire.
Sicona Battery Technologies
Deep tech: silicon-carbon battery anode materials
- Founded
- 2019
- Confirmed rounds
- Pre-Series A Aug 2021; Series A Jun 2023
- First finance hire
- CFO (part-time), Jul 2020
- Against the first round
- 13 months before
- Next finance hires
- Full-time CFO Aug 2023; finance managers Sep 2023 and Jul 2025
- Now
- The full-time CFO in the seat since Aug 2023
Sicona bought the CFO title first, but part-time. A part-time CFO started in July 2020, 13 months before a A$3.7 million pre-Series A. For a company scaling battery materials technology, that bought senior judgement on the capital plan without a full-time salary the business could not yet carry.
The switch came with the A$22 million Series A in June 2023. Two months later a full-time CFO started, the part-time role ended the same month, and a finance manager joined underneath a month after that. It is the cleanest fractional-to-internal handover in the deep tech data: one seat, converted at the round that could pay for it.
As I said on the Behind The Story podcast, not every company needs a full-time CFO straight away; a fractional CFO alongside a strong financial controller or head of finance can save a lot until the full-time job is really there.
The takeaway for a founderA part-time CFO first gives a pre-revenue company senior cover it can afford. Decide in advance which round turns it into a full-time seat.
Advanced Navigation
Deep tech: inertial navigation, fibre-optic gyroscopes and autonomous robotics
- Founded
- 2012
- Confirmed rounds
- Series A Nov 2019; Series B Nov 2022; Series C Mar 2026
- First finance hire
- Accountant, 2014
- Against the first round
- About five years before
- Next finance hires
- Accountant 2015; CFO Jan 2017; financial controller Jul 2022
- Now
- A second CFO since Jan 2024, with a head of finance and a finance director for the Americas added in 2026
Advanced Navigation started at the bottom of the ladder: an accountant in 2014 and another in 2015, the finance a company building and selling navigation hardware needs to invoice, pay suppliers and keep stock straight. A CFO followed in January 2017, almost three years before the company’s first confirmed round, a A$20 million Series A in November 2019.
That first CFO stayed seven years, through a US$68 million Series B in 2022, with a successor starting in January 2024 a month before the handover. The team then filled out for scale: controllers and accountants, a head of finance in May 2026 and a senior finance director for the Americas in August 2026, after a US$110 million Series C. Accountant first, CFO before the institutional money, then a multi-country function.
In a post on the first quarter of 2026, I noted that Australia had three new unicorns that quarter, Gilmour Space, Advanced Navigation and Neara, and that not one of them was a SaaS business. The next era of Australian tech looks to be taking a different route from software.
The takeaway for a founderStarting at accountant level is fine while the business is small. A CFO in place years before the first institutional round is the deep tech pattern at its clearest.
Vow
Deep tech: cultured meat grown from animal cells
- Founded
- 2019
- Confirmed rounds
- Seed Jan 2021; Series A Nov 2022
- First finance hire
- Senior financial controller (part-time), Jun 2021
- Against the first round
- 5 months after the seed
- Next finance hires
- Head of finance Oct 2022; junior financial controller Jan 2023; financial accountant Apr 2026
- Now
- A financial accountant in role
Vow raised a US$6 million seed in January 2021 and five months later brought in a senior financial controller on a part-time basis. That is a controls-first choice: getting the books and payroll right in a company that was building a food production process from cells.
The forward-looking seat came just before the big round. A head of finance started in October 2022, one month before a US$49 million Series A, and a junior financial controller followed in January 2023. The first two hires map neatly onto the difference between a controller and a head of finance: one looks back and keeps the numbers right, the other looks forward and builds the plan investors fund.
Vow hired a part-time controller first and a head of finance before the Series A, each timed to the round it served.
Diraq and Hysata, which put a CFO in first, are on before or after the first raise, and All G is on the second finance hire.
Compare: deep tech against fintech, software and all startups
| Figure | Deep tech | Fintech | Software | All startups |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First hire is a CFO | 20 of 52 (38%) | 10 of 40 (25%) | 20 of 82 (24%) | 56 of 191 (29%) |
| Most common below-CFO first hire | Head of finance and controller, 10 each | Head of finance, 12 | Head of finance, 19 | Head of finance, 44 |
| Below-CFO start later topped by a CFO | 21 of 32 (66%) | 15 of 30 (50%) | 24 of 62 (39%) | 65 of 135 (48%) |
| Median months to that CFO | 18 | 32 | 23 | 26 |
| Leavers’ median tenure, months | 33 (n=33) | 23 (n=28) | 24 (n=52) | 25 (n=125) |
| Came straight from another startup | 3 of 52 | 6 of 40 | 25 of 82 | 37 of 191 |
The same question for the other sectors: what Australian fintechs hire first in finance, what Australian software startups hire first in finance and what Australian startups hire first in finance across every sector. The rest of the deep tech series:
- Before or after the first raise: deep tech
- How long after a raise deep tech hires finance
- The second finance hire in deep tech
- Every finance hiring benchmark, by subject and sector
For what each seat owns and costs, see the CFO, the financial controller and the head of finance compared and 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. Titles are grouped as CFO; head of finance or finance director (including VP Finance); financial controller; finance manager; and accountant or FP&A analyst. Each person is counted once, at the earliest finance title they held at the company, so a first hire later promoted into the CFO seat does not count as a CFO being added: the “later added a CFO” figures are a floor. Previous employers were labelled by hand from each first hire’s profile.
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. Every tier row on this page rests on 20 companies or fewer, so read them as direction, not decimals. Tenure describes leavers only; it says nothing about how long the people still in the seat will stay.
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
Should a deep tech startup hire a CFO as its first finance hire?
Often not, but more often than in any other sector. Of 52 Australian deep tech companies we tracked, 32 (62%) made their first finance hire below CFO: a head of finance, a financial controller, a finance manager or an accountant. 20 (38%) hired a CFO first, against 24% in software and 25% in fintech.
If a deep tech company starts below CFO, how often does it add a CFO later?
Usually. Of the 32 Australian deep tech companies we tracked whose first finance hire was below CFO, 21 have since added a CFO, a median 18 months after that first hire. Across all sectors the figure is 65 of 135 at a median 26 months, so deep tech makes the step to a CFO more often and sooner.
How long does a deep tech company's first finance hire stay?
Longer than in other sectors, among those who have left. 17 of 52 deep tech first hires are still in the role. The 33 who have left stayed a median 33 months, against 25 months across all 191 companies in the study. Tenure figures describe leavers only.
Where do deep tech companies find their first finance hire?
Mostly outside startups. The most common previous employer of a deep tech first finance hire was a private company outside tech (15 of 52), then a large corporate outside tech (8) and an accounting, advisory or CFO services firm (7). Only 3 of 52 came straight from another startup, against 25 of 82 in software.
References
- From a LinkedIn post on the most expensive finance hire a startup makes: it is usually not the first one, it is the one that follows it. Businesses scale exponentially, people don’t.
- From a LinkedIn post on why the first finance hire is the hardest hire: founders are focused on growth, product and the science behind what they are building, so they often cannot assess what good looks like in finance and write the brief on guesswork.
- From a LinkedIn post on the classic deep tech CFO challenge: the best deep tech CFO candidates often come from heavy or food manufacturing, defence or mining, and what the seat really needs is urgency, adaptability and a willingness to get into the detail, not prior experience in space tech, robotics or agtech.
- From the Behind The Story podcast: a big-brand CV is not always the best choice for a startup; what matters is the person’s actual impact, their motivation and whether they have built a function from zero.
- From a LinkedIn post for accounting professionals: as AI takes on more of the manual and technical work, what separates great finance people from good ones has nothing to do with the spreadsheet.
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.