The first seat split five ways across 40 fintechs: head of finance 12, CFO 10, and 6 each for controller, finance manager and accountant. Before the first round, 68% (15 of 22) of first hires were a CFO or head of finance; after it, 11% (2 of 18) were a CFO.
90% of fintechs that hired a CFO first have lost that CFO; half the first heads of finance are still there
Each row is one first seat at 40 funded Australian fintechs: how often it came first, how long it held and whether a CFO followed. The CFO row and the head of finance row run in opposite directions.
| First finance hire | First hireshare of 40 | Still in the seathired 3+ years ago | Leavers stayedmedian | CFO hired latera different person | Wait for that CFOmedian |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CFOCapital, investors, the board | 25%10 of 40 | 1 of 9n under 10 | 15 mo9 who left | 60%6 of 10 | 16 mo6 companies |
| Head of finance or finance directorThe model, budget and forecast | 30%12 of 40 | 45%5 of 11 | 36 mo6 who left | 50%6 of 12 | 35 mo6 companies |
| Financial controllerControls, compliance, reporting | 15%6 of 40 | 1 of 5n under 10 | 21 mo4 who left | 3 of 6n under 10 | 10 mo3 companies |
| Finance managerMonth end, reporting, the advisers | 15%6 of 40 | 0 of 5n under 10 | 20 mo5 who left | 3 of 6n under 10 | 22 mo3 companies |
| Accountant or FP&A analystExecutes; the founder still leads finance | 15%6 of 40 | 2 of 6n under 10 | 28 mo4 who left | 3 of 6n under 10 | 62 mo3 companies |
| Any seat below CFOThe four seats above, together | 75%30 of 40 | 30%8 of 27 | 27 mo19 who left | 50%15 of 30 | 32 mo15 companies |
90% (9 of 10) of first fintech CFOs have left, and the CFO was the seat most likely to be bought twice. The head of finance held: 45% (5 of 11) of those hired three or more years ago are still in the seat, and the six who left stayed a median 36 months. Half of those 12 companies did later add a CFO above the first hire, which means a head of finance start still leaves the CFO decision open, for later.
Weighing a head of finance against a CFO for your fintech? Send me what finance covers today, what the product does with money and where the business will be in 18 months, and I will tell you which one to brief.
Get a read on my first finance hireTo test whether the CFO seat is real yet in a lender or payments business, use the five-question check in when a fintech needs its first CFO.
A first fintech CFO stayed a median 15 months, and 60% of companies bought the seat again
80% (8 of 10) of the CFO-first fintechs made that hire before their first announced round. 60% (6) had not held the CFO title in their previous role, so most were stepping up at the same time as the company was working out what it needed from one.
What the data does show is the cost of a seat bought twice.8 As I wrote about a hire that looked right on approval, the cost of a hire that does not work runs well past salary: time, attention, momentum and morale, and usually another three months before the problem it was meant to fix gets solved.
If you are being told to hire differently
“Investors will want a CFO in before the round.” Some fintechs did it: 36% (8 of 22) of those that hired before their first round chose a CFO. 7 of those 8 have left. A CFO is hired for continuous work. As I said on Celia’s Corner, “CFO is much more strategic”: capital raising, governance, the investors and any M&A. If that work is one raise, a head of finance can prepare it; if it is every quarter from here, it is the CFO’s job.
“An accountant can hold it until the Series A.” It can, if you know what you are buying. 2 of the 6 accountant-first fintechs still have that hire in the seat, and 3 of 6 later hired a CFO. In my post on why two recruiters quoted one founder two different bands, I wrote that founders most often under-hire: they price the role against today’s complexity and are hiring again a year later, when the person cannot scale. In a fintech the complexity arrives with the first customer’s money.
“Our head of finance will step up into the CFO seat.” Some will.5 Plan for the other case too. As I wrote about the most expensive finance hire, finance people are usually excellent at one stage of a business, and the pool with the range to run several stages as it scales is much smaller in Australia than founders expect. Ask at offer stage which stage your candidate is best at.
Before the first round, 68% of fintechs hired a CFO or head of finance first; after it, 11% hired a CFO
The side of the first round sorted the seat more than anything else we measured. Fintechs that hired before their first announced round went senior: 36% (8) started with a CFO and 32% (7) with a head of finance. Those that raised first mostly hired someone to run the books and controls the money brought: controllers (28%, 5 of 18) and heads of finance (28%, 5) led, and only 11% (2) started with a CFO.
CFO first. Grey bars are the four seats below CFO.
View as a table
| First finance hire | Hired before the first round (22) | Hired after the first round (18) |
|---|---|---|
| CFO | 8 | 2 |
| Head of finance | 7 | 5 |
| Financial controller | 1 | 5 |
| Finance manager | 2 | 4 |
| Accountant or FP&A | 4 | 2 |
A hire before the round builds from nothing, and that is a different skill from running a function someone else built. On Behind The Story I put it this way: “coming in at zero and building to one is super, super difficult.” If you are hiring before your first round, screen for someone who has done that, whatever the title.
Whether the product lends or moves money did not change the first seat. 25% (6 of 24) of lending and payments fintechs started with a CFO, against 25% (4 of 16) of other fintechs, and the first CFOs left in both groups (6 of 6, and 3 of 4). What the product changed is when the hire came: fintechs that lend or move money more often hired before the round. Only 1 of the 40 first hires was visibly fractional.3
How FrankieOne, Azupay and Zeller built from their first seat
One CFO first and two heads of finance, one hired before the first round and one after it. Sequences are read from public profile titles and announced rounds; people are not named.
FrankieOne
A CFO 32 months before the Series A, and the longest stay of the nine that left
- Business
- Identity verification and fraud prevention for fintechs and banks (founded 2017)
- First finance hire
- CFO, Feb 2019
- Against the first roundVs first round
- 32 months before
- Next finance hire
- Accountant, Feb 2022; financial controller, Sep 2022; second CFO, Oct 2024
- Now
- Second CFO in role (Sep 2026)
FrankieOne sells identity checks and fraud screening to fintechs. It hired a CFO, who came from a bank, in February 2019, 32 months before its A$20 million Series A.
That CFO stayed 64 months, through the Series A and a A$23 million Series A+, the longest stay of the nine first fintech CFOs in our data who have left. The team underneath came late: an accountant three years after the CFO, in February 2022, and a controller that September. The first CFO left in June 2024, and a second CFO started that October.
A first CFO hired long before the round can carry a fintech through its Series A. Put the controller in underneath before the CFO is the one doing month end.
Azupay
A head of finance 13 months after the Series A, still carrying finance four years on
- Business
- Real-time bank-account payments for businesses and government (founded 2019)
- Rounds
- Earlier raise, Jul 2020; A$10M from Ellerston Capital, Sep 2021 (a Series A in our data)
- First finance hire
- Head of finance and company secretary, Oct 2022
- Against the first roundVs first round
- 27 months after; 13 after the Series A
- Next finance hire
- None yet
- Now
- Head of finance in role, nearly four years in (Sep 2026)
Azupay runs real-time account-to-account payments, so money moves through the product on every transaction. Its first finance hire, a head of finance who is also company secretary, joined in October 2022, 13 months after its A$10 million raise from Ellerston Capital, from an accounting and CFO-services firm.
Nearly four years on, that person is still in the seat, and no other finance hire shows on the public record. Azupay is one of the 6 head-of-finance-first fintechs that have not hired a CFO.
A head of finance can carry a payments business alone for years. Decide early who owns capital strategy when the next raise comes, because that is the part of the CFO job the seat does not cover.
Zeller
A head of finance two months before the seed, still there after six years
- Business
- Payment terminals and business accounts for merchants (founded 2020)
- First finance hire
- Head of finance and analytics, Apr 2020
- Against the first roundVs first round
- 2 months before
- Next finance hire
- Junior accountant, Jul 2022
- Now
- First hire still in role; FP&A manager since May 2025 (Sep 2026)
Zeller makes payment terminals and runs business accounts for merchants. Its head of finance and analytics started in April 2020, two months before the seed, and was still in the seat through a Series A the company called one of Australia’s largest pre-launch rounds and a Series B in March 2022.
The second finance hire came 27 months after the first, and it was a junior accountant. Accountants followed in 2024 and 2025 and an FP&A manager in May 2025, all built underneath the first hire, with no CFO on the record.
A head of finance hired before the first cheque can scale a long way if the brief is written for the business two rounds ahead.
Against every other sector, fintech’s first CFOs stayed shortest: 15 months, against 24 across all startups
| Group | First CFO still in the seatshare of CFO starts | First CFOs who left stayedmedian | Another CFO hiredshare of CFO starts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fintech (this page) | 10%1 of 10 | 15 mo9 who left | 60%6 of 10 |
| All startups | 32%18 of 56 | 24 mo38 who left | 50%28 of 56 |
| Difference, fintech minus all | −22 pts | −9 mo | +10 pts |
| Software | 35%7 of 20 | 21 mo13 who left | 55%11 of 20 |
| Deep tech | 40%8 of 20 | 29 mo12 who left | 45%9 of 20 |
Fintech started with a CFO about as often as the market (25%, or 10 of 40, against 29%, or 56 of 191). The gap is in what happened next.
What to hire first, in the other cuts: All startups, Tech, Deep tech.
Fintech, the other three questions: Before or after the first raise, How long after a raise, The second finance hire. All of them sit in the finance hiring benchmarks series.
For the CFO decision itself, read when a fintech needs its first CFO.
Common questions
Should a fintech's first finance hire be a CFO?
Most Australian fintechs did not start there. Of 40 funded fintechs we tracked, 75% (30) made their first finance hire below CFO, most often a head of finance or finance director (30%, 12). 25% (10) started with a CFO, and 90% (9) of those CFOs have since left.
How long does a fintech's first CFO stay?
Of the 10 fintechs whose first finance hire was a CFO, 90% (9) of those CFOs have left, after a median 15 months. 60% (6) of the companies hired another CFO, a median 16 months after the first one started. The data records when people left. It cannot say why.
Does a lending or payments fintech need a different first finance hire?
Not by the first seat. 25% (6 of 24) of lending and payments fintechs started with a CFO, against 25% (4 of 16) of other fintechs, and both groups most often started below CFO. What differs is timing: lenders and payments companies more often hired before their first round.
If a fintech starts with a head of finance, will it need a CFO later?
Half did. 6 of the 12 fintechs whose first finance hire was a head of finance or finance director later hired a CFO, a median 35 months after that first hire.
How long does a fintech's first finance hire stay?
28% (11 of 40) are still in the role. The 28 who left with a known end date stayed a median 23 months: 15 for a first CFO and 36 for a first head of finance.
Notes
- 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.
- Sector and product are tagged by us. “Fintech” means the product is financial; the split into 24 that lend or move money and 16 others is our own reading of each company’s product, and every seat row is small, so read the direction, not the decimal; the controller, finance manager and accountant rows hold six companies each. The data records when first CFOs left. It cannot say why, or that an early CFO was the wrong call.
The full method, including how rounds were double-checked and how same-named companies overseas were excluded, is in the study’s methodology section.
These guides set out how we see it, drawn from the searches we run and the finance leaders we work with. They are general information about the market, not financial, accounting or legal advice, and they are no substitute for advice on your own circumstances.