Of 52 Australian deep tech companies we tracked with a dated finance hire, 33 (63%) had a finance person before their first announced round, a median 19 months ahead of it. The other 19 hired after the round, a median 21 months later.
The short answer: deep tech usually has someone first
A first finance hire is the first person a startup employs whose job is finance: a CFO, a head of finance, a financial controller, a finance manager or an accountant. In Australian deep tech, that person was usually already there when the first round was announced. 33 of the 52 deep tech companies we tracked (63%) hired finance first. Across all 191 funded Australian startups in the study the split was close to even, 100 before and 91 after, so deep tech is the sector where hiring before the raise is most clearly the common path.
| Deep tech companies (n=52) | Companies | Median months | Middle half |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finance hire before the first announced round | 33 (63%) | 19 ahead | 8 to 35 ahead |
| Finance hire after it | 19 (37%) | 21 after | 5 to 38 after |
| All 52, first round to first hire | 52 | 5 ahead |
Read the two rows, not the total. A median of “5 months ahead” across all 52 companies describes almost nobody: the companies that hired first did so well over a year ahead, and the ones that hired after usually waited well over a year. If you are benchmarking your own timing, first work out which of the two groups you are in.
The stage benchmark: finance in place by round
The first announced round is one reference point. A founder planning a seed or a Series A wants a different one: of the deep tech companies that raised that kind of round, how many already had a finance person when it was announced? Each row below counts every company with a confirmed round at that stage, whenever it came.
| Round | Had a finance hire before it | Had not yet made an internal finance hire |
|---|---|---|
| Seed (n=16) | 8 of 16 (50%) | 8 |
| Series A (n=34) | 21 of 34 (62%) | 13 |
| Series B or later (n=18) | 16 of 18 (89%) | 2 |
The share rises with every stage, and by Series B it is nearly universal: 16 of the 18 deep tech companies we tracked that reached Series B or later had a finance person before that round was announced. Across all sectors the Series B figure is 50 of 64 (78%), and in software 19 of 24.
The 2 deep tech companies without an internal hire at Series B need careful reading. The study only sees people who list the company as their employer. A founder can run finance through an outsourced provider for years, and a pre-revenue founder came to me recently asking for exactly that: a fractional CFO to get visibility and line the model up with the plan.[1] That person is not an employee, so the study cannot see them. So the honest version is: of the deep tech companies we tracked that went on to build an internal finance function, 2 of 18 had not made that internal hire by the time their Series B was announced.
How far ahead, and why the lead is so long
Among the 33 deep tech companies that hired first, the lead over the first announced round was long. 12 of the 33 had a finance person more than two years before that round.
| Lead over the first announced round | Companies |
|---|---|
| 1 to 6 months | 8 |
| 7 to 12 months | 4 |
| 13 to 24 months | 9 |
| More than 24 months | 12 |
| Hired before the first round | 33 |
The main reason is visible in the round data itself. In deep tech, the first round a company announces is often not the start of its funding. 28 of the 52 deep tech companies (54%) had a Series A or later as their first announced round, against 32 of 82 software companies (39%). Before that round there is often a long stretch funded by founders, angels, grants and research programs, none of which appear in a series of announced venture rounds. A finance person hired two years before the “first round” is often a finance person hired during that stretch.
That stretch creates finance work early. As I put it on the Behind The Story podcast:
“Deep tech generally has a really heavy inventory component because they’re building things. Or really heavy stock component or there’s a massive part on grants or research and development.”
Those are the conversations I have been having with founders for almost ten years: capital raises, runway visibility and R&D tax claims.[2] The Research and Development Tax Incentive is a good example. A company has to register its R&D activities within 10 months of the end of the income year, and a smaller company may be able to claim a refundable offset, which for a pre-revenue business is part of the runway.[3] Someone has to own that claim, and it lands on finance.
The time from founding to the first finance hire is not short in deep tech, though: a median 3.6 years (n=50), against 2.3 years in fintech (n=34) and 4.0 in software (n=76). Deep tech companies are not hiring finance on day one. They are hiring it years before they announce a venture round.
Who deep tech hires before the round, and who after
The two groups hire differently. Before the round, the first finance hire in deep tech was a CFO in 14 of 33 companies. After it, 6 of 19. Every accountant-level first hire in deep tech came before the round.
| First finance hire | Before the round (n=33) | After the round (n=19) |
|---|---|---|
| CFO | 14 | 6 |
| Head of finance or finance director | 6 | 4 |
| Financial controller | 5 | 5 |
| Finance manager | 2 | 4 |
| Accountant or FP&A analyst | 6 | 0 |
Deep tech also shows more visible part-time cover than any other sector. 8 of its 52 first hires (15%) were listed as fractional, part-time or interim, 4 before the round and 4 after, against 7 of 82 in software and 1 of 40 in fintech. Four of those eight were CFOs. That is a floor: a CFO supplied by a firm does not list the startup as an employer at all. Which seat to fill first, and what tends to follow each choice, is on what Australian deep tech hires first in finance.
Three deep tech companies, before and after the round
Each case is built from public profile titles and publicly announced rounds, in the order things happened, with the round announcements linked. They are sequences, not prescriptions: none of them proves that one order is better than another.
Gilmour Space Technologies
Deep tech: orbital launch vehicles, hybrid rocket propulsion 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
- Against the first round
- 33 months before
- Next finance hires
- CFO Oct 2021; management accountant Mar 2022
- Now
- A second CFO in the seat since Jan 2024
Gilmour is the clearest example of why deep tech’s “hired before the round” figure runs so high. The company spent years building rockets before the first round our two-source check could confirm: a A$61 million Series C in June 2021. Earlier raises did not pass that check, so in this study Gilmour’s first round is a Series C, and its financial controller had been in the seat for almost three years by then.
The Series C changed the finance brief quickly. A CFO started in October 2021, four months after the round, while the controller stayed on until March 2022. A second CFO followed in January 2024, a month before the Series D, and was still in the seat through the Series E in January 2026. A controller first, then a CFO once a priced round brought institutional investors: the order a software company would follow, running on a much longer clock.
In a LinkedIn post on Australian venture funding in the first quarter of 2026, I pointed out that the single largest deal of the quarter was Gilmour Space’s, big enough on its own to be about a tenth of all the capital raised.
The takeaway for a founderIf grants, founders or early backers have funded you for years, “before the first round” may not describe you. Time the finance hire to when the finance workload starts, not to the first announcement.
Diraq
Deep tech: silicon quantum computing chips built in a standard CMOS process
- Founded
- 2022
- Confirmed rounds
- Series A-2 Feb 2024 and Jun 2024; government equity Feb 2026
- First finance hire
- CFO, May 2022
- Against the first round
- 21 months before
- Next finance hires
- Financial accountant May 2025; finance manager (Australia and US) Mar 2026
- Now
- The first CFO still in the seat, 52 months in
Diraq hired a CFO in the year it was founded, and for three years that CFO was the whole finance function visible in public records. The first rounds both of our searches confirmed were a US$15 million Series A-2 in February 2024, 21 months after the CFO started, and a US$22 million extension that June.
Support came only when the business needed it. A financial accountant joined in May 2025, and in March 2026 a finance manager covering Australia and the United States, a sign of a company now running across two jurisdictions. A month earlier the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation announced a A$20 million equity investment. A government co-investor, US operations and a quantum hardware roadmap is exactly the kind of capital story a CFO is hired to carry.
A CFO at formation is a legitimate deep tech shape when raising capital is most of the job in the early years. Budget for that person running finance alone for a long time.
Hysata
Deep tech: capillary-fed hydrogen electrolysers
- Founded
- 2021
- Confirmed rounds
- Series A Aug 2022; Series B May 2024
- First finance hire
- CFO, Oct 2022
- Against the first round
- 2 months after
- Next finance hires
- Accountants 2023 and Feb 2024; financial controller Nov 2024; head of finance Jul 2026
- Now
- Head of finance and three accountants in role
Hysata is the after-the-round version. It announced a Series A of more than A$40 million in August 2022 with nobody internal in finance, and a CFO started two months later. For a company that manufactures electrolysers, the money arrives with a factory attached: supplier contracts, inventory and a build program all need a finance owner at once.
The first CFO left in January 2024, 15 months in. Hysata did not refill the top seat straight away. It built underneath instead: accountants, then a financial controller in November 2024, six months after a US$111 million Series B, then a head of finance in July 2026. Seven finance hires in under four years, most of them below the top seat.
Hiring straight after the round works when the round gives the hire a clear job. If that first CFO moves on, building the team underneath before refilling the top seat is a real option.
Two more deep tech sequences, Sicona and All G, are set out on what deep tech hires first and the second finance hire.
What I see in deep tech
The data lines up with the briefs I take from deep tech founders. When I was asked on the Behind The Story podcast how deep tech timing compares with software, this is how I put it:
“For the CFO, it might be much sooner than a pure play SaaS business. It might be closer to, yeah, a seed or depending on the size of the raise. Like some of them might have a 30 to 50 million dollar seed round.”
A round that size brings a board, institutional investors and a capital plan that need a finance owner from the first month.[4] And the rounds are getting bigger in exactly these sectors. Looking at Australian venture funding in the first quarter of 2026, the largest rounds went to space and defence, hardware and robotics, AI infrastructure, life sciences, and climate and energy.[5]
The seat does not have to be a CFO. When I was asked on Celia’s Corner how the first finance hire differs in deep tech, space tech and robotics, this is what I said:
“The first finance hire is often coming in a little bit sooner, and it might be around a seed round funding where they might have just raised 10 to 15 million, you might get a first finance hire in then. And that can often be a head of finance.”
That hire’s first job is usually setting up financial controls before the numbers get any messier.[6] It is also why I think the timing question matters less than founders expect. The headline raise is the part everyone sees; the five years of grind before it is where the finance function actually gets built.[7] If a priced round is coming and nobody owns the cash model, the R&D claim and the grant reporting, that is the gap to close first, whether with an internal hire or with part-time cover that can hand over cleanly. Sicona’s part-time-to-full-time CFO, on what deep tech hires first, is one way to do it.
For how the deep tech finance seat differs from a software company’s, see the deep tech section of my SaaS CFO guide.
Compare: deep tech against fintech, software and all startups
| Figure | Deep tech | Fintech | Software | All startups |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hired before the first round | 33 of 52 (63%) | 22 of 40 (55%) | 37 of 82 (45%) | 100 of 191 (52%) |
| Median months ahead (those before) | 19 (n=33) | 15 (n=22) | 15 (n=37) | 17 (n=100) |
| Median months after (those after) | 21 (n=19) | 21 (n=18) | 18 (n=45) | 18 (n=91) |
| Finance in place before seed | 8 of 16 (50%) | 6 of 14 (43%) | 10 of 34 (29%) | 25 of 67 (37%) |
| Finance in place before Series A | 21 of 34 (62%) | 10 of 22 (45%) | 30 of 50 (60%) | 64 of 112 (57%) |
| Finance in place before Series B or later | 16 of 18 (89%) | 12 of 17 (71%) | 19 of 24 (79%) | 50 of 64 (78%) |
The same question for the other sectors: when Australian fintechs hire finance, when Australian software startups hire finance and, across every sector, when Australian startups make their first finance hire, the long-form study this series is built on. The rest of the deep tech series:
- How long after a raise deep tech hires finance
- What deep tech hires first in finance
- The second finance hire in deep tech
- Every finance hiring benchmark, by subject and sector
If you are deciding the seat as well as the timing, my guides on when to hire a CFO and how to hire a CFO set out the process, and the best CFOs in Australian deep tech shows who is doing the job now.
How these figures were built
All figures come from Story Recruitment’s study of 194 funded Australian startups, 53 of them deep tech. A company qualified when two independent searches of public funding announcements found the same round. Deep tech means a defensible scientific or engineering advance the company builds itself: semiconductors, space, biotech, medical devices, novel materials, robotics and energy technology. Every finance role at each company was dated from public professional profiles, using the earliest finance role each person held there. 52 deep tech companies have a dated finance hire.
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. Where a cell rests on fewer than 10 companies we print the count, not a percentage. Two deep tech companies are in the study on a raise that looks more like a listed placement or a grant than a venture round; they are the softest rows in the sector.
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
Do Australian deep tech startups hire finance before they raise?
Most of the ones we tracked did. Of 52 Australian deep tech companies with a dated finance hire, 33 (63%) had a finance person in place before their first announced funding round, a median 19 months ahead of it. The other 19 hired after the round, a median 21 months later. Across all 191 funded Australian startups in the study the split was 52% before and 48% after.
Why does deep tech hire finance earlier than software startups?
The study cannot prove why, but two patterns sit alongside it. Deep tech's first announced round is more often a Series A or later (28 of 52 companies) than in software (32 of 82), so there is often a long funded stretch before any announced venture round. And the work that stretch creates, R&D tax claims, grant milestones, inventory and long cash runways, lands on a finance person early. Of 52 deep tech first hires, 20 (38%) were a CFO, the highest share of any sector.
How many deep tech companies reach Series B without a finance hire?
Very few of the ones we tracked. Of 18 Australian deep tech companies that reached Series B or later, 16 had a finance person in place before that round was announced, and 2 had not yet made an internal finance hire. Outsourced or fractional finance providers do not appear in public employment records, so those 2 may well have had outside help.
Is it better for a deep tech startup to hire finance before the first round?
The data does not say so, and we do not claim it. It records the order in which things happened, not whether one order leads to better results. An earlier test on the first 102 companies in the study found no link between hire timing and raising again that could be told apart from chance.
References
- A founder of a pre-revenue startup came to me looking for a fractional CFO to get financial visibility and bring the financial model into line with where the business was going. I wrote it up in a LinkedIn post in June 2026.
- From a LinkedIn post on why the first finance hire is the hardest hire: I have spent almost ten years talking with founders and startup finance people through capital raises, runway visibility and R&D tax claims.
- The Research and Development Tax Incentive overview at business.gov.au, which sets out registration and eligibility, and the ATO’s page on refundable and non-refundable offsets.
- What I told the Behind The Story podcast about deep tech: heavy inventory and stock, a big grants and R&D component, often pre-revenue with a commercial product years away, which is why runway and cash flow are critical and the CFO can come much sooner than in SaaS.
- From my LinkedIn post on Australian venture funding in the first quarter of 2026: the largest rounds went to space and defence, hardware and robotics, cybersecurity, AI infrastructure, life sciences, and climate and energy, and the single largest deal was Gilmour Space’s.
- On Celia’s Corner: for deep tech, space tech and robotics the first finance hire often comes sooner, around a seed round of 10 to 15 million dollars, is often a head of finance, and starts by setting up financial controls.
- From the Behind The Story podcast: startup growth looks glamorous online, but behind the big raise and the exit there are usually five years of intense grind in the trenches.
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.