Of 40 funded Australian fintechs we tracked, 55% (22) had a finance person before their first announced round and 45% (18) hired after it. Of the 24 that lend or move money, 63% (15) hired before; of the 16 other fintechs, 44% (7) did.
55% of fintechs hired finance before their first round, and 68% of those lend or move money
We dated every finance hire at 40 funded Australian fintechs against their publicly announced rounds. Split them by what the product does and two different habits appear.
- Lend or move money (24)
- Every other fintech (16)
- More than 12 months before8 of 245 of 16
- 1 to 12 months before7 of 242 of 16
- 0 to 12 months after4 of 241 of 16
- More than 12 months after5 of 248 of 16
View as a table
| First finance hire | Lend or move money (24) | Every other fintech (16) |
|---|---|---|
| More than 12 months before | 8 | 5 |
| 1 to 12 months before | 7 | 2 |
| 0 to 12 months after | 4 | 1 |
| More than 12 months after | 5 | 8 |
63% (15 of 24) of fintechs that lend or move money had someone in finance before the first round was announced, so if yours does, the round is the wrong clock to wait for. The other 16 look like software. 56% (9) of them hired after the round, and 8 of those 9 waited more than a year. Why money moving through the product brings the seat forward is the argument of when a fintech needs its first CFO, along with what a licence adds to the job.
The early hire is rarely senior. 64% (14 of 22) of the fintechs that hired before the round started below CFO, with an accountant, a controller or a head of finance.
At the seed, 43% of fintechs had someone in finance; at the Series A, 45% did
The same question for every fintech that raised at each stage, later rounds included: was an internal finance hire already in place when the round was announced?
| Group | Seedincl. pre-seed | Series A | Series B+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fintech (this page) | 43%6 of 14 | 45%10 of 22 | 71%12 of 17 |
| All startups | 33%24 of 73 | 57%64 of 113 | 78%50 of 64 |
| Difference, fintech minus all | +10 pts | -12 pts | -7 pts |
| Software | 24%9 of 38 | 60%30 of 50 | 79%19 of 24 |
| Deep tech | 47%8 of 17 | 62%21 of 34 | 89%16 of 18 |
Fintech is 10 points ahead of all startups at the seed and 12 behind at the A: 55% (12 of 22) of the fintechs we tracked announced a Series A with nobody inside in finance, and raised it on founders and outside help. The split underneath is the same one as above: at the seed, 5 of 7 lending and payments fintechs had someone in finance against 1 of 7 others; at the A, 7 of 13 against 3 of 9.8 At Series B or later, 29% (5 of 17) of fintechs still had no internal finance hire.3
When the seed came first, 67% (8 of 12) of fintechs hired finance after it, 5 of them more than two years later
For 12 of the 40, the first announced round was a seed. Three of the five lenders and payments companies among them hired before it; one of the seven others did. Of the 8 fintechs with nobody in finance when their seed was announced, one hired within a year, and the median wait was 31 months.
That wait is getting longer across the market. Companies are raising earlier than ever at pre-seed and taking nearly twice as long to reach the scale-up zone, as I wrote after the first quarter’s venture figures this year, so a small seed has to carry the numbers further on outside help. The first finance hires I recruit generally come, as I told Honest Wealth Builders, “around like late seed round or series A”.
For the full clock after a seed, Series A and Series B in fintech, read how long after a raise fintechs hire finance.
Before a Series A, the raise needs someone who knows where the cash is
When the Series A was the first round, 54% (7 of 13) of fintechs had hired ahead of it. That is closer to a coin flip than in software, where 65% (15 of 23) hired before an A that came first. What tips it is the work a raise needs. The classic thing a first finance hire walks into is messy accounting, and as I said on Celia’s Corner, “messy accounting’s fine when you’re very early and the founder’s doing the finance”, but “when you do start to scale, that it’s impossible to do properly.” In a lender or a payments company, knowing what is on paper and what is cash in the bank is the business.
The most useful finance lead is the one who helps a founder think through a capital raise three months before it starts. If your Series A is a year out and nobody owns that yet, the hire belongs before the round.
Which side of your next round are you on?
Five yes-or-no questions about the business today. One yes puts the first finance hire before the raise.
- Does customer money, loan capital or settlement cash move through the business every week?
- Is the next raise less than 12 months away?
- Is the financial model a scramble, or is nobody sure which forecast is the live one?
- Are hires and spend being approved without numbers behind them?
- Would an investor's request for the model and its assumptions take you more than a day to answer?
0 of 5 answered. Your side appears here after the last one.
Not sure which side you are on? Send me what the product does, when the round lands and who does finance today, and I will tell you.
Get a read on my finance hireIf you are being told to hire now, or to wait
“Investors will want a CFO in the seat before they fund a fintech.” At the seed, 57% (8 of 14) of fintechs we tracked had no internal finance hire at all, and they raised. When I asked five startup finance specialists what kills founder credibility in due diligence, the same answer came back from all five: investors do not believe a seed company’s revenue projections, because nobody can see three years out. They test the model’s structure and assumptions, which an outside accountant or a fractional CFO can build. When the CFO seat itself becomes real is in when a fintech needs its first CFO.
“Raise first. The round will pay for the hire.” For a fintech that sells software or information, the data agrees: 56% (9 of 16) hired after the round. For a lender, waiting means the money moving through the product has no owner inside the business until the hire lands. Watch for the signs that founder-led finance has run its course: a model that is a scramble, cash conversations that are a guess, hiring without data.
How Block Earner, Marmalade and Simply Wall St timed their first finance hire
Three Australian fintechs from the study, told from public profile titles and announced rounds: a lender that hired four months before its seed, a payments company that raised first, and a research platform that waited almost six years.
Block Earner
An accountant four months before the seed, a head of finance a month after it
- Business
- Crypto-backed lending and yield products (founded 2021)
- First finance hire
- Financial accountant, Aug 2021
- Against the first roundVs first round
- 4 months before
- Next finance hire
- Head of finance, Jan 2022
- Now
- Head of finance since Mar 2024; finance manager since Apr 2026
Block Earner lends against crypto and offers yield products to savers, so customer money moves through it from the start. It was founded in 2021, and a financial accountant started in August, four months before its seed round was announced in December.
A head of finance followed in January 2022, a month after the seed. That first head of finance left in May 2023 and the seat was filled again in March 2024, ahead of an A$8 million Series A in August 2025. A finance manager joined in April 2026.
When money moves through the product from the first customer, a hands-on hire before the seed is the common path, and the senior seat can follow the money in.
Marmalade
A payments company that raised first and hired 26 months later
- Business
- On-demand invoice payments for small businesses (founded 2020)
- Rounds
- Funding round, Mar 2024 (A$16M)
- First finance hire
- Finance manager, May 2026
- Against the first roundVs first round
- 26 months after
- Next finance hire
- None yet
- Now
- Finance manager in role (Sep 2026)
Marmalade pays small businesses’ invoices on demand. Its March 2024 release announced A$16 million, put payment volumes at over half a billion dollars a year and total money raised over four years at more than A$32 million. The earlier money was never dated in a public announcement we could confirm.
The first internal finance title on the public record is a finance manager in May 2026, 26 months after that round. A business moving that much money had its finance done somewhere before then, by the founders or by outside providers. It is the exception to the lending and payments pattern.3
A payments business can raise with its finance done outside. If you plan to, decide before the round who owns the cash and the numbers until the first internal hire lands.
Simply Wall St
Almost six years from the seed to the first finance hire
- Business
- Share research and portfolio analysis for retail investors (founded 2014)
- First finance hire
- Finance manager, Apr 2021
- Against the first roundVs first round
- 68 months after the seed; 46 after the Series A
- Next finance hire
- Accountant, Mar 2022; FP&A analyst, 2022
- Now
- Latest on record: financial controller and company secretary, Nov 2024 to Aug 2026
Simply Wall St sells share research and portfolio tools to retail investors by subscription; customer money does not pass through it. It raised a $600,000 seed in 2015 and a $1.8 million Series A in 2017, then ran for almost four more years with no internal finance hire.
A finance manager started in April 2021. The function then filled in around the seat: an accountant in March 2022, an FP&A analyst the same year, and a financial controller who was also company secretary from November 2024 to August 2026.
A fintech that sells information runs on software’s clock. Small rounds and outside help can carry it for years; hire when the next raise needs the numbers ready.
The other fintech benchmarks
Before or after the first raise, in the other cuts: All startups, Tech, Deep tech.
Fintech, the other three questions: How long after a raise, What to hire first, 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
Do Australian fintechs hire finance before or after their first raise?
Slightly more before. Of the 40 funded Australian fintechs in Story Recruitment's study, 55% (22) had a finance person in place before their first announced round, a median 15 months ahead of it, and 45% (18) hired after it, a median 21 months later. What the product does sorts them: 63% (15 of 24) of those that lend or move money hired before the round, against 44% (7 of 16) of the other fintechs.
What counts as a fintech here?
A company whose product is financial: payments, lending, banking, insurance, wealth, trading or crypto infrastructure. Story Recruitment's study holds 40 funded Australian fintechs, all with a dated finance hire. The 24 that lend, extend credit or move payments are our own reading of each company's product; the other 16 sell things such as trading platforms, insurance, advice, research or software to banks.
Does a lending or payments fintech need finance in place before its seed round?
Most in our data had it. Of the 7 lending and payments fintechs we tracked that announced a seed round, 5 had an internal finance hire when it was announced, against 1 of 7 other fintechs.
How long after a raise do fintechs make their first finance hire?
Among the fintechs we tracked with nobody in finance when their seed was announced, the median wait was 31 months (8 companies), and 1 of the 8 hired within a year. After a Series A the median was 15 months (12 companies), and 33% (4 of 12) hired within a year.
Does hiring finance before the round help a fintech raise?
This data cannot say, and it does not claim to. It records the order in which finance hires and announced rounds happened. It does not show that hiring earlier or later changes how a company fares.
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 the groups are small, so read the direction, not the decimal. Two of the 24 are soft rows (a listed company’s share issue more than a venture round), and without them 13 of 22 hired before.
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.