Of 82 funded Australian tech startups we tracked, 37 (45%) had a finance person before their first announced round and 45 (55%) hired after it. Of tech, fintech and deep tech, tech is the only sector where hiring after the raise is the larger group.
The answer for tech: a slight lean to after
“Tech” on this page means software and internet companies: SaaS, marketplaces, platforms and apps. Fintechs and deep tech companies are tagged separately from what they actually sell and have their own pages. Of the 83 funded Australian tech startups in Story Recruitment’s study, 82 have at least one dated finance hire, and the split is:
| Group | Companies | Median gap to the round |
|---|---|---|
| Finance hire before the first round | 37 of 82 (45%) | 15 months ahead (n=37) |
| Finance hire after the first round | 45 of 82 (55%) | 18 months later (n=45) |
| All 82 tech companies | 82 | 1 month after (n=82) |
Look at the bottom row and then ignore it. A median of one month after the round sounds like “tech hires finance when the money lands”, but almost nobody did that. The typical early hirer was more than a year ahead of the round and the typical late hirer was a year and a half behind it. Two behaviours sit either side of the raise, and the median falls in the sparse space between them.
Tech is also the only one of the three sectors where the after group is the bigger one. Across all 191 companies in the study with a dated hire, 100 (52%) hired before their first round. That matches what I see: a software business with one product in one market can run a long way on a bookkeeper and outside help, and a lot of it does.[1]
The stage benchmark: 24% at seed, 60% at Series A
The more useful question for a founder about to raise is not “before or after” in general but “do companies at my stage already have someone?” The table below takes every tech company that announced a round at each stage and asks whether an internal finance hire was already in place when its first round at that stage was announced.
| Round being announced | Tech: finance already in place | All startups |
|---|---|---|
| Seed | 9 of 38 (24%) | 24 of 73 (33%) |
| Series A | 30 of 50 (60%) | 64 of 113 (57%) |
| Series B or later | 19 of 24 (79%) | 50 of 64 (78%) |
This is the spine of the tech story. At seed, only 9 of 38 tech companies we tracked had anyone in an internal finance seat, below the all-startup rate of 24 of 73. By the time a tech company announces its Series A, it has caught up and slightly passed the market: 60% had someone. The switch happens between the two rounds, which fits the way Series A changes the job. There is now a board with real reporting expectations, a plan that has to hold, and enough money moving that the founder can no longer run it from a spreadsheet at night.
That matches the round sizes I see behind a first finance hire. When I was asked on Celia’s Corner when it typically lands, I said the first finance hire “might be a big seed round or a series A funding round”, somewhere between 10 and 20 million raised in Australia, or 5 to 10 million around Series A for a smaller business, “and then that’s pretty typical finance controller or head of finance level.”
At Series B or later, 19 of 24 tech companies had a finance hire in place, and the 5 that did not is the number most likely to be misread. It does not mean five Series B software companies were running with nobody doing finance. The study only sees people who list the company as their employer, and software is exactly where a virtual CFO provider carries the load for years without appearing anywhere. Of those 24, 5 is “had not yet made an internal finance hire”, nothing more. Across the whole study, 16 of 191 first hires (8%) are visibly fractional, part-time or interim, 7 of them in tech, and that is a floor.
If you are a SaaS founder weighing the senior seat specifically, I set out when a software startup needs a CFO, and why a controller plus outside help often carries you further than you expect.
How far ahead, and how far behind
Medians hide how wide this is. Here is every one of the 82 tech companies placed by the gap between its first finance hire and its first announced round.
| When the first finance hire started | Tech companies |
|---|---|
| 24 months or more before the round | 14 |
| 12 to 23 months before | 6 |
| 1 to 11 months before | 17 |
| In the round’s month or up to 3 months after | 8 |
| 4 to 6 months after | 3 |
| 7 to 12 months after | 6 |
| 13 to 24 months after | 11 |
| 25 to 36 months after | 2 |
| 37 months or more after | 15 |
Two clusters stand out. The biggest single band is the year before the round: 17 companies had their first finance person start 1 to 11 months ahead of the announcement. That is the pattern I know best. A founder about to go to market wants the numbers, the model and the data room to survive diligence, and brings someone in to get the house in order first. The other cluster is the long tail: 15 tech companies went more than three years past their first announced round before an internal finance hire appears. Those are the companies I would expect to have run on outside help for most of that time.
The early group needs one correction. Among the 37 who hired first, 3 have a first finance role that starts before the year the company records as its founding, which usually means a predecessor business or a founding year that is wrong. Leave those 3 out and the median lead is 12 months (n=34) instead of 15. Either way, the early hirers were typically a year or more ahead, not a few weeks.
What the early and late hirers brought in
The two groups did not hire the same seat.
| First finance hire | Hired before the round (37) | Hired after the round (45) |
|---|---|---|
| CFO | 13 | 7 |
| Head of finance or finance director | 5 | 14 |
| Financial controller | 9 | 9 |
| Finance manager | 4 | 6 |
| Accountant or FP&A analyst | 6 | 9 |
The pre-round group leans to the top seat: 13 of 37 started with a CFO title. The post-round group leans to a head of finance: 14 of 45. I would not read too much into a split this size, but it fits two very different briefs. A founder hiring ahead of a raise is often buying someone to stand in front of investors. A founder hiring after it is usually buying someone to run the function the new board now expects, and in software that is more often a head of finance than a CFO.[2] Which seat to start with is its own question, and the tech data on it is in what Australian tech startups hire first.
Four years from founding, the longest wait in the study
Tech also takes the longest to get there from day one. The median tech company we tracked made its first finance hire 4.0 years after it was founded (n=76), against 2.3 years in fintech (n=34) and 3.6 years in deep tech (n=50). Fintech is quick because the product moves money. Software is slow because, for a long time, it can be run with a good bookkeeper, an accounting firm and a virtual CFO a few hours a month.
The funding market is stretching that runway further. Looking at the latest quarterly venture figures, I pointed out that the Canva and Airwallex era of Australian tech was built on software, and that not one of the quarter’s three new unicorns was a SaaS business. When the largest cheques go to hardware, space and defence, a software company’s first raise tends to be smaller, and a smaller raise buys less finance.
That is why I rarely tell a software founder they are late. The trigger I watch for is not a year count or a stage. It is the point where the founder is spending a fifth of their week on finance they should not be doing.[3]
Three tech companies, three answers to the timing question
Three recent Australian software companies, told from public profile titles, public round announcements and the study sequence. They are sequences, not prescriptions: none of them shows that one order is better than another.
iion
A CFO 20 months before the seed round
- Business
- Advertising technology for games (founded 2019)
- Rounds
- Seed, Jun 2024 (announcement)
- First finance hire
- CFO, Oct 2022
- Against the first round
- 20 months before
- Next finance hire
- Finance manager, Jan 2023
- Now
- Both finance hires still in role (Sep 2026)
iion is an advertising technology business in the games industry that operates remotely across the globe. A company selling across borders from day one has more to reconcile, more currencies to manage and more to explain to an investor than a single-market software business, and it tends to need a senior finance owner sooner.
It hired a CFO in October 2022 and added a finance manager three months later, in January 2023. Its seed round was announced in June 2024, 20 months after the CFO started. That is the pre-raise pattern at its most pronounced: by the time the round was public, the finance function had been running for more than a year and a half, with two people, and both are still there.
It is also a useful reminder that “before the first round” means before the first announced round. Plenty of Australian software companies fund themselves from revenue or private money for years before a round makes the news.
iion’s CFO joined me as a guest on The CFO Track (Episode 11). The pattern I see in companies like this: a founder brings someone in to support the raise and get the house in order well before going to market.
The takeaway for a founderA CFO title well before the first round is common when the business is already international and complex. Hire for that complexity, not for the round label.
Carma
A financial controller five months before the seed
- Business
- Online used-car retailer (founded 2021)
- First finance hire
- Financial controller, Jul 2021
- Against the first round
- 5 months before
- Next finance hires
- Senior finance manager (consulting), Nov 2021; finance manager, Jan 2022
Carma came out of stealth in December 2021 with a US$20 million seed round, unusually large for a first raise, and followed it with a A$75 million Series A five months later. A business that buys, reconditions and sells cars online is not a typical software company: it carries physical stock and takes large customer payments from the first sale.
That explains the order. A financial controller started in July 2021, five months before the seed was public, and a senior finance manager working on a consulting basis joined in November, the month before. A permanent finance manager followed in January 2022 and is still there. By the time the Series A landed, the company had three finance people in place and controls built for a business that moves physical assets.
Carma listed on the ASX in November 2025. That listing is not a verdict on the hiring order; this study cannot draw one, and neither can one company.
The structure I see work best between roughly 10 and 50 people is a financial controller who does a bit of everything at the top end, with outsourced help for payables, reconciliations and payroll. Not the controller doing everything, and not several full-time people too early.
The takeaway for a founderIf the product itself carries a balance sheet, as a car retailer holding stock does, the controller comes before the money, not after it.
Mindset Health
Two seeds, a Series A, then a fractional CFO
- Business
- Digital therapeutics apps (founded 2018)
- First finance hire
- Fractional CFO, Apr 2023
- Against the first round
- 35 months after; 1 month after the Series A
- Next finance hire
- Head of finance, Sep 2024
- Now
- Operating; head of finance still in role
Mindset Health builds evidence-based hypnotherapy apps, and its funding came in steps: a US$1.1 million seed in 2020, a US$6.7 million seed in 2021, then a US$12 million Series A in March 2023 to scale distribution. Through two seed rounds, no finance title appears in public records at all.
On paper that is a company that went nearly three years past its first round with no finance. In practice it shows exactly what the study cannot usually see: the first finance title that does appear is a fractional CFO, the month after the Series A. Outside finance help is normally invisible in employment records; here it happens to be listed.
A permanent head of finance started in September 2024, 18 months after the Series A, and the fractional arrangement ended a few months later. That handover, from a part-time senior adviser to an in-house lead below CFO, is the sequence I see most in single-product software.
As I said on a podcast about fractional finance: “The fractional relationship with a provider might only be 18 to 24 months. And then at the back end of it, when a business outgrows them, then they refer to me.” Here, the fractional CFO title ran 21 months.
The takeaway for a founderGoing years past your first round without an internal finance hire is normal in software. Plan the handover from outside help to an in-house lead before the arrangement is outgrown, not after.
What I see in tech
The honest version of this data for software founders is that the internal hire is the second step, not the first. When I was asked on a podcast how business model moves the timing, I put it this way:
“If it’s a SaaS business that’s one jurisdiction, one location, one product, then it probably doesn’t need a proper CFO until series B, because they can just facilitate with the finance controller internally and they have an external fractional CFO to support the other stuff.”
For a single-product software business that set-up is usually the right call, as long as you know it is a stage and not a destination.
So when a tech founder asks me whether they are behind, I ask three things first. Is a raise less than a year away? If so, someone needs to get the house in order before you go to market, and that is often a fractional provider running the raise as a project, with a plan to hire internally once it closes.[4] Is the business still one product in one market? If so, a strong controller inside and outside help above them can carry you further than the standard advice suggests. And is finance eating your week? If it is, the stage you are at matters less than the fact that you have already found your trigger.
What changes the answer in tech is complexity, not the round label: a second product, a second country, or a board that now expects audit grade numbers. That is usually where the controller who carried you through Series A needs someone above them.
How tech compares
| Cut | Hired before the first round | Median months ahead (those before) | Median months after (those after) |
|---|---|---|---|
| All startups | 100 of 191 (52%) | 17 (n=100) | 18 (n=91) |
| Tech (this page) | 37 of 82 (45%) | 15 (n=37) | 18 (n=45) |
| Fintech | 22 of 40 (55%) | 15 (n=22) | 21 (n=18) |
| Deep tech | 33 of 52 (63%) | 19 (n=33) | 21 (n=19) |
The other three tech benchmarks pick up where this one stops:
- How long after a raise tech startups hire finance
- What tech startups hire first in finance
- The second finance hire in tech
For the decision itself, see when to hire a CFO and how to hire a CFO.
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.
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 tech startups hire finance before or after their first raise?
Slightly more hire after. Of 82 funded Australian software and internet startups we tracked with a dated finance hire, 37 (45%) had a finance person in place before their first announced round, a median 15 months ahead of it, and 45 (55%) hired after it, a median 18 months later. Tech is the latest of the three sectors in the study: 22 of 40 fintechs (55%) and 33 of 52 deep tech companies (63%) hired before.
Does a SaaS startup need finance in place before its seed round?
Most in our data did not have it. Of 38 tech companies we tracked that announced a seed round, 9 (24%) already had an internal finance hire when that seed round was announced. By Series A the share was 30 of 50 (60%), and by Series B or later 19 of 24 (79%). Many of the rest will have used an outsourced bookkeeper or virtual CFO, which never shows up in public employment records.
How long after founding do tech startups make their first finance hire?
A median 4.0 years from founding in the tech companies we tracked (n=76), the longest of the three sectors: fintech took a median 2.3 years (n=34) and deep tech 3.6 years (n=50).
Do tech startups reach Series B with no finance hire?
A minority do on paper. Of 24 tech companies we tracked that reached Series B or later, 5 had not made an internal finance hire when that round was announced. That does not mean nobody was doing the work: software companies in particular often run for years on an external virtual CFO provider that does not appear in any public data.
Does hiring finance before the round help a tech startup raise?
This data cannot say and does not claim to. It records the order in which hires and announced rounds happened. An earlier outcome test on the first 102 companies found no difference that could be told from chance.
References
- What I see with founders before a raise: they often bring someone in to support the raise and get the house in order before they go to market. In software that person is very often an external virtual CFO provider, and some software businesses go a long time without an internal senior finance person at all. None of that appears in public employment data.
- From my conversations with SaaS founders: in a pure SaaS business you probably do not need a CFO until at least Series B, and I have seen companies at Series B, C and even D run well on a really good financial controller or head of finance.
- The trigger I hear most from founders is not a funding stage. It is the point where financial decisions start taking 20 or 30% of the founder’s day and pulling them away from the things they do really well.
- What investors tell founders and what founders do are often different. Investors would ideally like the finance hire in before Series A, so it can help with the raise, the data room and compliance. More often, a founder brings in a fractional person to run the raise as a project, with a mandate to hire finance internally once the money lands.
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.