Of 82 funded Australian software startups we tracked, 45% (37) had a finance person before their first announced round and 55% (45) hired after it. When a seed round was announced, 24% (9 of 38) already had someone in finance; when a Series A was announced, 60% (30 of 50) did.
45% of software startups hired finance before their first round, 55% after, and only 41% within a year of it
We dated every finance hire at 83 funded Australian software and internet companies against their publicly announced rounds, and 82 have at least one. Put each first finance hire against the first round and they spread across years on both sides of it.
- Before the round (37)
- In the month of the round or after it (45)
- 25+ months before14 (17%)
- 13 to 24 months before6 (7%)
- 1 to 12 months before17 (21%)
- 0 to 12 months after17 (21%)
- 13 to 24 months after11 (13%)
- 25+ months after17 (21%)
View as a table
| First finance hire | Companies | Share of 82 |
|---|---|---|
| 25+ months before | 14 | 17% |
| 13 to 24 months before | 6 | 7% |
| 1 to 12 months before | 17 | 21% |
| 0 to 12 months after | 17 | 21% |
| 13 to 24 months after | 11 | 13% |
| 25+ months after | 17 | 21% |
41% (34 of 82) made their first finance hire within a year of the first round, either side. The other 59% (48) were more than a year away, so the median of all 82, about a month after the round, describes almost nobody. What sorts them is which round came first. Across all 191 startups in the full study, 52% (100) hired before their first round; of tech, fintech and deep tech, software is the only sector where the after group is the larger one.
At the seed, 24% had someone in finance; by the Series A, 60% did
The same pattern holds for every company that raised at each stage, later rounds included. Here is the share with an internal finance hire already in place when each round was announced.
| Group | Seedincl. pre-seed | Series A | Series B+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software (this page) | 24%9 of 38 | 60%30 of 50 | 79%19 of 24 |
| All startups | 33%24 of 73 | 57%64 of 113 | 78%50 of 64 |
| Difference, software minus all | -9 pts | +3 pts | +1 pt |
| Fintech | 43%6 of 14 | 45%10 of 22 | 71%12 of 17 |
| Deep tech | 47%8 of 17 | 62%21 of 34 | 89%16 of 18 |
At the seed, software had someone in finance at 24% (9 of 38) of rounds, 9 points below all startups and well behind fintech and deep tech, whose products move money or carry stock from the start. By the Series A software has caught up, and at Series B or later it matches the market.3
After a seed, the median software startup waited 21 months for its first finance hire
Of the 24 software companies with nobody in finance when their seed was announced, the median took 21 months to make the first hire, and 33% (8) hired within a year. For most of them that was a sound call. As I said on Honest Wealth Builders, what happens a lot in an early-stage startup is “they don’t have the volume required for a full-time person”, so an outside accountant or a fractional CFO carries the numbers.
Round size is the other half. On Celia’s Corner I put the typical first finance hire at “a big seed round or a series A funding round”: somewhere between $10 million and $20 million raised, or $5 million to $10 million around a Series A for a smaller business, “and then that’s pretty typical finance controller or head of finance level.” Most Australian software seeds sit well under that, and a sub-$5 million round feels very different from what the quarter’s headline funding total suggests, as I wrote after the first quarter’s venture figures this year. A round that size buys runway, not a finance function.
For the full clock after a seed, Series A and Series B in software, read how long after a raise tech startups hire finance.
Before the Series A, the raise itself needs the finance work
By the time a Series A is announced, 60% (30 of 50) of software companies we tracked had someone in finance, and when the A was the first round at all, 65% (15 of 23) had hired ahead of it. The first finance hires I recruit generally come, as I told Honest Wealth Builders, “around like late seed round or series A”, and the work before an A is specific. As I said on Celia’s Corner, you might be “raising capital soon and you need to get the house in order in terms of financial controls or getting the data room there or documentation and governance.”
That is why the first finance person is not a bookkeeper. They build what the business grows on: the reporting framework, the compliance structure and the systems a raise runs through. If your Series A is a year out and nobody owns that yet, the hire belongs before the round. If you are not sure which side you are on, that is a conversation I have with founders for free, before anything commercial: what the raise needs.
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.
- Is your next raise a Series A, or a seed of $10 million or more?
- Is that raise less than 12 months away?
- Would an investor's request for recurring revenue, churn and cash by month take you more than a day to answer?
- More finance work than your accountant and a fractional CFO's few days a month can cover?
- Are big calls on hiring or spend being made on partial numbers and optimism?
0 of 5 answered. Your side appears here after the last one.
Not sure which side you are on? Send me the stage, the size of the next round 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
“Hire a CFO before the seed so investors take you seriously.” At the seed, 76% (29 of 38) of software companies we tracked had no internal finance hire, let alone a CFO, and they still raised.3 What seed investors look for is numbers that hold up, which an outside accountant and a fractional CFO can give you. The CFO seat itself usually comes later in software, and I set out when in when a software startup needs a CFO.
“A finance hire before the A will slow the raise down.” It usually does the opposite. When someone properly owns finance, decisions built on something solid tend to move faster, and in a raise the decisions are the data room, the model and the answers to diligence questions. The founder who owns all of that alone is running the raise and the finance function at once.
How Qwilr and Rosterfy timed their first finance hire
Two Australian software companies from the study, told from public profile titles, announced rounds and the study sequence: a finance manager three months before the Series A, and an accountant 27 months before it.
Qwilr
Five years after the seed, a finance manager three months before the Series A
- Business
- Proposal and quote software for sales teams (founded 2014)
- First finance hire
- Finance manager, Feb 2020
- Against the first roundVs first round
- 57 months after the seed; 3 months before the Series A
- Next finance hire
- Head of finance and operations, 2022
- Now
- Head of finance in role since Feb 2025 (Sep 2026)
Qwilr turns sales proposals and quotes into interactive web pages. It raised a A$500,000 seed in 2015 and then ran for almost five years with no internal finance hire. In February 2020 a finance manager started, three months before a $7.25 million Series A led by AirTree Ventures was announced.
After the round the seat moved up a level: a head of finance and operations in 2022, a virtual CFO title on the record from January 2024 to February 2025, and a head of finance from February 2025, still in the seat.
A small seed can carry a software business a long way on outside help. Hire when the next round is close enough to need the numbers ready.
Rosterfy
An accountant 27 months before the Series A, and a CFO the year it landed
- Business
- Volunteer and workforce management software (founded 2014)
- First finance hire
- Senior accountant, Jan 2021
- Against the first roundVs first round
- 27 months before
- Next finance hire
- Senior accountant, Nov 2022; CFO, 2023
- Now
- Second CFO since May 2025; financial controller added Jul 2026
Rosterfy sells volunteer and workforce management software to organisations that run on volunteers. It was founded in 2014, and its first announced round was a A$9.8 million Series A in April 2023. A senior accountant started in January 2021, 27 months before that, and a second senior accountant took over the seat in November 2022.
A CFO joined in 2023, the year of the Series A. An $8.5 million growth round followed in February 2025, a second CFO and a junior accountant started in May 2025, and a financial controller joined in July 2026.
A hands-on accountant can carry a software business to its Series A. Expect the senior seat to arrive with the round, and brief the first hire on that at offer stage.
The other tech benchmarks
- How long after a raise tech startups hire finance
- What tech startups hire first in finance
- The second finance hire in tech
For the CFO decision itself, read when a software startup needs a CFO. For every sector together, read when Australian startups make their first finance hire.
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, 45% (37) had a finance person before their first announced round, a median 15 months ahead of it, and 55% (45) hired in the month of the round or after it, a median 18 months later. It depends on the round: of the 36 whose first round was a seed, 78% (28) hired after it, and of the 23 whose first round was a Series A, 65% (15) hired before it.
What counts as a tech startup in this data?
A software or internet business: SaaS, marketplaces, platforms and apps. Sector is tagged from what each company's product does, so fintechs and deep tech companies are counted separately and have their own benchmark pages. Story Recruitment's study holds 83 funded Australian tech startups, 82 of them with a dated finance hire.
Should a SaaS startup hire finance before its seed round?
Most in our data did not. Of 38 Australian software companies we tracked that announced a seed round, 24% (9) had an internal finance hire when it was announced, against 33% (24 of 73) across all startups.
How long after a Series A do tech startups make their first finance hire?
Among the software companies we tracked with nobody in finance when their Series A was announced, the median was 12 months to the first finance hire (20 companies), and 55% (11 of 20) hired within a year. After a seed round the median was 21 months (24 companies), and 33% (8 of 24) hired within a year.
Does hiring finance before the round help a tech startup raise?
This data cannot say, and it does not claim to. It records the order in which hires and announced rounds happened. It does not show that hiring finance 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 is tagged from the product. “Tech” here means software and internet businesses; fintechs and deep tech companies are counted on their own pages, so the software figures and the all-startups figures overlap but are not the same set.
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.