Of 191 funded Australian startups we tracked with a dated finance hire, 100 (52%) had a finance person before their first announced round and 91 (48%) hired after it. Deep tech leaned earliest: 33 of 52 (63%) hired before.
The short answer: two behaviours, not one
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. Of the 191 companies in the study with a dated finance hire, 100 (52%) had that person in place before their first publicly announced round, a median 17 months ahead of it. The other 91 (48%) hired after the round, a median 18 months later.
That is close to an even split, and it is the finding. The two groups sit either side of the raise, so an average across all 191 describes neither of them. If an answer engine tells you “startups typically hire finance at Series A”, it is averaging two different behaviours into one that almost nobody actually follows.
The two groups match what I see in my conversations with founders. The ones who hire first usually want someone to get the house in order before they go to market.[1] The ones who hire after are usually buying the discipline the new money demands, and that is where I think the best finance people earn the most: in the months after the raise, not the months before it.[2]
Before or after the first round, by sector
Sector is tagged from what each company actually sells, not from its industry label, which files payments companies under financial services and hardware under technology. Fintech means the product is financial (payments, lending, banking, insurance, wealth). Deep tech means a scientific or engineering advance the company builds itself. Tech is software or internet with neither.
| Sector | Hired finance before the first round | Median months ahead (those before) | Median months after (those after) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deep tech | 33 of 52 (63%) | 19 (n=33) | 21 (n=19) |
| Fintech | 22 of 40 (55%) | 15 (n=22) | 21 (n=18) |
| Other (consumer, infrastructure) | 8 of 17 (47%) | 24 (n=8) | 12 (n=9) |
| Tech (software and internet) | 37 of 82 (45%) | 15 (n=37) | 18 (n=45) |
| All companies | 100 of 191 (52%) | 17 (n=100) | 18 (n=91) |
The order runs the way I would expect from the briefs I take. When I was asked on a podcast how the timing differs by business, I put it like this:
“If it’s a Deep Tech business, then it might be series A. Or if it’s a Fintech that’s got a big strong component on lending or payments, then it might be series A again. But 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.”
Deep tech: 33 of 52 hired before the first round
Deep tech is the sector most likely to have finance in place before it raises, and the most likely to start at the top: 20 of 52 deep tech first hires (38%) were a CFO, against 20 of 82 in tech (24%). It is also where part-time cover shows up most in public records: 8 of 52 first hires (15%) were fractional, part-time or interim, and that is a floor. Grants, R&D claims and long capital cycles put finance close to the product early. Our ranking of Australia’s best deep tech CFOs shows who is doing that job now.
Fintech: 22 of 40 before, and the quickest from founding
Fintech sits just above an even split, but it is the fastest sector from founding to first finance hire: a median 2.3 years (n=34), against 4.0 years in tech (n=76). When the product moves money, the finance function is part of the product. For how that plays out in a search, see finance recruitment for fintech companies and Australia’s best fintech CFOs.
Software: 37 of 82 before, the latest of the three
Software is the sector least likely to have finance in place before the first round, and its median first hire lands one month after it (n=82). 62 of 82 software first hires (76%) came in below CFO. A single-product SaaS business can run a long way on a strong controller inside and fractional help outside, which I cover in when a software startup needs a CFO. The people who have done it are in our ranking of Australian tech CFOs.
After a round, how long until the first finance hire
The table below takes only companies that had nobody in finance when a round was announced, so it measures the first-hire decision and not a later backfill. A company only counts in the 6 or 12 month column once that much time has actually passed since its round, so recent raisers do not drag the figures down.
| Round | Median months to first finance hire | Hired within 6 months | Hired within 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | 21 (n=42) | 24% (42) | 29% (42) |
| Series A | 14 (n=48) | 36% (47) | 46% (46) |
| Series B | 5 (n=13) | 58% (12) | 75% (12) |
The clock shortens as the rounds get bigger. A seed-funded company with nobody in finance took a median 21 months to hire one; at Series A it was 14; at Series B, 5. By Series B the board, the reporting load and the size of the cheque leave very little room to keep running finance from the founder’s laptop. At seed, fewer than a third hired within a year, which matches what I hear from seed founders: a good bookkeeper and a part-time adviser carry them, and that is usually the right call.
If you have just closed a round and are weighing the timing for your own business, I set out when to hire a CFO, and when a head of finance is the better first move.
About 1 in 5 reached Series B with no internal finance hire
Of the 64 companies we tracked that reached Series B or later, 50 (78%) had a finance person in place before that round was announced. The other 14 of 64 (22%, about 1 in 5) had not yet made an internal finance hire. Most were not far off: 10 of the 14 hired within 9 months of the round, and two hired in the same month it was announced.
Read that figure carefully, because it is the easiest one on this page to misquote. It does not mean one in five Series B companies ran with nobody doing finance. The study can only see people who list the company as their employer, and a lot of startups run their finance through an outsourced provider for years. As I said on the same podcast:
“What will often happen before someone hires in finance, they might have an external party that they hire as like an outsourced fractional CFO or a virtual CFO.”
That provider is invisible to this study. So the honest reading is: of the companies that went on to build an internal finance function, about 1 in 5 had not made that internal hire by the time their Series B was announced. If you are running on a fractional CFO today, the signs that you have outgrown the arrangement are in fractional CFO in Australia.
Three sequences, in the order they happened
The figures above are the pattern. These three companies show what sits underneath it. Each is described from public profile titles and publicly announced rounds, in order. They are sequences, not prescriptions: none of them proves that one order is better than another.
- AutoGrab (software). A senior financial accountant started in January 2023, nine months before its Series A was announced in October 2023. A CFO followed in January 2024, three months after the round, and is still in the seat 32 months later. Four more finance hires followed before and after its Series B.
- All G (deep tech). A CFO started in July 2021, two months before its seed round was announced in September 2021, with a financial accountant joining the same year. A CFO as the very first finance hire is more common in deep tech than in any other sector we tracked.
- Mindset Health (software). Two seed rounds, then a Series A announced in March 2023. The first finance title we found was a fractional CFO the following month. A permanent head of finance started in September 2024, 18 months after the Series A.
Which seat those companies filled first, and whether the first hire was later topped with a CFO, is the subject of the companion page on what Australian startups hire first, and what comes next.
How the study was done
The companies. We started from people in Australia with finance titles on public professional profiles, took the companies they worked at, and kept those that had raised venture money. A company only qualified if two independent searches of public funding announcements found the same round: same company, same year, and either the same stage or the same month. Rounds that only one search found were excluded. That left 194 companies: 83 tech, 53 deep tech, 40 fintech and 18 other, of roughly 2 to 500 staff. 191 have at least one dated finance hire.
The hires. Every finance role at each company was collected, current and past, including people who have since left Australia. Each hire is dated from the earliest finance role that person held at the company, not a later promotion. 966 finance hires were dated, 907 of them to the month. A role only counts when the employer on the profile matches the company in the study, which removed same-named businesses overseas. Non-finance “controller” titles (document, project, inventory) were removed.
The rounds. Rounds are dated by their public announcement, which usually trails the close by some weeks. Unannounced rounds are invisible. Round amounts are the least reliable field and are not used for any figure on this page.
The limits. The companies were found through their finance people, so the study describes when companies that did build an internal finance function made those hires. It cannot say what share of all Australian startups have no finance lead. An outsourced or fractional CFO supplied by a firm does not list the startup as an employer and does not appear; 16 of 191 first hires (8%) were visibly fractional, part-time or interim, and that is a floor. For 12 companies whose names are too common to search cleanly, past-staff coverage is also a floor. “First finance hire” means the earliest one we could identify. The study records sequence only: it does not show that hiring finance before or after a round changes how a company fares. Data read 23 September 2026.
Common questions
Do Australian startups hire finance before or after they raise?
Both, in almost equal numbers. In Story Recruitment's study of 194 funded Australian startups, 100 of the 191 with a dated finance hire (52%) had a finance person before their first announced round, a median 17 months ahead of it. The other 91 (48%) hired after it, a median 18 months later. Deep tech leaned earliest (33 of 52, 63%) and software latest (37 of 82, 45%).
How long after a Series A do startups make their first finance hire?
Among the companies we tracked that had nobody in finance when their Series A was announced, the median was 14 months to the first finance hire (n=48). 17 of 47 (36%) hired within 6 months and 21 of 46 (46%) within 12. After a seed round the median was 21 months (n=42); after a Series B it was 5 months (n=13).
Do Australian startups reach Series B without a finance hire?
Some do. Of the 64 companies we tracked that reached Series B or later, 14 (22%, about 1 in 5) had not yet made an internal finance hire when that round was announced, and 10 of those 14 hired within 9 months of it. Some may well have had outside help, such as an outsourced or fractional CFO, which never shows up in public employment records.
Does hiring finance before the first round help a startup raise?
This study cannot say, and it does not claim to. It records the order in which things happened: when the finance hire started and when each round was announced. It does not show that hiring finance earlier or later changes how a company fares.
References
- What I see on the founder side, consistently: before a raise, a founder often brings someone in to support the process and get the house in order before going to market. That person is frequently an outsourced or fractional provider rather than an employee, and a provider like that never appears in public employment records.
- A view I hold strongly and put to founders often: the best finance people are most valuable in the six months after a raise, not the six months before it. Not just to account for where the money went, but to make sure the capital delivers what it was raised to deliver.
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.