​I've seen startups at their very best, and at their very worst.

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I've seen businesses run out of cash. I've seen incredible pivots rescue companies that looked finished. I've watched brilliant products fail because the business around them wasn't ready to scale. And I've watched seemingly ordinary businesses become exceptional because they built the right foundations early.

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Those experiences have highlighted that most early stage startups don't actually have a finance problem. They have a leadership problem around finance.

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Reporting becomes unreliable. Forecasts are based more on instinct than data. Processes evolve organically, information lives in spreadsheets and founders end up carrying far too much of the business because nobody else has the visibility or confidence to make decisions.

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By the time people start talking about hiring a CFO, those problems have often been building for months, sometimes years.

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That's why we think the traditional fractional CFO model often misses the mark for Angel and Seed-stage businesses.

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At this stage, founders don't need someone who turns up once a month for a board meeting and disappears again.

 

They need someone who's happy to roll their sleeves up, get into the detail and help build the foundations the business needs to grow. That might mean improving reporting, forecasting cash, implementing systems, working with sales, marketing and operations, or simply helping the founder make better decisions with better information.

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I've worked on plenty of funding rounds. But more importantly, I've learned that the hard work starts after the money lands in the bank.

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That's why PRE-CFO exists.

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To build the kind of finance partner more early-stage founders should have access to. A team with the experience to see problems coming, the curiosity to understand how the business really works, and the willingness to get stuck in and help solve them.

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If we can help founders avoid a few expensive mistakes, bring some calm when things feel chaotic and leave the business stronger than when we arrived, then we’ve done our job.

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Any when you get too big, we'll watch with pride as we hand over to a CFO to lead you on the next stage of your success!