Your first finance hire

A lot of founders run the numbers themselves past the point that they should. You might be getting by with a bookkeeper or an outsourced accountant closing the month and a spreadsheet you built for the last raise - but if you’re growing fast, and planning what comes next, you may have reached the point where a finance hire starts paying for itself.

This is a guide to spotting that point and knowing what to do when you get there, based on my experience. It’s written for consumer businesses between seed and Series A, because that’s where I work and where getting this hire right tends to matter most. You’ll also find the salary figures in my salary benchmarks.

The signs it’s time

I don’t think there’s a definitive revenue number that tells you, but there are situations - and if more than one of these are true for you, then it’s time to get a move on.

You’re raising in the next nine months. Investors at seed will forgive a rough model but at Series A they won’t. They’ll want a three-statement model with scenarios, a cohort view of retention - and someone on the call who knows it inside out.

You struggle to answer a margin question without a day’s work. What’s your contribution margin by channel, blended CAC, your payback period? If any of those takes a spreadsheet rebuild rather than a glance at a dashboard to answer then making pricing and marketing decisions quickly is difficult.

Compliance is falling on you. PAYE, pensions, the option scheme are jobs that fall on the founder - until that finance hire.

You’ve got stock. Physical products make managing cashflow complicated. Payments can go out months before revenue comes in, and the difference between a good year and a bad one can be how well you’ve forecasted demand against lead times - that’s a finance job.

At Apex we ran the early days with an independent bookkeeper. They were good at the job they were hired for: the books were right and the VAT went in on time. But they weren’t commercial, nor full time, and by the time we were planning our next raise, my co-founder and I were the ones building the model, board pack and cash forecast, on top of running the business. In reality we needed an FD-level person who could own the numbers and argue with us about them. And I found some very good ones - but what happened next is a story for the CFO guide.

The lesson from this stage is that the trigger isn’t a revenue number - it’s the day you realise you’re the finance function.

What level to hire at

It helps to know the difference:

A Financial Controller keeps the books right. Month-end, VAT, payroll, audit. Essential, but backward-looking, and at seed you can usually buy this from an outsourced firm for a reasonable price.

A Head of Finance or Finance Director builds the model, owns the forecast, runs the board pack and handles compliance. They’ll also do the controller work until you can afford both - so for most seed-stage consumer businesses this is the right first hire. The exception is late seed with a Series A in view, which the CFO guide covers.

A CFO is a strategic peer to the founder: capital structure, investor relations, M&A. At early seed that’s usually overkill, but it starts to pay dividends at late seed, with a Series A on the horizon. I’ve written separately about when a CFO makes sense.

There’s also the fractional route, which is absolutely worth considering before you commit to a full-time salary.

The profile

For a first Head of Finance at a consumer startup, this is what I look for.

Five to eight years experience with at least two of them somewhere small. Big-four training can be an excellent grounding but what they’ve done since matters. Someone who’s spent their whole career in a large finance team has probably never had to run payroll themselves. The best candidates I meet have followed their training with a stint at a startup, scale-up or SME, where they were the whole finance team and had to get on with it.

Forward-looking by instinct. You want someone who can look at your plans for the next six months and work out how much cash you’ll need and when. Can you afford to make hires? When does your next stock order need paying for? What happens if sales come in below plan? A good Head of Finance helps you work through those decisions.

Comfortable with product. Consumer startups manage stock, returns, marketplace fees, Shopify reconciliation and often have funds tied up in inventory. Someone from SaaS can no doubt learn it, but someone from another consumer brand already has the t-shirt.

Sets up systems. Can create a spend management tool, or a data layer between your sales channels and your accounting software - if they’ve done it before they can add value really quickly.

Willing to do the small stuff. At seed, the person building the Series A model might also be the one chasing supplier invoices and making payroll - they need to be comfortable with that.

What they’ll cost

A full-time Head of Finance at a seed-stage consumer startup in London will come in below the CFO range on my benchmarks, which starts at £80k. Expect the upper half of the range for someone who’s done a raise before. Equity will depend on how early they’re joining, the salary and how much responsibility they’re taking on. If they’re your first finance hire and building the function from scratch on a below-market salary, then the overall package needs to reflect that. Vesting is typically over four years with a one-year cliff; I’ve covered the mechanics in the equity guide.

What they should own in year one

The financial model and the scenarios that go with it, cash and runway tracked regularly, the board pack, VAT, R&D claims, payroll - and a clean data room ready for the next raise.

If you’re a consumer founder thinking about a first finance hire in the next 6-12 months, get in touch. I’ll tell you honestly whether it’s a Head of Finance, a fractional CFO or an accountant, and whether I’m the right person to help.