Your first finance hire

Some founders run the numbers themselves past the point that they should - and if you’re growing fast, and planning what comes next, you may have reached the point where a finance hire makes sense.

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 getting this hire right tends to matter most. You’ll also find the salary figures in my salary benchmarks.

The signs it’s time

Here are four situations - and if more than one of these are true for you, then it’s time to get a move on.

1. You’re raising a Series A in the next nine months: Investors at seed will forgive a rough model but at Series A they won’t. They’ll want a model with scenarios - and someone who knows it inside out.

2. You struggle to answer a margin question quickly: What’s your contribution margin by channel, blended CAC, your payback period? These are important for making pricing and operational decisions and someone needs to own it.

3. Compliance is falling on you. In the early days, PAYE, pensions, the option scheme are jobs that fall on the founder. If time is getting scarcer then a finance hire can own these.

4. You’ve got stock. Physical products make managing cashflow complicated. Payments can go out months before revenue comes in so demand needs to be forecasted against lead times - that’s a finance job.

At Apex we ran the early days with an independent bookkeeper with myself and my co-founder running the model, board pack and forecasts. But we reached a point as we headed towards Series A when managing that on top of running the business was unsustainable and we hired a full time CFO.

What level to hire at

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 seed that’s usually overkill, but it starts to pay dividends 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.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. Comfortable with product: Consumer startups that manage stock, returns, and marketplace fees, will have funds tied up in inventory and that doesn’t always come naturally to someone from SaaS.

4. 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.

5. Someone you can work with. Your first finance hire will be in the room for every hard decision about cash, and how they handle pressure, and whether they’ll push back when they disagree with you, matters as much as anything above, and it’s the part a CV won’t tell you.

To test for these in the interview, my executive interview scorecard has the questions, including a set for finance leads.

What they’ll cost

A full-time Head of Finance at a seed-stage consumer startup in London will usually start from £65k, below the CFO range on my startup CFO salary page, which starts at £80k.

Expect to pay more, closer to £80k, 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 planning a first finance hire in the next 6-12 months, a Senior Hire Review will tell you which role, when, and what to pay.