Stories and lessons from an unexpected journey in finance.

If the middle market and public-company CFO roles are about refinement, the startup CFO role is raw creation.

I’ve stepped into venture-backed environments where the company had tremendous product vision but very little financial structure. It’s not unusual. Startups grow around opportunity, not process. When the CFO arrives, the business finally gets a mirror—and sometimes what they see isn’t comfortable.

Your first job? Create clarity.
Cash is the first battlefield. I’ve walked into rooms where the burn rate was misunderstood by millions, where the next raise depended on survival tactics rather than strategy, and where founders were operating with heroic optimism instead of grounded reality. The CFO becomes the truth-teller. Not pessimistic—just precise.

Your second job? Build systems out of chaos.
From implementing the first ERP to creating a proper close calendar, everything is a first. Teams are small, roles blurry, and processes undocumented. You don’t inherit a machine—you assemble one while it’s running. The CFO has to scale people, tools, and discipline in parallel.

Your third job? Balance vision with viability.
Founders live in the future. Investors want the next milestone. Employees want stability. The CFO sits in the tension between ambition and sustainability. Some of the toughest conversations I’ve ever had were with passionate founders who needed help seeing the trade-offs between growth and burn, product ambition and cash runway.

Your fourth job? Be the integrating force.
In a startup, finance touches everything—product roadmaps, pricing strategy, customer success, hiring plans. When I’ve helped guide two acquisitions inside a startup, it wasn’t just a transaction; it was stitching together cultures, processes, and expectations in an organization that was still defining itself.

The startup CFO is part operator, part strategist, part psychologist, and part chief realist. If you get it right, you help turn potential energy into real traction. If you get it wrong, the runway ends fast.

👉 What’s the biggest misconception you’ve seen or heard about startup CFOs?

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