Chief Financial Officer
Owns cash, the model, the raise mechanics and the audit. The person who knows exactly how many weeks of runway are left.
Who to hire
The shape of person who does this job well — and whether you should be hiring it at all yet.
The highest-value fractional seat in a startup, and the one most often bought too late. One or two days a month from a real CFO beats a full-time controller for the first two years. Hire full time when any of these are true: revenue is recognised over time, you hold other people's money, you are being audited, or you are raising a priced round above a few million.
Education
An accounting designation or a finance degree, and in practice a designation: CPA for the books and the audit, CFA if the company's business is investment itself. A bookkeeper with 15 years in your industry is not a CFO and should not be asked to be one.
Experience
8+ years, including one audit survived and one financing closed from the company's side of the table. Ask what they did in the week before a round closed — the answer separates the people who have done it from the people who have watched.
Vertical / domain experience
Revenue recognition is where domain actually bites. SaaS, construction (percentage of completion), lending, insurance and anything with deferred revenue or trust money each have their own rules, and a CFO from the wrong one of those will get the first year's statements wrong. Otherwise domain is secondary to designation.
What it pays, roughly
$118,851 median, Canada — for Managers in financial and business services, the closest occupation Statistics Canada actually measures, measured from $102,398 to $123,198 over 216,805 people. That occupation is broader than this role, so read it as an anchor, not a salary band — and note that a startup usually pays below it in cash and above it in equity.
Credentials and certifications
What exists, who issues it, and whether it means anything for this seat. A credential is evidence of a floor, never of judgment — and in a few of these roles it is a legal requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
| Credential | Issued by | When it matters |
|---|---|---|
| CPA — Chartered Professional Accountant | CPA Canada (provincial bodies) | The baseline for anyone signing off statements in Canada. |
| CPA — Certified Public Accountant | AICPA & state boards (United States) | The US equivalent; licensing is by state board, not by the AICPA. |
| CFA — Chartered Financial Analyst | CFA Institute | Investment and capital-markets depth. Useful in a fund or a lender, not needed to close a Series A. |
| CTP — Certified Treasury Professional | Association for Financial Professionals | Matters when the company moves real money across currencies and banks. |
What this role does at each stage
The same title means three different jobs depending on how much money is in the bank. Read the stage you are at, then read the next one — that is what you are hiring toward.
Do not hire. A bookkeeper plus a spreadsheet the founder maintains personally. The founder must be able to say the burn rate from memory.
Fractional, one to three days a month: the model, the raise materials, the first proper monthly close, and the decision about when to stop using a spreadsheet.
Full time or a strong controller plus a fractional CFO above them. Now owns the audit, the board reporting pack, the equity administration and the first forecast anyone outside the company will hold you to.
Can one person hold this and something else?
The whole point of the many-hats problem: which of these jobs merge safely into one person, and which merges quietly cost you money or control.
Merges well with
- Corporate Accountant (Finance)
- Manager, Technical Accounting and Reporting (Finance)
- Manager of Global Payments (Finance)
At seed one person is reasonably the whole finance function — close the books, run payroll, pay the bills. The merge breaks when an auditor arrives, because the person who records a transaction should not be the only person who can approve it.
Keep separate from
See the CEO entry: separating who spends from who records is the cheapest control a company can have.
Reading a candidate
What good looks like in an hour, and what should stop the process.
Good signals
- Asks to see the bank statements and the contracts, not just the ledger
- Can explain your revenue recognition policy in plain words
- Has an opinion about when you should stop using your current accounting system
Red flags
- Has only ever worked at companies with an established finance team under them
- Talks about valuation before unit economics
- Will not put a number on runway without a week of work
The jobs under this seat
What this hat is actually responsible for once there are people doing it. Every one is a page of its own — and at seed most of them are the same two people, which is what the merge notes above are about.
Moves money across countries, currencies and banks — reliably, cheaply, and with a reconciliation trail.
Decides how a transaction is recorded and defends it — revenue recognition, equity, leases, acquisitions — and produces…
Keeps the books: the close, the reconciliations, accounts payable and receivable, and the file the auditor will ask for.
The whole department: Finance · every job in one list
What this role runs on
The software categories this seat lives in, each linked to the screen of who sells it — the incumbent, the challengers and what the lock-in is.