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Ask HN: Bringing in a finance guy CFO

1 points by morenoh149 ↗ HN
My cofounder is the business end of our startup. I'm the tech. He's been talking to his professors in college and one suggested we get bring in a finance guy. My question is, at what company size is a CFO justified? And what benefits, what can such a person do, that we can't do for ourselves?

I think it's way too early for us to be worrying about this.

1 comment

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[dead] seefriek
I think you're right as well, and in fact many companies grow quite large without having a CFO, and you certainly don't need a CFO to raise VC (a top flight lawyer is money better spent). Through several startups I've done, every single adviser I've had that I felt had our interest at heart said, basically, "you don't need a CFO until you can see a path to going public". The rationale is that someone who is really qualified to be a CFO would be wasting 80% of their skill set until then and costing you a lot of money and ownership. Until then, a controller or accountant will be able to manage the organizations finances just fine (and that function can be outsourced), and there are any number of "rent a CFO" arrangements should you find yourself with some particularly hairy financial needs without committing to a hire.