The business needed senior finance judgment for a defined period
A venture backed fintech business was going into a funding round. It had a strong controller, the person who runs the day to day accounting, and no senior finance seat above them. A round tests every part of a finance function, and somebody has to sit in a diligence session and answer for the numbers in front of investors.
What it needed was a chief financial officer’s judgment for a defined period and a controller’s execution for the rest of the time. A full time hire would have solved half of that and overpaid for the other half. An outsourced arrangement advises from outside, and an interim holds the seat full time. Neither is shaped like the need.
We bought the seniority and sized the commitment
We scoped the engagement around the round and around the finance function that would need to exist after it. Sourcing then went to former chief financial officers, finance directors and investor relations leads who had taken comparable businesses through a raise at the same stage. The screen was stage rather than title, because a growth round asks different questions of a finance function than a later one does, and someone who has only seen the later kind is a poor guide to this one.
Building the function that would remain was written into the brief, so the value did not walk out with the placement. Any restriction from a previous employer was disclosed to the business before an introduction was made.
The round was run by somebody who had run one
The business went into the round with senior finance leadership in place and a function built to hold up under the scrutiny a raise brings. The cost matched the shape of the need: it bought the seniority for the period it was needed, without a permanent cost it would have struggled to carry.
When the round closed, the controller stepped up into a function that had been built around them, rather than inheriting one designed for somebody else. That was the point of writing the build into the brief.
