We recently hosted a live webinar featuring Kevin Williams and Julian Castelli on how to structure a modern finance function as your company scales. Whether you’re a founder doing it all or already managing a lean team, the discussion offered clear guidance on how to build a finance team that supports both your day-to-day operations and long-term strategy.
Why Finance Structure Matters
At many early-stage companies, finance starts as a catch-all scrappy, reactive, and often founder-led. But as revenue grows, complexity follows. A strategic finance function isn’t just about staying compliant or closing the books on time. It’s about enabling confident decisions, ensuring cash runway, and making your business more valuable to future investors, acquirers, and your own team.
The Three Core Pillars of a Strategic Finance Function
In order to appropriately scale your finance organization, it is critical to understand the three distinct (but interrelated) areas of a complete finance capability.:
- Control & Accounting – Closes the books, manages audits, oversees ERP systems.
- Accounting Operations – Handles AP, AR, payroll, and billing.
- FP&A & Strategy – Focuses on forecasting, scenario planning, and tying numbers to decisions.
Clarity around these roles helps you hire or outsource with intent without overwhelming generalists or underinvesting in critical areas.
Left Brain / Right Brain Professionals
Not understanding these three very different pillars of a finance function often leads to frustration and staffing challenges. Pillar 1 – Control & Accounting requires specific accounting expertise – often staffed with CPAs and Chartered Accountants. The work here is not known for creativity, but instead is very rules and process based (Left brain oriented). Pillar 2 requires detail-oriented, operational and process focussed management. Finally Pillar 3 requires analytical skills married to practical business experience and creativity to run scenario based forecasting models and strategic planning tools (Right brain oriented). Founders often are frustrated when their Pillar 1 accountants are not able to run creative scenario planning models, and their FP&A resources may not be versed in GAAP rules and audit procedures. Often these are very different career and educational tracks – and it is rare to find early and mid-stage professionals who are able to bridge the various domains and do all three functions well.
Team Structures by Stage
There’s no universal template, but general guidelines can help you anticipate what your finance team should look like as you scale:
- Seed Stage (0–$2M): At this stage, closing the books and getting people paid are the most important priorities. Founder-led finance with fractional or outsourced bookkeeping and tax is often the starting path, with the first full time hire being a versatile accounting professional.
- Series A ($2–$10M): As customers, employees and vendors multiply an operational resource is often added to the group to execute on growing Pillar 2 tasks and allow the accountant to work with a Controller (fractional or full time) to close the books.
- Series B+ ($10M+): A Series B fundraise is often the catalyst to investing in F,P&A capability for the first time, as it is often required to drive the type of investor relations reporting expected by later stage investors. This can be done by bringing in an FP&A oriented leader for the finance group and/or a more junior or fractional FP&A resource.
This staged approach ensures you’re not overhiring too early but also not leaving mission-critical gaps as complexity increases.
When to Bring on a CFO
Hiring a CFO is a major milestone. It’s typically time to bring in that level of strategic finance leadership when:
- You’re actively fundraising or preparing for M&A
- You’re managing a growing team and need an experienced finance leader
- You need better forecasting and capital planning to inform decisions
But before bringing on a full-time CFO, many companies benefit from working with a fractional CFO who can guide financial strategy and prep you for larger capital events.
Outsourcing Smartly
Outsourcing continues to be a strong option, especially for early-stage teams. High-quality partners can run your core accounting and back-office processes cost-effectively just make sure you’re not relying on a single partner for everything, especially if they don’t offer strong FP&A capabilities.
As you scale, your finance function should evolve from transactional to strategic. A thoughtful approach to building the right team at the right time can become a true growth lever, not just a back-office necessity.
Final Thoughts
Finance should evolve from a transactional back office to a strategic growth partner. The best finance teams don’t just reconcile the past, they help shape the future.
By aligning the right people to the right roles at the right time, you set your company up for faster growth, better decisions, and stronger investor confidence.