The CFO Has Replaced the COO

And why the CFO seat is the true operator and my favorite in any company

For years, the CFO was seen as the financial custodian. Own the budget. Manage burn. Prepare the board deck. Make sure every number ties out and every statement is auditable. Rarely were they seen as a true partner in operating the business.

But the demands on the CFO have changed dramatically.

In modern SaaS companies, the CFO isn’t just managing finances. They’re designing the business. They own the operating cadence. They define the metrics that matter. They shape how different functions communicate and make decisions. In many companies, the CFO has quietly replaced the COO without the title ever changing.

And this shift didn’t start in the enterprise. It started in startups.

When you’re the first finance hire at a growing company, you’re not just doing bookkeeping. You’re building the architecture for how the company understands itself. You’re building the operating model, the GTM dashboard, the ARR forecast, the capacity plan. You’re in sales forecast calls, marketing budget reviews, and hiring plan meetings because you’re the one person who can tie all of it together. There’s no VP Ops. Often, there’s no COO. So that job falls to you. At least, that was my experience.

And that’s why I’ve always loved the finance seat. It’s as close to the CEO seat as you can get. You have an expansive purview of the business. And most importantly, you own the conversation around nearly every major tradeoff. It’s one of the most cross-functional, leveraged, and strategic roles in the company. Full stop.

A shift in mindset that helped me unlock that leverage:
I started thinking of the job as one of building frameworks.
CFO = Chief Frameworks Officer.

Because a framework is not just a model or a report.
It’s a tool for surfacing tradeoffs, and tradeoffs are the whole game in a startup.

You can’t do everything. You have limited capital, time, and people. So the most valuable thing a CFO can do is create the boundaries. Make clear what’s possible, what’s not, and what each path might cost or enable. The best CFOs don’t just run scenarios. They frame the conversations that help teams choose which bets to make.

A great framework gives structure to ambiguity. It creates a shared language for how the business works. It’s the container for understanding and the foundation for alignment.

That’s why I say CFOs don’t just track the business. They design it. They define how growth is measured, how efficiency is benchmarked, where the limits are, and what “good” looks like. And they facilitate the conversations across leadership to align on what comes next.

Here’s what that looks like in practice, across five foundational frameworks:

Growth x Burn x Valuation
The most fundamental tradeoff in SaaS.
How fast can we afford to grow? What does that mean for our runway? And how does it shape the story we tell in our next fundraise?
This isn’t just a spreadsheet. It’s a capital allocation framework. It forces discipline and long-term thinking. The CFO needs to own that conversation.

The ARR Build
Everyone obsesses over ARR growth, but it’s meaningless without breaking it down into its component parts: new business, expansion, contraction, and churn.
This is how you truly understand your growth engine and where it might break down.
If new logo growth is strong but expansion is flat, that has implications for product. If churn is creeping up, CS needs a different playbook.
The CFO doesn’t just present these numbers. They ask: So what? What now?

Segmentation
Not all customers are created equal.
The best CFOs push the company to think in segments and cohorts.
Which customers retain best? Which ones expand? Which are costly to acquire?
And what happens to the shape of the business if we double down on one segment versus another?
This is how you move from generic growth to strategic growth.

Sales Capacity
This is where strategy becomes math.
The CFO isn’t just reviewing headcount requests. They’re modeling the productivity assumptions behind every rep: ramp time, quota coverage, AE to SDR ratios, and whether the math supports the revenue target.
If those assumptions don’t hold, the plan isn’t real. The CFO is the one person who can say that and back it up.

Unit Economics
This is where the CFO sets the guardrails.
What’s our LTV to CAC? Payback period? Magic number?
And more importantly, where do we want those metrics to be in 12 months? In three years?
These aren’t just investor-friendly metrics. They’re operating boundaries. They help leadership decide whether to grow faster, slow down, hire more, or hold the line.

When done well, these frameworks become part of the company’s operating system.
They don’t just describe the business.
They shape it.

That’s why I believe the best CFOs today aren’t just CFOs.
They’re Chief Frameworks Officers.
Or, as I like to call them, First Operators.

Because in the end, the job isn’t to track what’s happening.
It’s to make sure the right things are happening.
And to facilitate the right conversations to get there.

That’s real leverage. That’s real operating.
And it’s why I’ll always make the case that finance, done well, is the most underrated strategic function in the company.